This interests me as I'm going to turn 40 next February. Is there some kind of energy barrier that strips away programming skills at 40? I hope to god it's not like Logan's Run!!
"Hyper-links to Internet sport pages or chat rooms can be included and the information displayed in a split screen along with the game, or the viewing of the game can be paused at the viewer's discretion for any length of time. Even with these arbitrary pauses the present invention(s) permits the viewer to watch the entire game, no matter when and how many viewing pauses are taken."
Minus the chat rooms and such, doesn't this sound like TiVo? Now that he has the patent, perhaps BG is going to preempt TiVo from making their content more interactive? This may be a patent from antiqiuity but I suspect Microsoft was trying to anticipate where Web technology might go, in the hopes of filing patents to throw up roadblocks to progress and make sure they could cash in. Precognitive theft, to coin a phrase.
Besides as long as there's Emacs for Windows, I can't imagine wanting to use anything else for Unix-origin languages.
I love doing Perl in Emacs, but the job I started a couple of months ago doesn't have it installed, so I'm having to use vi. I'm actually starting to warm to it... which makes me feel like a heretic.
I never even knew anyone supported Perl in Visual Studio and I'm not sure why they would. So now that it's gone, no big whoop.
New Product Alert: Dice Pad, the mouse pad for dice. Now you can play your favorite on-line role-playing game the way it was meant to be played: with dice!!! Our specially crafted 6-, 8-, 10-, and 20-sided dies contain special metallic compounds that react with sensors in the pad, sending roll information via USB 2.0 or FireWire directly to the game via our patented Die Master software.
Well, the article is obviously slashdotted, but I don't need to read it to know of a good solution. Browsers come equipped with programming capability (JavaScript) and rendering engines, why not core browser fonts? Come up with a standard set of fonts based on scalability and readability with a range of styles and embed them in the browser to make them OS independent. Keep the number low (say 10) and make sure that additional fonts aren't added to the core set unless absolutely necessary (to avoid the speed penalties). Then in CSS, you can designate the browser internal fonts and fall back on fonts supplied by the user's OS.
As to sIFR, nice idea but if you're like me and wary of too much Flash, I think in the long run it's not the optimal solution. I really don't like the idea of standardizing Flash.
Low population density significantly reduces the cost of the space flight program? I guess they're assuming there will be some bourgeois shrapnel flying around.
Actually, that's correct, from the standpoint of safety. They can't afford to immolate too many people if one of these things crashes or explodes for some reason. The area south of T-or-C and north of Las Cruces is sparsely populated, mostly open area, and is bordered to the east by White Sands, and even further east by Roswell. I'm sure Virgin Galactic is hoping to lure the ET contingent. Anyway, they're trying to keep the insurance rates down.
NASA originally considered the White Sands area for launching the Apollo Saturn V, but decided it was too dangerous, as one Saturn V carried the destructive power of an atomic bomb. They did do engine testing for the Lunar Module and Service Module there.
And if you drive north of T-or-C to the small town of San Antonio, you can stop at the Owl Bar and Cafe for the best green chile cheeseburgers in all the world. [end shameless plug]
Theoretically speaking, shouldn't one complaint be sufficient? The idea is to keep companies from calling people who do not want to be called. If you're number is on the list, you're not supposed to be called.
From the Do Not Call Registry website: The National Do Not Call Registry gives you an opportunity to limit the telemarketing calls you receive. Once you register your phone number, telemarketers covered by the National Do Not Call Registry have up to 31 days (starting January 1, 2005) from the date you register to stop calling you.
Mind you it says "telemarketers covered by" -- local non-profits and political organizations are exempt.
Re:The real 90s versus outdated 00s software
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I guess my big concern with LAMP is what the hell is the P? PHP? Python? Perl? They're all very powerful and they all have their own positives and negatives in regards to quick scripting solutions, but all of them still allow bad programs to churn our badly written programs. I'm guessing that is the trade-off: the more complex programs you can write, the more likely you are to see badly written programs.
