You're going to have to choose between Gnome and your netbook sooner or later, yeah. Since I'm a satisfied WindowMaker user, you can probably guess what my recommendation is!
Seriously, though, give some of the alternative window managers out there a shot if you haven't already. You may find you don't miss much from Gnome.
You haven't done tech support, then (even for family).
Yes, I have, but:
(a) I can usually IM or email any relevant URLs to family members (unless it's their internet connection I'm troubleshooting, in which case URLs wouldn't be much use).
(b) If didn't have that option, it would be easier to give them search terms rather than full URLs. Even for something very specific like, say, a Microsoft KB article I would say something like "go to support.microsoft.com and search for 'kb242450'" rather than spell out an exact URL, even a shortened one.
Why do you think this has anything to do with finding sites? Would you just randomly type in domain names now to find a site about the Liberty Bell, or about rapping? There's this really cool site called Google... you should try it.
This will basically end with the demise of mandatory endings like.com,.org, and.net. They might have been a good idea to begin with, but now they are just cruft, like the www prefix. Instead of "http://www.google.com/", you would just go to "http://google/".
I just tried visiting yahoo.com in Firefox with image loading turned off, and the alt-text placeholders are there. Can you give an example of a site that works with images turned off in Netscape but not in Firefox?
You know you can disable stylesheets in most browsers, right? In Firefox it's something like View->Page Style->No Style. And I'd be surprised if turning off images in any browser could seriously break things when you've turned off CSS anyway... what kind of problems do you run into?
Why can't the filesystem just update data and metadata in given order for a particular file? For example, if you truncate a file and then write to it, the following should happen:
Metadata for `foo' is updated (length=0)
New data for `foo' is written elsewhere
Metadata for `foo' is updated (contents=new_data)
If, on the other hand, you're doing the create-write-close-rename trick to get an "atomic file replace", then the following should happen:
Metadata for `foo.new' is created (length=0)
New data for `foo.new' is written elsewhere
Metadata for `foo.new' is updated (contents=new_data)
Metadata for `foo.new' is updated (filename=foo), replacing old `foo'
It seems like in both cases, ensuring that data and metadata are written in given order for a particular file would solve the problem, without imposing any performance penalties on I/O operations going on for other files. I assume I'm missing something-- does all metadata need to be written in order with respect to all other metadata or something?
Don't pick programming languages based solely on what is popular or in-demand. That way lies complacency, boredom and stagnation.
C, C++ and Java are all pretty similar languages. Try a functional language like Lisp: it will stretch your mind and make you a better programmer. You should also try one of the modern scripting languages like Ruby or Python: they're fun on their own, and increasingly useful in the "real world".
Join an open-source project! That's the best way to get practical experience and show prospective employers that you've got both skills and motivation.
Finally, if you are not already intimately familiar with UNIX and the command line, learn it. Live it. Love it. Seriously, it's one of the most valuable skills a programmer can have outside of programming itself.
My point was that BSD-style licenses are effectively the same thing as public domain, if you ignore the attribution requirement. So yes, the BSD license would not exist without copyright, but we wouldn't need it in that case. GPL, on the other hand, requires copyright to enforce its "viral" nature.
In all honesty, I think modern Copyright rules suck, and I think Free Software is awesome, but of course the latter is dependant on the former...
No, only GPL-alikes depend on copyright. It's true that BSD-style licenses require attribution, but attribution is arguably separate from copyright itself, and in any case it's hardly required for those kinds of licenses to function.
Capitalisim is great and all but how is it possible without law, and how is law effective without enforcement?
I will not try to summarize the arguments here, but there is plenty of literature on the subject. In particular, check out some of Murray Rothbard's writings, such as Power and Market: Government and the Economy. This assumes you are at least open to the idea in the first place; if not, there's not much point in discussing it.
And please let's not talk about everyone bartering for horses out of the goodness of their hearts, that's just as fantasmagorical as the socilist's sharing and caring paradise.
Can we please leave behind the straw men?
So you are saying that people don't vote for their percieved self-intrest?
They have no incentive to invest the time and effort required to make an informed choice, because an individual vote accomplishes absolutely nothing unless the margin of the election would have been no greater than one vote. You've probably got better odds of winning the lottery, then using the money to fund your favored politician's campaign.
