>> unless their ticket systems are so ancient and cruddily coded in COBOL
I work for a large travel company. The guys maintaining the ticketing system consider COBOL to be a bit modern and refuse to sully their big iron with it.
800,000 men in the UK play Championship Manager (the series, rather than any specific version).
That's over 1% of the UK population. That'll make it probably 10-20% of "home and small business users".
Does a new Mac come with any of the CM games pre-installed? No? Then STOP FUCKING LYING.
Fuck me, just because you don't game, your mother doesn't game, your father may or may not game (ask him if you ever find him), DON'T discount the needs of those of us who DO game.
Now, FM2005 (latest incarnation of Champ Man) is available on the Mac. Unfortunately many games I play (and will want to play) aren't.
I am not representative of a mere 1% of the home and small business user market.
I already own a router/firewall. That's because I have multiple machines in my home. If I buy a Mac or a PC it'll be connecting to the 'net from behind a firewall. No additional cost.
I don't run anti-virus software. Even if I did, you can get it for free.
I do use ad-aware from time to time. It never finds nasty software that I didn't intentionally install. I didn't pay for ad-aware though (they offer a free version) so there's no additional cost. If I use a Mac I'm still at risk of installing nastiness if I randomly download and run stuff.
As for "You can't use your regular browser", my regular browser is Mozilla. So I can use it.
I have a 3 year old PC running windows XP home. It still boots as fast as it always has, it never goes wrong, it never does anything unexpected, it does run the software I want to run.
So you may get a hassle-free computer; I get a hassle-free computer that I can play FPS games with new, inventive graphics on.
But integrating GPL licenced software into your company's internal systems and never releasing them outside of the company means you aren't releasing/distributing the binary, or the code, and thus you do not need to provide a GPL licenced version of your system.
From a certain perspective that's a hole in the GPL.
A lady in UK was recently prosecuted for eating an apple while driving.
The actual law was related to being in control of the vehicle, rather than specifically mentioning apples, but the simple fact is that if you take your hand off the steering wheel while driving for anything other than a gear change then you're risking prosecution in the UK.
Are you going to take up arms against the British Government next time you're here on business and rent a car?
This might be taking away rights - but only in the same way that mandating you can't drive while blindfolded is taking away rights. Your right to cause danger to the public has been deemed lower in priority than the general right to live without fear of dangerous drivers.
Note that enforcement of the law in the UK tends to be predominantly sensible - the case of the lady with the apple made the news because it was so unusual.
Oh, and using a handheld mobile telephone (a "cell phone" in American English) while driving is illegal in the UK. And I'm glad, because I've seen too many near-accidents caused by people using one.
The CTRL key is indeed down there. However, since I press CTRL with the underside of the knuckle on my baby finger, my thumb is merely travelling as far as the Z key.
Then again, I just tried and by keeping my wrist stationary but swivelling my hand half an inch to the left, I can reach the CTRL key with my thumb. I can actually reach it without moving my hand at all, but it hurts..
>> a robust suite of polished, easy-to-use applications that will cover most of the needs of the freshman computer enthusiast (photography, music, basic word processing, even movies).
Games. They're the sole reason I run Windows, and have been for 4-5 years now.
For all your Mac advocacy I will still not be even considering a Mac until all the games I want to play are guaranteed a Mac release.
You are shitting me aren't you? I'm running on a 3 year old PC at home, and it's had 1GB of RAM since I bought it.
At work 1GB is the absolute minimum these days - by the time you include operating system, two web browsers, email/calendar app, diagramming tool, word processor, text editor, a decent IDE, source code management tool and start running build scripts, recursive greps and performing other development tasks, even a gig isn't enough to prevent you swapping. And swapping slows you down..
Hmm, no. The natural resting position of my left hand is such that the CTRL key is under the baby finger knuckle part of my hand. So to do a fingerless CTRL-Z I just need to bend my thumb back a bit and push with the knuckle and the thumb - no wrist movement, and no hand movement other than just mentioned.