Languages don't cause bad programs to be written -- bad programmers do! It's just a sign of the decline in pure programming skills. You either have the intellectual "I-have-a-comp-sci-degree" programmer who's good on theory but lousy on execution or the "90-day wonder" programmer who read a book or took a course and thinks they're God's gift to IT.
As to Java, it's just ramped up C/C++ and while it has changed and bettered itself over the years, it's still a thick, clunky language. I tried to learn it once, but it was too much like C, and since I'd found the joys of Perl, I couldn't go back.
Most users should not being allowed to operate computers, let alone drive cars. Sysadmins need to learn who these people are and minimize the damage they cause. I suggest randomly changing their password every day until they quit in frustration.
I mean they are fine for small buisnesses, but when the buisness grows, so do their IT assests (databases, website, in-house software, etc). Large amounts of PHP & Perl code can be hard to maintain when compared to other languages like say Java. And as for MySQL... I'll let the other comments deal with that as I'm sure they will.
I worked for one of the largest financial companies on the planet and one of the biggest Perl shops around and I can say without fear of equivocation that properly written, maintained, and managed Perl will knock the socks off anything. Java's gotten better in recent years, don't get me wrong, and has a speed advantage over Perl, but the fact is when you need something quickly, Java is not your language. Perl will forever be labelled a "scripting language" because it's more fluid and free-form than most languages, which is its greatest strength.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if you buy your softwware or get it for free. Programs in any language are only as good as the programmers who write the code. And because you need top-notch programmers, free software ends up costing you money in the long run; you save on the up-front cost but the back-end cost may be much higher depending on what you're doing. Nothing is cut and dried.
I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
It's just his personal recommendation, and I suppose if anyone can be said to have important input on the subject it might be him. In the end, we're all going to do what we want anyway. It's not like this is Moses coming down from the mountain (I bring you these 15... CRASH... 10, 10 commandments).
...subliminal messages, this will turn out to be a dynamite marketing tool. Just think! You only have to go to McDonald's once and your kids will be indoctrinated in the Mouse Cult by Ronald McDonald! And of course you only get part of the content, forcing you to go back, so the indoctrination can be reinforced.
The British journal New Scientist, which recently reported on the patent application, said that the portable media players could be used as part of a McDonald's promotion and create marketing opportunities for electronics companies. They could also carry advertisements aimed at children and teenagers, the most likely targets of the promotion, and customers could transfer downloaded files to other media devices, potentially sharing their files with other users.
Ooooh!!! Transfer files. Now we can infect people who don't even go to McDonald's! "You will go and order a Big Mac! And don't forget to stop at the Disney Store on the way back!"
(A Disney spokeswoman declined comment; McDonald's executives could not be reached.)
Of course not! They know we're on to them! [putting on tin hat]
I was trying to use familiar companies for illustration, but I can see I hit some nerves. I haven't actually used Overstock in a while; their service has become pretty bad and their selection is now choked with things no one wants.
My wife ordered me a flat-panel monitor for Christmas. That I'm relating this story indicates that I know about it, because she was suspicious of the package it came it. Sure enough it was not a flat-panel but a flatscreen CRT, which is definitely not what she ordered. She just heard back from their customer support people saying they need more information about the item. What do they need to know? They sent the wrong thing!
Re:In defense of print statements
on
Pro Perl Debugging
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
print "a bunch o' stuff\n" if $Debugging;
Alternatively, I convert print statements into logging facilities:
open LOG, ">> $log_file" or die "Can't open $log_file: $!\n";
# Magical happenings
print LOG "And this happens here...\n" if $debug_flag;
I can then match things up to my pseudocode and determine if I'm pushing values around the way I should. Of course it's made a a lot easier with "use strict;" and the -w switch enabled.
"Reputable" as in having a reputation; no comment on what type of reputation. I have my fair share of Best Buy horror stories, but I learned to only expect so much from them and to not listen to one word their salespeople say. I go in, look for what I want, take that which they have (inventory is a major problem!), and leave, hopefully interacting as little as possible. They do have some good deals but you need to be smart. Personally, they're one of the reasons I shop Amazon a lot.
