er, there are only two N's in insanity... I don't normally bother with spelink missteyx in Sloshdat but a capitalised sig like that one with such an obvious error is just asking for correction...
It's been a while so I can't remember too many details...
One was in 4.0 where if you saved a file with exactly 1000 lines, regardless of size of file - it was the line count that mattered, the IDE crashed.
Later (4.5?) I had a graphics problem with something appearing a few pixels off where it should have been. Thought I'd got the maths wrong so I added an offset to put it in the right place (as a precursor to finding the cause of the problem) but then the graphic was off where it should have been by that offset! Moved the offset towards zero, and when it was zero the graphic was in the right place, but without that +0 on the equation it didn't give the right result.
Then there was one, oh that's three, never mind, where I tried adding a TTime and an int, and I got an ambiguous error because it didn't know whether to cast the int to long or the TTime to a TDate, cos it knew about TTime+long and TDate+int. Ok, not a bug (unless you consider that TDate+int would have given a vastly different result to TTime+long(int)), but one of those interesting little logic problems that make programming such fun.
And I'm not even going to get into the Losedows API. CreateBitmap and CreateDIBitmap; which one creates a device independent bitmap? That's right - NOT CreateDIBitmap.
You don't learn the basics of maths with a calculator, you just learn how to press buttons. Back in my day when I did O/A levels (that's exams at 16 and 18 for you Yanks, whatever you call them) calculators weren't necessary, were considered cheating, and any maths you did have to do could be easily done in your head if the exam/question was properly designed - if you found yourself having to divide 576985820 by 99.31467148 then that was a pretty clear sign you'd gone wrong somewhere - you'd be more likely to get 6e8 and 100 which is trivial. All questions in my O levels (calculators were allowed by the time I got to A and they didn't make a lot of difference because the exams were still being designed properly) resolved to easy numbers if done properly. Also exams are (were, at least) about showing your working, which you don't get from a calculator, and if the working was correct and the answer wrong because of some silly miscalculation you would only get penalised for that once - you'd still score most of the points for the question. If you shoved everything into a calculator and got the wrong answer, you'd fail the entire question - there was no way the examiner could know where you'd gone wrong.
Using a calculator for everything is just sad. If you're presented with a fairly simple calculation and you have to reach for a calculator, you'll just look dumb. Students - this does happen quite regularly in Real Life; being able to do maths in your head, even just approximately, is really an invaluable skill.
I also disconnected from an ISP some years ago - I emailed them and asked if I could end the service; they emailed back yes, I cancelled the direct debit and that was that. So I thought. About a year later they wrote to me explaining I owed them about $150. I wrote back: no I don't. They wrote back: yes you do. Cutting to the chase, when they had emailed back yes, there was a clause I didn't expect. I saw the "yes" at the top of the email and stopped reading. The email _actually_ said: yes, please email to confirm. I didn't think I needed to confirm; my original request was not ambiguous. They took it fairly well though although at the next year end we went through it all again.
And there's the time I signed up for a "free" service "we need your CC number for this free service". D'oh! At the end of the month - well, it actually took me about 5 minutes to decide I didn't want it - I informed them I did not want to continue. Guess what - the CC got debited. I think I had to threaten legal action before they refunded it.
Here's an idea. How about adding pricks like these to ORDB or equivalent. Since PenISless reckon they invented the internet, let's see how they get on without access to it.
"Organizational hierarchies of data sources are arranged so that an infinite number of sales presentation configurations can be created"
Infinite number of configurations = infinite number of options = infinite sized program. So all you do is demonstrate that an infinite number of configurations isn't possible on your system and you aren't breaking the patent. Hey they deserve this patent if they've figured out a way of storing an infinite amount of data in a finite computer.
Ok, barring the obvious "we're obfuscating it for the same reason every mobile phone has a different tariff so you really haven't got a clue which one is cheaper", what about standard licences? A EULA could state "This is a standard Type 1 licence, click here for more details" - if you already know what a Type 1 licence is, you know what the license states without having to read heaps of legal mumbo jumbo to try to determine if this is something you've seen before; equally, if you agree with Type 1 licences then you implicitly agree with any other software with a Type 1 licence. A different licence could be a different type, or an existing type "with the following modifications..." This would make it obvious if the company is trying to pass off a standard licence with a well hidden gotcha.
