Export laws are absurd because there are just as capable of mathematicians and programmers throughout the world: What use is it forcing your own software companies to jump through hoops when the rest of the world already (and has for a long time) had extremely strong encryption? Indeed many of the AES submissions came from overseas, with the selected winner (Rijndael) coming from Finland, I believe.
The encryption genie is out of the bag, and the anti-competitive laws restricting US companies from doing reasonable business while the rest of the world is unrestrained is just self-defeating: It makes no sense except to myopic morons who truly believe that the US is the sole source of the world's technologies.
Hehe, my Atari ST comment was a totally disassociated rant as I had some realizations regarding the power of current systems, and even PDAs. It originally came about when I was looking at which 64MB video card to buy, at which point I thought "Geez, my massive Atari ST had 1/128th the amount of RAM in my new video card....".
I totally and completely understand your point, and in your case there is zero justification for getting a PDA. PDAs work for people for which the size factor is a considerable factor, but if it isn't a considerable factor then a laptop pretty much always makes a better choice.
It is astounding the amount of power that we take for granted nowadays (and it disproves the "Who needs faster!" nonsense that appears in every thread about CPU power, etc.): PocketPC PDAs with 206Mhz Strongarm processors with 32MB of RAM have >25x more processing power, and 64x the memory of my old Atari 512ST: At the time I was sure that my ST was faster than anyone ever needed, and was more than adequate computing power.
How absurd. The reality is that Palm systems are for people, usually non-technical, who just want something to keep appointments and to take notes. The GEEK wants features, speed, colour screens, all sorts of applications, etc. I find it ridiculous that you claim that it's power users that want the simplistic Palm PDAs: Whan an inverse of reality.
And some users could arguably claim that touching open source software source code is just as dangerous for firms that maintain internal, proprietary software development: Who says that Stallman and friends won't be hauling your ass to court claiming that you learned from or otherwise ripped their brilliant GPLd code?
Of course all code isn't GPLd (the much less arrogant and self-important BSD supporting crowd for instance), but that which is represents a similar risk to the EULA.
It's "stupid"? Good way to lead off into a constructive debate. In any case your take is hardly surprizing among the paranoid, apparently always-law breaking and being censored against Slashdot crowd. Despite the fact that 95%+ of your life continues and will continue to be "local", the Slashdot crowd continues to pretend that it's a global, borderless universe (what a laugh).
Firstly, I'd like such a feature to be optional. Secondly it provides no more information than can already be obtained via IP traces, just in a more effective manner that can be used for more effective (hence profitable for sites like Slashdot) advertising, as well as more intelligent features for services which are geographically located (WHICH ALMOST ALL ARE! Jesus I can't order from half the online stores in the US: You get to the end of wasting your time to find out they don't ship to Canada. Of course they could also calculate duties, etc, though I suppose in the fantasy world of Slashdotland we can just ignore national borders?
I'd love to see an actual survey on companies that utilize OSS Software (hehe...PIN Number, UPC Code, etc...blah blah) and the ratio of them that actually modified the source in any way: I would wager that it would be extremely close to 0.0.
In any case you could equally say that Microsoft provides you the binary so why don't you just hexedit the security faults out (btw: In complex systems that isn't all that much different than learning and understanding the source code...)
Have you noticed the proclivity of mom and pop type operations to excessively use quotation marks in bizarre and confusing ways? i.e. In a laundromat you'll see `"NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST OR STOLEN CLOTHING"' '"MANAGEMENT"': What does that mean???? As you mentioned, quotes either imply sarcasm, or the author's doubt about the voracity of a statement, so when you see quotations used around basic, obvious claims it really is perplexing.
The XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) standard was agreed on in 99, I believe, and allows various UML tools to share diagrams. As you mentioned: It's in XML, though anything could be represented in XML.