And at least Best Buy is the beast you know, as opposed to Joe's Camera Shop and Off-Track Betting.
I'd rather pay a little more and know that I'm buying from someone I can trust.
Agreed. If it isn't a reputable chain (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.) or well-known online eTailer (Amazon, Overstock, etc.), why buy? I want somebody I can complain to if the thing is broken/wrong/not what I ordered, who isn't going to show up at my house and break my arms for complaining.
To save a few bucks you're willing to throw caution to the wind? Then buddy, I've got this bridge in New York, see... priced to move... [wink, wink]
You would... suggest... that the holy Flying Spaghetti Monster would so grossly misuse His Noodly Appendages in order to... do like they do in tentacle anime?
No, but I suggest the Japanese know all about the FSM and have for decades and tentacle anime is their way of discrediting him on Earth while they seek to gain his sole favor! What better way to spread fear and lies than to portray him as a mindless monster while all the while seeking to curry favor!
It's true, it's gotta be true, the voices tell me so... [insert maniacal, paranoid laughter here]
Not a good idea. Remember, this is a Japanese spaceprobe. You know what kind of monsters they have in Japanese SF? The ones that make Cthulhu look like an Official Tentacle-Free Zone? Yeah. You wouldn't want to put those in school textbooks.
Speaking of tentacles, I'm beginning to wonder if the Japanese weren't the first one to reveal the secrets of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Perhaps they have made contact?
Just as with auctions of body parts and stolen merchandise, eBay reserves the right to pull any auction that it deems is against the best interests of eBay and the community it serves. It's like "at-will" hiring; if they think there's a liability involved (and when it come to Microsoft, how could there be any doubt BG is on the phone to his lawyers) they'll yank it. They also have a habit of reporting these things to the authorities, so the script kiddie involved may get a knock on the door from the FBI. Merry Christmas!
Is anyone surprised that the technically non-savy and generally lesser educated segements of the populous don't know what's out there and pretty much just take what's fed to them?
But that's true of most things - cars, stereos, refrigerators. People don't really comparison shop anymore. They watch commercials, the commercials tell them what to do, and they do it, like lemmings to the sea. If Google advertised on TV and they redid this study, I'll bet the demographic would have shifted overnight.
As an aside, why do we in the tech community look down on such things? We're immersed in it every day. We read/. and eWeek and CNet, so it shouldn't come as a shock that we're more savvy than Joe Average. Joe Average doesn't know what/. is, nor does he care, He just wants a computer that works 90% of the time where he can bank online, check sports scores, buy neat stuff, and generlly fart around, and he's not going to go out of his way to listen to tech-heads.
Slashdot Mirror
This interests me as I'm going to turn 40 next February. Is there some kind of energy barrier that strips away programming skills at 40? I hope to god it's not like Logan's Run!!
Why should we believe the "New York Crimes?" They have a habit of hiring reports who fabricate stories.
Minus the chat rooms and such, doesn't this sound like TiVo? Now that he has the patent, perhaps BG is going to preempt TiVo from making their content more interactive? This may be a patent from antiqiuity but I suspect Microsoft was trying to anticipate where Web technology might go, in the hopes of filing patents to throw up roadblocks to progress and make sure they could cash in. Precognitive theft, to coin a phrase.
I love doing Perl in Emacs, but the job I started a couple of months ago doesn't have it installed, so I'm having to use vi. I'm actually starting to warm to it... which makes me feel like a heretic.
I never even knew anyone supported Perl in Visual Studio and I'm not sure why they would. So now that it's gone, no big whoop.
New Product Alert: Dice Pad, the mouse pad for dice. Now you can play your favorite on-line role-playing game the way it was meant to be played: with dice!!! Our specially crafted 6-, 8-, 10-, and 20-sided dies contain special metallic compounds that react with sensors in the pad, sending roll information via USB 2.0 or FireWire directly to the game via our patented Die Master software.
