Posts by JamesH 24 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2007
Well, as stated above, there is SOME good open source documentation out there, but much more open source stuffstuff has dire or non-existent documentations. (for obvious reasons - who likes writing documentation!!)
Thank god for the wiki where you can pretend to write some, then get someone else to patch it up for you.
And as for the comment
'There is nothing stopping YOU! writing good documentation for the projects you like (if there are any).'
What bollocks! If you are in a situation where you need decent documentation for something, you are hardly likely to be in a situation where you're a suitable person to write it!!
"Their supply of the 701 Eee PC in both its 2GB and 4GB SDD variants has been awful. The things have been as rare as hens teeth. The sceptical would say that Asus did this in purpose to drive up interest and demand, while having no intention to cater for the latter."
And why would Asus drive up demand - then not bother to sell anything?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, they were surprised by demand and were unable to ramp up production enough (or as intimated in the article, their battery supply was inadequate). Sorry, does that make too much sense? I'll get my coat - it's the non-sceptical one.
Odd that so many think that the previous occupants will make the car unusable. Ever been in a taxi lads? AFAIK, they have previous occupants...
Anyway, I imagine each charge station will have a eastern european cleaning team at the ready. Quick hose down of the hard seats and away you go.
Bit confused - lots of comments saying that C++ is a shifting language, but as far as I know, the basic language has remained unchanged for years (and I have been using it for over 10 years)
Yes, there have been the addition of templates (but you dont HAVE to use them), and the STL, but the STL is NOT PART OF THE LANGUAGE. It's a set of headers and libaries that use the language.
OK, to get the real benefits you can learn and use STL (and Boost - which if you program in C++ and are ignoring - shame on you), but I say again, the basic language has not changed in YEARS.
As someone who came to C++ via first Basic and assembler, then Pascal, then C (plus a few other bits and pieces), I find it is faster to write robust code in C++ than anything I have used before - but its does take time to get good at it. I have not used Java to any great extent so will refrain from commenting on that argument!
James H
If the engines shut down it would take longer than 1s to crash. Remember, you still have wings.....even if you have nothing pushing you along. If the airliner was stationary, then 1s would be about right.
And to be honest, pilots fly airliners this close to the ground all the time (taking off and landing..), so he not very likely to lose control - after all, he's done it quite a few times before.
As to engines shutting down - it really doesn't matter when they shut down - whether you are 30feet or 30kfeet - it's still going to be messy. To be honest, at the height he was, you are more likely to survive than it was was from higher (ref. recent Heathrow crash).
That said, he was a bit silly! But hey, at £250k a year (that $500k) he probably has a few quid saved up for lean periods. And at least he's famous now!!
James
Hmm. So anyone who lives in the country (and almost by definition >cycling distance from work, with no public transport) all have to be old, sick or disabled before they can have a car? Nice one.
My passenger car is NOT a toy, it's an absolute requirement for me to get to work. I drive it sensibly to maximise my MPG - I'm trying to get my work to allow me to work from home - not sure what else I can do.
I cannot move closer to work (in fact just had to move further away) because I cannot afford the housing. Have you got any suggestions that may help here???
I think you are the one who has no idea. It's all very well accusing us hammered tax payers and telling us to try and 'better' ourselves, but as soon as we try to, HMRC and the government in general F**KS us up the AR*E until we go back to paye and watch people who can afford devious accountants get richer and richer while we get poorer and poorer.
I work a solid week, get paid a decent amount, and watch most of it get taken away in tax. Holidays are a no-no - I need to pay the mortage with my money, and spiralling petrol costs (caused by tax) just mean I can hardly afford to get to work. And Why Oh Why on earth should I have to put in a load of extra unpaid hours when I have a family? And why would I take risks when I have all that to protect?
Rich, Go back to the single and presumably childless rock under which you live, and keep on ignoring the real world.
Not wishing to appear picky but Dune 2000 was actually based on a book called, er, Dune. Which is where the original idea can be found. I don't think video games designers are that good at ideas.....
As to the concept, obviously you do need some water in the air to start with...and a lot of power to run the fridge unit to get the water out. But possible.
James
Just for background, I run Windows and Linux at work. Linux (and my partners Windows) at home,and I write software for embedded platforms, the latest of which is Linux.
I've been impressed with the latest Ubuntu, it installed easily at home, recognised my USB wireless adapter, and was generally easier to install than the Windows with its USB wireless adapter. Excellent. Nice one Ubuntu.
It still isn't granny friendly enough though. I have problems setting up Bugzilla - its all very well proclaiming the benefits of the apt system, but you still needed to trawl the instructions to get configuraton files set up correctly. OK, so Bugzilla is a techie app, but its not the only app out there that requires a little extra work.
As for community help - I think there have been improvements - at one point, the equally balanced Linux gurus (a chip on both shoulders) were doing the whole community a massive disservice with their attitude. It's getting better though, unlike the documentation, which as a devleoper, really sucks big time, and where, although not perfect, the Windows world has a big lead. Its not surprising - I don't like writing docs - but I get paid to do it, unlike most open source developers, who have better things to do with their unpaid time than write docs.
Anyway, got a Scrum meeting now. In precis - its getting better all the time, but now quite there yet.
Quick question...
In UK, you own the copyright of any pictures you have taken. However, what if you took them at a concert where photography was prohibited? Usually the tickets say that you cannot take piccies.
If you do them take piccies, have you lost the copyright? I don't think so, but in that case what have you actually done that could be sanctioned?
Ahh. And here we have the main reason why Linux still isn't the major desktop O/S.
You are right - a stereotypical Linux users response. And offensive with it. No change there for anyone who has asked advice on a Linux forum. It's not the ignorant users that are the problem - Ignorant users can still use windows (mostly). They can't use Linux (and although its getting better, I still wouldn't put it on my parents PC). And that is Linux's problem - not the users.
And I use Ubuntu, Suse and embedded Linux every day at work and have Ubuntu at home....
.
There are many MANY more devices out there that are getting processors in them - washing machines, cars, PVRs etc than the whole market for smartphones.
And ARM has a huge market shares in those areas because the processor is cheap (we use a PXA270 running embedded linux), and does the job well. In fact we are not worried about power consumption, but still went for the Arm architecture as it was the cheapest option in our case. Its difficult to see an X86 architecture device being as cheap to make as an ARM device, and that could be a real problem for Intel.
James
Since the OSI have failed to accept the Boost open licence (one of the most broad licences IMO), and with Boost being one of the largest and best open source C++ projects, one has to wonder whether having OSI approval is of any use whatsoever.
And am I the only person who wishes amanfrommars would just stop posting and wasting my time? It's not big and its not clever.In fact, it's nonsense.
Like someone else said - ITS LEGAL TO TAKE PICTURES IN PUBLIC.
Do you want to ban cameras or stop people taking their holiday snaps and posting then on Photobucket or where ever? That's exactly the same as what Google are doing, but with less benefit...at least with the Google effort you can ask for stuff to be removed.
So live with it.
James
Have to disagree with the poster re: Motorsport causing speeding. I actually participate in motorsport (used to kart, now car race) and it is noticeable how much more calmly I drive after events, for a few weeks. Then speed starts to drift up until the next event. You see, I get my speed fix from the races themselves. And given the number of race crashes I have had (not all my fault I hasten to add), I am intently aware how much worse a road crash can be than a track crash. For a start, race tracks dont have cars coming the other way, or ditches at the side of the track, and they all have marshalls, doctors and ambulances a few seconds away.
As to the report, nice to see so many experts commentators adding their 2 cents worth. I presume they are all scientists working in the field?
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