First you hire Java programmers to produce C code. Next you found out (surprise!) that they are struggling to get the work done. Then you blame Java.
I think it's still being used, there was something like high and low level programming languages. This was the level of abstraction between a programming language and machine code. Java is at a higher level than C. The AdaCore professionals are bitching that they can't hire good C programmers. What they should know is that programming is not a method. You can not expect a good programmer to be taught in 10 days, it's more like 10 years.
Also, Free Software displaced things a bit. Good C programmers are born in good C environments. In a proprietary world, there is no environment to teach a good C programmer. You must let them watch your code, since when they were sloppy, lousy programmers. Worse, you have to let them mess with your code. Big companies like (from the article) "AT&T, IBM, Intel, Bloomberg, NI, Microsoft, Lockheed-Martin, and more" just want to *hire* these programmers, those companies don't have the patience to teach them, because there's no guarantee that they would turn into good C programmers. But how can you learn good programming when you can't look at good code?
Free Software is not guarantee of good code, but is guarantee of a good learning environment. Lots of code to look at, lots of bugs to be fixed, sometimes people to help you make a good fix or guide you how to make yours better coded. All this thanks to a philosophy that allows you to to that.
On the other hand, companies want to produce proprietary software, but don't want to help these people being good programmers, how can programmers be grateful to those companies?
I was using Linux as my primary OS before 2007 (Debian, then Ubuntu). Before the switching, I was using XP and Linux alternatively. Both were installed with equivalent applications, and I bought a 160Gb hard drive.
I became very angered by the fact that Windows XP started overwriting the beginning of the hard drive after it reached the 137th GB of the drive. I was not aware that this could happen. Well, this is a very dumb limitation for XP that was corrected in sp1. I thought at the time that it shoud have been corrected at least before XP was ever shipped.
At the same time I thought 'Linux may have this limitation as well' and started searching for it. Although a simple search at google showed me the problem with windows XP, with Linux nobody was having this problem. The reason for this is that this problem is related to XP, not the filesystem. Fat32, NTFS and EXT2 all have limits beyond some Terabytes.
It's been corrected in 200X. But in my opinion, an operating system that have such lack of vision, of problems that would affect it some 5 years in the future, can not be taken seriously.
I was using Linux as my primary OS before 2007 (Debian, then Ubuntu). Before the switching, I was using XP and Linux alternatively. Both were installed with equivalent applications, and I bought a 160Gb hard drive.
I became very angered by the fact that Windows XP started overwriting the beginning of the hard drive after it reached the 137th GB of the drive. I was not aware that this could happen. Well, this is a very dumb limitation for XP that was corrected in sp1. I thought at the time that it shoud have been corrected at least before XP was ever shipped.
At the same time I thought 'Linux may have this limitation as well' and started searching for it. Although a simple search at google showed me the problem with windows XP, with Linux nobody was having this problem. The reason for this is that this problem is related to XP, not the filesystem. Fat32, NTFS and EXT2 all have limits beyond some Terabytes.
It's been corrected in 200X. But in my opinion, an operating system that have such lack of vision, of problems that would affect it some 5 years in the future, can not be taken seriously.
Ubuntu Linux 2 : Microsoft XP 0
It depends on the kind of professional you need. If you want the kind of professional who investigates and fixes software installation problems, these are expensive. If you want to ship Ubuntu with detailed firewall support, apache, php, mysql, postgresql, zope, custom backgrouds, themes, icons and mouse effects, you will have to have a few Linux experts to prepare the enviroment.
But if you want the kind of professional that installs a norton ghost image, these are cheap. In this case, Linux is easier to install, Windows has to change the licence number afterwards, it's entered manually, is a huge string and gets bigger each release.
This case is hardware support. If you're a hardware company, you probably won't install a copy of a software diagnostic tool (licenced to you), in a customer's computer to find out a hardware problem, anyway. Tools like these are smarter than that. I've seen people build Linux systems to test hardware problems and package it in a live floppy, cd or usb drive. There is a procedure to testing so you don't have to be a Linux Expert to test a system with it. It can be used to test hardware running Windows or Linux. I've heard people building diagnostic tools to test DOS machines also.
Problem is... you pay so little for an upgrade. Sometimes you don't even acklowledge it, it comes pre-installed.