Thus it is completely rational for self-interested voters to behave the way they do; it's a form of the free rider problem. That's why I said democracy fights human nature: it only works if you assume people don't act in a self-interested way.
If we stopped voting for the guy with the convincing advertisement, there would be no need use for any of that money.
And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Face it, democracy is broken. Always was, always will be, because it tries to fight human nature. Compare to capitalism: for all its faults, capitalism has done fantastically well for us because it thrives on self-interest.
Of course, I expect replies from the usual armchair economists who will show their lack of historical perspective by snidely pointing out the current economic downturn, as if that somehow disproved the claim that markets have an overwhelmingly better track record than do governments, democratic or otherwise. Bring it on!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
--Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface" [Alpha Centauri]
I personally think it should be perfectly OK to read and write hundreds of tiny files. Even thousands.
To paraphrase https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/54 : You certainly can use tons of tiny files, but if you want to guarantee your data will still be there after a crash, you need to use fsync. And if that causes performance problems, then perhaps you should rethink how your application is doing things.
You're in luck, because the economists highlighted in TFA happen to have written a book on the very subject of the article! You might want to read chapter 9, The Pharmaceutical Industry.
Right now if something is patented, you need to figure out another way to do the same thing. Sometimes the new method is even better than the original. THAT IS THE [IMPLIED] GOAL. Without a patent, everyone would just use the 1st method and nobody would want to improve upon it.
Why don't we outlaw the wheel, then? I'm sure that will force the market to come up with all sorts of creative alternatives. We'll probably waste billions of dollars in the process, but at least we'll be promoting "innovation"! Isn't that what's important, after all?
I visited Washington DC a while back. I stood on the Mall. I stood on the Lincoln Memorial. I own a piece of it.
Do you? Really? Can you sell your piece of it, or give it away? Can you take your piece somewhere else, or destroy it if you feel like it? If not, you sure have a funny definition of "own".
Slashdot Mirror
...I plan on going through life without EVER setting foot in a McD's (That includes drive through's).
"Setting foot in a McD's" does not include drive-throughs pretty much by definition.
What they describe/offer as food does not interest me in the slightest...
Wow, good for you. What do you want, a medal? You're like those insufferable twats who brag about not owning a television.
You're going to have to choose between Gnome and your netbook sooner or later, yeah. Since I'm a satisfied WindowMaker user, you can probably guess what my recommendation is!
Seriously, though, give some of the alternative window managers out there a shot if you haven't already. You may find you don't miss much from Gnome.
You haven't done tech support, then (even for family).
Yes, I have, but:
(a) I can usually IM or email any relevant URLs to family members (unless it's their internet connection I'm troubleshooting, in which case URLs wouldn't be much use).
(b) If didn't have that option, it would be easier to give them search terms rather than full URLs. Even for something very specific like, say, a Microsoft KB article I would say something like "go to support.microsoft.com and search for 'kb242450'" rather than spell out an exact URL, even a shortened one.
For anything that isn't electronic...
That's the point. When was the last time you actually hand-copied a URL? I can't recall ever doing it, though I probably have once or twice.
Besides, isn't it easier just to give a few keywords that will lead to a particular page either from Google or your own site's interal search?
Why do you think this has anything to do with finding sites? Would you just randomly type in domain names now to find a site about the Liberty Bell, or about rapping? There's this really cool site called Google... you should try it.
.com, .org, and .net. They might have been a good idea to begin with, but now they are just cruft, like the www prefix. Instead of "http://www.google.com/", you would just go to "http://google/".
This will basically end with the demise of mandatory endings like
I just tried visiting yahoo.com in Firefox with image loading turned off, and the alt-text placeholders are there. Can you give an example of a site that works with images turned off in Netscape but not in Firefox?
You know you can disable stylesheets in most browsers, right? In Firefox it's something like View->Page Style->No Style. And I'd be surprised if turning off images in any browser could seriously break things when you've turned off CSS anyway... what kind of problems do you run into?
http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/acoustics/essay1/brechung_en.html
And that makes it OK to send in a bunch of tanks and start shooting at them?
If, on the other hand, you're doing the create-write-close-rename trick to get an "atomic file replace", then the following should happen:
It seems like in both cases, ensuring that data and metadata are written in given order for a particular file would solve the problem, without imposing any performance penalties on I/O operations going on for other files. I assume I'm missing something-- does all metadata need to be written in order with respect to all other metadata or something?