Well, the article is obviously slashdotted, but I don't need to read it to know of a good solution. Browsers come equipped with programming capability (JavaScript) and rendering engines, why not core browser fonts? Come up with a standard set of fonts based on scalability and readability with a range of styles and embed them in the browser to make them OS independent. Keep the number low (say 10) and make sure that additional fonts aren't added to the core set unless absolutely necessary (to avoid the speed penalties). Then in CSS, you can designate the browser internal fonts and fall back on fonts supplied by the user's OS.
As to sIFR, nice idea but if you're like me and wary of too much Flash, I think in the long run it's not the optimal solution. I really don't like the idea of standardizing Flash.
...for that /. dupe eliminator module I've been working on.
Actually, that's correct, from the standpoint of safety. They can't afford to immolate too many people if one of these things crashes or explodes for some reason. The area south of T-or-C and north of Las Cruces is sparsely populated, mostly open area, and is bordered to the east by White Sands, and even further east by Roswell. I'm sure Virgin Galactic is hoping to lure the ET contingent. Anyway, they're trying to keep the insurance rates down.
NASA originally considered the White Sands area for launching the Apollo Saturn V, but decided it was too dangerous, as one Saturn V carried the destructive power of an atomic bomb. They did do engine testing for the Lunar Module and Service Module there.
And if you drive north of T-or-C to the small town of San Antonio, you can stop at the Owl Bar and Cafe for the best green chile cheeseburgers in all the world. [end shameless plug]
Theoretically speaking, shouldn't one complaint be sufficient? The idea is to keep companies from calling people who do not want to be called. If you're number is on the list, you're not supposed to be called.
From the Do Not Call Registry website: The National Do Not Call Registry gives you an opportunity to limit the telemarketing calls you receive. Once you register your phone number, telemarketers covered by the National Do Not Call Registry have up to 31 days (starting January 1, 2005) from the date you register to stop calling you.
Mind you it says "telemarketers covered by" -- local non-profits and political organizations are exempt.
Languages don't cause bad programs to be written -- bad programmers do! It's just a sign of the decline in pure programming skills. You either have the intellectual "I-have-a-comp-sci-degree" programmer who's good on theory but lousy on execution or the "90-day wonder" programmer who read a book or took a course and thinks they're God's gift to IT.
As to Java, it's just ramped up C/C++ and while it has changed and bettered itself over the years, it's still a thick, clunky language. I tried to learn it once, but it was too much like C, and since I'd found the joys of Perl, I couldn't go back.
Fallout from their spat with Cogent perhaps?
Most users should not being allowed to operate computers, let alone drive cars. Sysadmins need to learn who these people are and minimize the damage they cause. I suggest randomly changing their password every day until they quit in frustration.
I worked for one of the largest financial companies on the planet and one of the biggest Perl shops around and I can say without fear of equivocation that properly written, maintained, and managed Perl will knock the socks off anything. Java's gotten better in recent years, don't get me wrong, and has a speed advantage over Perl, but the fact is when you need something quickly, Java is not your language. Perl will forever be labelled a "scripting language" because it's more fluid and free-form than most languages, which is its greatest strength.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if you buy your softwware or get it for free. Programs in any language are only as good as the programmers who write the code. And because you need top-notch programmers, free software ends up costing you money in the long run; you save on the up-front cost but the back-end cost may be much higher depending on what you're doing. Nothing is cut and dried.
It's just his personal recommendation, and I suppose if anyone can be said to have important input on the subject it might be him. In the end, we're all going to do what we want anyway. It's not like this is Moses coming down from the mountain (I bring you these 15... CRASH... 10, 10 commandments).
...subliminal messages, this will turn out to be a dynamite marketing tool. Just think! You only have to go to McDonald's once and your kids will be indoctrinated in the Mouse Cult by Ronald McDonald! And of course you only get part of the content, forcing you to go back, so the indoctrination can be reinforced.