What a wunch of bankers. (1) Ok, so they own part of the project. Drop it, and claim it cost the company millions of dollars. Since they own part of it, they owe you big time. (You may be able to use some of the code in a new project, perhaps this one will be successful...) (2) Their time means they own some of your business. Ok, so your time equally means you own part of their business. Agree to an equal share (or equal percentage share, depending who is bigger) of each other. (3) Tell them to check their filesystem off, drop them as testers and refuse to do business with them until they pay you large $$$$ - perhaps as consultancy for implementing their requests. Hey the co I work for sell software then charge people more for configuring the thing.
So if I start a Kr**t company and call it Windotcom GmbH, we can get this guy to raise an injunction against Microsoft to recall all versions of Windows?
Ok I'll bow to the greater knowledge of TRS-80 and PDP fans, but one incredibly playable first person game (note the title does NOT say "first person shooter") released somewhere around 1981-1982 what 3D Monster Maze on the Sinclair ZX81. It was followed by 3D Asteroids by the same company which _was_ a shooter, although I could never get the hang of it. I think the ZX81's graphics were just a little bit too clunky for something as detailed as 3D Asteroids needed to be. But 3D Monster Maze always misses out on these discussions, and was the first first-person game I ever played! Download an emulator and play it today!
So we finally have an insect powered by nitrous oxide, and it only uses it to switch a stupid light on and off? Believe me, if I add nitrous oxide to my motorbike, it won't be used for illumination, although the term "speed of light" may still apply...
I got a FREE Nokia 7110 from the decent guys at breathe.com; I recently acquired a Palm Vx to see if it was worth ditching my increasingly useless Pison 5 for, which it turns out it is, and thanks to Dr Salami I got the two hooked up through IR to my ISP and I can now go surfing, expensively, and with a _very_ trashed screen because everything out there is designed for 800x600 not 160^2, but at least it _works_. With the Pison it always seemed that I had to get n+1 cards, bits of wire or software each costing about a hundred quid, where n=the number I thought I needed last time I looked at it and gave up cos it was just too stupidly expensive: 130110X to that and my pison is now up for sale.
Okay I can probably surf with the pison and the 7110 but when you're hacked off with something you just want to get rid, even if it has just started working. Well I do anyway. And the Palm is just such a sexy little device, especially after seeing that great big massive Pison 7 block which doesn't even go in external pockets its so damn oversized. Nice screen though, but far far too big.
As for the other discussion about phone plans I'm thinking of starting a page up for direct comparisons of what people are _actually_ doing. In discussion with some friends I've already surprised them with my tariff even though they think they covered all bases. It's time there was a site up there that lists examples of _actual_ users and what they are really paying.
Depends. If Micosoft is an engineering company producing, say, lathe parts, then clearly there is no infringement.
But if Micosoft produces a software product that it chooses to call Crapdows, which crashes a lot and doesn't do anything useful, then they might start to see complaining letters from MS.
That is only coincidentally pronounced "tossers", by the way;-)
Most TOS's I've seen have a clause that says they don't guarantee uptime, so if athome have the same clause they could simply fix the problem by pulling the proverbial plug out of the socket. This would presumably result in the UDP being lifted too as the spam would drop to zero.
Of course they want to provide a continuous service to their users so they probably won't go this route, but the point is - if they don't guarantee uptime they don't need 30 days notice to solve the problem.
If they can't do a scan w/o 30 days notice, and they need to do a scan to fix the spam, then they've got a (30 day downtime) problem. Most users I think though wouldn't quibble about a scan done in lieu of a scan being done anyway plus 30 days downtime. It's not as if they have a choice about the scan.
