Well, yah, I was being generous. The part I don't get is that people who post on Slashdot are part of the IT industry, right? How is it people posting here aren't aware of things like that? Are there programmers *so* insulated from the actual process of developing products?
I don't have to reinstall my OS at least once a year, run defrag on a monthly basis, worry about anti-virus updates every week,
I can't speak for Linux, but you need to update your Windows rhetoric. If you're trying to convince people who have actually *used* Windows in the last 10 years (since you obviously haven't), you're just going to make yourself look stupid by saying things like that.
Specifically: * You don't need to reinstall your OS at least once a year. Or ever in the lifetime of the computer, for that matter. * You don't need to run defrag at all, much less on a monthly basis. NTFS organizes itself to minimize fragmentation; it certainly won't get fragmented enough to affect performance in the lifetime of a computer. * Anti-virus products all update themselves with no user interaction required.
What would you expect the ruling to me? We have a 1st Amendment, in case you hadn't noticed.
In any case, you've failed to point out an instance where Fox News has actually purposefully lied to the public, which is what the grandparent was asking about.
Do you honestly believe the whole open source movement depends on people uniting around a hatred for Microsoft, as opposed to sharing a love for innovation and technology?
As a relatively neutral observer on this forum (my favorite OS was Mac OS 9.2.2 to give you an idea), it seems to me that the Linux community *is* based around hatred for Microsoft. Look at all the paranoid anti-Microsoft loons on this board who won't change their minds even after their greatest idol says they're acting stupid.
Maybe Slashdot isn't representative of the Linux community, but if it's not-- what is?
This response is a lot less insane than your previous one. For example, when reading this one, my mental image of you didn't involve spastic hand-waving and foam coming out of your mouth.
But I still think you're being stupid, or at least missing something. An MBA is just a degree. Some people with MBAs are good at what they do, and some are terrible at it-- just like any other degree!
I've met people who have computer science degrees who can't code a FOR loop. For some reason those people always like to come interview at my company, and it makes this college drop-out feel really smug to deny them. But anyway.
If you're angry at useless middle-managers, and I don't think anybody will disagree that these people exist in most companies, then say so. Don't blame an entire degree program for the phenomenon; useless middle-managers were around long before MBA degrees existed.
I also think you need to go visit more tech companies, preferably ones on the west coast. Very few tech companies on the west coast have useless layers of management, that's why they pretty much kick-ass at it. (East-coast companies, on the other hand...)
People that knock the hacker ethic are a bunch of MBA drones that could never really build a damned thing themselves.
MBA "drones" build things all the time. You just don't understand what, because they use human beings as their construction material.
You learn to program by diving in and doing it. The more you practice and study, the better you get at it.
You learn some things, but not others. You'll never learn how to write maintainable code this way.
GM was very good at shackling some very brilliant engineers and turning them into process drones.
GM suffers from disfunctional management, poor marketing (that did nothing to turn-around public opinion on American car quality), and labor relations. Engineering wasn't the problem. (Now design-- that was a problem. Any company that could think something like the Aztek was worth buiding has big, big design problems.)
Great things are built by individuals and the more steps you have in the way of people being individuals, the worse you will get.
Bullshit. All great films, for example, are collaborations. All great buildings are collaborations. All great legislation are collaborations.
The software industry has had a couple instances where a single person has built a great product... the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Napster. But that is the exception, and not the rule.
That said you're kind of on the right track here. The role of a *good* MBA-type is to keep the everyday distractions away from the developers/engineers/whoever so they can get on with their work. That's one of the reasons Microsoft has been so successful. (Another is something else you imply: Microsoft developers *own* the features they are assigned.)
At the end of the day, the managers, bean counters, and all of these other people with their measurements, metrics and fancy charts are so much fluff, a tax on the capable in society... by really a bunch of leaches that could barely feed themselves as they lack the mental self sufficiency to do anything other than to try and ride the labor of others.
Wow. Tell us how you really feel.
I'd assume the more geeky a person, the *more* bean counting and measuring they'd want, since it removes a lot of the guesswork currently done in business. (Especially in certain industries, like marketing.) Without the measurement part, how do you know your code answers the need? How do you know it's easy to use? (Of course, considering your general attitude, I'm sure you don't give a shit how easy-to-use it is.) How do you know bugs are getting addressed in a timely manner?