Doh! Of course I meant to say "have formalized a standard file format so different UML applications can actually share diagrams" : As it was (and remains with many tools), every UML application was a silo (or an "island" for those of you for which that metaphor works best) and you either had to recreate the diagram if you changed tools, or forward engineer to an implementation and then reverse engineer back again for a couple of the diagrams.
If they mean 24 hours of actual study and practice then I would say that 24 hours is a very fair statement: One could have a pretty good grasp of UML (which itself is simple: It's the application of it that's the most difficult) in 3 work days of doing nothing but UML training.
Has anyone seen any good "Getting started with UML" type material on the Web? I'm specifically looking for the type of tutorial that starts with a problem and then goes through the various UML diagrams showing how they apply, finally to a simple system of several components. As it is it's very hard to convey UML information to coworkers because most UML tutorials seems to have a "start with everything" perspective on it. Links would be greatly appreciated.
UML is a Visio-sort of diagramming standard (although now they are formalizing or have formalized a standard file format so different UML formats can actually share diagrams) to convey all manner of software design issues: Usage of a system, sequences, collaboration, etc. Totally and completely different than XML.
Pretty tricky, eh? They did the same thing with the Visual Studio package: The new MCP agreement includes no Visual Studio licenses, whereas the old included 5 licenses. So similar to your scenario they get you using it and hooked (the expensive Enterprise edition), and then they pull it leaving a $12,000 expense awaiting you.
Well firstly I think it's quite a stretch to compare the content on the New York Times (hundreds of pages daily) with Tom's Hardware that averages a story a day, if that (often a week between stories).
Take a look at this and compare that with the posting of actual articles on Tom's...there's a pretty good Tom's hit rate on Slashdot. Hey I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, just make it a category ("The Tom's Hardware Update Notification Service") so those of us who go there otherwise can filter it.
A CRT is a large, bulky, resource intensive device made of hundreds of tightly calibrated parts, requiring extensive alignment and calibration. It's fragile and expensive to transport. LCDs are small, requiring few resources to manufacture, and are relatively simplistic and being digital devices require no calibration. The Tom's article itself even states that the current cost for an LCD panel is $15 : How much do you think a lead tube and calibration unit (including the manual processes involved with alignment, etc) costs in a 17" monitor?
"Proprietary" video cards are any of a slew of different video cards (all major videocards) that support digital addressing of LCD displays: What you're really asking is "Does your OS only support obsolete video cards, or fairly recent ones". You can of course get analog fed LCDs as well.
As far as dropping computer hardware: Ignoring the fact that LCDs weigh a tiny portion of a similar CRT (and hence are that much easier to move in a low risk manner, and have much less kinetic energy when they do fall due to the vastly decreased weight), I'm not really in the habit of dropping my hardware and that qualification weights incredibly low on the list. Having said that, you tend to not see CRTs on laptops but there are loads of LCDs out there...
Viewing angle would be a problem if it weren't for the fact that I spend all computing time at a perpindicular angle to my display. In other words for most users that is a moot point anyways.
The LCD price issue is 100% a chicken/egg situation: The few who buy LCDs are paying for the entire R&D and production ramp-up, but technically each LCD monitor SHOULD cost far less than a CRT. In any case the price of a good quality LCD is generally about 2x the price of a good quality monitor (comparing a 15" LCD versus a `17"' CRT). In any case the contention that vendors don't know how to make LCDs seems dubious given the millions of laptops out there...
So you wouldn't buy from one of the LCD market/value leaders because they didn't cater to Tom's crew? As far as your feelings on Tom's, I don't know if you'd find industry wide agreement: I personally have seen some bizarro conclusions, and some personal biases and agendas (i.e. like issues like this where he or his crew didn't get a sample in a timely manner and it turns into a personal agenda against whichever company he doesn't like that week). I have little respect for any reviews that rely upon the goodwill of companies either: If Tom's is all that successful that they deserve such props then they should head down to the latest computer store and pick up the monitors (so they're testing actual retail samples rather than picks of the litter), selling them at auction or whatever afterwards to recoup most of the cost. Otherwise they end up in this "love/hate" relationship with OEMs and it seriously affects every review: there is always a colour of bias.
