For the record, yes, I'm a typical windows user. And, also for the record, I've also done my share of piracy while learning. I was just playing around with software I couldn't afford anyway, so nobody lost any money there. Now I use windows at work, paying and using software that costs thousands of dollars on a per seat/per year basis. Companies thankfully realized that if they don't let youngsters play with their software, guess what, they will also not care for it when they become paying professionals. Sadly, in my time such a thing as a "student" version was unheard of, so piracy was really the only option. There were 30-day trial versions though, which we practiced cracking to make them last more. Illegal? Maybe where you are from, but we were 18 years old and didn't give a rat's ass.
At home I go with Fedora for my desktop, a Win7 netbook and an aging WinXP laptop that I am using right now. I also have quite a few legacy machines, going back to an 150 MHz Intel (that can still run Win98 nicely, updated from Win95). My Intel 80286 stopped working a while ago. It could run Windows 3.0 quite smoothly though (no updates were applied to that one, and no, not because of the warez).
My Fedora machine is not connected to the internet and runs Fedora 7. If I wanted to upgrade something on it, I would pretty much have to dump the whole system because of the dependencies (kudos to Paradigma11 below for pointing this out). I will not bother (or risk) installing a "better" driver since the one that I have now runs smoothly (ATI blob) and what is there to upgrade anyway when the hardware itself is outdated? I would be surprised that someone even bothered to write a new driver for that piece of junk. Needless to say that the machine has been running fast, stable and smoothly for about five years now, and it will probably do so for at least another five. And I will still be using it for the stuff that it can do, because it will do then good. If I want new features, I buy new hardware. A new GUI is not a new feature, it is new eye candy. I want that too, and I get it with new hardware that can render the damn semi-transparencies.
So, you see, all this has nothing to do with piracy, you were just thinking "lets go troll the windows user". In that one you were right (that I am, at least partially, a windows user), but everything else was besides the point.
I have been using computers for about 15 years now and here are my thoughts concerning OS updates and (to a lesser degree) updates in general:
I try to avoid updates like hell.
More often than not, an upgrade will tend to make the system slower, influence your user experience by changing the way you do stuff (for no apparent reason), and break things. So unless we are talking about an update that adds important functionality that is worth the risk it comes with, it just won't come anywhere near my system(s). Obviously, this way of filtering updates lets (most) security updates pass for machines that are online. I put really important systems on an air-gap network.
The above also means that UI (or similar) updates are straight out. No UI is flawless. No OS comes complete with the functionality you wished for. Once you set up a system and adjust it so that it won't (badly) suck, then chances are that you will be finding ways to add functionality using 3rd party software, learn how to do things someone decided you are not supposed to (also known as "hacks" for you youngsters) and in general bring it to a state that you are more or less happy with.
They why, oh why, do you have to go and mess it up?
I'm not saying that I don't use the new stuff, but usually such new experiences also come with new machines that (in general) get fresh installations of the latest versions of everything that is needed. I found this to minimize the pain and time wasted, and most importantly, it puts you in control. If you perform a casual update and things go awry, then it is highly probable that you will be wasting time on trying to fix it, while you should be paying attention on more important things.
"free speech" doesn't mean "free to say whatever you want"
You bet your bottom it does. And quite sly of you to say that your above opinion is "common knowledge". Having said that, I will acknowledge that there are rules that limit such freedoms, but only to protect other freedoms. Every time a new rule is put in place, careful thought is necessary in order to prevent abuse. I, for one, don't see a good enough reason for a rule in this case, so I guess I am against it, although I believe that our artificial world is seriously lacking in realism sometimes. But this is the tragedy of trying to keep such freedoms: most of the time you end up defending scum.
A steep learning curve means that you learn a lot in very little time. A steep learning curve is something good. GIMP is rather hard to learn, and it therefore has a flat learning curve, not a steep one.
Have integrity and honesty really become "high standards"? Sorry dude, but it should come with the job. To me it seems that all lying jerks that didn't go to law school become politicians these days...