Let's take me and my brother for example. I use Ubuntu at home and at work. But I love games. Ok, Vista isn't ready for games. (Why did I love that last phrase?) Windows XP was. When I bought my computer, I wanted it to come with XP pre-installed. For the games. I hated XP when my hard drive was wiped out by a virus, but I installed it again. For the games.
My brother didn't, he doesn't like games. He also had his hard drive wiped out by some virus which he didn't take from me, by the way. So I installed Ubuntu (only) on his computer. That was about a year ago, he had used Ubuntu since then. He don't usually do upgrades, bacause he hates computers. It was never a problem, sometimes I do an update on his computer, but he hardly notices.
A Hammer is a hammer is a hammer... You should all pay attention to the details. Have the police found any nails? Is it a silver hammer? Have he ever visited Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/)? Does he have any Beatles album? Never trust a man that keeps a hammer in his house. He can be one of those psycopaths that hangs pictures on the wall or worse, a carpenter.
By default, the URL address bar in Firefox uses Google for exact text search. That means, if a word is written there without the dots, "yahoo" instead of "yahoo.com", it defaults to parsing, doing a search in google.com, selecting the first site it finds, and opening this site. I think other browsers do the same.
Also, sometimes people type in the address bar instead of typing in the search bar.
It just means that besides Google, Yahoo is the first most used site, in average.
What is this article about? It's asking for BIG revisions. It says something in the line of 'Change everything and you have something new. If you change bit by bit, somehow you would never get there'.
Take a look at what the author defines as "stagnation": we have accustomed to the continuous flow of revisions and improvements in our desktop experience, when we use Linux. So major improvements are perceived as point revisions. We expected them. We wait as changes are happening and when they finally come we just use them. Is this stagnation? Say, if something is flowing continuously, it means it is stagnated?
Then I read this thing about randomness. I thought evolution was random, as well as creativity and improvement. I even thought ideas were random by nature. Now I read this as if it's a bad thing. Ok, does he wants to see results? Install Gnome 2.0.0 and KDE 2.2 and compare. It's not about bug fixing and speed improvements, it's not the same as comparing patched and unpatched versions of Windows XP. There are real improvements! Today's versions are as different from these early versions as Vista is different from XP.
And on another note, I read "not ready for the desktop" as if it really means anything. Ready for the desktop means nothing! Computers were being used on the desktop long before they were "Ready for the Desktop". The problem is every writer thinks people that use Free Software are masochists, we're not. It feels comfortable, responsive and easy to use. It's not so easy to set up, but computers were never easy to set up, it just takes time. It works out of the box just until you try to do something different. Same as it ever was.
All things summed, this was a really lousy article.
Have you heard about prizon riots in Sao Paulo - Brazil? PSDB is the party that have governed Sao Paulo State for the past 12 years, and will govern Sao Paulo State for the next 4 years. Eduardo Azeredo was president of the PSDB party (and founder) until he renounced this year, after he declared he received money channelled from the government in backdoor business deals, through Marcos Valerio.
Laws in Brazil are usually proposed in response of something that happened. The text of the projects have lots of revisions and discussions before voting, and usually more revisions and more voting. The happening was Google refusing to cooperate with the police in identifying racist groups acting through Orkut. I think there are other better proposals to deal with this situation, Azeredo's just reacting "good vs evil" style.
The main character is not any hacker, but the best hacker in the world. The best hacker in the world would simply start compiling the last version of the create_worm program he designed a few weeks ago, and do something else, like read his e-mail, or play a short game.
He probably have bet himself he could't win that 3-D blocks game before his program compiles.
Now I agree. Have I known "car safety regulations" meant enforcing having either an airbag or safety belt I wouldn't have posted that. I didn't knew who Nader is, also. I may also have sound ambiguous.
The thing in Brazil is, cars are expensive. Airbags are very expensive, and come as default in very expensive cars. People drive very expensive cars very very fast, *because* they have airbags installed. In these cases, the sense of security is more dangerous than not having any.
Ralph Nader made a choice. He must have been representing the interests of good companies.
Also, you should always measure security with your foot on reality. Some measures should never be enforced in the name of security.
