"I know that Microsoft could not have developed Windows 95, one of the most successful software programs in history, if (the requirement) had been in effect in the early 1990s,'' Gates said."
explains why he hated Jar Jar Binks so much and what he did.
My nephews (ages 10 and 12 at the time of Episode I release) loved Jar Jar Binks. I know the character made the movie unpalatable for many adults, but for what it's worth, lots of kids were happy with it.
Personally, I really don't feel one way or the other about Jar Jar.
I prefer the kind of software that has less features in the evaluation version, but is good enough to do a job. If I can get a feel for what the product does, get it operational and see how stable it is. Then, I can consider if I want to lay out cash to buy the better version.
But, I usually stop short when I see 15-day limit or something like that. Yeah, you can tweak the registry among other tricks to bypass the day limit. But, I want something I can use. Tease me a little so that I want to pay for the best version of the product. This has never worked with me with, for example, RealPlayer. But, I've bought plenty of other software.
Another good trick is with software like GoldWave, where you get 150 actions on a sound file, before it craps out.
The GPL does not require that you give away your code for free to anyone who asks for it, only to those who you distributed the binary.
And to any 3rd party who received the binaries, the GPL is still in effect. If I receive a GPL'd program, even if not from the original source, I have the right to ask the source for the code.
Note that anyone can peruse the signatures and comments (a good idea to help sign the petition with an intelligent comment), but it appears that only U.S. citizens can sign. Of course, it's also a good idea to read the petition fully rather than blindly signing.
Apparently, this "mutation" does not affect all locations equally. With exception to a brief interlude in the last three months of 2001, here in NYC, the middle finger still reigns supreme as the most dextrous digit.
^^^ Offtopic my ass, mod parent up ^^^
on
He Writes Back
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Whomever modded this as offtopic, is either:
a) short a finger or two (for the intellectually challenged, this means can't count). 4 comments, 5 too many connections. Get it? OR
b) has no sense of humor. Geez, can't we have any fun here anymore? Need a new category: -1 Having too much fun.
I've begun using Spamcop, and I'm hoping for the results you claim. Although there is a free version of the service, it'll be well worth the paid-for service if it's successful.
Has anyone experienced definite success from using this service? I've been using it for the last couple weeks, and it seems to be starting to help. But then, I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy.
Well, it's fun seeing the "yum, this spam is fresh" message either way.
Penalty Phase, bah! When do we get to the critical "Parody Phase"? You know, when we get to make fun of Microsoft? Oh, wait...that's the phase we're in now.
Anyone who has maintained a large codebase, or has made mods to someone else's code, knows this:
Sometimes hours and hours of work can result in very few lines of code. It reminds me of the carpenter's rule: "think twice, saw once". Sometimes a great deal of analysis yields more results than many lines of code.
Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but I think the article title changed when farrellj added an update to it.
Call me a conspiracy theorist and moderate me down if you like, but it seems that Fred Hoyle was slightly downgraded from scientific icon/genius to "controversial cosmologist" as the comments started rolling in.
Now, I question established standards as well as controversial opinions alike, and I don't agree with everything I read. But, could it be that some of those zealots subscribing to the Church of the Holy Science Textbook didn't like the direction that the comments were heading?
I'm just asking, because although Fred's dead, his accomplishments speak for themselves, and I don't think we need to overly discredit him post mortem.
I think you are referring to the Stanley L. Miller experiment; for years it has been cited in science textbooks and school courses. This led to more recent tests that even produced components found in nucleic acids (DNA or RNA). Miller took hydrogen, ammonia, methane, and water vapor (assuming that this had been the primitive atmosphere), sealed these in a flask with boiling water at the bottom (to represent an ocean), and zapped electric sparks (like lightning) through the vapors. Within a week, there were traces of reddish ooze, which Miller analyzed and found to be rich in amino acids - the essence of proteins.
This explanation is seriously questioned today, since it rests on the presumption that the earth's primordial atmosphere was "reducing." That means it contained only the smallest amount of free (chemically uncombined) oxygen. Otherwise, none of the amino acids could even be formed, and if by some chance they were, they would decompose quickly.
Most of us understand that oxygen is highly reactive. For example, it combines with iron and forms rust or with hydrogen and forms water. If there was much free oxygen in an atmosphere when amino acids were assembling, it would quickly combine with and dismantle the organic molecules as they formed.