From the company's perspective, they would hardly get anything done if their key staff members were switching sides all the time. From my point of view the "no cold-call" agreement makes sense. I would even go further saying that this should be a general law. If I own a small business, I would hate some big company throwing its money around at my employees, tempting them all the time. If they want to leave my company, in search for greener pa$tures, it should be THEIR initiative, not because someone planted the idea in their mind out of thin air. And I don't see how this freezes salaries and/or hinders employee development. If someone in my staff is unhappy with his job, THEY can call my competitors and ask for a job offer. They can then come to me with that offer and ask me to top it or otherwise make changes so that they stay. But having the other firms sniffing around all the time is just annoying.
How come "Software Engineer" and "Actuary", both desk jobs according to their descriptions have different scores for "Physical Demand". Especially when the later is measured according to the weight one is expected to lift while performing his duties (ok, they say they also take "pulling, pushing, standing, walking, stooping, kneeling, crawling, climbing, crouching or reaching" into account, but still... click the "Jobs Rated Methodology" link). And what do the green bars mean? They don't seem to be scaled according to the scores...
an energy crisis has been reached the outcome of which is either population collapse or evolution to a state more like an ant community than anything else.
Nonsense. You are judging from our current situation which is biased by our own nature, knowledge and mentalities. What if, another civilization lived in a world where uranium and/or other fissile material is abundant, and, having developed a degree of immunity to radiation are not afraid to use it for producing vast amounts of energy? Or, how about a culture that managed to make the leap to fusion? Or what about, simply, a species that lives on a much smaller planet from which the escape velocity is not so overwhelming? Or a combination of the above?
Even if we set fusion and fission aside, what about a larger, brighter star, continuously shining on this world, inhabited by humanoid (for argument's sake) sentient beings that can photosynthesize? No more wasting of energy to grow crops and feeding them to cows. Just a couple of hours sun-bathing each day and your dandy, left with all remaining energy to go places, if you're the visiting type.
You speak as if this energy crisis of yours is a law of nature, which it isn't. If you want to accept that there is such a thing as an energy crisis (the existence and exact definition of which is a topic that does not concern me in this post) then you need to realize that it is our own problem here on earth and it is a fallacy to a priori accept that it is a universal issue.
A Majorana fermion is a fermion that is its own anti-particle.
What the heck?! I am starting to think that my knowledge of physics will never reach even a mediocre level just because every time I start to think that I got some stuff covered, some smart-ass physicist comes by and pulls jet another particle out of his, ehem, hat.
Nice utopia that you describe there. Thing is, the inventor with the smaller purse will just sell his patent for peanuts to the other party, because he/she can't afford a long court struggle that will suck up all his capital and all hopes for implementing his/her invention with it.
If I come up with something brilliant and truly innovative I won't tell a soul about it. If the novelty is about something in the production process that will not show in the final product (or only its effects will show), then it will be implemented and guarded as a trade secret under lock and key. If the novelty is about a product feature, I would secretly produce as many units as possible and file for a patent the moment the product hits the market. In this way, even if the novelty is thought to be infringing by a patent troll, the units will already be out making money and the competition will have a run for theirs. If they sue and I win (now backed up with the cash coming from the selling products) then it's all good. If I lose, I give the earnings to the competition, spit in their direction and file for bankruptcy and no harm done.
It probably does, but it uses all other search engines too, plus its own crawler. It is what we used to call a "meta" search engine before Google threw all competition into oblivion.
Of all things, autocomplete was the one that you missed most? Really? I mean, really? I would understand it if you said that DuckDuckGo lacks e.g. an (own) image searching feature of searching features in general, but stuff like autocomplete are mostly fluff if you ask me. And DuckDuckGo has its own neat ideas implemented in its own algorithms. I won't argue that DuckDuckGo is better than Google (because it isn't), but its nice to have some competition around. And, no, Bing does not count (because it sucks).
