Gee - it's no fun when you spill the punchline.... Subtle references are best left unexposed so the inner sanctum can continue to feel superior to and laugh at all those unknowing fools who have yet to master the intricacies of modern cartoons.
So, why don't you just bite my shiny metal ass? Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
Art is about creativity, not rote coding
on
The Art of SQL
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Ahhh - but the best scientists are artists as well. (In fact, scientists and mathematicians often have more in common with artists than engineers).
Sure, the mechanics of programming is rather dull and boring, but large scale system design often requires considerable creativity that is much better done by people not constrained by artificially perceived IT limitations.
Coding J2EE isn't an art, but designing/building a massive neural net or complex, distributed game/simulation is. MySpace, Google, eBay, etc weren't concieved by 'classic' engineers, but, rather, by creative people who understood how technology can enable new paradigms.
Where's the news?
on
The Art of SQL
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Book reviews seem so out of touch with the flow of the rest of Slashdot (except to the extent that everyone can comment about stuff they haven't read).
Could Slashdot not post book reviews to the main section?? At least not at the same level as a news story that locks Slashdot for an hour - maybe just a sentence "Art of SQL review" with a link then post a real news story as well.
The reviews are neither timely news nor really commentable (although that rarely stops us).
I quite like having the section and appreciate the time the authors put into these reviews (and have bought a couple because of that), but they shouldn't be mixed into the news postings.
I've actually been using their video search for sometime now and really like it. It's much superior to Google's video crap and I really hate surfing through tons of sites I've never heard of to figure out which ones have caught on enough to have decent content.
Yahoo! just gives me what I need without the hassle. And Yahoo! has such a strong user base for things well beyond Video that they'll attract far more content than most of the niche competition sites.
BTW, it does ALOT for Yahoo!'s customers. It's keeping me from going all Google and that's a huge part of why they're doing it in the first place.
Huh? Not sure if you're serious or not, but it's a pretty absurd position if it is.
Not being able to discuss things like WMD or torture without being labelled weak on terrorism greatly undermines our ability to keep the government accountable. The politics of personal destruction make it almost impossible to actually find out the truth because folks don't care what actually happened. The truth becomes irrelevant (or relative).
The problem is one party can spread lies and noone can question them without being labeled a traitor. That's a real problem.
And the propoganda fools most people. Most war supporters still believe in a tight link between Iraq and Al Queida.
1) What do you mean by "Buying stocks is legal"? Online betting is legal too unless this law passes, so it's kind of a weird point to be making.
2) And what do you mean by "But the real point is that stocks are legal as the government gets a cut"? The government gets a cut of your gambling revenue as well when you file your tax return (unless, of course, you're also a tax cheat).
But I definitely agree with you that it's all about those greedy politicians.
Well, I tried clicking on the arrows the first time and nothing happened. After all your wonderful suggestions, I went back in Firefox and IE and clicked on the arrows.
It works fairly well in Firefox, but under IE (6.0.x), I had to click the arrows 4-5 times before the side menus collapsed. I've reloaded it several times and there's always that delay. At least the arrow or section should CHANGE colors or fonts to indicate you've selected it and it's actionable.
I also tried the runner up's site with no problems.
As others have said, been there done that with Linux/BSD. Nice to have a dedicated package, but it's definitely not for the casual user and requires dedicated drives/machines (as one would expect for RAID).
I was amused that he could screw up the installation so easily by just creating a local user and it lacked auto-configuration. Imagine that in a review of a commercial product. "Easy to use and install, but it locked me out of my system and required a re-install and it couldn't find my network card".
Fact is, folks just expect open source to be a pain in the ass to work with and require tweaking or extreme attention to detail. It's almost a right of passage. And users accept and embrace it on a scale they would NEVER accept from a commercial product - particularly 'evil' Microsoft.
Anyway, nice open source addition, but it definitely belongs in the open source group (as in not-ready-for-normal-people group).
I had a good friend who once read a story about a guy who was thrown from a car accident and walked away because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. He used that example for many years as justification for NEVER wearing a seatbelt (and, ironically, he suffered a concusion from a 15 mph fender bender).
So, humans have an incredible capacity for ignoring the facts that don't support what they want to believe. In this case, even if the computer makes the RIGHT decision and a collision is avoided, passengers will get pissed for minor injuries in a severe turn, the computer will be blamed and a massive investigations will be launched.
And, in some cases, very senior, experienced individuals will make better decisions, but these aren't the guys that will flying the planes most of the time. They're the guys that need to train the computer systems (like chess - you need really great chess players to 'teach' the computers and, at some point, the computer will outplay the master).
1) Create free product 2) Attract users 3) Realize you don't make money from free product 4) Sell advertising because noone would actually pay to use your product 5) Make profit
The problem is that unless you're selling something, noone wants to pay for net services so focusing on building user bases and then selling advertising doesn't seem that unreasonable for some broad product areas.
No spidermen, but they're certainly interested in small devices with sensors (cameras/chemicals) that can scale walls, crawl through small spaces, and go where no man has gone before.