Without a project manager, how do you get a project of any decent size done? Do you think Microsoft could have built, say, MS SQL without a single project manager? How would that have even worked?
Also: Where do you work? Do you get promoted, with this attitude of yours? Or have you been stuck in a basement for a dozen years, writing barely-maintainable hard-to-use code at the same payscale you were at when you were hired?
And that's why we have so much of shitty inefficient code around. Even when you program in a high-level language, you still have to realize how the code you write works on the machine level. I've seen PHP programmers throwing around calls to array_diff/array_unique, chaining them without mercy, without thinking about performance - because they think that those function are some magic black boxes and never consider a performance hit. "Oh, it's a C function, C is fast anyway from what I've heard". Like a good driver should know the inners of a car, how engine/transmission etc. work, otherwise he couldn't drive efficiently - a good programmer should know all the chain, from Java/Python/Scheme/Whatever down to the machine code.
While I *somewhat* agree with the second half of your post, the "bloat" argument is a total non-starter. If you look at a computer program as a percentage of computer capability, programs now are less bloated than ever. I mean, calling things now "bloated" is equivalent to comparing prices without considering the inflation rate-- it's just dumb.
The other note is that bloat is a tradeoff with delivery. If you sit there and optimize every single feature and every single function, you might make a program with no bloat-- but you'll get nailed in the marketplace by your competitor who shipped his product 6 months ago.
Young programmers running Windows can always get Visual Studio for free via DreamSpark.
Dreamspark? I've never heard of that... what's wrong with just downloading the C# Express version? It's free, has been for years, and I'm constantly amazed how many Slashdotters don't know about it. http://www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp/
If you want to ingrain the OO paradigm, do it in a language that isn't painfully difficult and unforgiving. Like C# or even VB.net. But hell, most languages now support OO programming anyway... it'd almost be harder to pick one that didn't. (Javascript is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.)
There's tons of visual languages that make this pretty easy.
As a programmer you'll wince at this idea, but you can create a blank Windows form, fill it with sprites (in the form of Picture objects) and a timer, and make a game in a couple hours, at most. Obviously it'll be extremely inefficient (and flickery in XP), but for Space Invaders, it's more than enough.
However, Microsoft consistently does "evil". Anyone who is old enough to have seen the company's history knows that. Mostly ignorant kids who don't care about history keep defending the company.
Yah and anybody who runs Linux weighs 400lbs and lives in their parent's basement, right?
You've set up an awesome strawman there: if you like Microsoft you're a stupid little snot-nosed kid. Because it's inconceivable that a person could independently arrive at a conclusion different than yours.
. You have to fart around with settings to stop it putting all the dialog boxes in the bit inbetween the two monitors, for a start.
Wrong.
Then maximise a window. Oops it just made a huge window crossing both monitors.
Nope, works fine.
And god help you if you're running monitors with different resolutions.. maximise does *precisely* the wrong thing and chops half the contents of your windows off.
Complete bullshit.
What setup were you using where you had these problems? Are you talking about Windows 98 or something? None of those problems have been issues for at least a decade. (Which is as long as I've been using multiple monitors on Windows; I can't comment further back than that.)
What is grandma wants to use the projector in her church's meeting room to show a slideshow of her most recent quilt patterns? Oh yah, there's software for quilting.
Stop being such an elitist asshole; computers should be easy to use for EVERYBODY.
Sorry, I did some research and I was wrong. The TV ratings system in the US *is* voluntary-- the V-chip, however, is not.
So, in short, there's no reason video games should have a mandated ratings system when NO OTHER MEDIA does, and there's no reason novels should have no ratings system at all when all other media has voluntary ones.
I'll admit, it's easier to get into an R rated movie as a minor then to rent an M rated game, but I've still been carded in the past. Your statement is simply untrue, or depends on the state from which you are posting.
The MPAA ratings system is *VOLUNTARY*. There's no law compelling the theater to check your ID; they do that voluntarily.