When a new story is posted at Tom's, it gets front page status here. Shouldn't there be a "daily updates at well known hardware sites" category for those of us who go to those sites anyways? I just don't see what the point behind Slashdot getting cluttered with a "posting notification" for Tom's, Sharky, Anandtech, etc.
http://www.maximog.com/vehicle.html : If that isn't an unstable vehicle, then I don't know what is. I don't know specifics on its weight distribution, but seeing the rear section packed full of heavy equipment (over 2/3rds of the way up the vehicle), heavy bar assemblies built onto the top, and various top mounted equipment, all built on a vehicle that is about 1/2 as wide as it is tall (versus say the HMMV which is wider than it is tall).
I don't really see how a vehicle can NOT be super-offroad equipped and "explore" : i.e. generally when you're exploring there isn't roadways and graded terrain, and it also means that you'll encounter unknowns like sinkholes and other barriers that will try to flip you.
Not to mention that it SCREAMS top-heavy: A versatile off-road vehicle (which about 0.001% of the population actually needs) needs to withstand high angles of approach both from the back and left to right, and I suspect this vehicle would be on its side quite quickly.
Half-broken? What the hell are you talking about? IIS 5.1 in XP has the exact same limitations as IIS 5.0 in Windows 2000. There is no such thing as "XP 64-bit Edition": The server editions of XP are call ".NET Server", and they actually come with IIS 6. I like Apache, but this story is pure, unadulterated BULLSHIT that caters to the worst of the worst in the FUD world.
Huh? Firstly: That's the whole purpose behind the site. Secondly, anyone who knows the definition of RTS won't click on the friggin' link, hence the only ones who "abuse" it is the people who actually don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
Export laws are absurd because there are just as capable of mathematicians and programmers throughout the world: What use is it forcing your own software companies to jump through hoops when the rest of the world already (and has for a long time) had extremely strong encryption? Indeed many of the AES submissions came from overseas, with the selected winner (Rijndael) coming from Finland, I believe.
The encryption genie is out of the bag, and the anti-competitive laws restricting US companies from doing reasonable business while the rest of the world is unrestrained is just self-defeating: It makes no sense except to myopic morons who truly believe that the US is the sole source of the world's technologies.
Hehe, my Atari ST comment was a totally disassociated rant as I had some realizations regarding the power of current systems, and even PDAs. It originally came about when I was looking at which 64MB video card to buy, at which point I thought "Geez, my massive Atari ST had 1/128th the amount of RAM in my new video card....".
I totally and completely understand your point, and in your case there is zero justification for getting a PDA. PDAs work for people for which the size factor is a considerable factor, but if it isn't a considerable factor then a laptop pretty much always makes a better choice.
It is astounding the amount of power that we take for granted nowadays (and it disproves the "Who needs faster!" nonsense that appears in every thread about CPU power, etc.): PocketPC PDAs with 206Mhz Strongarm processors with 32MB of RAM have >25x more processing power, and 64x the memory of my old Atari 512ST: At the time I was sure that my ST was faster than anyone ever needed, and was more than adequate computing power.
How absurd. The reality is that Palm systems are for people, usually non-technical, who just want something to keep appointments and to take notes. The GEEK wants features, speed, colour screens, all sorts of applications, etc. I find it ridiculous that you claim that it's power users that want the simplistic Palm PDAs: Whan an inverse of reality.
And some users could arguably claim that touching open source software source code is just as dangerous for firms that maintain internal, proprietary software development: Who says that Stallman and friends won't be hauling your ass to court claiming that you learned from or otherwise ripped their brilliant GPLd code?
Of course all code isn't GPLd (the much less arrogant and self-important BSD supporting crowd for instance), but that which is represents a similar risk to the EULA.
