If it's really that bad, then he shouldn't link it at all. Wait for the story to hit another news source which isn't so bad, or simply find another article that expresses the same sentiment.
The problem is the mix of BOTH encouraging people to visit the site, and encouraging people to block ads. One or the other I wouldn't mind.
If you define "modern" as being built in the last two years or so, then surely most modern computers have either two or four.
Considering that laptops are most computers, is that true? I guess you're right that even most laptops at this point are probably dual-core. Just not sure about it.
Point is, "processor" is so vague a term that if you're really going to nitpick the number in a typical machine could be almost anything.
True that. I've always wondered what Hyperthreading counts as.
Washington tax is only even close to 10% in Seattle. Even then, it's only 10% in Seattle, if you're at a restaurant. Sales tax in Seattle is 9.2%, I believe. The base state rate is 6.5%. I live in a different county and I pay only 7.7%.
Please don't believe anything you read on Slashdot until you've verified it.
I'm sure it wasn't malicious, from my experience most Seattle-ites seem to forget that there's actually an entire state wrapped around their precious little city.
Washington's sales tax is only 6.5%, plus whatever each county/city adds to it. If you're paying 10%, or even close to it, you probably live in Seattle and/or King County. (Even Seattle is only 9.2%, I believe. Restaurants are 10%, but you can't really buy a restaurant meal from Amazon.) I live in Snohomish County and my rate is much less.
Unless you're just over-estimating it to keep the Californians from moving up here, in which case: oh wait, it's really 20%, better stay in LA!
Washington State has no income tax, and reasonable property taxes.
And the base State rate is like 7.5%... everything above that goes to the County and City governments. I'm guessing the grandparent lives in Seattle, which I believe is the only one near 10%...
The base rate in (incorporated) King County is 8.6% for retail, 9.1% for food. Pick a point in Seattle, and you get 9.5% for retail, and 10% on the button for food.
If I look up my little city in Snohomish County, the rate is 8.6% across the board. Unincorporated Snohomish County is 7.7%.
Note that virtually everything east of the Cascades, and most of the Olympic Peninsula, is definitely charging only the base State rate. (Except some of the bigger cities, probably.) That's the majority of the State geographically.
That all said, next time I buy from Steam, I'm going to double-check their tax calculation, because I have a hunch they might be over-charging me... giving me the Seattle rate instead of my local rate.
Anyway, long story short: I like how Washington does taxes, and I think the rates I pay are reasonable. They only upset me when they give us taxpayers the "we're low on money" sob story while, simultaneously, paying pilots to fly "Click it or Ticket" banners over sporting events. That one pissed me off.
If I go to California to buy something, I have to pay California's taxes and not my own.
If you go to Washington (the State, not the city), you can ask the cashier to ring you up as tax exempt, as you're not a resident of the state. I used to work in an OfficeMax years ago, and we often had people from other states (and Canada) request that.
You say this as if it's universally true, but that's just one more aspect of the complexity of tax laws most posts in this thread are about.
1) Give your users a terrible expectation, by starting them out on unfinished software 2) Constantly annoy them with trivial changes until they say "screw this" and move to your competitor
What was interesting was the "better than ever tablet support".
With all due respect, it could hardly be worse.
I'm guessing that what that really means is that they've progressed beyond "what's a tablet?" to "ok, we think we know what a tablet is... we added a tablet-looking icon!"
Sadly, I think Linux-in-general is about 5 years behind both Windows and OS X for tablet support. The really sad part of that? Apple doesn't even *make* a tablet. (Although, to be fair, they have a lot of users on Wacom drawing tablets, and that code I'm sure has come in handy for the iPhone. But still.)
ReactOS, for example, provides a significant proportion of the functionality of Windows in a fraction of the size.
How significant is significant?
Or, asked a different way, if ReactOS provides a significant proportion of the functionality of Windows, why aren't a significant proportion of customers using it?
All video games are like this to some extent, except perhaps the longest-lived MMOs (which have probably evolved beyond that simply out of necessity.) At least, all the ones I've perused the source code for, which is a lot.
I blame hard deadlines and crunch time, but I'm not sure if that's the real cause, or if it's just a different class of programmer writing video games. The excuse *used* to be optimization, but I don't think that applies nearly as much anymore.
"set the x of button1 to 500; set the y of button1 to 240; set the caption of button1 to "continue"; set the action of button1 to ( go forward 2 cards visual effect vertical wipe)"
From memory, forgive syntax errors. AppleScript wasn't much better, IIRC.
