Seems like a statistics problem. Chances of finding life vs. chance of mission failure. If the chance for mission failure is too high, you won't find life anyways.
I do agree with your sentiment that they should try to minimize the chance of failure before ruling it out, but I don't think it's "bad" to consider this chance.
(Now for stupid example that oversimplifies things to make it seem like I'm correct) If you have one mission with a 10% chance of finding life with a 70% chance of success, that's a 7% chance of finding life overall (despite if it's there or not). If it's 15% of finding but 40% success, that's only 6% chance of finding life overall.
Now if only we knew the actual percentages...
I wasn't specifically addressing compiler, but the entire Visual C++ portion of the IDE. I've used Eclipse for Java programming for a short amount of time, and it did a pretty decent job. There were a few knacks I had with it (having already worked with Visual Studio before), but I imagine that most of these would go away from extended usage or changing preferences.
I haven't looked into Eclipse CDT extensively, but I've been pretty happy with VS2005, so I haven't had the need to change. If I ever get around to installing Ubuntu on my other hard drive, maybe I'll experiment with it there.
For C/C++ programming, I have a hard time seeing how anyone who has really used VS2005 can claim it to be inferior. For all my CS projects I've had to have them compile with MS, GNU, and Borland compilers. They all do a fine job compiling code (though Borland pisses me off sometimes). However, there's some features built into VS that make life SO much easier. I still believe in compiling with as many compilers as you can to remain portable, but for a development environment VS2005 takes the cake.
I've been using VS2005 for 3 years now, so I'm familiar with it's main features. My favorite, which I have yet to find an equivalent is the debugger. It's great for tracking down the "horrible" bugs that would normally take hours of development time (like memory trashing caused by a third-party function you're using that overwrites a pointer...). Without being able to break on a specific memory location being changed, and stepping through code, watching variables change before my eyes, the time to fix it would have went up by at least a factor of two.
Bugs are inevitable, no matter how great a coder you think you are. If a CS student has never needed to fix a bug like this, they likely never programmed anything more complex than Djikstra's algorithm. Once you've worked on a team project with at least 10,000 lines of code, you'll see the importance of a great debugger (and dev-environment).
In addition, if you end up getting your hands on VisualAssistX, coding will be a breeze. It allows you to type less and think more, which results in better code overall, and faster development time.
And get your next 320 generations ready to take over for you, on the 32,000 year [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri#Interstellar_travel] trip with current technology...
But I heard the drops on the boss are AMAZING! It will make your purples look like greens!
At Seatac airport there is a spot to wait in your car that is just for "Cell phone waiting". You wait for someone to call you when they are outside the terminal and you can just drive by and pick them up. Much more convenient and quicker than parking, then going inside of the airport to wait.
You bring up some good points for a majority of ads, but I'd like to add something. You are basically saying that ads are only useful if they result in a direct purchase.
The thing about ads... It's not whether or not it leads to a direct purchase or not... It's the fact that you know the product exists, and is mainstream. For example, you can't buy food from McDonald's online (yet), so using your logic, an internet ad for their product would be useless. It's more of a long term customer base they are building. You are familiar with their product because you see it everywhere, whether or not you like it or not. After a commercial, you may not go, "Oh, I should go buy a burger right now!" but maybe next week, when you have to choose between "Lil' Tony's Big Burger" or "McDonalds", you might (and probably will) choose McDonalds.
Re:This is my single biggest push to free software
on
Vista is Watching You
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· Score: 1
Well said. I love PC games, and until Linux or even Mac (eek, I can't believe I said that), have better offerings in this department, I'm going to be using Windows. Playing a console game occasionally is fun, but in order to play RTS or FPS games with any degree of skill, you have to be on a PC (and I hate auto-aim in console FPS games).
I hope to goodness they don't bundle it with iTunes... The Quicktime/iTunes bundle is already bad enough. It's deceptive to force users to download and install iTunes if they want Quicktime (there is an alternative without it, but not to the "mainstream" user you discuss). However, since playing media is related, I don't mind so much...
But if they ever put a browser with Quicktimes/iTunes, my disdain for Apple software would turn to hatred.
In other news: It has been confirmed that Halo 3 will have a button that you press which will make Master Chief jump. Details to be announced at a later date.
There is more to it that just "DirectX has shiny graphics, and if I don't have it I just won't have as shiny graphics." Most modern games for the PC use DirectX, so you are at the mercy of the developers whether they choose to support OpenGL or not. If they develop the game for DirectX only, then you will have to do some sort emulation to get it to run on a non-windows environment (which I don't know much about, but it will definitely be slower/impossible). Rather than limit the amount of games I can play by depending on OpenGL support, I'll just use what enables me to play all my games. I have had no major problems with Vista CTP, so I'll eventually switch to it because I can get it for free from my school with MSDN Academic Alliance.
I don't see myself as a zombie. I see myself as someone who will choose the better product for enabling me to play the games I want. If all the sudden games start widely supporting Mac or Linux APIs, I may consider the switch. Until then, there is really only one gaming OS for me.
Unfortunately, as a gamer, there is no reason to switch to Ubuntu. DirectX10 reduces the amount of work that the hardware has to do to make simple primitives, and the hardware is becoming even more powerful on top of that. Sure, you have to buy a new card, but if you're a gamer, you probably upgrade cards every 2-3 years anyways. I think the decision to rebuild DX10 from the ground up was a good decision by MS, at least from my standpoint.
And that is why I haven't switched to OSX or Linux, and probably won't in the near future.
