const int SIZE=5;
int arr[SIZE];

Second line works in C++, but is a compiler error in C. You have to use #define instead.

From what I've seen, large enterprise customers prefer to have support. Many will in fact not use anything that doesn't have "enterprise class" support. Maybe your company will be fine without such support, but then again, maybe it won't be. When shit hits the fan the CentOS developers aren't going to help you out, and Red Hat certainly won't either. But if you don't think you'll ever have a problem with the OS or a distro provided package, then go ahead.

I sympathize with your boss's disposition. Paid support often is absolutely worthless. I don't think Red Hat's support is worthless though.

Well I used to think programming was something everyone could do. Experience has proven me wrong again and again. Some people think of themselves as exceptional. I do not. I think of myself as average or middling. When it comes to "ability to program" though, most people cannot come close to middling.

Programming seems easy to you and me, but you would be surprised at how many people just cannot do it no matter how much training you give them. Anyone can clean, most people can do construction. Maybe 1 in 10 people could program if they really wanted to, and only 1 in 10 of those will actually want to.

Too many people in IT don't know the first thing about writing code. I think things are changing though. Companies seem to realize you can get by with less people that can do more if your workers can actually program.

Calling oneself a "programmer" tells us exactly what we want to know when we're looking at candidates. So many people put C, C++, Java, C# or whatever on their resume and can't even write a simple for loop.

Patrick McKenzie isn't right about how he describes businesses and employees. We see resumes all the time where someone highlights how they saved their last company six, seven, or eight figures. We don't want to hear that. We want to hear that you have the skills needed to do the job we're hiring you for.

He also isn't right about the language not mattering. It's much easier to go from low level languages to higher level languages than vice versa. If someone was an expert in VB or Python, we would be very hesitant to hire them for a position that required coding in C. And if someone can pick up a language in just a few weeks, then they should do that before they apply to jobs asking for that skill set.

It's not bundling. The customer was threatened with having to pay more than they ever did before they even considered installing the SSO solution. It'd be like buying a combo meal, then getting an apple turn over, then deciding you don't want the apple turnover, then being charged more for the original combo meal.

Oracle is unpopular in many shops. Being a dick to all your customers actually does turn them away, even the greedy amorphous customers known as corporations.

Oracle's main source of revenue in the past 10 or so years has been buying applications that many people are firmly committed to, like PeopleSoft and Weblogic, then jacking up the licensing and maintenance fees. Customers hate it when you do that.

That's the main driver that's pushing people away from their software. When Oracle buys a company, move away from that company's software as quickly as possible.

We just made independent invention an absolute defense against patent infringement. If your idea is truly innovative then there should be little risk to someone independently inventing it.

Alertpay is the best alternative I've seen so far. Of course you can't use alertpay at most online shops, but if you're sending money to people you know, it works well.

Well, I imagine what will happen is what's happened to other open source products Oracle got its hands on. Redhat and SUSE will likely step up to the plate and support kernel splicing without the help of K-Splice. Oracle is trying to give customers a reason to use their version of Linux rather than Redhat's or SUSE's. However, stuff like this just pisses customers off.

Honestly, I can't understand why anyone continues to use Oracle products any more than is absolutely necessary. It's said that companies only care about the money and don't care about how evil their vendors are. But Oracle time and time again dicks over their customers, and in ways that cost the customers extra money. Eventually executive golf games with the marketing guys aren't going to be enough to keep the sales coming in.

Which I guess is why they continue to buy established firms and fuck over the existing customer base with price hikes, poorer service, and more restrictive licensing terms.

Just like having an unsecured wifi network doesn't prove that YOU sent that threat to the president. Except juries don't find that very convincing. And even where it is true that someone is committing crimes through your wifi network, such as in a recent case, you still get to have all your computers seized and combed through. If you actually had been doing something illegal, even if it wasn't what the search warrant was for, you'd still be prosecuted. Because the police had reasonable cause to search your possessions.

It's a British website. I would assume it's talking about British police. Though I doubt here in the US we fare much better.

End software patents, leave this consortium with 4.5 billions dollars worth of paper.

In any case, I hope this deal fails to pass regulatory inspection. Apple monopolizing smartphones with patents is probably worth 10-20 billion to them. No one should be able to monopolize technology. The whole idea of patents made more sense hundreds of years ago when everything was trade secrets, but in the information age it's just a way to create artificial monopolies on certain technologies.

Yes, and they had a document release planned for Monday. Something must have just happened.

It's proper usage to say "just deserts":

http://www.snopes.com/language/notthink/deserts.asp