In fact, in the US, almost all media "censored" has been voluntary: * The Explicit Lyrics warning on CDs is RIAA policy, not law * The "Comics Code" (when it was in force) was voluntarily practiced by comic publishers * The ESRB video game rating system is completely voluntary
The only one so far that has had the force of law behind it was the TV ratings system, which is mandated for broadcast media by the FCC. (I think it's voluntary for cable/satellite networks, though) and designed to be used with the V-Chip mandated to be installed in all TVs. And it's been a huge failure-- let me ask you a question, have you ever, in your entire life, seen a TV with the V-Chip activated? I haven't.
As far as I know, the only media that's still completely unrated in any way is novels. A 12-year-old gets carded to buy Halo, but can check out American Psycho from the public library? That's hypocrisy in action.
Yes, but he had the chance to be the better man-- to reply to the unprofessional notice with a professional response-- and instead he swears like a college freshman.
Your post is so full of misconceptions it's hard to know where to start.
Until you have the hardware to run DX10 in full details (i7 CPU) what is the point in having a DX10 OS?
Wrong. CPU hardly matters at all in modern gaming; I can run just-released games like Fallout 3 and my Core 2 Duo hovers around 30% utilization. 30%. Assuming you're not *really* cheaping out on a CPU, you're fine.
I still have problems with my overclocked dual core at 3.3Ghz to run all the DX9 games at full details at 60FPS.
Maybe you should upgrade your video card. You know, that thing in your computer that actually determines its framerate? Once again: CPU has absolutely nothing to do with your FPS. It does not matter.
And XP is usually faster for DX9 games then Vista or Win7 is.
Blame shitty Vista drivers. There's nothing inherent in the OS that's causing that.
So, until I can get an overclocked i7 at 4.0Ghz I'll stick to DX9 and WinXP. Since why overclock to gain FPS and lose them with Vista / Win7?
Since you're overclocking your CPU to gain FPS, you're a complete idiot. The CPU doesn't have anything to do with game performance.
This is for games, so please M$ lovers don't bash me.
Can we bash you for being totally ignorant of how computer hardware works?
But your point about drivers is not Microsoft's fault-- it's not like Longhorn/Vista came as a surprise to hardware manufacturers. Microsoft led the horse to water, and it's not their fault that it didn't drink.
Your UAC experience makes me wonder how long you actually used it. You only get frequent UACs prompts if you're using your computer like Windows 3.11 (i.e. storing your data in the Program Files folder instead of Users, or something similar.) Admittedly, you get a lot of UAC prompts when you first install all your software, but if you're still seeing them frequently after a week of use, you're doing something wrong.
The x64 version was worse than the 32 bit, it should have been better than
Strange. I thought that I had this custom Nvidia specific nvidia control panel application that was entirely different to the windows display properties box and installed with the Nvidia Driver. Maybe I imagined it though:)
Yes, you *have* one, but you don't have to use, or even install, it. nVidia's drivers just install it because it supports some really crazy configurations that the Windows control panel doesn't, like rotating a screen 90 degrees. Apples and oranges.
People who argue that X11 works just fine with multiple monitors are usually running desktops. It does work in that scenario, although it's still much harder to set up than in Windows.
Where it doesn't work is on computers that frequently hot-swap monitors, like laptops. During the course of an average day, my laptop will have three entirely different monitors hooked into it, one of them a large desktop monitor, and two of them projectors with completely different parameters. I *could* do this in Linux if I didn't mind rebooting frequently, but I do-- Windows just plain does it right. (So does OS X for the record.)
I've tried several distros, never had a single app crash on any of them, let alone the OS.
Bullshit. Well, possibly not, maybe you just let the computers sit there doing nothing.
Here's a recipe for an instant Linux crash about 50% of the time, from my experience: 1) Install Linux on a computer capable of sleep mode 2) Put it to sleep 3) Wake it up
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yah, I was being generous. The part I don't get is that people who post on Slashdot are part of the IT industry, right? How is it people posting here aren't aware of things like that? Are there programmers *so* insulated from the actual process of developing products?
I don't have to reinstall my OS at least once a year, run defrag on a monthly basis, worry about anti-virus updates every week,
I can't speak for Linux, but you need to update your Windows rhetoric. If you're trying to convince people who have actually *used* Windows in the last 10 years (since you obviously haven't), you're just going to make yourself look stupid by saying things like that.
Specifically:
* You don't need to reinstall your OS at least once a year. Or ever in the lifetime of the computer, for that matter.
