My thought exactly. It's not like there aren't much more attractive LCD fonts out there, if the default clock must indeed have the LCD look. Yes, it can be changed, but come on now, let's have a nicer default!
Well, to each their own obviously, but fancy packaging doesn't necessarily make for great taste. I find several of the Milka chocolates (particularly Nougat and some of the coffee flavors) more addictive than anything I've eaten from Lindt or some boutique brand. And a product doesn't have to be upmarket to be good. "Fine" can also mean "good", not just "fancy".
Whatever. I went to the site and actually pulled up and browsed his PDF. It's full of statments-of-truth with hard to verify sources, yet plausably and authoritatively formulated. IOW, the classic formula of the snake oil salesmen, regardless of whether they're selling herbal Viagra or perpetuum mobiles. And not everyone for gun control is a big Moore fan, either. Oh, and "gun control" does not mean "gun banning". But I guess that distinction is lost on budding anarchists.
A site run by a guy looking like the second coming of David Koresh peddling a PDF with supposed facts that consist mostly of footnotes with vague references to FBI and other statistics does not exactly represent proof of anything other than your eagerness to embrace any excuse for guns.
Your beef?! Do go buy yourself a 40-60" one, along with that small car. This particular model is for those who already have a fleet of small (and large) cars, and need a large central TV to frame with all the other 40-60" ones they already have. IOW, you're NOT the target market for this model, so don't take it personally that it doesn't come bundled with a small car.
Microsoft is also developing lots of new systems code, and Grimes' question is, how come so little (if any) of it is written in.NET, if.NET is indeed the future? Or is.NET just the latest incarnation of the MFC: good enough for everyone else and to sell lots of books, but most certainly not for internal Microsoft development?
Actually, Grimes didn't make this particular point as well as he could have, and I think you actually read some of what he meant between the lines. He made two statements that he didn't logically link particularly well: that a lot of the.NET framework is a thin win32 wrapper, and that Microsoft are not implementing much or any new OS functionality in.NET, particularly in Longhorn. If indeed Microsoft are not themselves using.NET to implement new system functionality, any new features would indeed have to be exposed to.NET as thin wrapper classes. I assume that is what he meant with the win32 "thin wrapper" criticism.
Re:The Problem With XML
on
Effective XML
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· Score: 1
A simple googling of "http gzip" would yield pages such as this. It explains quite well how HTTP compression works, but also shows that not all web servers support it equally well.
Re:The Problem With XML
on
Effective XML
·
· Score: 1
> Contrary to being human friendly it isn't. XML Tagging should be shortened > to a simple set of defined tag names and then type definitions. After that > each name would be addressed by an index.
You must be kidding me. You're dissing XML for not being human friendly, and then you propose to replace human readable redundant tags with dictionary indexes. While what you're proposing is indeed one of the mechanisms in binary XML, its furthest goal would be human friendliness.
> It makes a good universal file storage structure and that is it! [...] > I am not sure it really has any advantage over flat files or such.
There are "better" alternatives to XML for any given problem domain, but no single one comes close to XML's flexibility. For two-dimensional data sets CSV files are as simple and concise as it gets, for configuration storage it doesn't get much simpler and easier to read than INI files. But for storing generic and unforeseen data formats, XML is very close to the intersection point of simplicity and flexibility. One single parser reads them all, and with a bit of code can transform the data into just about any other format.
> It drinks band width and program operations time.
I'm sorry but this is becoming more and more a bogus argument. Have you ever tried zipping up a large XML file and observed the compression ratio? You get huge ratios precisely because of the redundancy. Even simple Huffman coding removes practically the entire overhead of verbosity and reduncancy. The more verbose and profusely tagged the data, the higher the compression ratio. In typical use a one megabyte XML file often compresses to under 50KB. Just about any programming language nowadays provides easy access to compression routines, be it file based or in-memory string compression. There is absolutely no need to transmit uncompressed XML over the wire, and in fact it should be a criminal offense. Besides, simply enabling HTTP gzip compression will buy you most of this compression on the fly. Yeah, it takes some processor cycles, but compared to how much work Windows does just to repaint the GUI while I'm typing this, those 2000 MHz are really not being overtaxed.