They also mention the rescue bot - that sounds like a great application for a collapsed building.
How was this a troll? It's much more insightful than most of the other ridiculous posts about how evil the MAN is for trying to protect legally protected content.
Maybe DRM isn't the best implementation (and it certainly isn't), but free SOFTWARE is very different than free CONTENT. It's one thing when FSF argues you can't patent ideas and algorithms, it's quite different when they say you can't protect anything digital.
Dumbing down IT programming (and IT in general) has been a huge trend throughout the industry for years. I remember teaching Fortune 100 financial analysts Visual Basic and how to hook up to an Oracle stock database we built and they were on cloud nine. Later our secretaries setup and maintained our department's homepage - it was great and really represented a milestone in our company as well as a symbolic milestone within IT.
The future of IT is all about dumbing down so technology just becomes a part of everyday life - not some uber-geeky medium that takes years to master. Letting 'normal' folks develop and support websites moves content from an IT shop to the business folks where it belongs!
No, just post things as 'Plain Old Text'. It's that damned HTML Formatted by default button that tricks me every time.
BTW, nice post - I think copyright laws have largely been trumped by the publics total disregard for them. People should expect their internet-published works to be copied and need to move on from there.
Well, for us, if you consider taking a walk with my wife, doing homework with kids (or even a quickie) important, then, yes, I'm doing important stuff. It's far easier to use 15-30 minute blocks of time (and then spend LESS time watching TV) than to use a series of 2-3 minute blocks.
Most shows we watch come on more or less when kids are finishing up homework or going to bed, so it's really great to just postpone the time for a while plus it let's us get to bed faster.
And we watch, maybe, 90 minutes/night that I don't want extended to 2 hours for some stupid commercials.
Not to mention that the lack of regulation will enable terrorists to control them and take over the world. We're all doomed I tell ya - we're all doomed!
Damn shame/. doesn't allow us to demerit its own postings when they are so bogus and designed to inflame and slander. These postings really undermine the credibility of/..
This certainly isn't 'bad'. I think the only point is that reflects a strong shift away from the original ideals that created the open source software movement.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee - it's no fun when you spill the punchline.... Subtle references are best left unexposed so the inner sanctum can continue to feel superior to and laugh at all those unknowing fools who have yet to master the intricacies of modern cartoons.
So, why don't you just bite my shiny metal ass? Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
Ahhh - but the best scientists are artists as well. (In fact, scientists and mathematicians often have more in common with artists than engineers).
Sure, the mechanics of programming is rather dull and boring, but large scale system design often requires considerable creativity that is much better done by people not constrained by artificially perceived IT limitations.
Coding J2EE isn't an art, but designing/building a massive neural net or complex, distributed game/simulation is. MySpace, Google, eBay, etc weren't concieved by 'classic' engineers, but, rather, by creative people who understood how technology can enable new paradigms.
Book reviews seem so out of touch with the flow of the rest of Slashdot (except to the extent that everyone can comment about stuff they haven't read).
Could Slashdot not post book reviews to the main section?? At least not at the same level as a news story that locks Slashdot for an hour - maybe just a sentence "Art of SQL review" with a link then post a real news story as well.
The reviews are neither timely news nor really commentable (although that rarely stops us).
I quite like having the section and appreciate the time the authors put into these reviews (and have bought a couple because of that), but they shouldn't be mixed into the news postings.
I've actually been using their video search for sometime now and really like it. It's much superior to Google's video crap and I really hate surfing through tons of sites I've never heard of to figure out which ones have caught on enough to have decent content.
Yahoo! just gives me what I need without the hassle. And Yahoo! has such a strong user base for things well beyond Video that they'll attract far more content than most of the niche competition sites.
BTW, it does ALOT for Yahoo!'s customers. It's keeping me from going all Google and that's a huge part of why they're doing it in the first place.
Huh? Not sure if you're serious or not, but it's a pretty absurd position if it is.
Not being able to discuss things like WMD or torture without being labelled weak on terrorism greatly undermines our ability to keep the government accountable. The politics of personal destruction make it almost impossible to actually find out the truth because folks don't care what actually happened. The truth becomes irrelevant (or relative).
The problem is one party can spread lies and noone can question them without being labeled a traitor. That's a real problem.
And the propoganda fools most people. Most war supporters still believe in a tight link between Iraq and Al Queida.
To both users of Open Office. I'll bet they're shaking in their boots!
(Ok, just kidding, they're probably up to 10 actual users by now).
This is a confusing post:
1) What do you mean by "Buying stocks is legal"? Online betting is legal too unless this law passes, so it's kind of a weird point to be making.
2) And what do you mean by "But the real point is that stocks are legal as the government gets a cut"? The government gets a cut of your gambling revenue as well when you file your tax return (unless, of course, you're also a tax cheat).
But I definitely agree with you that it's all about those greedy politicians.
Well, I tried clicking on the arrows the first time and nothing happened. After all your wonderful suggestions, I went back in Firefox and IE and clicked on the arrows.