Me, I always write the comment for a function/method before I've started writing the body of the method. Because, even if it's just me maintaining the code, I want to know what it was there for in the first place.
If you're using Visual Studio, it's dumb *not* to do that. It's intellisense will pick-up on your comment, and from then on every place you see that function call, BAM, there's the explanation of it right there.
It always bugs me how many people use an IDE, but fail to use any of the benefits of using an IDE.
Try changing the DPI in Vista. It finally scales up the entire app, not just the fonts, and works much better. (Icons can still get jaggy if they're scaled-up.)
Vista/Windows 7 can scale-up icons if needed, they just look ugly. Unfortunately, there's no good way to cope with that. Microsoft doesn't have a time machine, nor do they have the authority to force all third-party developers to up their icon sizes.
In general, I think they handle DPI changes very well-- certainly incredibly well compared to XP, which frankly sucked at it. (XP generally upped the text size, but left everything else alone, so you ended up in a world of readable text but miniscule icons, and text that ran off the right-edge of windows.)
Slashdot Mirror
If it's really that bad, then he shouldn't link it at all. Wait for the story to hit another news source which isn't so bad, or simply find another article that expresses the same sentiment.
The problem is the mix of BOTH encouraging people to visit the site, and encouraging people to block ads. One or the other I wouldn't mind.
That's all I'm sayin'.
I'm not a retard, I understand the theory behind it. I just think, in practice, it doesn't work.
It is possible for me to both understand it, and disagree with it. You do realize this, right?
I'm being flamey, but I've already been modded down in this thread (God knows why), so WTF.
Yah what they need to do is hook it up with a cat robot. Then you'd have the full artificial cat experience going.
I doubt IBM is up on Internet memes enough to get that one. I'd wager they're still laughing at the Ally McBeal dancing baby animation.
If you define "modern" as being built in the last two years or so, then surely most modern computers have either two or four.
Considering that laptops are most computers, is that true? I guess you're right that even most laptops at this point are probably dual-core. Just not sure about it.
Point is, "processor" is so vague a term that if you're really going to nitpick the number in a typical machine could be almost anything.
True that. I've always wondered what Hyperthreading counts as.
Bing is not a joke.
Take it or leave it, but don't encourage people to:
1) Use up their bandwidth
2) Block all their advertising
That's just rude. Terrible netiquette, IMO.
If Slashdot wants to run a story about this, they can wait until a better news source carries it.
Washington tax is only even close to 10% in Seattle. Even then, it's only 10% in Seattle, if you're at a restaurant. Sales tax in Seattle is 9.2%, I believe. The base state rate is 6.5%. I live in a different county and I pay only 7.7%.
Please don't believe anything you read on Slashdot until you've verified it.
I'm sure it wasn't malicious, from my experience most Seattle-ites seem to forget that there's actually an entire state wrapped around their precious little city.
Washington's sales tax is only 6.5%, plus whatever each county/city adds to it. If you're paying 10%, or even close to it, you probably live in Seattle and/or King County. (Even Seattle is only 9.2%, I believe. Restaurants are 10%, but you can't really buy a restaurant meal from Amazon.) I live in Snohomish County and my rate is much less.
Unless you're just over-estimating it to keep the Californians from moving up here, in which case: oh wait, it's really 20%, better stay in LA!
Washington State has no income tax, and reasonable property taxes.
And the base State rate is like 7.5%... everything above that goes to the County and City governments. I'm guessing the grandparent lives in Seattle, which I believe is the only one near 10%...
Take a look at our state's tax tool: http://dor.wa.gov/content/findtaxesandrates/salesandusetaxrates/lookupataxrate/
The base rate in (incorporated) King County is 8.6% for retail, 9.1% for food. Pick a point in Seattle, and you get 9.5% for retail, and 10% on the button for food.
If I look up my little city in Snohomish County, the rate is 8.6% across the board. Unincorporated Snohomish County is 7.7%.
Note that virtually everything east of the Cascades, and most of the Olympic Peninsula, is definitely charging only the base State rate. (Except some of the bigger cities, probably.) That's the majority of the State geographically.
That all said, next time I buy from Steam, I'm going to double-check their tax calculation, because I have a hunch they might be over-charging me... giving me the Seattle rate instead of my local rate.
Anyway, long story short: I like how Washington does taxes, and I think the rates I pay are reasonable. They only upset me when they give us taxpayers the "we're low on money" sob story while, simultaneously, paying pilots to fly "Click it or Ticket" banners over sporting events. That one pissed me off.