> I think in time it will turn out to be a fun toy but not much else.
Given the proper time scale, this will no doubt be true. But considering that XML 1.0 was officially defined in 1998, and its use and rate of adoption can still be considered as exponentially growing, you would have to choose a very large scale to be able to look BACK to XML. Till then, better learn to compress and find yourself an alternative to Notepad that displays XML in a more human readable form.
> The disturbing trend behind the recent attempts to declare unwanted > information illegal is that we seem to think that bad things will > go away if we don't talk about them. They won't.
Excellent case in point would be the old DDR: most things Nazi were filed away under "History" and there wasn't much discourse about the past. Is it any surprise that the stronghold of the nationalistic NPD is in the new states? Which is not to say that it doesn't have its sympathisers in the West as well.
> The Comcast cable by me offers a DVR box for like an extra $5 USD a month.
Are you quite sure about that? Because in many markets that seems to be $9.99 or $14.99, on top of the most expensive basic digital TV package out there, for the probably worst picture quality of all digital TV providers. I seriously looked into Comcast digital cable because of massive tree growth obscuring my view of the southern sky, but to get similar programming (actually less) to what I get from DirecTV now for less than $50, I would have to pay around $80. In Comcast's mind they're obviously still a monopoly. I think I will just hunt satellite signals some more instead.
I still think that Delphi is more than a match for the current.NET languages and framework, and shines well above.NET in actually writing to the metal. But I don't know how many visionaries Borland has left, and I can take a good guess at what things will look like in another 2-3 years.
Au contraire, this article shows precisely how low MICROSOFT can go, not other companies. We'll deal with the others as they are found out, but the hand in this particular cookie jar is Microsoft's, so they'll get the spanking.
You could see that same attitude in the Usenet groups they hosted, which were frequented by their hard-core users almost religiously. They claimed to listen to their customers, but if any of these users gave them any suggestions on how to improve things and push Delphi more mainstream, they would just brush them off as being non-typical hard-core users and not representative of their targetted audience (John Kaster comes to mind). Which brings us to their insane Inprise days, when they thought they could me more Microsoft than Bill Gates, and any non-corporate entity (i.e. end-user programmers rather than purchasing managers or whatever) wasn't worth listening to.
Yeah, I'm bitter about all that because they prevented Delphi from being a real contender, and forced legions of loyal users to defect to gag-inducing VB to keep making a living. Borland once used to be a real name in compilers, and you didn't have to make an excuse for using TP or BC++, until about the late 90s. Nowadays it's hard to find a company that even has Borland products on their approved list.
Incidentally, I loved the Delphi help file. It was a very well structured and exhaustive documentation of the IDE and particularly the VCL, with only the odd missing or wrong link. I must say that the MSDN library (particularly since.NET) is getting quite good also, though it still has some large gaping holes, and Delphi was there already long, long ago.
And how is that a Firefox problem? You can download and execute any old crap, and whose fault is it other than your own? The point is whether the browser allows sites to push executable content to your machine without your knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
My thought exactly. It's not like there aren't much more attractive LCD fonts out there, if the default clock must indeed have the LCD look. Yes, it can be changed, but come on now, let's have a nicer default!
Well, to each their own obviously, but fancy packaging doesn't necessarily make for great taste. I find several of the Milka chocolates (particularly Nougat and some of the coffee flavors) more addictive than anything I've eaten from Lindt or some boutique brand. And a product doesn't have to be upmarket to be good. "Fine" can also mean "good", not just "fancy".
Wow! So? Nothing of substance in Windows itself is. Talk about not putting your money where your mouth is.