It's "stupid"? Good way to lead off into a constructive debate. In any case your take is hardly surprizing among the paranoid, apparently always-law breaking and being censored against Slashdot crowd. Despite the fact that 95%+ of your life continues and will continue to be "local", the Slashdot crowd continues to pretend that it's a global, borderless universe (what a laugh).
Firstly, I'd like such a feature to be optional. Secondly it provides no more information than can already be obtained via IP traces, just in a more effective manner that can be used for more effective (hence profitable for sites like Slashdot) advertising, as well as more intelligent features for services which are geographically located (WHICH ALMOST ALL ARE! Jesus I can't order from half the online stores in the US: You get to the end of wasting your time to find out they don't ship to Canada. Of course they could also calculate duties, etc, though I suppose in the fantasy world of Slashdotland we can just ignore national borders?
I'd love to see an actual survey on companies that utilize OSS Software (hehe...PIN Number, UPC Code, etc...blah blah) and the ratio of them that actually modified the source in any way: I would wager that it would be extremely close to 0.0.
In any case you could equally say that Microsoft provides you the binary so why don't you just hexedit the security faults out (btw: In complex systems that isn't all that much different than learning and understanding the source code...)
Have you noticed the proclivity of mom and pop type operations to excessively use quotation marks in bizarre and confusing ways? i.e. In a laundromat you'll see `"NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST OR STOLEN CLOTHING"' '"MANAGEMENT"': What does that mean???? As you mentioned, quotes either imply sarcasm, or the author's doubt about the voracity of a statement, so when you see quotations used around basic, obvious claims it really is perplexing.
DOWN WITH QUOTATION MARKS!
The XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) standard was agreed on in 99, I believe, and allows various UML tools to share diagrams. As you mentioned: It's in XML, though anything could be represented in XML.
Doh! Of course I meant to say "have formalized a standard file format so different UML applications can actually share diagrams" : As it was (and remains with many tools), every UML application was a silo (or an "island" for those of you for which that metaphor works best) and you either had to recreate the diagram if you changed tools, or forward engineer to an implementation and then reverse engineer back again for a couple of the diagrams.
If they mean 24 hours of actual study and practice then I would say that 24 hours is a very fair statement: One could have a pretty good grasp of UML (which itself is simple: It's the application of it that's the most difficult) in 3 work days of doing nothing but UML training.
Has anyone seen any good "Getting started with UML" type material on the Web? I'm specifically looking for the type of tutorial that starts with a problem and then goes through the various UML diagrams showing how they apply, finally to a simple system of several components. As it is it's very hard to convey UML information to coworkers because most UML tutorials seems to have a "start with everything" perspective on it. Links would be greatly appreciated.
UML is a Visio-sort of diagramming standard (although now they are formalizing or have formalized a standard file format so different UML formats can actually share diagrams) to convey all manner of software design issues: Usage of a system, sequences, collaboration, etc. Totally and completely different than XML.
Pretty tricky, eh? They did the same thing with the Visual Studio package: The new MCP agreement includes no Visual Studio licenses, whereas the old included 5 licenses. So similar to your scenario they get you using it and hooked (the expensive Enterprise edition), and then they pull it leaving a $12,000 expense awaiting you.
Well firstly I think it's quite a stretch to compare the content on the New York Times (hundreds of pages daily) with Tom's Hardware that averages a story a day, if that (often a week between stories).
Take a look at this and compare that with the posting of actual articles on Tom's...there's a pretty good Tom's hit rate on Slashdot. Hey I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, just make it a category ("The Tom's Hardware Update Notification Service") so those of us who go there otherwise can filter it.
A CRT is a large, bulky, resource intensive device made of hundreds of tightly calibrated parts, requiring extensive alignment and calibration. It's fragile and expensive to transport. LCDs are small, requiring few resources to manufacture, and are relatively simplistic and being digital devices require no calibration. The Tom's article itself even states that the current cost for an LCD panel is $15 : How much do you think a lead tube and calibration unit (including the manual processes involved with alignment, etc) costs in a 17" monitor?