Furthermore, little evidence has emerged to support the notion of a hydrogen-rich, highly reducing atmosphere. In fact, Scientific American once reported: "Over the past decade or so, doubts have grown about Urey and Miller's assumptions regarding the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments and computerized reconstructions of the atmosphere . . . suggest that ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which today is blocked by atmospheric ozone, would have destroyed hydrogen-based molecules in the atmosphere. . . . Such an atmosphere [carbon dioxide and nitrogen] would not have been conducive to the synthesis of amino acids and other precursors of life."
Well, I guess I'm a lamer - I confess to not only using Red Hat, but even buying the distro at least once.
Okay, I'm not a Linux expert, just a programmer from a non-Linux planet who shares some, but not all of the anti-MS sentiment expressed here. So, from time to time I try a Linux distro to see if the state of the art is such that I can replace my Windows desktop with it.
So, I've bought Redhat, Caldera and Corel (there goes what little Karma I have) over the last few years. Recently, I clued into downloading ISO's and burning my own, so I have can dual boot RH 7.1 now with my windows. I can tell you, I'll keep downloading RH and working with it until my MS Independence Day comes (probably shortly after the release of XP).
Um, yeah, CmdrTaco's comment went over like a lead balloon. In contrast, I really appreciate the calm, helpful, objective postings such as the ones bero-rh has posted here today. But, give the TacoMan a break. He's just the guy throwing the chum over the side of the boat:-)
Actually, this does affect msn.com. I have a customer who called for support today because his IE home page is an msn page of some sort. Of course, www.msn.com works, but whatever page he had bookmarked under msn did not. Perhaps it was a redirect to a microsoft.com page, but I just told him it was a problem at MS.
The funniest part is that he went downstairs and rebooted the company NT server 3 times before he called me, because his browser said "cannot locate server" (no, I'm not bashing MS, just one of it's users).
I don't consider myself a wage slave. I am the highest paid programmer in the company I work for, and the only immigrant on the payroll.
Our workload outpaces our resources, and if my company could find more programmers like me locally they would hire them and these would join me at the top of the payroll heap. There are plenty of bright kids and what some like to call advanced hobbyists out there, but when you need 5-10 years experience, you pay for it when you can get it, even if it means importing.
I can tell you, moving from Canada to the U.S. has not been all it was cracked up to be. With stars in my eyes, I sold my home and moved my family to a U.S. city to work for better pay. Despite receiving better pay, the reward hasn't been necessarily financial. Among other things, I quickly found that to live in a good neighborhood with good schools, I would have to spend more real estate dollars than where I came from. I have had to re-establish credit. My wife can't work if she wanted to. I have been on a temporary visa for 4 years wondering if the holy grail (green card) will ever arrive. What a feeling - everything is temporary?! The list goes on and on, not to mention the xenophobic fear mongering in tv ads and on the internet;)
The positives about moving to the U.S. have been quite unexpected: we've met some of the best friends anyone could have, and have put down some pretty good roots here. I hope we do one day get our permanent residency here, and can feel like we truly belong. I hope I don't have to sell all my belongings, and pack up my family with my tail between my legs and go back to Canada. I've gambled a lot, and for the first time in my life know the fear and apprehension an immigrant feels.
The ironic part is that with the explosion of the internet, it matters much less where I live than when I first hired in 4 years ago. Today, I could take a somewhat reduced role with my employer and live anywhere that I could find good bandwith, including another country.
I couldn't resist both reading the article and posting a comment to abcnews.com - at least I referenced back to/., so hopefully some hits will bounce back this way. Here is the comment (Warning, rant mode on):
Linux Sux Redux?! How about "Moody Sux Booty"? This guy has a history of clueless pro-Microsoft ranting. Don't know what axe he has to grind, but a little future objectiveness on his part would be nice. This is one reason why I spend little time at abcnews.com - I came (as have likely numerous clueful people) by way a link from/. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/02/212244 &mode=thread
Slashdot just spent 92 seconds opening this edit page.
When it takes this long to load a Slashdot page, I usually click my reload button rapidly. Although this doesn't always help, I do it anyways because, when/. is slow, it usually means something is going down and I want to read about it right away!!
"Guns do not kill people, people kill people". This means that a gun is a tool. Guns are USED to kill people, they do not kill people unless a person makes them.
Hmmmm. Yeah, maybe guns *don't* kill people. As a matter of fact, people use hammers and saws to kill people sometimes too, albeit more effort is required with hand tools. I was thinking, how about:
"Guns make it easier to kill people when you have that urge...and to do it quickly, before the urge wears off."?