Safety is expensive. Also it can be used to promote anything you want. And if the coice for safety is not in the hands of the consumer, it benefits big corporations that could afford to implement it. You can argue that airbags saves lifes, but only if I'm not driving twice the speed I usually drive *because* I have an expensive airbag installed in my fancy car.
In some cases, the sense of security is more dangerous than not having any.
The problem is not who wrote the law in the first place, because the first draft is tampered with to make the law's final text. And big companies usually monitor for any law that could be used to extend their business, and contact their representatives to modify and promote it when they need.
Don't be fooled by politicians. There's always companies behind them, bigger or smaller. And to some extent, you will find that their motivation are aligned to those of companies they represent. That's not a bad thing, politicians often favor a balance between what the public want and what the companies want. Big big companies generally pay politicians to act in their favor, but they don't have to pay every politician, just enough.
The name of this section on SlashDot is "Your Rights", right? Right.
So, why is it that things like this end up posted here? Wouldn't it be fit to make a new category like "So Much For... Your Rights", "There Goes... Your Rights", "R.I.P. Your Rights", or "In Loving Memory Of... Your Rights".
More news like this and anytime soon, SlashDot will have to post: "Sorry, we're closing this section because you have no Rights left to be discussed here."
BTW, somebody should make a chronology of Rights we lost over the years, I think it would make a great poster, if we still could have the right to print it then.
Is there is a gray area in teaching for profit? Look from the point of view of the worker. The professor is being paid to teach by the university, and indirectly, by his students. This work is to teach them classes.
Besides this, he is doing some extra work taping and delivering copies of his teaching for a personal fee. If it's not forbidden by the contract of his other job, and permission is given by the university, he is allow to do it. It is his free time and he is allowed to ask whatever price for it.
But Copyright law has evolved to be the prime concern of profitable companies and has the potential to control everything. It is law that rules on creativeness and humans, being naturally creative, are being wrapped in it unintentionally. It is exactly like "The Trial" by Kafka. We have become so entangled in copyright law, that a Professor asking to be paid to teach, rings like trespassing on our individual rights, because of Copyright Law.
The problem is not that he is being paid for teaching, but if are students allowed to learn. When Professor X publishes his work for profit, it is Copyright Law again falling over our heads, and "danger of being sued" alarms sounding all around. It's psychological. Pure and simple fear.
The question is "what can students do with this material"? How is his work Copyrighted and licensed? Should he sue people that take notes in his class? After this, are his students allowed to learn at all? Should them be Joseph Ks waiting in line for trial?
> You know that Microsoft does usability tests, right? They don't just randomly
> place things (well, they did in Office for a long time, which is why they're
> fixing that now), and they don't just rip-off other programs like open source
> projects to.
And what is Microsoft Office but a giant ripoff? Spreadsheet, Word processing, E-mail, Presentation software. Is Windows a copy of some other product, huh? What about Internet Explorer? Visual Basic? Media Player?
These damn open source projects rip everything! New IE has tabs and they copied it BEFORE Microsoft even thought of putting them in, outrageous! BTW they have "documented, repeatable, scientific evidence" that it would confuse people, but people grew accustomed to it, thanks to these damn open source projects.
Rest assured Office 2007 is a great product. I don't even have to try it to know. I own one of their previous versions' ripoffs, and it's a great product, why the company that invented it all would have less?
The best tool to do the job, ok. But which job? Not the best job if you ask me. It's like saying that they should have the best broom to do the job. They would not make brooms, they would use them. That's the opposite of the idea behind the $100 computer.
The IT market is very well divided. A small group of people control the production means and a large amount of people are consumers. Copyright laws and Acts tend to dificult the entrance of people from the larger group to the smaller group. FLOSS tend to even the ground.
The problem here is that people generally are ok with the view that third world country should serve, because people from developed countries are servants too. They should have the best tools. But thinking of third world country people making tools is invasive, so have them use the tools for free instead. They will be happy. Forcing them to make the tools is "arbitrary, petty, and will ultimately hurt them".
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That's why Vista SP1 is so much faster than Vista, they are already taking out the speed reducers, saving them for the next major Windows release.
First you hire Java programmers to produce C code. Next you found out (surprise!) that they are struggling to get the work done. Then you blame Java.
I think it's still being used, there was something like high and low level programming languages. This was the level of abstraction between a programming language and machine code. Java is at a higher level than C. The AdaCore professionals are bitching that they can't hire good C programmers. What they should know is that programming is not a method. You can not expect a good programmer to be taught in 10 days, it's more like 10 years.