It works fairly well in Firefox, but under IE (6.0.x), I had to click the arrows 4-5 times before the side menus collapsed. I've reloaded it several times and there's always that delay. At least the arrow or section should CHANGE colors or fonts to indicate you've selected it and it's actionable.
I also tried the runner up's site with no problems.
Ok, I give up. Where's the collapsable sections??
But I do completely agree with A) it's not a democracy, although I also like the runner-up much more.
But, in reality, it's not big enough of a change that I care.
As others have said, been there done that with Linux/BSD. Nice to have a dedicated package, but it's definitely not for the casual user and requires dedicated drives/machines (as one would expect for RAID).
I was amused that he could screw up the installation so easily by just creating a local user and it lacked auto-configuration. Imagine that in a review of a commercial product. "Easy to use and install, but it locked me out of my system and required a re-install and it couldn't find my network card".
Fact is, folks just expect open source to be a pain in the ass to work with and require tweaking or extreme attention to detail. It's almost a right of passage. And users accept and embrace it on a scale they would NEVER accept from a commercial product - particularly 'evil' Microsoft.
Anyway, nice open source addition, but it definitely belongs in the open source group (as in not-ready-for-normal-people group).
I had a good friend who once read a story about a guy who was thrown from a car accident and walked away because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. He used that example for many years as justification for NEVER wearing a seatbelt (and, ironically, he suffered a concusion from a 15 mph fender bender).
So, humans have an incredible capacity for ignoring the facts that don't support what they want to believe. In this case, even if the computer makes the RIGHT decision and a collision is avoided, passengers will get pissed for minor injuries in a severe turn, the computer will be blamed and a massive investigations will be launched.
And, in some cases, very senior, experienced individuals will make better decisions, but these aren't the guys that will flying the planes most of the time. They're the guys that need to train the computer systems (like chess - you need really great chess players to 'teach' the computers and, at some point, the computer will outplay the master).
And it's called the internet. They want to create and own the extended desktop.
Actually the business model is much closer to:
1) Create free product
2) Attract users
3) Realize you don't make money from free product
4) Sell advertising because noone would actually pay to use your product
5) Make profit
The problem is that unless you're selling something, noone wants to pay for net services so focusing on building user bases and then selling advertising doesn't seem that unreasonable for some broad product areas.
But if you used Gell + Microsoftness to get a Yahoo!, then the three way thing sounds a lot more intriguing...
No spidermen, but they're certainly interested in small devices with sensors (cameras/chemicals) that can scale walls, crawl through small spaces, and go where no man has gone before.
They also mention the rescue bot - that sounds like a great application for a collapsed building.
How was this a troll? It's much more insightful than most of the other ridiculous posts about how evil the MAN is for trying to protect legally protected content.
Maybe DRM isn't the best implementation (and it certainly isn't), but free SOFTWARE is very different than free CONTENT. It's one thing when FSF argues you can't patent ideas and algorithms, it's quite different when they say you can't protect anything digital.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Dumbing down IT programming (and IT in general) has been a huge trend throughout the industry for years. I remember teaching Fortune 100 financial analysts Visual Basic and how to hook up to an Oracle stock database we built and they were on cloud nine. Later our secretaries setup and maintained our department's homepage - it was great and really represented a milestone in our company as well as a symbolic milestone within IT.
The future of IT is all about dumbing down so technology just becomes a part of everyday life - not some uber-geeky medium that takes years to master. Letting 'normal' folks develop and support websites moves content from an IT shop to the business folks where it belongs!
No, just post things as 'Plain Old Text'. It's that damned HTML Formatted by default button that tricks me every time.
BTW, nice post - I think copyright laws have largely been trumped by the publics total disregard for them. People should expect their internet-published works to be copied and need to move on from there.
Yes, but they've been putting them into $1k + camera bodies. The article is about bringing CMOS to the masses which is new.
BTW, Canon has a nice site discussing the CMOS sensor technology and tradeoffs: http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/cmos/index-e.html
Well, for us, if you consider taking a walk with my wife, doing homework with kids (or even a quickie) important, then, yes, I'm doing important stuff. It's far easier to use 15-30 minute blocks of time (and then spend LESS time watching TV) than to use a series of 2-3 minute blocks.
Most shows we watch come on more or less when kids are finishing up homework or going to bed, so it's really great to just postpone the time for a while plus it let's us get to bed faster.
And we watch, maybe, 90 minutes/night that I don't want extended to 2 hours for some stupid commercials.
I read about it a history book a few years back (right next to zip disks and 8 track players)....
What's next? Commodore 1024?
Not to mention that the lack of regulation will enable terrorists to control them and take over the world. We're all doomed I tell ya - we're all doomed!
Damn shame /. doesn't allow us to demerit its own postings when they are so bogus and designed to inflame and slander. These postings really undermine the credibility of /..
This certainly isn't 'bad'. I think the only point is that reflects a strong shift away from the original ideals that created the open source software movement.
Yes - MOD up the parent! Hard to believe the crap that's modded up around here and this post is ignored :(...