The problem about which they are being proactive is not spam, which they're quite clearly totally happy about*, but the forthcoming UDP. The UDP effectively puts them out of business, since they exist to connect people to the internet, and if there is an active UDP against them their users are going to leave in droves. Since the UDP is a future problem, anything they do to block spam is acting proactively against the UDP and fundamentally against a drain on their own wallet sizes. Spam is not their problem. The UDP is.
And just because they know about it doesn't mean they no longer qualify for the term "proactive". There's no point being proactive about stuff you know isn't going to happen, which is why e.g I don't scan my Linux box for Losedows viruses, but you can be proactive about stuff you know might, will or will eventually happen.
* Dumping 166MB of spam onto Usenet daily and ignoring complaints is, I'd say, a clear indication that they positively promote spam, rather than try to stem like the rest of us do.
When the UK/European eclipse happened (yes I have registered that it's the other type of eclipse) there were plenty of voices complaining that eclipses aren't "News for Nerds".
On behalf of all those posters may I be the first to point out that if an eclipse isn't news when it happens in Europe, it also isn't news if it happens in America?
Tax free software at 200% of the cost. the taxman is happy, because he is making twice what it cost you rather than some silly low percentage. You're happy because it's still free (0 x 200% is still 0).
Er, IIRMGC, there is a straight(ish) line dividing US/Canada, whereas with Oz there is a massive body of water called the Pacific Ocean, right? So a link from Canada to the US MIGHT JUST COST SLIGHTLY LESS than a link from Oz to the US?
Hey, you think the Ozzies are getting shafted? Here in the UK it's even worse. We get charged by time, by a company hell bent on slowing the lines down if anything; I can only dream of monthly quotas of gigabytes. What we need to do here is take away the asset of bandwidth - that'll encourage British Ripoffcom to invest in faster lines and bring charges down. Then we'll probably get charged per megabyte, but at least it'll be fast.
Slashdot Mirror
er, there are only two N's in insanity...
I don't normally bother with spelink missteyx in Sloshdat but a capitalised sig like that one with such an obvious error is just asking for correction...
It's been a while so I can't remember too many details...
One was in 4.0 where if you saved a file with exactly 1000 lines, regardless of size of file - it was the line count that mattered, the IDE crashed.
Later (4.5?) I had a graphics problem with something appearing a few pixels off where it should have been. Thought I'd got the maths wrong so I added an offset to put it in the right place (as a precursor to finding the cause of the problem) but then the graphic was off where it should have been by that offset! Moved the offset towards zero, and when it was zero the graphic was in the right place, but without that +0 on the equation it didn't give the right result.
Then there was one, oh that's three, never mind, where I tried adding a TTime and an int, and I got an ambiguous error because it didn't know whether to cast the int to long or the TTime to a TDate, cos it knew about TTime+long and TDate+int. Ok, not a bug (unless you consider that TDate+int would have given a vastly different result to TTime+long(int)), but one of those interesting little logic problems that make programming such fun.
And I'm not even going to get into the Losedows API. CreateBitmap and CreateDIBitmap; which one creates a device independent bitmap? That's right - NOT CreateDIBitmap.
No, not that. I mean the required comment about finding the StarGate if they keep digging. I'm just surprised I appear to have made it first...
You don't learn the basics of maths with a calculator, you just learn how to press buttons. Back in my day when I did O/A levels (that's exams at 16 and 18 for you Yanks, whatever you call them) calculators weren't necessary, were considered cheating, and any maths you did have to do could be easily done in your head if the exam/question was properly designed - if you found yourself having to divide 576985820 by 99.31467148 then that was a pretty clear sign you'd gone wrong somewhere - you'd be more likely to get 6e8 and 100 which is trivial. All questions in my O levels (calculators were allowed by the time I got to A and they didn't make a lot of difference because the exams were still being designed properly) resolved to easy numbers if done properly. Also exams are (were, at least) about showing your working, which you don't get from a calculator, and if the working was correct and the answer wrong because of some silly miscalculation you would only get penalised for that once - you'd still score most of the points for the question. If you shoved everything into a calculator and got the wrong answer, you'd fail the entire question - there was no way the examiner could know where you'd gone wrong.