* You don't need to run defrag at all, much less on a monthly basis. NTFS organizes itself to minimize fragmentation; it certainly won't get fragmented enough to affect performance in the lifetime of a computer.
* Anti-virus products all update themselves with no user interaction required.
easy removal of power connector in case of tripping
Almost all modern laptops have that.
accelerometers to shut the hard drive off if the laptop falls
Lenovo has that.
backlit keyboards that have a sensor to automatically come on
Newer Dells have that.
automatic screen dimming at low light levels
All laptops do that, don't they?
single piece aluminum frame construction for less stress on the motherboard (the most common point of failure of a laptop, in my experience)
Ok, that one I have to hand to Apple.
custom battery arrangement to maximize useful lifetime but leave a smaller dimensional footprint.
Too vague to make a judgement on.
What would you expect the ruling to me? We have a 1st Amendment, in case you hadn't noticed.
In any case, you've failed to point out an instance where Fox News has actually purposefully lied to the public, which is what the grandparent was asking about.
Do you honestly believe the whole open source movement depends on people uniting around a hatred for Microsoft, as opposed to sharing a love for innovation and technology?
As a relatively neutral observer on this forum (my favorite OS was Mac OS 9.2.2 to give you an idea), it seems to me that the Linux community *is* based around hatred for Microsoft. Look at all the paranoid anti-Microsoft loons on this board who won't change their minds even after their greatest idol says they're acting stupid.
Maybe Slashdot isn't representative of the Linux community, but if it's not-- what is?
Oh right. We only WISH he were dead. Damn.
I think its quite healthy to dislike ( ok, hate ) an entity whose stated goal is to wipe you from the face of the earth.
[citation needed]
If the goal was "stated" it should be Google-able, right? I get nothing.
This response is a lot less insane than your previous one. For example, when reading this one, my mental image of you didn't involve spastic hand-waving and foam coming out of your mouth.
But I still think you're being stupid, or at least missing something. An MBA is just a degree. Some people with MBAs are good at what they do, and some are terrible at it-- just like any other degree!
I've met people who have computer science degrees who can't code a FOR loop. For some reason those people always like to come interview at my company, and it makes this college drop-out feel really smug to deny them. But anyway.
If you're angry at useless middle-managers, and I don't think anybody will disagree that these people exist in most companies, then say so. Don't blame an entire degree program for the phenomenon; useless middle-managers were around long before MBA degrees existed.
I also think you need to go visit more tech companies, preferably ones on the west coast. Very few tech companies on the west coast have useless layers of management, that's why they pretty much kick-ass at it. (East-coast companies, on the other hand...)
People that knock the hacker ethic are a bunch of MBA drones that could never really build a damned thing themselves.
MBA "drones" build things all the time. You just don't understand what, because they use human beings as their construction material.
You learn to program by diving in and doing it. The more you practice and study, the better you get at it.
You learn some things, but not others. You'll never learn how to write maintainable code this way.
GM was very good at shackling some very brilliant engineers and turning them into process drones.
GM suffers from disfunctional management, poor marketing (that did nothing to turn-around public opinion on American car quality), and labor relations. Engineering wasn't the problem. (Now design-- that was a problem. Any company that could think something like the Aztek was worth buiding has big, big design problems.)
Great things are built by individuals and the more steps you have in the way of people being individuals, the worse you will get.
Bullshit. All great films, for example, are collaborations. All great buildings are collaborations. All great legislation are collaborations.
The software industry has had a couple instances where a single person has built a great product... the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Napster. But that is the exception, and not the rule.
That said you're kind of on the right track here. The role of a *good* MBA-type is to keep the everyday distractions away from the developers/engineers/whoever so they can get on with their work. That's one of the reasons Microsoft has been so successful. (Another is something else you imply: Microsoft developers *own* the features they are assigned.)
At the end of the day, the managers, bean counters, and all of these other people with their measurements, metrics and fancy charts are so much fluff, a tax on the capable in society... by really a bunch of leaches that could barely feed themselves as they lack the mental self sufficiency to do anything other than to try and ride the labor of others.
Wow. Tell us how you really feel.