Don't pick programming languages based solely on what is popular or in-demand. That way lies complacency, boredom and stagnation.
C, C++ and Java are all pretty similar languages. Try a functional language like Lisp: it will stretch your mind and make you a better programmer. You should also try one of the modern scripting languages like Ruby or Python: they're fun on their own, and increasingly useful in the "real world".
Join an open-source project! That's the best way to get practical experience and show prospective employers that you've got both skills and motivation.
Finally, if you are not already intimately familiar with UNIX and the command line, learn it. Live it. Love it. Seriously, it's one of the most valuable skills a programmer can have outside of programming itself.
My point was that BSD-style licenses are effectively the same thing as public domain, if you ignore the attribution requirement. So yes, the BSD license would not exist without copyright, but we wouldn't need it in that case. GPL, on the other hand, requires copyright to enforce its "viral" nature.
In all honesty, I think modern Copyright rules suck, and I think Free Software is awesome, but of course the latter is dependant on the former...
No, only GPL-alikes depend on copyright. It's true that BSD-style licenses require attribution, but attribution is arguably separate from copyright itself, and in any case it's hardly required for those kinds of licenses to function.
Capitalisim is great and all but how is it possible without law, and how is law effective without enforcement?
I will not try to summarize the arguments here, but there is plenty of literature on the subject. In particular, check out some of Murray Rothbard's writings, such as Power and Market: Government and the Economy. This assumes you are at least open to the idea in the first place; if not, there's not much point in discussing it.
And please let's not talk about everyone bartering for horses out of the goodness of their hearts, that's just as fantasmagorical as the socilist's sharing and caring paradise.
Can we please leave behind the straw men?
So you are saying that people don't vote for their percieved self-intrest?
They have no incentive to invest the time and effort required to make an informed choice, because an individual vote accomplishes absolutely nothing unless the margin of the election would have been no greater than one vote. You've probably got better odds of winning the lottery, then using the money to fund your favored politician's campaign.
Thus it is completely rational for self-interested voters to behave the way they do; it's a form of the free rider problem. That's why I said democracy fights human nature: it only works if you assume people don't act in a self-interested way.
If we stopped voting for the guy with the convincing advertisement, there would be no need use for any of that money.
And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Face it, democracy is broken. Always was, always will be, because it tries to fight human nature. Compare to capitalism: for all its faults, capitalism has done fantastically well for us because it thrives on self-interest.
Of course, I expect replies from the usual armchair economists who will show their lack of historical perspective by snidely pointing out the current economic downturn, as if that somehow disproved the claim that markets have an overwhelmingly better track record than do governments, democratic or otherwise. Bring it on!
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centisecs
/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
(from https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/7)
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
--Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface" [Alpha Centauri]
It's pretty funny that you link to an explanation of a word most English speakers already know, and spell it wrong in the process.
I personally think it should be perfectly OK to read and write hundreds of tiny files. Even thousands.
To paraphrase https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781/comments/54 : You certainly can use tons of tiny files, but if you want to guarantee your data will still be there after a crash, you need to use fsync. And if that causes performance problems, then perhaps you should rethink how your application is doing things.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. That's a real useful invention.
You're in luck, because the economists highlighted in TFA happen to have written a book on the very subject of the article! You might want to read chapter 9, The Pharmaceutical Industry.
Right now if something is patented, you need to figure out another way to do the same thing. Sometimes the new method is even better than the original. THAT IS THE [IMPLIED] GOAL. Without a patent, everyone would just use the 1st method and nobody would want to improve upon it.
Why don't we outlaw the wheel, then? I'm sure that will force the market to come up with all sorts of creative alternatives. We'll probably waste billions of dollars in the process, but at least we'll be promoting "innovation"! Isn't that what's important, after all?
I visited Washington DC a while back. I stood on the Mall. I stood on the Lincoln Memorial. I own a piece of it.
Do you? Really? Can you sell your piece of it, or give it away? Can you take your piece somewhere else, or destroy it if you feel like it? If not, you sure have a funny definition of "own".
Thank you! I had completely forgotten how to use Google!
"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... AAY!"
-Disco Stu