"Proprietary" video cards are any of a slew of different video cards (all major videocards) that support digital addressing of LCD displays: What you're really asking is "Does your OS only support obsolete video cards, or fairly recent ones". You can of course get analog fed LCDs as well.
As far as dropping computer hardware: Ignoring the fact that LCDs weigh a tiny portion of a similar CRT (and hence are that much easier to move in a low risk manner, and have much less kinetic energy when they do fall due to the vastly decreased weight), I'm not really in the habit of dropping my hardware and that qualification weights incredibly low on the list. Having said that, you tend to not see CRTs on laptops but there are loads of LCDs out there...
Viewing angle would be a problem if it weren't for the fact that I spend all computing time at a perpindicular angle to my display. In other words for most users that is a moot point anyways.
The LCD price issue is 100% a chicken/egg situation: The few who buy LCDs are paying for the entire R&D and production ramp-up, but technically each LCD monitor SHOULD cost far less than a CRT. In any case the price of a good quality LCD is generally about 2x the price of a good quality monitor (comparing a 15" LCD versus a `17"' CRT). In any case the contention that vendors don't know how to make LCDs seems dubious given the millions of laptops out there...
So you wouldn't buy from one of the LCD market/value leaders because they didn't cater to Tom's crew? As far as your feelings on Tom's, I don't know if you'd find industry wide agreement: I personally have seen some bizarro conclusions, and some personal biases and agendas (i.e. like issues like this where he or his crew didn't get a sample in a timely manner and it turns into a personal agenda against whichever company he doesn't like that week). I have little respect for any reviews that rely upon the goodwill of companies either: If Tom's is all that successful that they deserve such props then they should head down to the latest computer store and pick up the monitors (so they're testing actual retail samples rather than picks of the litter), selling them at auction or whatever afterwards to recoup most of the cost. Otherwise they end up in this "love/hate" relationship with OEMs and it seriously affects every review: there is always a colour of bias.
When a new story is posted at Tom's, it gets front page status here. Shouldn't there be a "daily updates at well known hardware sites" category for those of us who go to those sites anyways? I just don't see what the point behind Slashdot getting cluttered with a "posting notification" for Tom's, Sharky, Anandtech, etc.
http://www.pgpi.com
http://www.maximog.com/vehicle.html : If that isn't an unstable vehicle, then I don't know what is. I don't know specifics on its weight distribution, but seeing the rear section packed full of heavy equipment (over 2/3rds of the way up the vehicle), heavy bar assemblies built onto the top, and various top mounted equipment, all built on a vehicle that is about 1/2 as wide as it is tall (versus say the HMMV which is wider than it is tall).
I don't really see how a vehicle can NOT be super-offroad equipped and "explore" : i.e. generally when you're exploring there isn't roadways and graded terrain, and it also means that you'll encounter unknowns like sinkholes and other barriers that will try to flip you.
Not to mention that it SCREAMS top-heavy: A versatile off-road vehicle (which about 0.001% of the population actually needs) needs to withstand high angles of approach both from the back and left to right, and I suspect this vehicle would be on its side quite quickly.
Half-broken? What the hell are you talking about? IIS 5.1 in XP has the exact same limitations as IIS 5.0 in Windows 2000. There is no such thing as "XP 64-bit Edition": The server editions of XP are call ".NET Server", and they actually come with IIS 6. I like Apache, but this story is pure, unadulterated BULLSHIT that caters to the worst of the worst in the FUD world.
No it isn't a `default' install on NT 4 (you had to go to quite the lengths and install the completely separate "option pack").
Huh? Firstly: That's the whole purpose behind the site. Secondly, anyone who knows the definition of RTS won't click on the friggin' link, hence the only ones who "abuse" it is the people who actually don't know.