Slashdot Mirror
"I know that Microsoft could not have developed Windows 95, one of the most successful software programs in history, if (the requirement) had been in effect in the early 1990s,'' Gates said."
Yes, Windows 95 was a DOS application, not an OS.
My nephews (ages 10 and 12 at the time of Episode I release) loved Jar Jar Binks. I know the character made the movie unpalatable for many adults, but for what it's worth, lots of kids were happy with it.
Personally, I really don't feel one way or the other about Jar Jar.
But, I usually stop short when I see 15-day limit or something like that. Yeah, you can tweak the registry among other tricks to bypass the day limit. But, I want something I can use. Tease me a little so that I want to pay for the best version of the product. This has never worked with me with, for example, RealPlayer. But, I've bought plenty of other software.
Another good trick is with software like GoldWave, where you get 150 actions on a sound file, before it craps out.
Well, that's my 2 pence.
And to any 3rd party who received the binaries, the GPL is still in effect. If I receive a GPL'd program, even if not from the original source, I have the right to ask the source for the code.
Note that anyone can peruse the signatures and comments (a good idea to help sign the petition with an intelligent comment), but it appears that only U.S. citizens can sign. Of course, it's also a good idea to read the petition fully rather than blindly signing.
Apparently, this "mutation" does not affect all locations equally. With exception to a brief interlude in the last three months of 2001, here in NYC, the middle finger still reigns supreme as the most dextrous digit.
a) short a finger or two (for the intellectually challenged, this means can't count). 4 comments, 5 too many connections. Get it? OR
b) has no sense of humor. Geez, can't we have any fun here anymore? Need a new category: -1 Having too much fun.
Why don't I have mod access when I need it?
I've begun using Spamcop, and I'm hoping for the results you claim. Although there is a free version of the service, it'll be well worth the paid-for service if it's successful.
Well, it's fun seeing the "yum, this spam is fresh" message either way.
I'm just saying.
Penalty Phase, bah! When do we get to the critical "Parody Phase"? You know, when we get to make fun of Microsoft? Oh, wait...that's the phase we're in now.
Anyone who has maintained a large codebase, or has made mods to someone else's code, knows this:
Sometimes hours and hours of work can result in very few lines of code. It reminds me of the carpenter's rule: "think twice, saw once". Sometimes a great deal of analysis yields more results than many lines of code.
Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but I think the article title changed when farrellj added an update to it.
Call me a conspiracy theorist and moderate me down if you like, but it seems that Fred Hoyle was slightly downgraded from scientific icon/genius to "controversial cosmologist" as the comments started rolling in.
Now, I question established standards as well as controversial opinions alike, and I don't agree with everything I read. But, could it be that some of those zealots subscribing to the Church of the Holy Science Textbook didn't like the direction that the comments were heading?
I'm just asking, because although Fred's dead, his accomplishments speak for themselves, and I don't think we need to overly discredit him post mortem.
I seem to remember "lightning bottle" experiments
I think you are referring to the Stanley L. Miller experiment; for years it has been cited in science textbooks and school courses. This led to more recent tests that even produced components found in nucleic acids (DNA or RNA). Miller took hydrogen, ammonia, methane, and water vapor (assuming that this had been the primitive atmosphere), sealed these in a flask with boiling water at the bottom (to represent an ocean), and zapped electric sparks (like lightning) through the vapors. Within a week, there were traces of reddish ooze, which Miller analyzed and found to be rich in amino acids - the essence of proteins.
This explanation is seriously questioned today, since it rests on the presumption that the earth's primordial atmosphere was "reducing." That means it contained only the smallest amount of free (chemically uncombined) oxygen. Otherwise, none of the amino acids could even be formed, and if by some chance they were, they would decompose quickly.
Most of us understand that oxygen is highly reactive. For example, it combines with iron and forms rust or with hydrogen and forms water. If there was much free oxygen in an atmosphere when amino acids were assembling, it would quickly combine with and dismantle the organic molecules as they formed.
Furthermore, little evidence has emerged to support the notion of a hydrogen-rich, highly reducing atmosphere. In fact, Scientific American once reported: "Over the past decade or so, doubts have grown about Urey and Miller's assumptions regarding the atmosphere. Laboratory experiments and computerized reconstructions of the atmosphere . . . suggest that ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which today is blocked by atmospheric ozone, would have destroyed hydrogen-based molecules in the atmosphere. . . . Such an atmosphere [carbon dioxide and nitrogen] would not have been conducive to the synthesis of amino acids and other precursors of life."
