I'm happy to see that you don't hate systemd. That was the last shoe to drop. I'll complete the switch to BSD now!

Dragonfly BSD works quite well on the desktop, as does Funtoo Linux, which is systemd-free. Gentoo also works and still uses OpenRC by default, although there is growing concern some of the devs are quietly preparing to push a systemd agenda (kdbus patches in the kernel, one of the devs commenting he hopes systemd would become the Gentoo default, and a habit of the moderators in the Gentoo forums to shut down any discussions critical of systemd).

Linus may not be showing good leadership in this instance, but not everyone has drunk the urine just yet, and there are others stepping up to the plate to maintain or create alternatives.

What is this "Apple" of which you speak? Oh, you mean the gay-supporting, headphone-selling, law-breaking, watch-making Apple that hasn't updated the Safari browser, and now announces products before they are ready?

They must defend their trademark, and unfortunately, a lawsuit is the only way that the courts will recognize it. If they didn't, then anyone could use their non-response to the workbetter domain name as evidence to take their trademark.

It seems to me that if someone else was using the same name for 16 years prior to them and they claim that it's confusingly similar, they're effectively arguing that their trademark is invalid. Either they had a trademark and spent 16 years not enforcing it, or they failed to notice/mention prior art when they applied for it.

Weak-minded government officials are an example of government corruption.

Anyone who accepted the idea, "not allowing parking lots was to push people into not having cars", was weak-minded. The idea was always to save the builders money, and have residents use the surrounding streets instead. The resulting lack of parking reduced the values of surrounding houses, because, for example, house owners could not have parties if their guests could not find a place to park.

Google became better than everyone else but that only happened AFTER they became popular. Altavista was initially as good or better.

From what I recall at the time, Google was initially a good quality engine, but Altavista had a huge lead in the size of their index. At the time, the size of your web page index was considered the biggest factor in search quality and ranking algorithms were... important, but considered secondary. Once Google's bots reached a critical mass, their algorithms won.

What happens to your 'standard' linked lists solution when you have ten values scattered over an array which is 1000! (factorial 1000) in each dimension? For most genuinely sparse arrays, a hashmap is a better approximation of an efficient implementation. Of course, there will be corner cases where you want to do something different, but linked lists strike me as an extremely poor solution except in arrays where more than about 10% of cells have data.

I should have read the linked questions before replying...

Stupid, stupid, STUPID! Why have numRows and numCols in a sparse array? Things with unnecessary, arbitrary bounds annoy me. My implementation of Conway's Game of Life runs on a sparse array precisely because that allows the world to stretch arbitrarily in any direction a glider goes, limited only by the capacity of the bignum library and the total store available to the program.

And this is how we teach computer science?

Sigh.

Sparse array entries, in general, are not necessarily immutable, although they may be so in this case. Most spreadsheets are implemented as sparse arrays, for example. But your point about the benefit of a map is well made.

So, you see your truck as more of a "lifestyle" purchase than a utilitarian one?

Honestly, I find that far less annoying than people who refer to their SUV as a "truck"...

It's amazing to me how much Slashdot readers hate discussing business management. Discussing business management is often painful, but I think we should accept the pain and get the job done. For example:

Marissa Meyer is not competent, in my opinion. A dishonest or sneaky CEO should be fired. This is the 2nd recent nasty manipulation Meyer has arranged. This is the first:

Has Firefox been Embraced and Extended with the intention of Extinguishing it by Microsoft? Mozilla Foundation now gets most of its money from Microsoft. Microsoft pays Yahoo. Yahoo pays Mozilla Foundation to make "Yahoo search" (actually Microsoft Bing search) the default search engine in Firefox. Most people don't have the technical knowledge to know how they've been manipulated, or how to restore the default search engine to Google search. Marissa Meyer's sneakiness is damaging Firefox's reputation.

The Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Composer GUIs have been damaged, apparently deliberately. Every time you do a file save, the newer versions of both ask for a new file name, and don't suggest the last file name chosen. The damage was reported several months ago, but has not been fixed. Is that another example of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? People who feel forced away from Thunderbird may choose Microsoft software to replace it. Is that what Microsoft is trying to accomplish?

Change in subject: It's amazing how fast computer programming languages die. Pascal died in 2 years. Java is almost dead because the U.S. government issued a very negative warning.

Wow. Someone recommends my book (which is on-topic for the discussion). I thank them. And we're both marked trolls.

The critics are right. This site really has gone downhill.

Thank you, whoever you are! Free software and the threat of software patents and copyright law to our basic freedoms to create were very much on my mind when I wrote the novel. Very glad you enjoyed it!

Jean-Michel Smith's science fiction novel _Autonomy_ would be a good summer read. It's about a small group of open source revolutionaries who work to transcend through their own singularity. Unfortunately they are hounded by government agencies and the UN, who want to destroy them without ever understanding what they are and what they offer the world. It's a clever novel that promotes a lot of open source values. http://www.amazon.com/Autonomy...

Thank you, whoever you are! Free software and the threat of software patents and copyright law to our basic freedoms to create were very much on my mind when I wrote the novel. Very glad you enjoyed it!

"Blocked that as well, you never know what they spam you with..."

At present, the best way to update Windows 7 is to use Autopatcher. The Autopatcher group helps everyone avoid Microsoft's anti-customer "updates".

Microsoft's updates are usually poorly described. The business rules Microsoft has made for itself do not include being honest or complete in describing the control Microsoft wants over computers.