And you are mixing up the Gmail-service with the Gmail-client. You can set POP and IMAP for your Google account and view your emails in your favorite open-source email client (like Thunderbird). For obvious reasons, there can be no open-source alternative of the Gmail-service, but you can find a few for the Gmail-client. And having ALL the features is mostly a sign of bloat, rather than something good. Give me an intuitive, slick, fast interface that can be viewed comfortably in various operating systems as well as screen formats and sizes and I will immediately accept loosing half of the features.
If you think that free textbooks for kids is what bankrupted Greece then you are being naive. This has been standard practice even before Greece joined the EU and is a direct follow-up of the Greek constitution. Oh, and you might want to look up on how this systems works in Greece before posting further comments.
For the record, I agree with you on taxes and spending. You just have to apply this concept to sections of the budget like "military spending" and "Olympics 2004". And don't get me started on corruption, bad management and the like...
The article doesn't mention for which e-book reader the textbooks will be available. I hope this is not part of someone's marketing strategy...
Free textbooks in Europe is not new, however. E.g. the Greek state has been giving away dead-tree textbooks for all classes for free since decades now.
Big wide-screen LCD / plasma TVs are great, but a ceiling-mounted projector does nearly as well, can create a much bigger image, and often can be had for much less.
I'm afraid not. I researched the local (German) market a couple of years ago and that wasn't the case. The image from a projector can be much bigger, but that's about it. A decent projector started at about 3000 Euros, which still produced an image that was not as sharp and not as bright as the one produced by a modern TV at half the cost. Unless you have a really huge living room so that you'll be sitting fairly far away from the screen, the projector's image quality is not up to par to the TV's IMHO. Then, in order to get the best out of the projector, you will have to dim the lights or shell out a lot of cash for a very powerful bulb. The TVs do not suffer that badly from ambient light. Than again, you still have the problem with the life-span of the projector's light-bulb, which is rather limited in comparison to a TV and replacing it is a very expensive business.
In Germany, a device is considered to be equivalent if there is identity between the device and the claimed invention with respect to the problem and the effect, but not necessarily the "solution principle" (the manner in which the device operates).
So I guess it does apply where I live. I didn't know about this rule though. However, according to wikipedia:
"programs for computers" are not regarded as inventions for the purpose of granting European patents.
But anyway, you are right. All such laws are not really relevant if you do not have the cash to back your case up.
For one, the ruling is only against the patents that are an application of a law of nature. Math is not a law of nature, it's a tool for putting the laws of nature on paper. Software on the other hand are implementations of algorithms that are (usually) described using math. They are not "applied math" and the algorithms themselves are not patentable (at least not where I live). Their implementations, however, are. You can circumvent a patent by writing your own implementation of the algorithm.
This "one textbook for a given grade for the entire country" concept is pretty broadly implemented across Europe even today. For a small country it doesn't make any sense to have a different book in each region. Furthermore, in some countries like Greece, you have A-level country-wide exams on the same day using the same exercises whose results pretty much define who gets to study in a university and who doesn't. So the books have to be the same or otherwise it won't be fair for all pupils. This does not mean that the books are good though. In my year they were in the process of overhauling the whole educational system and we got a mix of old and new books. In most of the cases, the old books pretty much sucked because the "added sugar" of the new books sometimes (not always, but who's perfect?) helped understanding the material better. In the worst case scenario, the new book would suck exactly as much as the old one, but in a more modern way.
Still, even an own implementation of the crappy BubbleSort can, in some cases, be a better choice than loading a huge library that will bring everything to a halt, just so that you can call HeapSort to sort 20 elements... Neither good APIs nor fast CPUs are a replacement for common sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Dr. Lorenz? Is that you?
You are just trolling, but I will bite.
