Yesterday it was the Opera fanboys, today it's the Google Chrome fanboys. There is nothing new here.
Myself, I prefer Firefox, but I don't sneer at Presto- or Webkit-based browser users. The only users that I really hold in low regard are the Internet Explorer users, because it's their "I don't care" attitude that holds back the web and forces web developers to support ancient browsers such as IE6.
I mean - running JavaScript and rendering pages in Chrome is REALLY FAST.
According to many sources, so is Firefox 3.1 nightly with the TraceMonkey Javascript engine enabled. It is said to be on par with Chrome and even pass it for some operations.
I respect what the Google coders have done, but from the user point of view, it's less ready than any Firefox alpha or nightly for day to day use.
I haven't tried Chrome for more than five minutes, so I cannot really comment on it, but I really agree that Firefox 3 has been remarkably solid, even when it was in the alpha stages. Since April last year, I used it as my primary browser, with extremely few issues, especially for a product in heavy development. Many kudos to Mozilla for providing such remarkably stable alpha releases.
And now, I use the Firefox 3.1 alpha, with similar results. No crashes at all yet, and I've been using it for almost two months.
But basically this whole "story" is a meaningless attempt to generate hype for Google's browser and troll for post-high arguments.
Actually, the Ars article is not a troll. It contains a good argument for why Gecko has a future and why Mozilla is going to continue using it, instead of switching to Webkit as the Google Chrome fanboys demand. The Slashdot posting however, could be considered a troll post.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
So what do you want people to learn? That we should ignore risks that seem low? How many times can we get away with that?
That is an important observation. 0.1% may not seem like so much (not that I think that 0.1% is an accurate measure, but I'll go with it for this example), but taken many times in a row, the risk increases substantially. 10 experiments with that risk gives a risk of 1%, 100 experiments give a risk of 9.5%, and 1000 experiments give a risk of 63%. Suddenly, the risk isn't so low anymore.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
My only question is, when the smoke clears and we're all fine, will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time?
Actually, the media got it all wrong. There was never any risk at all today, since they only let the protons circulate the ring in one direction this time. We'll get the real answer after October 21st, since that is the date of the official unveiling of the LHC, and also the date of the first collisions.
The notion of creating a black hole just by circulating protons in the ring was just silly.
I sincerely hope (but I realize that it is likely in vain) that publishers one day realize that DRM only hurts your customers, turns away potential customers (like me), and does nothing to stop the pirates.
In order to fight DRM you need to convince people of some real advantage that not having DRM will have to the Legal Copies
How about this: If Spore didn't have DRM, I would have bought it in an instant. But since it has DRM, especially a particularly draconian DRM scheme, there is not one chance in hell that I'll buy it. I'll not pirate it either, since that would tell EA that I couldn't stand abstaining from playing it, which I surely can.
So in my case, the DRM equals a lost sale, nothing more, nothing less.
I intend to e-mail the publisher explaining that I would rather pirate it than pay them money thanks to their greed.
Between the lines, you are actually saying that you cannot live without their game, since if you could, you wouldn't pirate it when you disagree with their machinations.
This will only strengthen their resolve to put even more onerous DRM schemes in their games, since if they could stop you from pirating (by harsher DRM and/or lobbying for harsher copyright laws), you would buy it.
If you can live without their game, don't buy it, and don't pirate it.
Technically, you probably have no right to play the game on WINE. What's the license say about reverse engineered systems?
It is very unlikely that the license for the game specifies that you are not allowed to run the game on a reverse engineered implementation of a supported operating system. The clauses prohibiting reverse engineering applies to the software itself, not the operating environment.
IANAL though.
So in this case, DRM is doing what it's supposed to.
The DRM is supposed to prevent people from pirating the game, not enforce the EULA of its supported operating system. Thus, it is not doing what it's supposed to do.
They should be clever enough to understand that the criticism is against the DRM, not the game itself.
many of which oppose DRM no doubt
Then they should not take the campaign personally, but understand that it is aimed at their publisher.
But anyway, I guess you are right. For example, Gas Powered Games released a patch to Supreme Commander a fairly short time after the release that removed the copy protection. I really liked this move, and it contributed significantly to my decision to buy the game.
reinforce the mentality that those who oppose DRM are doing so for childish reasons.
I read a few of the "reviews", and they were not childish. They were reasonable complaints against a draconian DRM scheme, fairly comparing the so-called "purchase" with a rental scheme. What's childish about wanting to play the game even after EA stops supporting it? I still sometimes play games ten years old.