> Ah, the ad hominem he's-not-like-us attack
Whatever. I went to the site and actually pulled up and browsed his PDF. It's full of statments-of-truth with hard to verify sources, yet plausably and authoritatively formulated. IOW, the classic formula of the snake oil salesmen, regardless of whether they're selling herbal Viagra or perpetuum mobiles. And not everyone for gun control is a big Moore fan, either. Oh, and "gun control" does not mean "gun banning". But I guess that distinction is lost on budding anarchists.
I didn't say that guns are mentioned here, but rather that safe sex isn't much, either.
> I feel that, just like safe sex and drivers ed, gun safety should be taught in school.
In all fairness, it IS being taught just about as much, certainly around these parts.
> The number of *homocide* related firearm deaths in 2002 was 11,798.
Whereas homocide figures are much lower and fall under hate crimes, homicide figures are much higher and more in the range you mentioned.
A site run by a guy looking like the second coming of David Koresh peddling a PDF with supposed facts that consist mostly of footnotes with vague references to FBI and other statistics does not exactly represent proof of anything other than your eagerness to embrace any excuse for guns.
Your beef?! Do go buy yourself a 40-60" one, along with that small car. This particular model is for those who already have a fleet of small (and large) cars, and need a large central TV to frame with all the other 40-60" ones they already have. IOW, you're NOT the target market for this model, so don't take it personally that it doesn't come bundled with a small car.
Microsoft is also developing lots of new systems code, and Grimes' question is, how come so little (if any) of it is written in .NET, if .NET is indeed the future? Or is .NET just the latest incarnation of the MFC: good enough for everyone else and to sell lots of books, but most certainly not for internal Microsoft development?
Actually, Grimes didn't make this particular point as well as he could have, and I think you actually read some of what he meant between the lines. He made two statements that he didn't logically link particularly well: that a lot of the .NET framework is a thin win32 wrapper, and that Microsoft are not implementing much or any new OS functionality in .NET, particularly in Longhorn. If indeed Microsoft are not themselves using .NET to implement new system functionality, any new features would indeed have to be exposed to .NET as thin wrapper classes. I assume that is what he meant with the win32 "thin wrapper" criticism.
A simple googling of "http gzip" would yield pages such as this. It explains quite well how HTTP compression works, but also shows that not all web servers support it equally well.
> Contrary to being human friendly it isn't. XML Tagging should be shortened
> to a simple set of defined tag names and then type definitions. After that
> each name would be addressed by an index.
You must be kidding me. You're dissing XML for not being human friendly, and then you propose to replace human readable redundant tags with dictionary indexes. While what you're proposing is indeed one of the mechanisms in binary XML, its furthest goal would be human friendliness.
> It makes a good universal file storage structure and that is it! [...]
> I am not sure it really has any advantage over flat files or such.
There are "better" alternatives to XML for any given problem domain, but no single one comes close to XML's flexibility. For two-dimensional data sets CSV files are as simple and concise as it gets, for configuration storage it doesn't get much simpler and easier to read than INI files. But for storing generic and unforeseen data formats, XML is very close to the intersection point of simplicity and flexibility. One single parser reads them all, and with a bit of code can transform the data into just about any other format.
> It drinks band width and program operations time.
I'm sorry but this is becoming more and more a bogus argument. Have you ever tried zipping up a large XML file and observed the compression ratio? You get huge ratios precisely because of the redundancy. Even simple Huffman coding removes practically the entire overhead of verbosity and reduncancy. The more verbose and profusely tagged the data, the higher the compression ratio. In typical use a one megabyte XML file often compresses to under 50KB. Just about any programming language nowadays provides easy access to compression routines, be it file based or in-memory string compression. There is absolutely no need to transmit uncompressed XML over the wire, and in fact it should be a criminal offense. Besides, simply enabling HTTP gzip compression will buy you most of this compression on the fly. Yeah, it takes some processor cycles, but compared to how much work Windows does just to repaint the GUI while I'm typing this, those 2000 MHz are really not being overtaxed.
> I think in time it will turn out to be a fun toy but not much else.