I'd assume the more geeky a person, the *more* bean counting and measuring they'd want, since it removes a lot of the guesswork currently done in business. (Especially in certain industries, like marketing.) Without the measurement part, how do you know your code answers the need? How do you know it's easy to use? (Of course, considering your general attitude, I'm sure you don't give a shit how easy-to-use it is.) How do you know bugs are getting addressed in a timely manner?
Without a project manager, how do you get a project of any decent size done? Do you think Microsoft could have built, say, MS SQL without a single project manager? How would that have even worked?
Also: Where do you work? Do you get promoted, with this attitude of yours? Or have you been stuck in a basement for a dozen years, writing barely-maintainable hard-to-use code at the same payscale you were at when you were hired?
And that's why we have so much of shitty inefficient code around. Even when you program in a high-level language, you still have to realize how the code you write works on the machine level. I've seen PHP programmers throwing around calls to array_diff/array_unique, chaining them without mercy, without thinking about performance - because they think that those function are some magic black boxes and never consider a performance hit. "Oh, it's a C function, C is fast anyway from what I've heard". Like a good driver should know the inners of a car, how engine/transmission etc. work, otherwise he couldn't drive efficiently - a good programmer should know all the chain, from Java/Python/Scheme/Whatever down to the machine code.
While I *somewhat* agree with the second half of your post, the "bloat" argument is a total non-starter. If you look at a computer program as a percentage of computer capability, programs now are less bloated than ever. I mean, calling things now "bloated" is equivalent to comparing prices without considering the inflation rate-- it's just dumb.
The other note is that bloat is a tradeoff with delivery. If you sit there and optimize every single feature and every single function, you might make a program with no bloat-- but you'll get nailed in the marketplace by your competitor who shipped his product 6 months ago.
Young programmers running Windows can always get Visual Studio for free via DreamSpark.
Dreamspark? I've never heard of that... what's wrong with just downloading the C# Express version? It's free, has been for years, and I'm constantly amazed how many Slashdotters don't know about it. http://www.microsoft.com/express/vcsharp/
If you want to ingrain the OO paradigm, do it in a language that isn't painfully difficult and unforgiving. Like C# or even VB.net. But hell, most languages now support OO programming anyway... it'd almost be harder to pick one that didn't. (Javascript is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.)
There's tons of visual languages that make this pretty easy.
As a programmer you'll wince at this idea, but you can create a blank Windows form, fill it with sprites (in the form of Picture objects) and a timer, and make a game in a couple hours, at most. Obviously it'll be extremely inefficient (and flickery in XP), but for Space Invaders, it's more than enough.
However, Microsoft consistently does "evil". Anyone who is old enough to have seen the company's history knows that. Mostly ignorant kids who don't care about history keep defending the company.
Yah and anybody who runs Linux weighs 400lbs and lives in their parent's basement, right?
You've set up an awesome strawman there: if you like Microsoft you're a stupid little snot-nosed kid. Because it's inconceivable that a person could independently arrive at a conclusion different than yours.
Is there some way we can try him for the crime of inflicting Lotus Notes on an unsuspecting world?
. You have to fart around with settings to stop it putting all the dialog boxes in the bit inbetween the two monitors, for a start.
Wrong.
Then maximise a window. Oops it just made a huge window crossing both monitors.
Nope, works fine.
And god help you if you're running monitors with different resolutions.. maximise does *precisely* the wrong thing and chops half the contents of your windows off.
Complete bullshit.
What setup were you using where you had these problems? Are you talking about Windows 98 or something? None of those problems have been issues for at least a decade. (Which is as long as I've been using multiple monitors on Windows; I can't comment further back than that.)
What is grandma wants to use the projector in her church's meeting room to show a slideshow of her most recent quilt patterns? Oh yah, there's software for quilting.
Stop being such an elitist asshole; computers should be easy to use for EVERYBODY.
Sorry, I did some research and I was wrong. The TV ratings system in the US *is* voluntary-- the V-chip, however, is not.
So, in short, there's no reason video games should have a mandated ratings system when NO OTHER MEDIA does, and there's no reason novels should have no ratings system at all when all other media has voluntary ones.
I'll admit, it's easier to get into an R rated movie as a minor then to rent an M rated game, but I've still been carded in the past. Your statement is simply untrue, or depends on the state from which you are posting.