If I sit with my fingers comfortably stretched (slight curve) then for my left hand, my two middle fingers are just above the number key row, baby finger is on 1 and fore-finger is between r and t. Default position to start typing has forefinger on f, other three fingers on qwe. That's how I'm sat at the moment - for greater speed I may straighten slightly, but I'm going at 60wpm with no stress right now, and leaning sideways at a 45 degree angle in my chair with my right forearm on the desk... Ok, someone just came in and chatted to me, so I sat up, swivelled the chair and I'm back in a relaxed 45 degree angle, but this time leaning to the left instead. Only real difference for left hand is that it's now half a key further right than it started out.
Right hand occupies a very similar position to right of keyboard, but about half a row lower. J is default start-point for forefinger, and I have to bend baby finger almost double to hit shift - I do admit that having to use shift for an extended period (typing a lot of SHIFTED characters) can lead to strain.
For people under the age of 40 Make is incomprehensible, unintuitive and full of quirks that make so sense. Or maybe that's just me.
If you want 30 or so small, easy to read/understand Ant build.xml files, all controlled by a single daddy build.xml file, go right ahead - the tool supports it just fine. And it'll still be fast.
If you want them really really easy to read, I'm very concerned. You shouldn't need to be messing about with them - write them, get them working, leave them alone. Constant fiddling implies you keep doing it wrong.
If you want easy to read anyway, go back to eclipse - it has built-in Ant support. It may seem bloated but that's because you haven't learned half its features. It's designed to increase your productivity - learn how to use it so that it can.
Shit, you're calling Eclipse bloated and you use Xemacs? I should kill this reply and mod you 'troll'....
I had the same with my last car - it had a number pad to enter a keycode to disable the immobiliser.
Every time I put it in for a service the guy would ask for the keycode, and I'd have to go and find the card with it written down - I never actually knew the number, just entered it from muscle memory each time.
Couldn't even tell you for certain which way up that numpad was, now I've sold the car..
I can't necessarily think at 100wpm (I can't type that fast either) but what I do - especially when programming - is sit and think for a minute or two, then burst into action.
I need to communicate my thoughts into written code/prose/etc fast, before I forget them.
Fast typists make better programmers. It's a known observed phenomenum. I don't know whether anybody's actually scientifically tested it, and it may be correlation rather than causation, but that's my experience.
So being able to type at 80wpm allows me to take thoughts from brain to screen faster, and thus gives me more time available to do the actual thinking.
If anything, people who are not professional stenographers need typing speed more - because they type only occasionally, they need to be able to get through the typing process swifter to free up their minds/fingers/etc for their normal activities.
Anyway, being able to type fast gives you an immense advantage when chatting online - you can respond much more swiftly and often hold multiple concurrent conversations. Far more fun and far more interesting than being stuck in a 1 on 1 conversation.
But the current shift key locations are ideal for holding down with the baby fingers. I do use my baby fingers while typing normally, but not as much as a properly taught touch-typist would down. However, I have used my right baby finger to hold down Shift for every single capital letter typed in this message so far.
I have also noticed that I seem to be using only my right thumb - validation indeed that my left thumb is idle and thus wasted while typing, although once I get onto the number keys I do use it so I keep my right hand higher on the keyboard.
I do use my left baby finer for shift too - seems to depend on what my right hand is up to at the time. Oh, and I tend to use my left baby finger to hold down the shift key to type in UPPER CASE as that's quicker than hitting CAPS LOCKS, typing, then turning it off again. I know several people who also do that - none of us are properly taught typists, all of us can do over 80wpm with minimal errors.
What I have noticed is that to hold down CTRL I use the underside of my hand below the knuckle of my left baby finger. Aha - while showing the guy sat next to me this terrific technique I realised that I do use my left thumb - I use it to do CTRL-Z without using fingers at all - and I do so completely automatically without thinking about it.
Truly a triumph for unconscious optimisation of repetitive actions. (yes, I'm sure being properly taught would have optimised further, and consciously. Such is life. On the other hand my unconventional style doesn't hurt my fingers over extended periods and is very comfortable for me)
Huzzah indeed. Absolutely my biggest single reason for wanting HP to boil in oil for this.
EU is even worse - Levi say "You cant buy jeans not intended for the EU and sell them cheaply there" and the EU says "indeed, that's contravening our free trade laws"
Meanwhile half the IT staff at my company just got replaced by a bunch of muppets from India..
