Posts by A J Stiles 2669 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Apr 2006
Is it just me who actually prefers Unity?
I find the launch bar down the left-hand side, and the Amiga / Mac-like unified top menus, perfect for my Thinkpad's letterbox screen (where vertical real estate is very much at a premium).
Though, it wouldn't make a lot of sense on the more square monitors attached to my other boxen. So they are running KDE.
All this sounds like a thinly-veiled justification for sexism.
The fact that we have one very dominant culture in the world, and that it gets imprinted pretty much from birth, makes it hard to spot a cultural phenomenon when we see one. I'm willing to bet that if you could find some test subjects coming from a culture where everyone wears either bare feet or flat shoes, they probably would not show the same bias towards heels.
Meanwhile, a bunch of misogynists are going to point to this and say "See -- it's all biological!" in an attempt to explain away their disgusting treatment of women.
Yet if you took fifty "Top Trumps" cards, each representing a woman as a series of individual measurements (none of which related to primary sexual characteristics) and another fifty representing men according to the same measurements, then you shuffled one of the women's cards in among the men and one of the men's cards in among the women, the only way you would be able to spot the ones that had been exchanged would be if the designs on the backs of the cards were different.
I wonder how many bugs or security holes that causes.Very few, actually, and their effects tend to be well-contained.
You see, just knowing that other people are going to point and laugh if you get it wrong, is a pretty good incentive to get your coding right.
If a project containing badly-written code becomes sufficiently popular, some other programmer keen to make a name for themself will rewrite the badly-written section and either submit it upstream, or call their refactored version a fork (depending whether they want their name at the front of the credits, or just an easy life).
On the other hand, if a project containing badly-written code is not widely used, then its effects are going to be limited anyway.
But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a dig. Thomas Edison never did, even when it was beyond obvious that alternating current was the future .....
My personal solution to this is to use my own domain with a "catch-all" e-mail address (anything before the @ sign goes to my user). I give every company with which I deal a slightly different version of my e-mail address (usually blatantly obvious, like reg_resp@mydomain.co.uk). From that point on, all it takes is careful use of procmail (it obviously helps that my ISP explicitly support uploading a .procmailrc file -- all halfway-decent ones do). If a company sells "my" e-mail address on, I can quickly spot e-mails not originating from the rightful sender; that one address variant simply gets devnulled, leaving all the others alone.
It's been working for over 14 years now and counting.
The worst offender was actually a private mailing list. Some Windows user managed to get infected with some malware which picked up on my e-mail address from a posting I made to the list, uploaded it to some list somewhere, and a deluge of spam ensued. After posting an e-mail to the list saying "SOMEONE ON THIS LIST HAS A VIRUS!", contacting the list moderators and changing my e-mail address, everything fixed itself.
Tablets are generally used -- at least, by non-techies -- as though they were limited-purpose appliances. Sure, I find it nice to have ConnectBot so I can play an MP3 on the RaspberryPi plugged into my stereo, but -- as anyone will tell you, if you haven't already figured it out -- I'm not most people.
Most people just use the applications that come pre-installed on their tablet. They don't really care too much about the underlying operating system, as long as there is an application store where they can install a few new levels for Angry Birds or whatever the latest and greatest new game is.
Usual lousy car analogy: Most people don't muck about with their engine or transmission. The enthusiasts who do the serious modding are really passionate about it; but most people really only care that they can buy the correct fuel, and don't do much customisation beyond adding ornaments.
* DOBO = Department of the Bleeding Obvious
I like to think I'm a good programmer, but I expect it's the same as driving: More than half of all drivers think they are better than average, which is mathematically impossible. So maybe I'm not really all that good. Anyway ..... This is my Modus Operandi, for what it's worth.
Obviously, the first step is to break the problem down into a series of simpler ones. So I begin by writing comments of what I want each of my main sections to be. That's right: the first thing I save is just a bunch of comments! Then I fill in the actual code to do what the comments said, right between the comments, moving bits that deserve to be made into functions out of the way.