If I go to California to buy something, I have to pay California's taxes and not my own.
If you go to Washington (the State, not the city), you can ask the cashier to ring you up as tax exempt, as you're not a resident of the state. I used to work in an OfficeMax years ago, and we often had people from other states (and Canada) request that.
You say this as if it's universally true, but that's just one more aspect of the complexity of tax laws most posts in this thread are about.
"Release early, release often" basically translates into:
1) Give your users a terrible expectation, by starting them out on unfinished software
2) Constantly annoy them with trivial changes until they say "screw this" and move to your competitor
I've never been convinced that it's a good idea.
What was interesting was the "better than ever tablet support".
With all due respect, it could hardly be worse.
I'm guessing that what that really means is that they've progressed beyond "what's a tablet?" to "ok, we think we know what a tablet is... we added a tablet-looking icon!"
Sadly, I think Linux-in-general is about 5 years behind both Windows and OS X for tablet support. The really sad part of that? Apple doesn't even *make* a tablet. (Although, to be fair, they have a lot of users on Wacom drawing tablets, and that code I'm sure has come in handy for the iPhone. But still.)
Windows 2000 was famously released with 65,000 bugs (or items, at least) still in its bug tracker: http://slashdot.org/articles/00/02/11/1840225.shtml
And yet it's almost universally considered one of the best Windows releases ever.
I'm not saying anything about how buggy KDE 4.3 is, but simply counting the number of bugs doesn't really indicate much.
This is why there are only a handful truly renewable resources. Solar, for as long as we really need to care about, is going to be around forever.
And since the solar cells can be conjured into existence by wizards, you'll never run out of materials needed to make them!
We're so far behind the energy resource curve that it is only a matter of time before we end up in the dark.
I love fear-mongering. Give me another one!
ReactOS, for example, provides a significant proportion of the functionality of Windows in a fraction of the size.
How significant is significant?
Or, asked a different way, if ReactOS provides a significant proportion of the functionality of Windows, why aren't a significant proportion of customers using it?
All video games are like this to some extent, except perhaps the longest-lived MMOs (which have probably evolved beyond that simply out of necessity.) At least, all the ones I've perused the source code for, which is a lot.
I blame hard deadlines and crunch time, but I'm not sure if that's the real cause, or if it's just a different class of programmer writing video games. The excuse *used* to be optimization, but I don't think that applies nearly as much anymore.
To do .NET development well, you'll need to get licenses for VS(.NET),
Wrong.
Windows,
Wrong.
SourceSafe,
Wrong.
Windows Server,
Wrong.
Sybase SQL,
Not just wrong, but mystifying! Sybase? Not... MS SQL Express? That would have made sense.
Anyway, congratulations! You're five-for-five. You've succeeded in crafting a perfectly factless post.
My favorite super-verbose language was HyperTalk:
"set the x of button1 to 500; set the y of button1 to 240; set the caption of button1 to "continue"; set the action of button1 to ( go forward 2 cards visual effect vertical wipe)"
From memory, forgive syntax errors. AppleScript wasn't much better, IIRC.
You can see some code samples on the Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk
Oh man, that one pisses me off every day. (I work with web analytics.)
Me, I always write the comment for a function/method before I've started writing the body of the method. Because, even if it's just me maintaining the code, I want to know what it was there for in the first place.
If you're using Visual Studio, it's dumb *not* to do that. It's intellisense will pick-up on your comment, and from then on every place you see that function call, BAM, there's the explanation of it right there.
It always bugs me how many people use an IDE, but fail to use any of the benefits of using an IDE.
Fail for coming so close, and yet missing the obvious Brazil reference. WALL-E, sheesh.
What OS were you running Media Center in? XP?
Try changing the DPI in Vista. It finally scales up the entire app, not just the fonts, and works much better. (Icons can still get jaggy if they're scaled-up.)
Vista/Windows 7 can scale-up icons if needed, they just look ugly. Unfortunately, there's no good way to cope with that. Microsoft doesn't have a time machine, nor do they have the authority to force all third-party developers to up their icon sizes.
In general, I think they handle DPI changes very well-- certainly incredibly well compared to XP, which frankly sucked at it. (XP generally upped the text size, but left everything else alone, so you ended up in a world of readable text but miniscule icons, and text that ran off the right-edge of windows.)
but it's a bit larger than 800x480 which is what most netbooks are these days.
Wha-huh? Where do you buy netbooks?
I don't think I've ever seen any less than 1024x600.