Also, Free Software displaced things a bit. Good C programmers are born in good C environments. In a proprietary world, there is no environment to teach a good C programmer. You must let them watch your code, since when they were sloppy, lousy programmers. Worse, you have to let them mess with your code. Big companies like (from the article) "AT&T, IBM, Intel, Bloomberg, NI, Microsoft, Lockheed-Martin, and more" just want to *hire* these programmers, those companies don't have the patience to teach them, because there's no guarantee that they would turn into good C programmers. But how can you learn good programming when you can't look at good code?
Free Software is not guarantee of good code, but is guarantee of a good learning environment. Lots of code to look at, lots of bugs to be fixed, sometimes people to help you make a good fix or guide you how to make yours better coded. All this thanks to a philosophy that allows you to to that.
On the other hand, companies want to produce proprietary software, but don't want to help these people being good programmers, how can programmers be grateful to those companies?
I was using Linux as my primary OS before 2007 (Debian, then Ubuntu). Before the switching, I was using XP and Linux alternatively. Both were installed with equivalent applications, and I bought a 160Gb hard drive.
I became very angered by the fact that Windows XP started overwriting the beginning of the hard drive after it reached the 137th GB of the drive. I was not aware that this could happen. Well, this is a very dumb limitation for XP that was corrected in sp1. I thought at the time that it shoud have been corrected at least before XP was ever shipped.
At the same time I thought 'Linux may have this limitation as well' and started searching for it. Although a simple search at google showed me the problem with windows XP, with Linux nobody was having this problem. The reason for this is that this problem is related to XP, not the filesystem. Fat32, NTFS and EXT2 all have limits beyond some Terabytes.
It's been corrected in 200X. But in my opinion, an operating system that have such lack of vision, of problems that would affect it some 5 years in the future, can not be taken seriously.
Ubuntu Linux 2 : Microsoft XP 0
I was using Linux as my primary OS before 2007 (Debian, then Ubuntu). Before the switching, I was using XP and Linux alternatively. Both were installed with equivalent applications, and I bought a 160Gb hard drive. I became very angered by the fact that Windows XP started overwriting the beginning of the hard drive after it reached the 137th GB of the drive. I was not aware that this could happen. Well, this is a very dumb limitation for XP that was corrected in sp1. I thought at the time that it shoud have been corrected at least before XP was ever shipped. At the same time I thought 'Linux may have this limitation as well' and started searching for it. Although a simple search at google showed me the problem with windows XP, with Linux nobody was having this problem. The reason for this is that this problem is related to XP, not the filesystem. Fat32, NTFS and EXT2 all have limits beyond some Terabytes. It's been corrected in 200X. But in my opinion, an operating system that have such lack of vision, of problems that would affect it some 5 years in the future, can not be taken seriously. Ubuntu Linux 2 : Microsoft XP 0
No need for Linux, try abacuses!
I sense a great opportunity here for former MicroSoft employees, start a Major Abacuses Manufacturing Enterprise.
Regards,
It depends on the kind of professional you need. If you want the kind of professional who investigates and fixes software installation problems, these are expensive. If you want to ship Ubuntu with detailed firewall support, apache, php, mysql, postgresql, zope, custom backgrouds, themes, icons and mouse effects, you will have to have a few Linux experts to prepare the enviroment.
But if you want the kind of professional that installs a norton ghost image, these are cheap. In this case, Linux is easier to install, Windows has to change the licence number afterwards, it's entered manually, is a huge string and gets bigger each release.
This case is hardware support. If you're a hardware company, you probably won't install a copy of a software diagnostic tool (licenced to you), in a customer's computer to find out a hardware problem, anyway. Tools like these are smarter than that. I've seen people build Linux systems to test hardware problems and package it in a live floppy, cd or usb drive. There is a procedure to testing so you don't have to be a Linux Expert to test a system with it. It can be used to test hardware running Windows or Linux. I've heard people building diagnostic tools to test DOS machines also.
Problem is... you pay so little for an upgrade. Sometimes you don't even acklowledge it, it comes pre-installed.