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Seems like a statistics problem. Chances of finding life vs. chance of mission failure. If the chance for mission failure is too high, you won't find life anyways. I do agree with your sentiment that they should try to minimize the chance of failure before ruling it out, but I don't think it's "bad" to consider this chance. (Now for stupid example that oversimplifies things to make it seem like I'm correct) If you have one mission with a 10% chance of finding life with a 70% chance of success, that's a 7% chance of finding life overall (despite if it's there or not). If it's 15% of finding but 40% success, that's only 6% chance of finding life overall. Now if only we knew the actual percentages...
... Instead of calling attention to itself: no blinking lights, no flashy logos in my faceMaybe PC owners have higher standards, or are more critical and demanding of their hardware? I don't think it's as binary as you make it seem.
Truth. The premise of the third movie was that they couldn't get the Delorean up to 88 MPH since they had no gasoline.
I wasn't specifically addressing compiler, but the entire Visual C++ portion of the IDE. I've used Eclipse for Java programming for a short amount of time, and it did a pretty decent job. There were a few knacks I had with it (having already worked with Visual Studio before), but I imagine that most of these would go away from extended usage or changing preferences.
I haven't looked into Eclipse CDT extensively, but I've been pretty happy with VS2005, so I haven't had the need to change. If I ever get around to installing Ubuntu on my other hard drive, maybe I'll experiment with it there.
For C/C++ programming, I have a hard time seeing how anyone who has really used VS2005 can claim it to be inferior. For all my CS projects I've had to have them compile with MS, GNU, and Borland compilers. They all do a fine job compiling code (though Borland pisses me off sometimes). However, there's some features built into VS that make life SO much easier. I still believe in compiling with as many compilers as you can to remain portable, but for a development environment VS2005 takes the cake.
I've been using VS2005 for 3 years now, so I'm familiar with it's main features. My favorite, which I have yet to find an equivalent is the debugger. It's great for tracking down the "horrible" bugs that would normally take hours of development time (like memory trashing caused by a third-party function you're using that overwrites a pointer...). Without being able to break on a specific memory location being changed, and stepping through code, watching variables change before my eyes, the time to fix it would have went up by at least a factor of two.
Bugs are inevitable, no matter how great a coder you think you are. If a CS student has never needed to fix a bug like this, they likely never programmed anything more complex than Djikstra's algorithm. Once you've worked on a team project with at least 10,000 lines of code, you'll see the importance of a great debugger (and dev-environment).
In addition, if you end up getting your hands on VisualAssistX, coding will be a breeze. It allows you to type less and think more, which results in better code overall, and faster development time.
And get your next 320 generations ready to take over for you, on the 32,000 year [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri#Interstellar_travel] trip with current technology... But I heard the drops on the boss are AMAZING! It will make your purples look like greens!
I approve of this message.
At Seatac airport there is a spot to wait in your car that is just for "Cell phone waiting". You wait for someone to call you when they are outside the terminal and you can just drive by and pick them up. Much more convenient and quicker than parking, then going inside of the airport to wait.
You bring up some good points for a majority of ads, but I'd like to add something. You are basically saying that ads are only useful if they result in a direct purchase. The thing about ads... It's not whether or not it leads to a direct purchase or not... It's the fact that you know the product exists, and is mainstream. For example, you can't buy food from McDonald's online (yet), so using your logic, an internet ad for their product would be useless. It's more of a long term customer base they are building. You are familiar with their product because you see it everywhere, whether or not you like it or not. After a commercial, you may not go, "Oh, I should go buy a burger right now!" but maybe next week, when you have to choose between "Lil' Tony's Big Burger" or "McDonalds", you might (and probably will) choose McDonalds.
Well said. I love PC games, and until Linux or even Mac (eek, I can't believe I said that), have better offerings in this department, I'm going to be using Windows. Playing a console game occasionally is fun, but in order to play RTS or FPS games with any degree of skill, you have to be on a PC (and I hate auto-aim in console FPS games).
I hope to goodness they don't bundle it with iTunes... The Quicktime/iTunes bundle is already bad enough. It's deceptive to force users to download and install iTunes if they want Quicktime (there is an alternative without it, but not to the "mainstream" user you discuss). However, since playing media is related, I don't mind so much...
But if they ever put a browser with Quicktimes/iTunes, my disdain for Apple software would turn to hatred.
While you'll probably get flamed by a majority of folks, I think you bring up some good points.
That sounds like an improvement to existing customer service if you ask me...
So true... So true.
1. Cut a hole in the box. 2. Put your flop in that box. 3. Make her open the box. And that's the way you do it!
You'd wait 7 hours for your order before leaving? That's some serious dedication for a hamburger!
In other news: It has been confirmed that Halo 3 will have a button that you press which will make Master Chief jump. Details to be announced at a later date.
There is more to it that just "DirectX has shiny graphics, and if I don't have it I just won't have as shiny graphics." Most modern games for the PC use DirectX, so you are at the mercy of the developers whether they choose to support OpenGL or not. If they develop the game for DirectX only, then you will have to do some sort emulation to get it to run on a non-windows environment (which I don't know much about, but it will definitely be slower/impossible). Rather than limit the amount of games I can play by depending on OpenGL support, I'll just use what enables me to play all my games. I have had no major problems with Vista CTP, so I'll eventually switch to it because I can get it for free from my school with MSDN Academic Alliance. I don't see myself as a zombie. I see myself as someone who will choose the better product for enabling me to play the games I want. If all the sudden games start widely supporting Mac or Linux APIs, I may consider the switch. Until then, there is really only one gaming OS for me.
Unfortunately, as a gamer, there is no reason to switch to Ubuntu. DirectX10 reduces the amount of work that the hardware has to do to make simple primitives, and the hardware is becoming even more powerful on top of that. Sure, you have to buy a new card, but if you're a gamer, you probably upgrade cards every 2-3 years anyways. I think the decision to rebuild DX10 from the ground up was a good decision by MS, at least from my standpoint.
And that is why I haven't switched to OSX or Linux, and probably won't in the near future.