Basing responsibility on number of applicable usages seems silly to me. Not only can creative uses be found for many "singular" use "things", but in software, it would be trivial for me to take the source for nmap, and integrate it into emacs- Hell, I wouldn't even have to tie the programs together in a binary fashion. I could simply setup lisp programs to hook nmap functionality. (I've even been a better programmer for doing it since I avoided tight-coupling). =)
I'm not saying your thinking is wrong: I just don't think that the generalization is valid. More thought probably needs to go into this to come up with a better solution, but I don't have the jets to do it. =)
I've been worried, for a long time, that a virus writer would exploit file dead-space.
This has been done. As a matter of fact, one of these came across as a/. story about a half year ago. The virus took advantage of internal fragmentation on FAT fs's. I'll look for the url...here it is. The informational link from there doesn't appear to be valid anymore, but that virus hid itself in files without changing their size through the method you mention.
Capitalsim is a paradox. Unbounded it NEVER reaches any kind of competitive equilibrium! What evidence makes you think that it does? I'd sure like to see some.
I don't really want to talk about "capitalism", but instead free markets and equilibrium prices. I agree that it is hard to come up with markets that work very close to purely effecient (maybe the US credit market would be a good example), but the reason for the innefficiencies are generally externalities granted through law (patents, trade barriers, favorable zoning law, etc.)
Thats the core of the thinking at least. What you really want to do to validate your quest for proof isn't to find markets that clear at true equilibrium, but study instead the effect of externalities on markets, and see if they give secondary evidence of true efficiency being kept away by interventionary forces.
For example, if we all start paying less for our clothing (here in the united states) after the Multi-Fibre Agreement expires, that would indicate that markets do in fact move towards equilibrium.
Showing statistical proof has probably been done, but it is a lot easier for me to give you examples of externalities breaking markets or forming monopolies than it is for me to show you an industry that has remained untouched by politics. =)
*shrug* Good luck in your research. I see enough evidence for myself of this every day . =)
I'm pretty sure that the mailboxes are owned by the federal government, and that taking mail out of a box that isn't assigned to you by them is a felony.
I wouldn't be surprised if misrepresenting the sender of an envelope (via the return address) would be a kind of mail fraud.
Of course, IANAL... I did take a tort law class once, though. =) I must be qualified to post on slashdot. heh.
Hmmm... I'm pretty sure that the Mayan calandar ends Dec 22, 2012. At least, if my shadowrun memory is correct. =) I think the Aztec Calander is a cyclical calander that doesn "end". But I'm not sure... =/
Its also worth mentioning, that it is entirely possible that you don't want cross-industry risk pooling if you have particular faith in the long term prospect of a given market.
When you add your cash reserves, real estate, and all those Botocelli's (heh heh) in your basement, it may be possible that accepting higher risk in your stock portfolio may put your overall asset portfolio right where you want it on the return horizon. =)
Ahh, the FUD word. =/ Every OS I have used has had some sort of "fragmentation" or binary compatability issues as it has rolled versions.
I think the story poster was trying to highlight that the IT media seems to be concentrating on potential linux fragmentation without looking at other OS's.
That said, as far as the topic goes, if it is fud, it is fud-light. I've personally experienced significant issues moving our source base forward from Win16->Win32, and then sprinkling "if (HIBYTE(HIWORD(::GetVersion())) lessthanssymbol 0x80)"'s arround my printing code. If I was to bitch it would be with printing and gdi in particular. (I can't seem to get the less than symbol to appear when posting "plain old text" I must be an idiot.) =)
Also, the various releases of comctrl32.dll have subtly changed certain message behavior of some controls our software uses. Admittadly it was somewhat cosmetic, but we have a commitment to making sure our UI is consistant across software releases, so it was something we had to spend time working around.
The thing I remember most about the 95 beta was trying to get it the hell off my machine! =) It took me quite a while to find all the files it had dumped on my harddrive. Ah well.
I think that encrypted communication becomes truely strong when it becomes ubiquitous. If the government can focus on which comminiques to decrypt, they can focus a massive amount of processing power on the problem, but if they are just as likely to get someones recipe for steamed cabbage as they are to get an admission of crime, they would really have to think about their policy on this stuff.