Let's take me and my brother for example. I use Ubuntu at home and at work. But I love games. Ok, Vista isn't ready for games. (Why did I love that last phrase?) Windows XP was. When I bought my computer, I wanted it to come with XP pre-installed. For the games. I hated XP when my hard drive was wiped out by a virus, but I installed it again. For the games.
My brother didn't, he doesn't like games. He also had his hard drive wiped out by some virus which he didn't take from me, by the way. So I installed Ubuntu (only) on his computer. That was about a year ago, he had used Ubuntu since then. He don't usually do upgrades, bacause he hates computers. It was never a problem, sometimes I do an update on his computer, but he hardly notices.
A Hammer is a hammer is a hammer...
You should all pay attention to the details.
Have the police found any nails? Is it a silver hammer? Have he ever visited Tom's Hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/)? Does he have any Beatles album?
Never trust a man that keeps a hammer in his house. He can be one of those psycopaths that hangs pictures on the wall or worse, a carpenter.
This is not a new feature, I've been experiencing core dumps since DOS!
I knew Mars would be heating from gas emissions in the near future. There are no humans there yet, but we already sending vehicles.
By default, the URL address bar in Firefox uses Google for exact text search. That means, if a word is written there without the dots, "yahoo" instead of "yahoo.com", it defaults to parsing, doing a search in google.com, selecting the first site it finds, and opening this site. I think other browsers do the same.
Also, sometimes people type in the address bar instead of typing in the search bar.
It just means that besides Google, Yahoo is the first most used site, in average.
What is this article about? It's asking for BIG revisions. It says something in the line of 'Change everything and you have something new. If you change bit by bit, somehow you would never get there'. Take a look at what the author defines as "stagnation": we have accustomed to the continuous flow of revisions and improvements in our desktop experience, when we use Linux. So major improvements are perceived as point revisions. We expected them. We wait as changes are happening and when they finally come we just use them. Is this stagnation? Say, if something is flowing continuously, it means it is stagnated? Then I read this thing about randomness. I thought evolution was random, as well as creativity and improvement. I even thought ideas were random by nature. Now I read this as if it's a bad thing. Ok, does he wants to see results? Install Gnome 2.0.0 and KDE 2.2 and compare. It's not about bug fixing and speed improvements, it's not the same as comparing patched and unpatched versions of Windows XP. There are real improvements! Today's versions are as different from these early versions as Vista is different from XP. And on another note, I read "not ready for the desktop" as if it really means anything. Ready for the desktop means nothing! Computers were being used on the desktop long before they were "Ready for the Desktop". The problem is every writer thinks people that use Free Software are masochists, we're not. It feels comfortable, responsive and easy to use. It's not so easy to set up, but computers were never easy to set up, it just takes time. It works out of the box just until you try to do something different. Same as it ever was. All things summed, this was a really lousy article.
I'm Brazillian.
Have you heard about prizon riots in Sao Paulo - Brazil? PSDB is the party that have governed Sao Paulo State for the past 12 years, and will govern Sao Paulo State for the next 4 years. Eduardo Azeredo was president of the PSDB party (and founder) until he renounced this year, after he declared he received money channelled from the government in backdoor business deals, through Marcos Valerio.
Laws in Brazil are usually proposed in response of something that happened. The text of the projects have lots of revisions and discussions before voting, and usually more revisions and more voting. The happening was Google refusing to cooperate with the police in identifying racist groups acting through Orkut. I think there are other better proposals to deal with this situation, Azeredo's just reacting "good vs evil" style.
He may be crazy. I know he's scary.
And wouldn't it be strange if the same politicians keeps winning the election without even being candidate.
You don't get it, swordfish was *very* realistic!
The main character is not any hacker, but the best hacker in the world. The best hacker in the world would simply start compiling the last version of the create_worm program he designed a few weeks ago, and do something else, like read his e-mail, or play a short game.
He probably have bet himself he could't win that 3-D blocks game before his program compiles.
Now I agree. Have I known "car safety regulations" meant enforcing having either an airbag or safety belt I wouldn't have posted that. I didn't knew who Nader is, also. I may also have sound ambiguous.
The thing in Brazil is, cars are expensive. Airbags are very expensive, and come as default in very expensive cars. People drive very expensive cars very very fast, *because* they have airbags installed. In these cases, the sense of security is more dangerous than not having any.