~Cederic// use of term 'muppets' in this comment relates to highly skilled and experienced IT professionals who are generously allowing us to utilise their vast delivery capability for inconsequential monetary return
Hmm. Implication from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.as p?vlnk=6339 suggests the generally reported statistic does have factual basis.
Whether "air weapon" includes "Air pistol converted to fire live cartridges" or whether there really are that many crimes committed with pellet guns would be useful information.
"have to draw this gun in anger" is a turn of phrase.
It doesn't mean he'll be angry at the time. It means there'll be a situation where the gun is necessary and live firing may occur (as opposed to firing on the range, training, etc).
>> assuming you're carrying this legally, which you're probably not
Hang on. He's gone to the extent of getting a safety feature built into his gun, and he also mentions his habit of wearing a very expensive (and inevitably uncomfortable) protective clothing. My assumption is that he's either works in a security role, or (more likely) he's a law enforcement official.
I don't know who the original poster was (that eponymous AC) and I'm very uncomfortable with the gung-ho gun-happy culture in America, but your response is entirely out of order.
The rise in guncrime is predominantly unrelated to the ban on public ownership.
The majority of firearms on the streets are actually converted air-pistols and other weapons not originally sold to fire gunpowder propelled projectiles.
Even if gun ownership was legal (and hell, it still is for shotguns and some other weapons) the level of gun crime would have risen.
Slashdot Mirror
>> unless their ticket systems are so ancient and cruddily coded in COBOL
I work for a large travel company. The guys maintaining the ticketing system consider COBOL to be a bit modern and refuse to sully their big iron with it.
It's rather frustrating dealing with these guys..
You kid me?? I have a dual-CPU Athlon MP1800+ system and it takes more than six seconds to get through the bios screens and look for Windows.
Obviously that doesn't differentiate Windows from Linux, but 6 seconds?? No. Not even after the first 'booting' prompt.
800,000 men in the UK play Championship Manager (the series, rather than any specific version).
That's over 1% of the UK population. That'll make it probably 10-20% of "home and small business users".
Does a new Mac come with any of the CM games pre-installed? No? Then STOP FUCKING LYING.
Fuck me, just because you don't game, your mother doesn't game, your father may or may not game (ask him if you ever find him), DON'T discount the needs of those of us who DO game.
Now, FM2005 (latest incarnation of Champ Man) is available on the Mac. Unfortunately many games I play (and will want to play) aren't.
I am not representative of a mere 1% of the home and small business user market.
~cederic
Oh quit trolling.
I already own a router/firewall. That's because I have multiple machines in my home. If I buy a Mac or a PC it'll be connecting to the 'net from behind a firewall. No additional cost.
I don't run anti-virus software. Even if I did, you can get it for free.
I do use ad-aware from time to time. It never finds nasty software that I didn't intentionally install. I didn't pay for ad-aware though (they offer a free version) so there's no additional cost. If I use a Mac I'm still at risk of installing nastiness if I randomly download and run stuff.
As for "You can't use your regular browser", my regular browser is Mozilla. So I can use it.
I have a 3 year old PC running windows XP home. It still boots as fast as it always has, it never goes wrong, it never does anything unexpected, it does run the software I want to run.
So you may get a hassle-free computer; I get a hassle-free computer that I can play FPS games with new, inventive graphics on.
~Cederic
But integrating GPL licenced software into your company's internal systems and never releasing them outside of the company means you aren't releasing/distributing the binary, or the code, and thus you do not need to provide a GPL licenced version of your system.
From a certain perspective that's a hole in the GPL.
>> What Slashdot are doing by not fixing their HTML is saying: "Open source developers produce ugly hack code".
No it's not. Slashdot is saying "Slashdot coders produce ugly hack code".
And lets face it, we already knew that.
Of course, that hasn't stopped them becoming an immensely popular and scalable website..
~cederic
A lady in UK was recently prosecuted for eating an apple while driving.
The actual law was related to being in control of the vehicle, rather than specifically mentioning apples, but the simple fact is that if you take your hand off the steering wheel while driving for anything other than a gear change then you're risking prosecution in the UK.