This way, it's pretty much self-documenting. I never have to go back and try to understand how a particular chunk of code works; because I already wrote that down in the first place, as soon as I figured out how I wanted it to happen. It has also given me ideas for Meaningful Variable and Function Names (which, in and of themselves, limit the need for additional comments). It might well suggest creating a new object type. The basic point is as soon as the idea is fresh in my mind, it gets turned into natural language comments, and then into the idiom of the programming language. It also means I'm coding not straight from abstract thoughts, but from words.
In Perl, which is my language of choice, methods may be "asking" -- returning a value relating to the object -- or "telling" -- setting a property, or injecting something into the object, and not naturally having anything obvious to return. I make my "telling" methods return the object itself; then I can daisy-chain them, avoiding repetition:
$cake ->ingredient("flour", 200, "g") ->ingredient("sugar", 200, "g") ->ingredient("butter", 200, "g") ->ingredient("bicarbonate of soda", 20, "ml") ->ingredient("eggs", 4) -> ingredient("water", 50, "ml") ->bake(5, 15 * 60);
Notice how that neat "15 * 60" (which, since it is being used as a literal, will be evaluated once, at compile-time) makes it obvious to the reader that the second argument to ->bake() is a time in seconds, in a way that "900" might not, and does it without an explicit comment.
All this, of course, is Laziness -- the fist great virtue of a programmer. Although it seems an effort to write down what you are thinking as you are thinking it, it is less effort than thinking of it all again later just so you can write it down.
The first versions of the Mozilla suite and OpenOffice.org were basically formerly-proprietary projects which were suddenly Open Sourced. And they were riddled with schoolkid errors (OOo 1.x wouldn't even build on anything but 32 bits).
Knowing that there will be many strangers' eyes looking at your code tends to make you write it properly (and "properly" means -Wall doesn't say a dicky-bird); seeing someone else's bad code that could have been done better makes you think seriously about submitting a patch upstream. (Both these are examples of Hubris -- the third great virtue of a programmer).
We can only guess what other horrendous bodges lurk in other proprietary software.
Doesn't this indicate a certain amount of self awareness and spatial awareness in order to get the spatial dimensions in correct proportion?No, it doesn't. You're bringing in advanced human concepts here. The spider doesn't need to know that what it is building looks like a spider. All it needs to know is that what it is building scares off predators. It so happens in this case that looking like a spider and scaring off predators are the same thing, is all.
After all, if the legs look to long in comparision to the bodies overall shape, then it would not be indicative of a spider, but instead of another creature perhaps.And the spider that built it would, in all probability, get eaten before it got a chance to pass on the genes for building poor-quality decoys.
That's really all it takes: Try lots of slightly-different things, keep the ones that work, throw away the ones that don't, and repeat over and over again.
That was what I was thinking when I first heard this. Some user uploads an image over which they don't have the rights; Instagram use it in an advertisement campaign; the rightsholder sues Instagram; Instagram in turn find out the user signed up with bogus credentials in the first place, and have no comeback against them.
If / when Instagram go back on this decision, you can bet this -- and not user power -- was the real reason.
In practice, energy now being generated from coal will be replaced by energy generated from gas, resulting in exactly the same amount of CO2 emitted.
Fixed that for you.
One mole of C combining with one mole of O2 to give one mole of CO2 always liberates the same amount of energy every time, whether the carbon is obtained from coal or gas. Unless the efficiency of the process for converting heat to KE has improved dramatically in recent years (KE to electricity hit maximum efficiency long ago) then the amount of CO2 produced per kWh will not change simply by using a different fuel.
It's like a group of kids and a big jar of sweeties. Day one, there are 20 kids. The greediest ones shove some of the others out of their way, trying to grab half a dozen or more sweets each. Teacher applies ruler to knuckles. Complaints. Greedy kids get own way, some kids get none.
Day two, there are 21 kids. The greedy ones again try to get the lion's share of the sweets; the teacher with the ruler holds off. Everyone else lucky to get at most one sweet.
Day three, 22 kids. Similar pattern repeats every day. Sooner or later, the number of sweeties in the jar drops below halfway.
The greediest kids begin bullying the most timid, in order to steal their sweeties. Teacher tries to intervene, but is told to butt out.
Eventually, there are not even enough sweeties left even for just the greediest kids to have one each.
Teacher: "Well, that's that, then. The jar is finally empty. Looks like there will be no more sweeties for anyone, now, and because a few greedy kids took more than their fair share!"