Ralph Nader made a choice. He must have been representing the interests of good companies.
Also, you should always measure security with your foot on reality. Some measures should never be enforced in the name of security.
Safety is expensive. Also it can be used to promote anything you want. And if the coice for safety is not in the hands of the consumer, it benefits big corporations that could afford to implement it. You can argue that airbags saves lifes, but only if I'm not driving twice the speed I usually drive *because* I have an expensive airbag installed in my fancy car.
In some cases, the sense of security is more dangerous than not having any.
The problem is not who wrote the law in the first place, because the first draft is tampered with to make the law's final text. And big companies usually monitor for any law that could be used to extend their business, and contact their representatives to modify and promote it when they need.
Don't be fooled by politicians. There's always companies behind them, bigger or smaller. And to some extent, you will find that their motivation are aligned to those of companies they represent. That's not a bad thing, politicians often favor a balance between what the public want and what the companies want. Big big companies generally pay politicians to act in their favor, but they don't have to pay every politician, just enough.
The name of this section on SlashDot is "Your Rights", right?
Right.
So, why is it that things like this end up posted here? Wouldn't it be fit to make a new category like "So Much For... Your Rights", "There Goes... Your Rights", "R.I.P. Your Rights", or "In Loving Memory Of... Your Rights".
More news like this and anytime soon, SlashDot will have to post: "Sorry, we're closing this section because you have no Rights left to be discussed here."
BTW, somebody should make a chronology of Rights we lost over the years, I think it would make a great poster, if we still could have the right to print it then.
Right?
Is there is a gray area in teaching for profit? Look from the point of view of the worker. The professor is being paid to teach by the university, and indirectly, by his students. This work is to teach them classes.
Besides this, he is doing some extra work taping and delivering copies of his teaching for a personal fee. If it's not forbidden by the contract of his other job, and permission is given by the university, he is allow to do it. It is his free time and he is allowed to ask whatever price for it.
But Copyright law has evolved to be the prime concern of profitable companies and has the potential to control everything. It is law that rules on creativeness and humans, being naturally creative, are being wrapped in it unintentionally. It is exactly like "The Trial" by Kafka. We have become so entangled in copyright law, that a Professor asking to be paid to teach, rings like trespassing on our individual rights, because of Copyright Law.
The problem is not that he is being paid for teaching, but if are students allowed to learn. When Professor X publishes his work for profit, it is Copyright Law again falling over our heads, and "danger of being sued" alarms sounding all around. It's psychological. Pure and simple fear.
The question is "what can students do with this material"? How is his work Copyrighted and licensed? Should he sue people that take notes in his class? After this, are his students allowed to learn at all? Should them be Joseph Ks waiting in line for trial?
BTW, Kafka's "The Trial"'s Copyright has expired so you can legally read it. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7849
Enjoy.
> You know that Microsoft does usability tests, right? They don't just randomly > place things (well, they did in Office for a long time, which is why they're > fixing that now), and they don't just rip-off other programs like open source > projects to. And what is Microsoft Office but a giant ripoff? Spreadsheet, Word processing, E-mail, Presentation software. Is Windows a copy of some other product, huh? What about Internet Explorer? Visual Basic? Media Player? These damn open source projects rip everything! New IE has tabs and they copied it BEFORE Microsoft even thought of putting them in, outrageous! BTW they have "documented, repeatable, scientific evidence" that it would confuse people, but people grew accustomed to it, thanks to these damn open source projects. Rest assured Office 2007 is a great product. I don't even have to try it to know. I own one of their previous versions' ripoffs, and it's a great product, why the company that invented it all would have less?
The best tool to do the job, ok. But which job? Not the best job if you ask me. It's like saying that they should have the best broom to do the job. They would not make brooms, they would use them. That's the opposite of the idea behind the $100 computer.
The IT market is very well divided. A small group of people control the production means and a large amount of people are consumers. Copyright laws and Acts tend to dificult the entrance of people from the larger group to the smaller group. FLOSS tend to even the ground.
The problem here is that people generally are ok with the view that third world country should serve, because people from developed countries are servants too. They should have the best tools. But thinking of third world country people making tools is invasive, so have them use the tools for free instead. They will be happy. Forcing them to make the tools is "arbitrary, petty, and will ultimately hurt them".