Using a calculator for everything is just sad. If you're presented with a fairly simple calculation and you have to reach for a calculator, you'll just look dumb. Students - this does happen quite regularly in Real Life; being able to do maths in your head, even just approximately, is really an invaluable skill.
So now instead of just employees skiving to watch the footy, we'll have the computers watching the footy as well?
What next, a peripheral to test the various qualities of beer and curry?
I also disconnected from an ISP some years ago - I emailed them and asked if I could end the service; they emailed back yes, I cancelled the direct debit and that was that. So I thought. About a year later they wrote to me explaining I owed them about $150. I wrote back: no I don't. They wrote back: yes you do. Cutting to the chase, when they had emailed back yes, there was a clause I didn't expect. I saw the "yes" at the top of the email and stopped reading. The email _actually_ said: yes, please email to confirm. I didn't think I needed to confirm; my original request was not ambiguous. They took it fairly well though although at the next year end we went through it all again.
And there's the time I signed up for a "free" service "we need your CC number for this free service". D'oh! At the end of the month - well, it actually took me about 5 minutes to decide I didn't want it - I informed them I did not want to continue. Guess what - the CC got debited. I think I had to threaten legal action before they refunded it.
Here's an idea. How about adding pricks like these to ORDB or equivalent. Since PenISless reckon they invented the internet, let's see how they get on without access to it.
"Organizational hierarchies of data sources are arranged so that an infinite number of sales presentation configurations can be created"
Infinite number of configurations = infinite number of options = infinite sized program. So all you do is demonstrate that an infinite number of configurations isn't possible on your system and you aren't breaking the patent. Hey they deserve this patent if they've figured out a way of storing an infinite amount of data in a finite computer.
Ok, barring the obvious "we're obfuscating it for the same reason every mobile phone has a different tariff so you really haven't got a clue which one is cheaper", what about standard licences? A EULA could state "This is a standard Type 1 licence, click here for more details" - if you already know what a Type 1 licence is, you know what the license states without having to read heaps of legal mumbo jumbo to try to determine if this is something you've seen before; equally, if you agree with Type 1 licences then you implicitly agree with any other software with a Type 1 licence. A different licence could be a different type, or an existing type "with the following modifications..." This would make it obvious if the company is trying to pass off a standard licence with a well hidden gotcha.
36 million lines of code....8-10 hours.
And for his next trick he'll estimate the volume of the Atlantic ocean using nothing more than a teaspoon.
Go to your phone keypad and type in:
SHOVE IT SLASHDOTT
It corresponds exactly to my CC number!!!
Is he a relative of Sideshow Bob?
What a wunch of bankers. (1) Ok, so they own part of the project. Drop it, and claim it cost the company millions of dollars. Since they own part of it, they owe you big time. (You may be able to use some of the code in a new project, perhaps this one will be successful...) (2) Their time means they own some of your business. Ok, so your time equally means you own part of their business. Agree to an equal share (or equal percentage share, depending who is bigger) of each other. (3) Tell them to check their filesystem off, drop them as testers and refuse to do business with them until they pay you large $$$$ - perhaps as consultancy for implementing their requests. Hey the co I work for sell software then charge people more for configuring the thing.
So if I start a Kr**t company and call it Windotcom GmbH, we can get this guy to raise an injunction against Microsoft to recall all versions of Windows?
Ok I'll bow to the greater knowledge of TRS-80 and PDP fans, but one incredibly playable first person game (note the title does NOT say "first person shooter") released somewhere around 1981-1982 what 3D Monster Maze on the Sinclair ZX81. It was followed by 3D Asteroids by the same company which _was_ a shooter, although I could never get the hang of it. I think the ZX81's graphics were just a little bit too clunky for something as detailed as 3D Asteroids needed to be. But 3D Monster Maze always misses out on these discussions, and was the first first-person game I ever played! Download an emulator and play it today!
it'll cost them far more to cash that lot!
Okay okay, I'll do it before anyone else. I'm not a chemist. Look, I don't expect you to know everything about subjects you know nothing about do I?