Greediest kid of them all: "But Miss, why didn't you do something earlier?"
Don't be silly! Britons hate infrastructure -- it keeps reminding us that everything does not work by magic and pixies.
The money from fracking will be spunked on tax cuts for the rich, MPs' vanity projects, and suchlike; and when the shale gas runs out (as non-renewables have a nasty habit of doing), we'll be left with a serious environmental mess and another energy shortage on our hands.
Why tax corporations at all? For the same reason why we tax individuals: they obtain certain benefits from the civilised society in which they exist, therefore they ought to make a contribution to it.
Anyway, if corporations didn't pay tax, goods and services might get cheaper, if they passed on the savings to customers; but individuals would end up having to pay more tax, to make up the shortfall.
Why not just tax multinational companies doing business in the UK, according to the larger of
(a) declared UK profit; or
(b) worldwide profit * (UK turnover / worldwide turnover) ?
You can hide profit made in one country by creating an artificial overhead, but that profit will still show up somewhere in the world -- and the cost you created will contribute to your turnover in the UK.
However, I suspect the law is unlikely to change precisely because it benefits the rich.
Nobody forces you to buy a Smart TVExcept, possibly, TV manufacturers stopping making any other sort .....
You seriously overestimate the power of a minority knowledgeable individuals against (the corporations plus a bunch of dumb people who just buy whatever they are told).
Being the head of one of the most successful and innovative open source movements in the world clearly has its freedoms. No paying customers means zero commercial obligation to keep supporting them, and one can just walk away without a care in the world. Bliss!Yes, because all the code that's already been written that did support the 80386 has suddenly vanished for all time. Oh, no, wait. It hasn't. It's all still there. Scrub that, then.
a Linux driver dev I know moans that Linux is a bit Mozilla-ish. Every major release changes everything all over again and drivers have to be re-written, etc. etc. It's a ball ache to keep up."Changing everything all over again" is pretty much the definition of a major release.
MS (and presumably Apple) long ago learnt the true value of drivers, API stability, etc. Like it or loathe it, the fact that Windows XP has been maintained all this time, still works, and so forth is fairly impressive and has meant that many paying customers have stuck with MS.Windows XP has been about for what, 11 years or so, and Microsoft are going to be pulling support for it Real Soon Now. Linux has been around since 1991, and every version ever released is still available. For £0, and with commented Source Code and modification rights.
Binary compatibility across releases was deliberately never a design goal of Linux. This was a deliberate decision: binary compatibility can potentially mean having to support things that, with the benefit of hindsight, turn out to have been stupid decisions. Having to recompile applications (or download new, pre-compiled versions from a trusted source) is ultimately less bother for users than security holes you could get a bus through sideways.
Considering that the 6502 went on indirectly to inspire the instruction set of the ARM processor, which is probably the most widely-used processor architecture on the planet (it's found in mobile phones, routers, printers, wireless cards and even the Raspberry Pi), you might just be right with that.
Actually, the 6502 wasn't a bad chip in its own right, if you knew how to deal with zero page mode.
Your problem is, the drive belt in your wireless wireless has stretched. It can be replaced easily (field-maintainability is designed into the set). The outer case separates into two, and the scary mainspring is concealed behind another tray -- which you don't need to remove just to replace the belt. Wrap a piece of string around the pulleys, and subtract one millimetre for each centimetre to allow for stretchiness. Order yourself a new belt from CPC or wherever, and you should be good to go again.
My Freeplay gives me almost one minute of listening on FM per turn of the crank, with the volume turned up just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the spring unwinding. It's nearer 30 seconds per turn, when loud enough to listen in the shower (radio on the bathroom windowsill; it's not waterproof).
Well, strictly, it's not the GPL that forbids that, but copyright law. The GPL is the "written permission" required by copyright law to perform certain acts, and is granted subject to you satisfying certain conditions. It takes $(wc /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL | awk '{print $2}') words to explain precisely what you are permitted to do, and when.
The GPL -- in its effort to preserve your freedoms -- requires you not to impose any additional restrictions on recipients of software licensed thereunder. (You can grant additional permission in respect of anything over which you have the right to do so, but this will not apply to the portions of the resulting work that you received under the GPL). The CDDL contains restrictions (basically, attempting to terminate your right to use the the licensed software if you make a patent claim against software so licensed) that are not in the GPL (which makes it clear that you have unconditional permission to use the software); and the only way you can comply with both licences at the same time is by not distributing software at all.