What makes this kind of legislation important is that while it won't infringe on your ability to get encryption software, it will stop companies from rolling out built in strong encryption, thereby keeping strong encryption from becoming ubiquitous in the consumer and business worlds.
OK, so we know that companies report losses/gains in financial reports under GAAP rules, but do those rules apply as a standard in our (US) criminal or civil litigation system?
Everyone is all over the board with the Mitnik thing, and I'm not sure I've gotten enough reliable information to make a personal judgement on it, but I hope the parties involved all realize this kind of accounting as relatively useless for establishing damages. As far as 2600 using it as a reason for his being held without bail seems kind of silly though. *shrug*
I have to dissagree with you on this. The embedded systems that you refer to have a controled set of inputs and can therefore be fully tested to find the complete set of outputs, given failure assumptions about the hardware.
Application and OS developement are entirely different beasts, and are subject to massive complexities that (I personally believe) cannot be fully solved with "building block" methodologies.
So do we have different licenses for different programming tasks? I just don't think that we are at a point where licensing can be meaningful since processes aren't fully under control (and at times cannot be).
This is that whole accountability vs. anonymity thing. That is, complete anonymity == no accountability (whether that truth is exploited or not). Of course, this is all your basic food for thought in that mandatory CS Ethics class that they require now, so I'll just shut up. =)
I'm not sure, but this seems kind of like engineered information to support US companies looking for "relief" from the current IT job crunch.
Its amazing how companies dig on supply and demand until we start talking about capital/labor markets. =)
Of course, all metrics have problems, and the L.O.C. thing has been well covered, blah, blah, blah... I just don't like the idea of someone telling me that my 60 hours a week aren't good enough.
oh well...enough whining... I have to get cracking if I'm going to beat my "nonunion mexican equivilent" (to quote the simpsons).
...but a neat little trick that I saw (and now use) is to rearrange the evaluation order to:
int iRet = strcmp(x,y); if (0 == iRet)// instead of (iRet == 0) blah();
That way, if you happen to accidently type 1 = instead of 2 (==), you die at compile time rather than runtime.
Of course, this is not applicable to the given example (since the function doesn't evaluate to a valid LHS of an =), but I figured Id throw it out there in case someone hadn't seen it before.
Open Source useless in this and similar cases
on
Open Source Windows
·
· Score: 1
Well, OK. But as someone who does Windows developement by day, I can tell you that I would love to have the source available...most notably comctrl32 and GDI32 source. Not to compile up, or to fix, but just to see what MS is doing in some strange circumstances that would help me better write my code that uses those DLLs.
Basicly, I would no longer have to take their documentation (or lack thereof) on faith!
OK. Conceded. MS has a solution for your problem, whether your problem is 3d developement, network programming, or plain old vanilla applications.
HOWEVER, I still feel that many of the windows API are just a simple case of bad design. They are CERTAINLY inconsistantly designed. I furthermore think that the MS solution is almost always inferior. Rate them yourself... CORBA-COM? D3D-GL? Win32(GUI portion)-Xtk?
I like my work a whole lot more when I don't have to fight the API (or the compiler).
I am also looking at this from a programming point of view instead of a user interface point of view. Consistancy of UI is important- blah blah blah. We've heard it before. I believe you. That said, I personally don't care too much about GUIs. I think they cloud the process unless done right, and I don't think MS does them right very often. Please, go out, write the best GUIs out there. I will appreciate it, others will appreciate it.
All that said. I write WinXX software because I get paid for it. I go home at night and write *nix software because I love it. Someday I'll get paid to write *nix software, and there will be dancing in the streets, and good old biblical celebration.
->You are right: it is complete. ->Complete or not, I would rather work with consistant, well designed API.
I'm with you until you get to that "...it is an extremely complete GUI API". I guess I can't dissagree about completeness, but I would suggest that the API itself is incredibly bloated. My main beefs are with Win32 printing, ComCtrl32 objects, RichEd32 objects, and to a lesser degree GDI32 (although I have been burned more than once by their 16 bit limitations).