The MPAA ratings system is *VOLUNTARY*. There's no law compelling the theater to check your ID; they do that voluntarily.
In fact, in the US, almost all media "censored" has been voluntary:
* The Explicit Lyrics warning on CDs is RIAA policy, not law
* The "Comics Code" (when it was in force) was voluntarily practiced by comic publishers
* The ESRB video game rating system is completely voluntary
The only one so far that has had the force of law behind it was the TV ratings system, which is mandated for broadcast media by the FCC. (I think it's voluntary for cable/satellite networks, though) and designed to be used with the V-Chip mandated to be installed in all TVs. And it's been a huge failure-- let me ask you a question, have you ever, in your entire life, seen a TV with the V-Chip activated? I haven't.
As far as I know, the only media that's still completely unrated in any way is novels. A 12-year-old gets carded to buy Halo, but can check out American Psycho from the public library? That's hypocrisy in action.
Yes, but he had the chance to be the better man-- to reply to the unprofessional notice with a professional response-- and instead he swears like a college freshman.
Having to click through a bunch of selection menus in Vista just to do what took 1-2 clicks in XP was, and still is, ridiculous.
Example?
If you're clicking more than in XP, you're probably doing something wrong.
Your post is so full of misconceptions it's hard to know where to start.
Until you have the hardware to run DX10 in full details (i7 CPU) what is the point in having a DX10 OS?
Wrong. CPU hardly matters at all in modern gaming; I can run just-released games like Fallout 3 and my Core 2 Duo hovers around 30% utilization. 30%. Assuming you're not *really* cheaping out on a CPU, you're fine.
I still have problems with my overclocked dual core at 3.3Ghz to run all the DX9 games at full details at 60FPS.
Maybe you should upgrade your video card. You know, that thing in your computer that actually determines its framerate? Once again: CPU has absolutely nothing to do with your FPS. It does not matter.
And XP is usually faster for DX9 games then Vista or Win7 is.
Blame shitty Vista drivers. There's nothing inherent in the OS that's causing that.
So, until I can get an overclocked i7 at 4.0Ghz I'll stick to DX9 and WinXP. Since why overclock to gain FPS and lose them with Vista / Win7?
Since you're overclocking your CPU to gain FPS, you're a complete idiot. The CPU doesn't have anything to do with game performance.
This is for games, so please M$ lovers don't bash me.
Can we bash you for being totally ignorant of how computer hardware works?
I agree that Ultimate was a rip-off.
But your point about drivers is not Microsoft's fault-- it's not like Longhorn/Vista came as a surprise to hardware manufacturers. Microsoft led the horse to water, and it's not their fault that it didn't drink.
Your UAC experience makes me wonder how long you actually used it. You only get frequent UACs prompts if you're using your computer like Windows 3.11 (i.e. storing your data in the Program Files folder instead of Users, or something similar.) Admittedly, you get a lot of UAC prompts when you first install all your software, but if you're still seeing them frequently after a week of use, you're doing something wrong.
The x64 version was worse than the 32 bit, it should have been better than
It was? How?
Strange. I thought that I had this custom Nvidia specific nvidia control panel application that was entirely different to the windows display properties box and installed with the Nvidia Driver. Maybe I imagined it though :)
Yes, you *have* one, but you don't have to use, or even install, it. nVidia's drivers just install it because it supports some really crazy configurations that the Windows control panel doesn't, like rotating a screen 90 degrees. Apples and oranges.
People who argue that X11 works just fine with multiple monitors are usually running desktops. It does work in that scenario, although it's still much harder to set up than in Windows.
Where it doesn't work is on computers that frequently hot-swap monitors, like laptops. During the course of an average day, my laptop will have three entirely different monitors hooked into it, one of them a large desktop monitor, and two of them projectors with completely different parameters. I *could* do this in Linux if I didn't mind rebooting frequently, but I do-- Windows just plain does it right. (So does OS X for the record.)
I've tried several distros, never had a single app crash on any of them, let alone the OS.
Bullshit. Well, possibly not, maybe you just let the computers sit there doing nothing.
Here's a recipe for an instant Linux crash about 50% of the time, from my experience:
1) Install Linux on a computer capable of sleep mode
2) Put it to sleep
3) Wake it up