Note that the doctrine of Fair Dealing / Fair Use allows you to compile software distributed under the GPL with legitimately-acquired software distributed almost any other licence -- you just can't distribute it. That's why you have to faff about to get proprietary graphics card drivers into the Linux kernel. If nVidia would just release the driver Source Code under the GPL, the issue would go away.
It's not necessarily about real names; it's about the ability uniquely to identify a person within a context.
As long as only one user of The Register forum is calling themself "Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance", then it's a unique identifier in a way which "Anonymous Coward" certainly isn't.
There is no doubt that the moon landings happened.
The Apollo XIV mission planted a mirror on the moon. Ever since then, people have been firing lasers at this, measuring the time delay before the reflection comes back, and using the speed of light to calculate the distance to the moon.
Bare wires tapping together in the wind might end up inadvertently dialling "111", was the official reason given.
It's easy to find the 9 in the dark if you have to, by putting two fingers in the "9" and "0" holes (the 0 being nearest the finger stop and so easy to find). Also, "9" was often used as a local dialling code to reach one exchange from another, bypassing GRACE; using "999" for emergency services reduced the opportunity to make a local-rate call across the country by routing the call through several exchanges.
I have a GPO 746 plugged into a Digium TDM410P in a box running Asterisk 1.8 with Dahdi 2.4.
My own dialplan apps respond absolutely fine to pulse dialling (though I purposely didn't use the star or comment mark in any of them.) I have to confess I was a little surprised by this.
Sounds like a case of US English vs Proper English.
In the Queen's English, compound nouns are formed from participles of verbs and genitive cases of nouns. Also (not directly relevant here), collective nouns are generally treated as plural. In the strange dialect picked up by the descendants of those who forgot to pack a dictionary when the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth , compound nouns are formed from infinitives of verbs and accusative cases of nouns -- and collective nouns are always treated as singular.
So whilst we would say "computing time", Americans might well say "compute time". Compare also "The girls' swimming team have chosen their new mascot" vs. "The girl swim team has chosen its new mascot".
1: Non-renewable energy is a finite resource. (Even if there is 10 000 years' worth of it, we'll simply be repeating this in 10 000 years' time.)
2: The population is growing exponentially.
3: That finite amount of energy has to be shared among an increasing number of people.
4: At some point in the future, the amount of energy available per person per day will be less than the maximum amount of energy that a person can use in a day.
5: At that point, one of two things is inevitable: energy rationing (the civilised option), or the strong stealing energy from the weak (the barbaric option).
Which of the above statements do you dispute, and how?
The whole point of energy-saving lighting is that we cannot simply keep wasting irreplaceable fossil fuels on producing unwanted heat just for the sake of a bit of wanted light. You might find it inconvenient that you aren't allowed to buy certain kinds of light bulb anymore. Well, tough: the rules are there for other people's benefit. You might also find it inconvenient that you have to drive your car on the public roads and go the long way around, rather than taking a short cut through someone else's land. They probably like it that way.
When (and it's coming within our lifetimes: generating capacity per person is steadily decreasing) electricity is rationed and you can choose between having a 100W filament bulb on for an hour or a 20W CFL on for five, I'm betting the energy-saving option won't seem so bad.
As any fule kno, two dots over a letter can be either a diaeresis -- as in "naïve" -- indicating that it and the preceding letter are meant to be pronounced separately; or an umlaut -- as in "führer" -- indicating that the sound is changed as though by a following "e" (which is an acceptable alternative spelling if accented characters are not available).
Given all which, can you spell "diaeresis" using an umlaut, as "diäresis" ?
You can get yourself on the Sex Offenders' Register just for taking a leak in an alleyway after dark when all the public toilets in town are shut, if you're unlucky enough to get caught.
As part of my job, I need access to various computer security tools, including (but not limited to) secure file erasure and strong, deniable encryption.
Needless to say, I keep a very close watch on how much I am drinking on a night out. Anybody could easily put 2 and 2 together and make 17.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