For the record, yes, I'm a typical windows user. And, also for the record, I've also done my share of piracy while learning. I was just playing around with software I couldn't afford anyway, so nobody lost any money there. Now I use windows at work, paying and using software that costs thousands of dollars on a per seat/per year basis. Companies thankfully realized that if they don't let youngsters play with their software, guess what, they will also not care for it when they become paying professionals. Sadly, in my time such a thing as a "student" version was unheard of, so piracy was really the only option. There were 30-day trial versions though, which we practiced cracking to make them last more. Illegal? Maybe where you are from, but we were 18 years old and didn't give a rat's ass.
At home I go with Fedora for my desktop, a Win7 netbook and an aging WinXP laptop that I am using right now. I also have quite a few legacy machines, going back to an 150 MHz Intel (that can still run Win98 nicely, updated from Win95). My Intel 80286 stopped working a while ago. It could run Windows 3.0 quite smoothly though (no updates were applied to that one, and no, not because of the warez).
My Fedora machine is not connected to the internet and runs Fedora 7. If I wanted to upgrade something on it, I would pretty much have to dump the whole system because of the dependencies (kudos to Paradigma11 below for pointing this out). I will not bother (or risk) installing a "better" driver since the one that I have now runs smoothly (ATI blob) and what is there to upgrade anyway when the hardware itself is outdated? I would be surprised that someone even bothered to write a new driver for that piece of junk. Needless to say that the machine has been running fast, stable and smoothly for about five years now, and it will probably do so for at least another five. And I will still be using it for the stuff that it can do, because it will do then good. If I want new features, I buy new hardware. A new GUI is not a new feature, it is new eye candy. I want that too, and I get it with new hardware that can render the damn semi-transparencies.
So, you see, all this has nothing to do with piracy, you were just thinking "lets go troll the windows user". In that one you were right (that I am, at least partially, a windows user), but everything else was besides the point.
I have been using computers for about 15 years now and here are my thoughts concerning OS updates and (to a lesser degree) updates in general:
I try to avoid updates like hell.
More often than not, an upgrade will tend to make the system slower, influence your user experience by changing the way you do stuff (for no apparent reason), and break things. So unless we are talking about an update that adds important functionality that is worth the risk it comes with, it just won't come anywhere near my system(s). Obviously, this way of filtering updates lets (most) security updates pass for machines that are online. I put really important systems on an air-gap network.
The above also means that UI (or similar) updates are straight out. No UI is flawless. No OS comes complete with the functionality you wished for. Once you set up a system and adjust it so that it won't (badly) suck, then chances are that you will be finding ways to add functionality using 3rd party software, learn how to do things someone decided you are not supposed to (also known as "hacks" for you youngsters) and in general bring it to a state that you are more or less happy with.
They why, oh why, do you have to go and mess it up?
I'm not saying that I don't use the new stuff, but usually such new experiences also come with new machines that (in general) get fresh installations of the latest versions of everything that is needed. I found this to minimize the pain and time wasted, and most importantly, it puts you in control. If you perform a casual update and things go awry, then it is highly probable that you will be wasting time on trying to fix it, while you should be paying attention on more important things.
No, "bottom" as in the British for "ass". Read: "you bet your ass it does". Ow! You made me say it!
"free speech" doesn't mean "free to say whatever you want"
You bet your bottom it does. And quite sly of you to say that your above opinion is "common knowledge". Having said that, I will acknowledge that there are rules that limit such freedoms, but only to protect other freedoms. Every time a new rule is put in place, careful thought is necessary in order to prevent abuse. I, for one, don't see a good enough reason for a rule in this case, so I guess I am against it, although I believe that our artificial world is seriously lacking in realism sometimes. But this is the tragedy of trying to keep such freedoms: most of the time you end up defending scum.
Just a very minor correction...
A steep learning curve means that you learn a lot in very little time. A steep learning curve is something good. GIMP is rather hard to learn, and it therefore has a flat learning curve, not a steep one.
Anyway...
High standards?!
Have integrity and honesty really become "high standards"? Sorry dude, but it should come with the job. To me it seems that all lying jerks that didn't go to law school become politicians these days...