Given the proper time scale, this will no doubt be true. But considering that XML 1.0 was officially defined in 1998, and its use and rate of adoption can still be considered as exponentially growing, you would have to choose a very large scale to be able to look BACK to XML. Till then, better learn to compress and find yourself an alternative to Notepad that displays XML in a more human readable form.
> The disturbing trend behind the recent attempts to declare unwanted
> information illegal is that we seem to think that bad things will
> go away if we don't talk about them. They won't.
Excellent case in point would be the old DDR: most things Nazi were filed away under "History" and there wasn't much discourse about the past. Is it any surprise that the stronghold of the nationalistic NPD is in the new states? Which is not to say that it doesn't have its sympathisers in the West as well.
Yet another example for why I don't find the Family Guy all that funny. This exchange pales in comparison to Fawlty Towers:
German: Will you stop talking about the war?
Basil: But you started it.
German: No, we didn't.
Basil: Yes, you did--you invaded Poland.
> They have a lot of swastikas (among other things) in there.
Yes, in the German version they're all replaced with the Pepsi symbol.
> you cannot write "Heil Hitler! Lets go kill some Kanaken!".
Well, that would be very silly, indeed. Who would understand that? You'd write "Lass uns ein paar Kanaken ausschalten!"
> he may well be able to work out a DRM scheme that is acceptable to
> the industry, yet not unacceptable to the average consumer
Alas, all cynicism aside, this appears to be a utopian goal, never to be achieved by mere mortals.
> The Comcast cable by me offers a DVR box for like an extra $5 USD a month.
Are you quite sure about that? Because in many markets that seems to be $9.99 or $14.99, on top of the most expensive basic digital TV package out there, for the probably worst picture quality of all digital TV providers. I seriously looked into Comcast digital cable because of massive tree growth obscuring my view of the southern sky, but to get similar programming (actually less) to what I get from DirecTV now for less than $50, I would have to pay around $80. In Comcast's mind they're obviously still a monopoly. I think I will just hunt satellite signals some more instead.
I still think that Delphi is more than a match for the current .NET languages and framework, and shines well above .NET in actually writing to the metal. But I don't know how many visionaries Borland has left, and I can take a good guess at what things will look like in another 2-3 years.
> But working for Bill Gates' company is not a natural human right
Carly, I do hope you're not using HP computers to post this, right?!
Au contraire, this article shows precisely how low MICROSOFT can go, not other companies. We'll deal with the others as they are found out, but the hand in this particular cookie jar is Microsoft's, so they'll get the spanking.
You could see that same attitude in the Usenet groups they hosted, which were frequented by their hard-core users almost religiously. They claimed to listen to their customers, but if any of these users gave them any suggestions on how to improve things and push Delphi more mainstream, they would just brush them off as being non-typical hard-core users and not representative of their targetted audience (John Kaster comes to mind). Which brings us to their insane Inprise days, when they thought they could me more Microsoft than Bill Gates, and any non-corporate entity (i.e. end-user programmers rather than purchasing managers or whatever) wasn't worth listening to.
.NET) is getting quite good also, though it still has some large gaping holes, and Delphi was there already long, long ago.
Yeah, I'm bitter about all that because they prevented Delphi from being a real contender, and forced legions of loyal users to defect to gag-inducing VB to keep making a living. Borland once used to be a real name in compilers, and you didn't have to make an excuse for using TP or BC++, until about the late 90s. Nowadays it's hard to find a company that even has Borland products on their approved list.
Incidentally, I loved the Delphi help file. It was a very well structured and exhaustive documentation of the IDE and particularly the VCL, with only the odd missing or wrong link. I must say that the MSDN library (particularly since
And how is that a Firefox problem? You can download and execute any old crap, and whose fault is it other than your own? The point is whether the browser allows sites to push executable content to your machine without your knowledge.
> Now naturally if there is life that's a whole can of worms in itself
Funny you should mention a can of worms: guess what was on-board the last Mars lander?