Well-thought out, considered and intelligent emails to the publishers and developers will achieve a hundred times more
I would surely do that, if I thought that it had any chance of actually being read. But unfortunately, I don't think that it would, so why waste my time?
as will boycotting the game (both legal and illegal copies)
That's what I do. I really looked forward to Spore, but the DRM is a showstopper. I won't buy the game until it is put in the bargain bin for $10, or (extremely unlikely) they remove the DRM. I will also not pirate the game.
and only purchasing DRM-free games.
Unfortunately, those are few and far between. I can accept games like Supreme Commander, which are initially copy-protected, but which have the protection removed by the game developers themselves afterward (as the DRM is usually demanded by the publisher, not the developers).
If they're just using open source stuff in house, they're not distributing any changes, so they don't have to give anyone the source.
In my experience, this is likely wrong, at least for bug fixes. Enterprises don't want to maintain separate trees for applications not part of their core business just for fixing a bug, so sending the bug fix to the developers is the sane thing to do, and at least this is what my employers have done.
Languages like Java and C# are scripting langauges because they tell the environment what they want to do, and the environment (JVM,.NET, etc..) actually does the work.
Not entirely, as the JIT in most cases generates native code on the first invocation of a method/function call, and the code is cached for future use. That native code is then executed directly on the processor, just like native code generated by the C compiler.
In my opinion this makes C/C++ the programming language, and Java and C# are scripting into the environments. By that same logic, something like SmallTalk might also not be a programming language but a scripting language, since it runs inside an VM.
I consider any language used to write programs for a computer a programming language, regardless fo whether it is compiled, interpreted or something in between. Then there are subsets, such as compiled languages, interpreted languages, languages executed as bytecode in a VM, etc. I strongly disagree with the notion that a scripting language is not a programming language.
However, Squeek, a SmallTalk VM, is also written in SmallTalk, so I really don't know where to go with that one.
A perfect example of why your view causes problems with terminology.
Or, is the language interpreted into a second high-level language
I wouldn't call Java bytecode or similar languages "high-level", as high-level usually implies human-readable. It is a machine-independent machine language interpreted and/or JIT-compiled by the JVM.
Please note that I consider the OS a platform, not environment, so arguing that Windows or Linux is actually doing the executing doesn't make C a scripting language.
That's an entirely reasonable position, as the OS does not interpret the native code. When an application is running on the processor, it really is its compiled code that is running there, not some interpreter.
To sum it up, the line between interpreted languages and compiled languages is becoming more and more blurry. Some languages are completely interpreted, some languages are completely compiled into machine code, and many languages use some combination of interpretation and compilation.
Personally, I use the term scripting language for languages that do not need a separate compilation stage (good examples of this are those that can be executed by running the source file directly in *nix by including the #!interpreter notation on the first line of the source file). They may be internally JIT-compiled, but that isn't my business. I do not consider languages explicitly compiled into some intermediate form to be scripting languages. But I consider all of them to be programming languages.
Personally I don't consider Java a programming language because you have to use a JVM to run it in (instead of running natively within the environment).
Then you're likely one of those crazy guys who think that scripting languages are not programming languages? I never really understood that opinion, so if you share it, maybe you can explain it to me.
In my opinion, scripting languages are a not-so-well-defined subset of programming languages, not a separate category of languages. After all, you program the computer regardless of whether the language is compiled or interpreted.
but I jumped ship for Python a long time ago. I think most Perl hackers have done the same, or picked up Ruby.
I really don't get it. I know Perl inside and outside. Last year I learned Python, and currently I'm reading a book on Ruby. But that doesn't make me forget Perl, so why not use it when it fits the problem being solved. Additional languages are new tools to add to your toolbox, but they don't remove your old tools. Why stick with one language when you can use all of them as you see fit?
It certainly can, but you might not want to. One could define an SELinux type for normal users, having all their files labeled with that type, and then only letting that type do very few things. But that would also prevent all nice applications that you install yourself from doing those forbidden things.
When a petrol tank leaks, it drips out, and is very difficult to ignite.
Petrol that has leaked out of the tank is not hard to ignite. If the catalytic converter is a fire hazard just for parking the car over tall grass, I would think that it would be a fire hazard if parked over a puddle of leaked gasoline.
And a fire under the car heats the gasoline in the tank, increasing the pressure and forcing it out through the leak at a higher speed.
Slashdot Mirror
only to be called bloated and inefficient.
Yesterday it was the Opera fanboys, today it's the Google Chrome fanboys. There is nothing new here.
Myself, I prefer Firefox, but I don't sneer at Presto- or Webkit-based browser users. The only users that I really hold in low regard are the Internet Explorer users, because it's their "I don't care" attitude that holds back the web and forces web developers to support ancient browsers such as IE6.
I mean - running JavaScript and rendering pages in Chrome is REALLY FAST.