From the company's perspective, they would hardly get anything done if their key staff members were switching sides all the time. From my point of view the "no cold-call" agreement makes sense. I would even go further saying that this should be a general law. If I own a small business, I would hate some big company throwing its money around at my employees, tempting them all the time. If they want to leave my company, in search for greener pa$tures, it should be THEIR initiative, not because someone planted the idea in their mind out of thin air. And I don't see how this freezes salaries and/or hinders employee development. If someone in my staff is unhappy with his job, THEY can call my competitors and ask for a job offer. They can then come to me with that offer and ask me to top it or otherwise make changes so that they stay. But having the other firms sniffing around all the time is just annoying.
welcome our supercomputing, sidewise crawling crab overlords.
How come "Software Engineer" and "Actuary", both desk jobs according to their descriptions have different scores for "Physical Demand". Especially when the later is measured according to the weight one is expected to lift while performing his duties (ok, they say they also take "pulling, pushing, standing, walking, stooping, kneeling, crawling, climbing, crouching or reaching" into account, but still... click the "Jobs Rated Methodology" link). And what do the green bars mean? They don't seem to be scaled according to the scores...
an energy crisis has been reached the outcome of which is either population collapse or evolution to a state more like an ant community than anything else.
Nonsense. You are judging from our current situation which is biased by our own nature, knowledge and mentalities. What if, another civilization lived in a world where uranium and/or other fissile material is abundant, and, having developed a degree of immunity to radiation are not afraid to use it for producing vast amounts of energy? Or, how about a culture that managed to make the leap to fusion? Or what about, simply, a species that lives on a much smaller planet from which the escape velocity is not so overwhelming? Or a combination of the above?
Even if we set fusion and fission aside, what about a larger, brighter star, continuously shining on this world, inhabited by humanoid (for argument's sake) sentient beings that can photosynthesize? No more wasting of energy to grow crops and feeding them to cows. Just a couple of hours sun-bathing each day and your dandy, left with all remaining energy to go places, if you're the visiting type.
You speak as if this energy crisis of yours is a law of nature, which it isn't. If you want to accept that there is such a thing as an energy crisis (the existence and exact definition of which is a topic that does not concern me in this post) then you need to realize that it is our own problem here on earth and it is a fallacy to a priori accept that it is a universal issue.
Did you mean: Nvidia Cuda
Ha! Now we're getting somewhere! Maybe she was writing a video game script!
(like myself), here is the Wikipedia link
A Majorana fermion is a fermion that is its own anti-particle.
What the heck?! I am starting to think that my knowledge of physics will never reach even a mediocre level just because every time I start to think that I got some stuff covered, some smart-ass physicist comes by and pulls jet another particle out of his, ehem, hat.
Nice utopia that you describe there. Thing is, the inventor with the smaller purse will just sell his patent for peanuts to the other party, because he/she can't afford a long court struggle that will suck up all his capital and all hopes for implementing his/her invention with it.
If I come up with something brilliant and truly innovative I won't tell a soul about it. If the novelty is about something in the production process that will not show in the final product (or only its effects will show), then it will be implemented and guarded as a trade secret under lock and key. If the novelty is about a product feature, I would secretly produce as many units as possible and file for a patent the moment the product hits the market. In this way, even if the novelty is thought to be infringing by a patent troll, the units will already be out making money and the competition will have a run for theirs. If they sue and I win (now backed up with the cash coming from the selling products) then it's all good. If I lose, I give the earnings to the competition, spit in their direction and file for bankruptcy and no harm done.
It probably does, but it uses all other search engines too, plus its own crawler. It is what we used to call a "meta" search engine before Google threw all competition into oblivion.
Of all things, autocomplete was the one that you missed most? Really? I mean, really?
I would understand it if you said that DuckDuckGo lacks e.g. an (own) image searching feature of searching features in general, but stuff like autocomplete are mostly fluff if you ask me. And DuckDuckGo has its own neat ideas implemented in its own algorithms. I won't argue that DuckDuckGo is better than Google (because it isn't), but its nice to have some competition around. And, no, Bing does not count (because it sucks).