So we finally have an insect powered by nitrous oxide, and it only uses it to switch a stupid light on and off? Believe me, if I add nitrous oxide to my motorbike, it won't be used for illumination, although the term "speed of light" may still apply...
I got a FREE Nokia 7110 from the decent guys at breathe.com; I recently acquired a Palm Vx to see if it was worth ditching my increasingly useless Pison 5 for, which it turns out it is, and thanks to Dr Salami I got the two hooked up through IR to my ISP and I can now go surfing, expensively, and with a _very_ trashed screen because everything out there is designed for 800x600 not 160^2, but at least it _works_. With the Pison it always seemed that I had to get n+1 cards, bits of wire or software each costing about a hundred quid, where n=the number I thought I needed last time I looked at it and gave up cos it was just too stupidly expensive: 130110X to that and my pison is now up for sale.
Okay I can probably surf with the pison and the 7110 but when you're hacked off with something you just want to get rid, even if it has just started working. Well I do anyway. And the Palm is just such a sexy little device, especially after seeing that great big massive Pison 7 block which doesn't even go in external pockets its so damn oversized. Nice screen though, but far far too big.
As for the other discussion about phone plans I'm thinking of starting a page up for direct comparisons of what people are _actually_ doing. In discussion with some friends I've already surprised them with my tariff even though they think they covered all bases. It's time there was a site up there that lists examples of _actual_ users and what they are really paying.
Depends. If Micosoft is an engineering company producing, say, lathe parts, then clearly there is no infringement.
But if Micosoft produces a software product that it chooses to call Crapdows, which crashes a lot and doesn't do anything useful, then they might start to see complaining letters from MS.
That is only coincidentally pronounced "tossers", by the way ;-)
Most TOS's I've seen have a clause that says they don't guarantee uptime, so if athome have the same clause they could simply fix the problem by pulling the proverbial plug out of the socket. This would presumably result in the UDP being lifted too as the spam would drop to zero.
Of course they want to provide a continuous service to their users so they probably won't go this route, but the point is - if they don't guarantee uptime they don't need 30 days notice to solve the problem.
If they can't do a scan w/o 30 days notice, and they need to do a scan to fix the spam, then they've got a (30 day downtime) problem. Most users I think though wouldn't quibble about a scan done in lieu of a scan being done anyway plus 30 days downtime. It's not as if they have a choice about the scan.
The problem about which they are being proactive is not spam, which they're quite clearly totally happy about*, but the forthcoming UDP. The UDP effectively puts them out of business, since they exist to connect people to the internet, and if there is an active UDP against them their users are going to leave in droves. Since the UDP is a future problem, anything they do to block spam is acting proactively against the UDP and fundamentally against a drain on their own wallet sizes. Spam is not their problem. The UDP is.
And just because they know about it doesn't mean they no longer qualify for the term "proactive". There's no point being proactive about stuff you know isn't going to happen, which is why e.g I don't scan my Linux box for Losedows viruses, but you can be proactive about stuff you know might, will or will eventually happen.
* Dumping 166MB of spam onto Usenet daily and ignoring complaints is, I'd say, a clear indication that they positively promote spam, rather than try to stem like the rest of us do.
When the UK/European eclipse happened (yes I have registered that it's the other type of eclipse) there were plenty of voices complaining that eclipses aren't "News for Nerds".
On behalf of all those posters may I be the first to point out that if an eclipse isn't news when it happens in Europe, it also isn't news if it happens in America?
Two G's, if you were wondering.
Tax free software at 200% of the cost.
the taxman is happy, because he is making twice what it cost you rather than some silly low percentage.
You're happy because it's still free (0 x 200% is still 0).
Everybody wins!
Hey, you think the Ozzies are getting shafted? Here in the UK it's even worse. We get charged by time, by a company hell bent on slowing the lines down if anything; I can only dream of monthly quotas of gigabytes. What we need to do here is take away the asset of bandwidth - that'll encourage British Ripoffcom to invest in faster lines and bring charges down. Then we'll probably get charged per megabyte, but at least it'll be fast.