Well, I guess I'm a lamer - I confess to not only using Red Hat, but even buying the distro at least once.
:-)
Okay, I'm not a Linux expert, just a programmer from a non-Linux planet who shares some, but not all of the anti-MS sentiment expressed here. So, from time to time I try a Linux distro to see if the state of the art is such that I can replace my Windows desktop with it.
So, I've bought Redhat, Caldera and Corel (there goes what little Karma I have) over the last few years. Recently, I clued into downloading ISO's and burning my own, so I have can dual boot RH 7.1 now with my windows. I can tell you, I'll keep downloading RH and working with it until my MS Independence Day comes (probably shortly after the release of XP).
Um, yeah, CmdrTaco's comment went over like a lead balloon. In contrast, I really appreciate the calm, helpful, objective postings such as the ones bero-rh has posted here today. But, give the TacoMan a break. He's just the guy throwing the chum over the side of the boat
Thank you!! Now I can stop reading this thread and move on :)
Actually, this does affect msn.com. I have a customer who called for support today because his IE home page is an msn page of some sort. Of course, www.msn.com works, but whatever page he had bookmarked under msn did not. Perhaps it was a redirect to a microsoft.com page, but I just told him it was a problem at MS.
The funniest part is that he went downstairs and rebooted the company NT server 3 times before he called me, because his browser said "cannot locate server" (no, I'm not bashing MS, just one of it's users).
I don't consider myself a wage slave. I am the highest paid programmer in the company I work for, and the only immigrant on the payroll.
;)
Our workload outpaces our resources, and if my company could find more programmers like me locally they would hire them and these would join me at the top of the payroll heap. There are plenty of bright kids and what some like to call advanced hobbyists out there, but when you need 5-10 years experience, you pay for it when you can get it, even if it means importing.
I can tell you, moving from Canada to the U.S. has not been all it was cracked up to be. With stars in my eyes, I sold my home and moved my family to a U.S. city to work for better pay. Despite receiving better pay, the reward hasn't been necessarily financial. Among other things, I quickly found that to live in a good neighborhood with good schools, I would have to spend more real estate dollars than where I came from. I have had to re-establish credit. My wife can't work if she wanted to. I have been on a temporary visa for 4 years wondering if the holy grail (green card) will ever arrive. What a feeling - everything is temporary?! The list goes on and on, not to mention the xenophobic fear mongering in tv ads and on the internet
The positives about moving to the U.S. have been quite unexpected: we've met some of the best friends anyone could have, and have put down some pretty good roots here. I hope we do one day get our permanent residency here, and can feel like we truly belong. I hope I don't have to sell all my belongings, and pack up my family with my tail between my legs and go back to Canada. I've gambled a lot, and for the first time in my life know the fear and apprehension an immigrant feels.
The ironic part is that with the explosion of the internet, it matters much less where I live than when I first hired in 4 years ago. Today, I could take a somewhat reduced role with my employer and live anywhere that I could find good bandwith, including another country.
I couldn't resist both reading the article and posting a comment to abcnews.com - at least I referenced back to /., so hopefully some hits will bounce back this way. Here is the comment (Warning, rant mode on):
/. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/02/212244 &mode=thread
Linux Sux Redux?! How about "Moody Sux Booty"?
This guy has a history of clueless pro-Microsoft ranting. Don't know what axe he has to grind, but a little future objectiveness on his part would be nice. This is one reason why I spend little time at abcnews.com - I came (as have likely numerous clueful people) by way a link from
Slashdot just spent 92 seconds opening this edit page.
/. is slow, it usually means something is going down and I want to read about it right away!!
When it takes this long to load a Slashdot page, I usually click my reload button rapidly. Although this doesn't always help, I do it anyways because, when
"Guns do not kill people, people kill people". This means that a gun is a tool. Guns are USED to kill people, they do not kill people unless a person makes them.
:)
Hmmmm. Yeah, maybe guns *don't* kill people. As a matter of fact, people use hammers and saws to kill people sometimes too, albeit more effort is required with hand tools. I was thinking, how about:
"Guns make it easier to kill people when you have that urge...and to do it quickly, before the urge wears off."?
I'm just saying
I've noticed this trend, and have tried tagging messages with "Moderate me down if you must", but it doesn't seem to help.
.
I suppose it's possible that the stuff I write is just so much dogsh*t, and such politicking will never help me
.
Not to mention the fact that RH is much smaller than Corel.