Are you going to take up arms against the British Government next time you're here on business and rent a car?
This might be taking away rights - but only in the same way that mandating you can't drive while blindfolded is taking away rights. Your right to cause danger to the public has been deemed lower in priority than the general right to live without fear of dangerous drivers.
Note that enforcement of the law in the UK tends to be predominantly sensible - the case of the lady with the apple made the news because it was so unusual.
Oh, and using a handheld mobile telephone (a "cell phone" in American English) while driving is illegal in the UK. And I'm glad, because I've seen too many near-accidents caused by people using one.
~cederic
The CTRL key is indeed down there. However, since I press CTRL with the underside of the knuckle on my baby finger, my thumb is merely travelling as far as the Z key.
Then again, I just tried and by keeping my wrist stationary but swivelling my hand half an inch to the left, I can reach the CTRL key with my thumb. I can actually reach it without moving my hand at all, but it hurts..
~cederic
Oh, I don't know... I know plenty of humans that could ace a Turing test but lose pathetically to me in games.
And I suck at online games..
Hey, you didn't think of it.
>> a robust suite of polished, easy-to-use applications that will cover most of the needs of the freshman computer enthusiast (photography, music, basic word processing, even movies).
Games. They're the sole reason I run Windows, and have been for 4-5 years now.
For all your Mac advocacy I will still not be even considering a Mac until all the games I want to play are guaranteed a Mac release.
You are shitting me aren't you? I'm running on a 3 year old PC at home, and it's had 1GB of RAM since I bought it.
At work 1GB is the absolute minimum these days - by the time you include operating system, two web browsers, email/calendar app, diagramming tool, word processor, text editor, a decent IDE, source code management tool and start running build scripts, recursive greps and performing other development tasks, even a gig isn't enough to prevent you swapping. And swapping slows you down..
~Cederic
Hmm, no. The natural resting position of my left hand is such that the CTRL key is under the baby finger knuckle part of my hand. So to do a fingerless CTRL-Z I just need to bend my thumb back a bit and push with the knuckle and the thumb - no wrist movement, and no hand movement other than just mentioned.
If I sit with my fingers comfortably stretched (slight curve) then for my left hand, my two middle fingers are just above the number key row, baby finger is on 1 and fore-finger is between r and t. Default position to start typing has forefinger on f, other three fingers on qwe. That's how I'm sat at the moment - for greater speed I may straighten slightly, but I'm going at 60wpm with no stress right now, and leaning sideways at a 45 degree angle in my chair with my right forearm on the desk... Ok, someone just came in and chatted to me, so I sat up, swivelled the chair and I'm back in a relaxed 45 degree angle, but this time leaning to the left instead. Only real difference for left hand is that it's now half a key further right than it started out.
Right hand occupies a very similar position to right of keyboard, but about half a row lower. J is default start-point for forefinger, and I have to bend baby finger almost double to hit shift - I do admit that having to use shift for an extended period (typing a lot of SHIFTED characters) can lead to strain.
~Cederic
For people under the age of 40 Make is incomprehensible, unintuitive and full of quirks that make so sense. Or maybe that's just me.
If you want 30 or so small, easy to read/understand Ant build.xml files, all controlled by a single daddy build.xml file, go right ahead - the tool supports it just fine. And it'll still be fast.
If you want them really really easy to read, I'm very concerned. You shouldn't need to be messing about with them - write them, get them working, leave them alone. Constant fiddling implies you keep doing it wrong.
If you want easy to read anyway, go back to eclipse - it has built-in Ant support. It may seem bloated but that's because you haven't learned half its features. It's designed to increase your productivity - learn how to use it so that it can.
Shit, you're calling Eclipse bloated and you use Xemacs? I should kill this reply and mod you 'troll'....
I do find I tend to have an IDE open AND a shell prompt AND a decent (tabbed) window based text editor.
As you point out, IDEs can be a bit clunky for many simple uses.
~Cederic
I had the same with my last car - it had a number pad to enter a keycode to disable the immobiliser.
Every time I put it in for a service the guy would ask for the keycode, and I'd have to go and find the card with it written down - I never actually knew the number, just entered it from muscle memory each time.