According to many sources, so is Firefox 3.1 nightly with the TraceMonkey Javascript engine enabled. It is said to be on par with Chrome and even pass it for some operations.
I respect what the Google coders have done, but from the user point of view, it's less ready than any Firefox alpha or nightly for day to day use.
I haven't tried Chrome for more than five minutes, so I cannot really comment on it, but I really agree that Firefox 3 has been remarkably solid, even when it was in the alpha stages. Since April last year, I used it as my primary browser, with extremely few issues, especially for a product in heavy development. Many kudos to Mozilla for providing such remarkably stable alpha releases.
And now, I use the Firefox 3.1 alpha, with similar results. No crashes at all yet, and I've been using it for almost two months.
But basically this whole "story" is a meaningless attempt to generate hype for Google's browser and troll for post-high arguments.
Actually, the Ars article is not a troll. It contains a good argument for why Gecko has a future and why Mozilla is going to continue using it, instead of switching to Webkit as the Google Chrome fanboys demand. The Slashdot posting however, could be considered a troll post.
So what do you want people to learn? That we should ignore risks that seem low? How many times can we get away with that?
That is an important observation. 0.1% may not seem like so much (not that I think that 0.1% is an accurate measure, but I'll go with it for this example), but taken many times in a row, the risk increases substantially. 10 experiments with that risk gives a risk of 1%, 100 experiments give a risk of 9.5%, and 1000 experiments give a risk of 63%. Suddenly, the risk isn't so low anymore.
My only question is, when the smoke clears and we're all fine, will the doomsayers ever learn for the next time?
Actually, the media got it all wrong. There was never any risk at all today, since they only let the protons circulate the ring in one direction this time. We'll get the real answer after October 21st, since that is the date of the official unveiling of the LHC, and also the date of the first collisions.
The notion of creating a black hole just by circulating protons in the ring was just silly.
I hope it does.
I sincerely hope (but I realize that it is likely in vain) that publishers one day realize that DRM only hurts your customers, turns away potential customers (like me), and does nothing to stop the pirates.
In order to fight DRM you need to convince people of some real advantage that not having DRM will have to the Legal Copies
How about this: If Spore didn't have DRM, I would have bought it in an instant. But since it has DRM, especially a particularly draconian DRM scheme, there is not one chance in hell that I'll buy it. I'll not pirate it either, since that would tell EA that I couldn't stand abstaining from playing it, which I surely can.
So in my case, the DRM equals a lost sale, nothing more, nothing less.
I intend to e-mail the publisher explaining that I would rather pirate it than pay them money thanks to their greed.
Between the lines, you are actually saying that you cannot live without their game, since if you could, you wouldn't pirate it when you disagree with their machinations.
This will only strengthen their resolve to put even more onerous DRM schemes in their games, since if they could stop you from pirating (by harsher DRM and/or lobbying for harsher copyright laws), you would buy it.
If you can live without their game, don't buy it, and don't pirate it.
Technically, you probably have no right to play the game on WINE. What's the license say about reverse engineered systems?
It is very unlikely that the license for the game specifies that you are not allowed to run the game on a reverse engineered implementation of a supported operating system. The clauses prohibiting reverse engineering applies to the software itself, not the operating environment.
IANAL though.
So in this case, DRM is doing what it's supposed to.
The DRM is supposed to prevent people from pirating the game, not enforce the EULA of its supported operating system. Thus, it is not doing what it's supposed to do.
piss off everyone who worked on the game
They should be clever enough to understand that the criticism is against the DRM, not the game itself.
many of which oppose DRM no doubt
Then they should not take the campaign personally, but understand that it is aimed at their publisher.
But anyway, I guess you are right. For example, Gas Powered Games released a patch to Supreme Commander a fairly short time after the release that removed the copy protection. I really liked this move, and it contributed significantly to my decision to buy the game.
reinforce the mentality that those who oppose DRM are doing so for childish reasons.
I read a few of the "reviews", and they were not childish. They were reasonable complaints against a draconian DRM scheme, fairly comparing the so-called "purchase" with a rental scheme. What's childish about wanting to play the game even after EA stops supporting it? I still sometimes play games ten years old.
Well-thought out, considered and intelligent emails to the publishers and developers will achieve a hundred times more
I would surely do that, if I thought that it had any chance of actually being read. But unfortunately, I don't think that it would, so why waste my time?
as will boycotting the game (both legal and illegal copies)
That's what I do. I really looked forward to Spore, but the DRM is a showstopper. I won't buy the game until it is put in the bargain bin for $10, or (extremely unlikely) they remove the DRM. I will also not pirate the game.
and only purchasing DRM-free games.