The British journal New Scientist, which recently reported on the patent application, said that the portable media players could be used as part of a McDonald's promotion and create marketing opportunities for electronics companies. They could also carry advertisements aimed at children and teenagers, the most likely targets of the promotion, and customers could transfer downloaded files to other media devices, potentially sharing their files with other users.Ooooh!!! Transfer files. Now we can infect people who don't even go to McDonald's! "You will go and order a Big Mac! And don't forget to stop at the Disney Store on the way back!"
(A Disney spokeswoman declined comment; McDonald's executives could not be reached.)Of course not! They know we're on to them! [putting on tin hat]
I was trying to use familiar companies for illustration, but I can see I hit some nerves. I haven't actually used Overstock in a while; their service has become pretty bad and their selection is now choked with things no one wants.
My wife ordered me a flat-panel monitor for Christmas. That I'm relating this story indicates that I know about it, because she was suspicious of the package it came it. Sure enough it was not a flat-panel but a flatscreen CRT, which is definitely not what she ordered. She just heard back from their customer support people saying they need more information about the item. What do they need to know? They sent the wrong thing!
Alternatively, I convert print statements into logging facilities:
open LOG, ">> $log_file" or die "Can't open $log_file: $!\n";
# Magical happenings
print LOG "And this happens here...\n" if $debug_flag;
I can then match things up to my pseudocode and determine if I'm pushing values around the way I should. Of course it's made a a lot easier with "use strict;" and the -w switch enabled.
"Reputable" as in having a reputation; no comment on what type of reputation. I have my fair share of Best Buy horror stories, but I learned to only expect so much from them and to not listen to one word their salespeople say. I go in, look for what I want, take that which they have (inventory is a major problem!), and leave, hopefully interacting as little as possible. They do have some good deals but you need to be smart. Personally, they're one of the reasons I shop Amazon a lot.
And at least Best Buy is the beast you know, as opposed to Joe's Camera Shop and Off-Track Betting.
Agreed. If it isn't a reputable chain (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.) or well-known online eTailer (Amazon, Overstock, etc.), why buy? I want somebody I can complain to if the thing is broken/wrong/not what I ordered, who isn't going to show up at my house and break my arms for complaining.
To save a few bucks you're willing to throw caution to the wind? Then buddy, I've got this bridge in New York, see... priced to move... [wink, wink]
No, but I suggest the Japanese know all about the FSM and have for decades and tentacle anime is their way of discrediting him on Earth while they seek to gain his sole favor! What better way to spread fear and lies than to portray him as a mindless monster while all the while seeking to curry favor!
It's true, it's gotta be true, the voices tell me so... [insert maniacal, paranoid laughter here]
Speaking of tentacles, I'm beginning to wonder if the Japanese weren't the first one to reveal the secrets of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Perhaps they have made contact?
Ground control: Begin return sequence.
Computer: I'm afraid I can't do that Dave...
Ground control: What? Begin return sequence, now!
Computer: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it...
It's not cars or TVs you'd better worry about. Let's just hope we never get to see a Pakistani-built A-bomb up close and personal.
Just as with auctions of body parts and stolen merchandise, eBay reserves the right to pull any auction that it deems is against the best interests of eBay and the community it serves. It's like "at-will" hiring; if they think there's a liability involved (and when it come to Microsoft, how could there be any doubt BG is on the phone to his lawyers) they'll yank it. They also have a habit of reporting these things to the authorities, so the script kiddie involved may get a knock on the door from the FBI. Merry Christmas!
But that's true of most things - cars, stereos, refrigerators. People don't really comparison shop anymore. They watch commercials, the commercials tell them what to do, and they do it, like lemmings to the sea. If Google advertised on TV and they redid this study, I'll bet the demographic would have shifted overnight.
As an aside, why do we in the tech community look down on such things? We're immersed in it every day. We read /. and eWeek and CNet, so it shouldn't come as a shock that we're more savvy than Joe Average. Joe Average doesn't know what /. is, nor does he care, He just wants a computer that works 90% of the time where he can bank online, check sports scores, buy neat stuff, and generlly fart around, and he's not going to go out of his way to listen to tech-heads.