And you are mixing up the Gmail-service with the Gmail-client. You can set POP and IMAP for your Google account and view your emails in your favorite open-source email client (like Thunderbird). For obvious reasons, there can be no open-source alternative of the Gmail-service, but you can find a few for the Gmail-client. And having ALL the features is mostly a sign of bloat, rather than something good. Give me an intuitive, slick, fast interface that can be viewed comfortably in various operating systems as well as screen formats and sizes and I will immediately accept loosing half of the features.
If you think that free textbooks for kids is what bankrupted Greece then you are being naive. This has been standard practice even before Greece joined the EU and is a direct follow-up of the Greek constitution. Oh, and you might want to look up on how this systems works in Greece before posting further comments.
For the record, I agree with you on taxes and spending. You just have to apply this concept to sections of the budget like "military spending" and "Olympics 2004". And don't get me started on corruption, bad management and the like...
The article doesn't mention for which e-book reader the textbooks will be available. I hope this is not part of someone's marketing strategy...
Free textbooks in Europe is not new, however. E.g. the Greek state has been giving away dead-tree textbooks for all classes for free since decades now.
Big wide-screen LCD / plasma TVs are great, but a ceiling-mounted projector does nearly as well, can create a much bigger image, and often can be had for much less.
I'm afraid not. I researched the local (German) market a couple of years ago and that wasn't the case. The image from a projector can be much bigger, but that's about it. A decent projector started at about 3000 Euros, which still produced an image that was not as sharp and not as bright as the one produced by a modern TV at half the cost. Unless you have a really huge living room so that you'll be sitting fairly far away from the screen, the projector's image quality is not up to par to the TV's IMHO. Then, in order to get the best out of the projector, you will have to dim the lights or shell out a lot of cash for a very powerful bulb. The TVs do not suffer that badly from ambient light. Than again, you still have the problem with the life-span of the projector's light-bulb, which is rather limited in comparison to a TV and replacing it is a very expensive business.
In Germany, a device is considered to be equivalent if there is identity between the device and the claimed invention with respect to the problem and the effect, but not necessarily the "solution principle" (the manner in which the device operates).
So I guess it does apply where I live. I didn't know about this rule though. However, according to wikipedia:
"programs for computers" are not regarded as inventions for the purpose of granting European patents.
But anyway, you are right. All such laws are not really relevant if you do not have the cash to back your case up.
I tried to build a castle once, but it fell into the swamp!
It's not that simple.
For one, the ruling is only against the patents that are an application of a law of nature. Math is not a law of nature, it's a tool for putting the laws of nature on paper. Software on the other hand are implementations of algorithms that are (usually) described using math. They are not "applied math" and the algorithms themselves are not patentable (at least not where I live). Their implementations, however, are. You can circumvent a patent by writing your own implementation of the algorithm.
Not if you are a FORTRAN developer.
Now get off my lawn.
This "one textbook for a given grade for the entire country" concept is pretty broadly implemented across Europe even today. For a small country it doesn't make any sense to have a different book in each region. Furthermore, in some countries like Greece, you have A-level country-wide exams on the same day using the same exercises whose results pretty much define who gets to study in a university and who doesn't. So the books have to be the same or otherwise it won't be fair for all pupils. This does not mean that the books are good though. In my year they were in the process of overhauling the whole educational system and we got a mix of old and new books. In most of the cases, the old books pretty much sucked because the "added sugar" of the new books sometimes (not always, but who's perfect?) helped understanding the material better. In the worst case scenario, the new book would suck exactly as much as the old one, but in a more modern way.
Still, even an own implementation of the crappy BubbleSort can, in some cases, be a better choice than loading a huge library that will bring everything to a halt, just so that you can call HeapSort to sort 20 elements... Neither good APIs nor fast CPUs are a replacement for common sense.