Couldn't even tell you for certain which way up that numpad was, now I've sold the car..
~Cederic
I can't necessarily think at 100wpm (I can't type that fast either) but what I do - especially when programming - is sit and think for a minute or two, then burst into action.
I need to communicate my thoughts into written code/prose/etc fast, before I forget them.
Fast typists make better programmers. It's a known observed phenomenum. I don't know whether anybody's actually scientifically tested it, and it may be correlation rather than causation, but that's my experience.
So being able to type at 80wpm allows me to take thoughts from brain to screen faster, and thus gives me more time available to do the actual thinking.
If anything, people who are not professional stenographers need typing speed more - because they type only occasionally, they need to be able to get through the typing process swifter to free up their minds/fingers/etc for their normal activities.
Anyway, being able to type fast gives you an immense advantage when chatting online - you can respond much more swiftly and often hold multiple concurrent conversations. Far more fun and far more interesting than being stuck in a 1 on 1 conversation.
~Cederic
But the current shift key locations are ideal for holding down with the baby fingers. I do use my baby fingers while typing normally, but not as much as a properly taught touch-typist would down. However, I have used my right baby finger to hold down Shift for every single capital letter typed in this message so far.
I have also noticed that I seem to be using only my right thumb - validation indeed that my left thumb is idle and thus wasted while typing, although once I get onto the number keys I do use it so I keep my right hand higher on the keyboard.
I do use my left baby finer for shift too - seems to depend on what my right hand is up to at the time. Oh, and I tend to use my left baby finger to hold down the shift key to type in UPPER CASE as that's quicker than hitting CAPS LOCKS, typing, then turning it off again. I know several people who also do that - none of us are properly taught typists, all of us can do over 80wpm with minimal errors.
What I have noticed is that to hold down CTRL I use the underside of my hand below the knuckle of my left baby finger. Aha - while showing the guy sat next to me this terrific technique I realised that I do use my left thumb - I use it to do CTRL-Z without using fingers at all - and I do so completely automatically without thinking about it.
Truly a triumph for unconscious optimisation of repetitive actions. (yes, I'm sure being properly taught would have optimised further, and consciously. Such is life. On the other hand my unconventional style doesn't hurt my fingers over extended periods and is very comfortable for me)
~cederic, crap typist.
You muppet.
Huzzah indeed. Absolutely my biggest single reason for wanting HP to boil in oil for this.
EU is even worse - Levi say "You cant buy jeans not intended for the EU and sell them cheaply there" and the EU says "indeed, that's contravening our free trade laws"
Meanwhile half the IT staff at my company just got replaced by a bunch of muppets from India..
~Cederic
permit me to point out the idiocy of opposing B-52s with M-16s or AK-47s.
Sure. Tell them.
Hmm. Implication from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.a
Whether "air weapon" includes "Air pistol converted to fire live cartridges" or whether there really are that many crimes committed with pellet guns would be useful information.
"have to draw this gun in anger" is a turn of phrase.
It doesn't mean he'll be angry at the time. It means there'll be a situation where the gun is necessary and live firing may occur (as opposed to firing on the range, training, etc).
>> assuming you're carrying this legally, which you're probably not
Hang on. He's gone to the extent of getting a safety feature built into his gun, and he also mentions his habit of wearing a very expensive (and inevitably uncomfortable) protective clothing. My assumption is that he's either works in a security role, or (more likely) he's a law enforcement official.
I don't know who the original poster was (that eponymous AC) and I'm very uncomfortable with the gung-ho gun-happy culture in America, but your response is entirely out of order.
~Cederic
Which intrigues me. How would you know there was a rape being perpetrated if you witnessed it?
What if you ended up shooting the male half of a couple who are into kinky sex, roleplaying, B&D?
I don't trust your judgement. So I don't want you to have a gun - it might be me you shoot under a misconception.
~Cederic
The rise in guncrime is predominantly unrelated to the ban on public ownership.
The majority of firearms on the streets are actually converted air-pistols and other weapons not originally sold to fire gunpowder propelled projectiles.
Even if gun ownership was legal (and hell, it still is for shotguns and some other weapons) the level of gun crime would have risen.
~cederic