Unfortunately, those are few and far between. I can accept games like Supreme Commander, which are initially copy-protected, but which have the protection removed by the game developers themselves afterward (as the DRM is usually demanded by the publisher, not the developers).
If they're just using open source stuff in house, they're not distributing any changes, so they don't have to give anyone the source.
In my experience, this is likely wrong, at least for bug fixes. Enterprises don't want to maintain separate trees for applications not part of their core business just for fixing a bug, so sending the bug fix to the developers is the sane thing to do, and at least this is what my employers have done.
Languages like Java and C# are scripting langauges because they tell the environment what they want to do, and the environment (JVM, .NET, etc..) actually does the work.
Not entirely, as the JIT in most cases generates native code on the first invocation of a method/function call, and the code is cached for future use. That native code is then executed directly on the processor, just like native code generated by the C compiler.
In my opinion this makes C/C++ the programming language, and Java and C# are scripting into the environments. By that same logic, something like SmallTalk might also not be a programming language but a scripting language, since it runs inside an VM.
I consider any language used to write programs for a computer a programming language, regardless fo whether it is compiled, interpreted or something in between. Then there are subsets, such as compiled languages, interpreted languages, languages executed as bytecode in a VM, etc. I strongly disagree with the notion that a scripting language is not a programming language.
However, Squeek, a SmallTalk VM, is also written in SmallTalk, so I really don't know where to go with that one.
A perfect example of why your view causes problems with terminology.
Or, is the language interpreted into a second high-level language
I wouldn't call Java bytecode or similar languages "high-level", as high-level usually implies human-readable. It is a machine-independent machine language interpreted and/or JIT-compiled by the JVM.
Please note that I consider the OS a platform, not environment, so arguing that Windows or Linux is actually doing the executing doesn't make C a scripting language.
That's an entirely reasonable position, as the OS does not interpret the native code. When an application is running on the processor, it really is its compiled code that is running there, not some interpreter.
To sum it up, the line between interpreted languages and compiled languages is becoming more and more blurry. Some languages are completely interpreted, some languages are completely compiled into machine code, and many languages use some combination of interpretation and compilation.
Personally, I use the term scripting language for languages that do not need a separate compilation stage (good examples of this are those that can be executed by running the source file directly in *nix by including the #!interpreter notation on the first line of the source file). They may be internally JIT-compiled, but that isn't my business. I do not consider languages explicitly compiled into some intermediate form to be scripting languages. But I consider all of them to be programming languages.
I think I prefer Python/Django due to the more expressive syntax and superior templating
I never tried Django, but did you try the PHP template engine Smarty? It is the best templating engine for PHP that I've come across.
Personally I don't consider Java a programming language because you have to use a JVM to run it in (instead of running natively within the environment).
Then you're likely one of those crazy guys who think that scripting languages are not programming languages? I never really understood that opinion, so if you share it, maybe you can explain it to me.
In my opinion, scripting languages are a not-so-well-defined subset of programming languages, not a separate category of languages. After all, you program the computer regardless of whether the language is compiled or interpreted.
but I jumped ship for Python a long time ago. I think most Perl hackers have done the same, or picked up Ruby.
I really don't get it. I know Perl inside and outside. Last year I learned Python, and currently I'm reading a book on Ruby. But that doesn't make me forget Perl, so why not use it when it fits the problem being solved. Additional languages are new tools to add to your toolbox, but they don't remove your old tools. Why stick with one language when you can use all of them as you see fit?
That's unlikely, since the chip is most likely a passive RFID chip, and the ranges of those are pretty short.
It certainly can, but you might not want to. One could define an SELinux type for normal users, having all their files labeled with that type, and then only letting that type do very few things. But that would also prevent all nice applications that you install yourself from doing those forbidden things.
Look up Jerry Lee Cooper, especially on ZDNet Talkback.
Maureen O'Gara, is that you?
It's the open source method applied to legal research.
It may have been deserved, but its not suitable for most news sites to reproduce a lot of what's said.
But it was suitable to reproduce the drivel produced by the SCO Group?
When a petrol tank leaks, it drips out, and is very difficult to ignite.
Petrol that has leaked out of the tank is not hard to ignite. If the catalytic converter is a fire hazard just for parking the car over tall grass, I would think that it would be a fire hazard if parked over a puddle of leaked gasoline.
And a fire under the car heats the gasoline in the tank, increasing the pressure and forcing it out through the leak at a higher speed.
No, not besides power bills.
Ever heard of employee perks? Even without them, nothing says that the employer would have to provide the electricity free of charge.
but hydrogen actually DOES blow up quite easily - see the Hindenburg.
The Hindenburg didn't blow up, it burned rapidly. Watch the video again and you'll see.