I do the printing module for a commercial tax application, and it is a MESS of IfNT() crap, not to mention inconsistancies in 95 and 98 that make me do a lot of redundant work-- just to be safe. Check out the documentation for::EndPage() or CDC::EndPage() sometime (the CDC is a thin wrapper). There is a seperate section for EVERY SINGLE FLAVOR of windows. 5 windows, 5 behaviors (I'm counting win311 and wince here).
I would rather have a consistant API that may be a little sketchy in parts and make me do a little more work than forcing me to code around all the different configurations and hoping to god that they don't change behavior underneath me forcing me to ship disks again for MS changes. (I know DLLs are supposed to be backwards compatible, but in the ComCtrl case, I've noticed the details get fudged. The list control comes to mind.)
As an aside, I should mention that I find MFC pretty thin in most cases (Doc-View printing comes to mind as an exception)... The only reason I dislike it is that it immediately ties me to the "One MS Solution". I mean, we spent 10 years on a C++ standard... wouldn't it be nice to take advantage of it now that it is here?
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Basing responsibility on number of applicable usages seems silly to me. Not only can creative uses be found for many "singular" use "things", but in software, it would be trivial for me to take the source for nmap, and integrate it into emacs- Hell, I wouldn't even have to tie the programs together in a binary fashion. I could simply setup lisp programs to hook nmap functionality. (I've even been a better programmer for doing it since I avoided tight-coupling). =)
I'm not saying your thinking is wrong: I just don't think that the generalization is valid. More thought probably needs to go into this to come up with a better solution, but I don't have the jets to do it. =)
This has been done. As a matter of fact, one of these came across as a /. story about a half year ago. The virus took advantage of internal fragmentation on FAT fs's. I'll look for the url...here it is. The informational link from there doesn't appear to be valid anymore, but that virus hid itself in files without changing their size through the method you mention.
Wow. OK, I'll bite.
Your main point above is :
Capitalsim is a paradox. Unbounded it NEVER reaches any kind of competitive equilibrium! What evidence makes you think that it does? I'd sure like to see some.
I don't really want to talk about "capitalism", but instead free markets and equilibrium prices. I agree that it is hard to come up with markets that work very close to purely effecient (maybe the US credit market would be a good example), but the reason for the innefficiencies are generally externalities granted through law (patents, trade barriers, favorable zoning law, etc.)
Thats the core of the thinking at least. What you really want to do to validate your quest for proof isn't to find markets that clear at true equilibrium, but study instead the effect of externalities on markets, and see if they give secondary evidence of true efficiency being kept away by interventionary forces.
For example, if we all start paying less for our clothing (here in the united states) after the Multi-Fibre Agreement expires, that would indicate that markets do in fact move towards equilibrium.
Showing statistical proof has probably been done, but it is a lot easier for me to give you examples of externalities breaking markets or forming monopolies than it is for me to show you an industry that has remained untouched by politics. =)
*shrug* Good luck in your research. I see enough evidence for myself of this every day . =)
This is such a good idea!
But why stop there? We should get patterns posters, and patterns trading card games.
"My adapter beats your handle-body".
hehe...
"Vlissides, I choose you!"
Well, if that counts as a political contribution, I guess that I can deduct the first hundred on my 1040!
I think I can engineer 100 dollars worth of "political views" as a side bar on my web page. =)
I'm pretty sure that the mailboxes are owned by the federal government, and that taking mail out of a box that isn't assigned to you by them is a felony.
I wouldn't be surprised if misrepresenting the sender of an envelope (via the return address) would be a kind of mail fraud.
Of course, IANAL... I did take a tort law class once, though. =) I must be qualified to post on slashdot. heh.
Hmmm... I'm pretty sure that the Mayan calandar ends Dec 22, 2012. At least, if my shadowrun memory is correct. =) I think the Aztec Calander is a cyclical calander that doesn "end". But I'm not sure... =/
Heres a nice little howto
Its also worth mentioning, that it is entirely possible that you don't want cross-industry risk pooling if you have particular faith in the long term prospect of a given market.
When you add your cash reserves, real estate, and all those Botocelli's (heh heh) in your basement, it may be possible that accepting higher risk in your stock portfolio may put your overall asset portfolio right where you want it on the return horizon. =)
Ahh, the FUD word. =/ Every OS I have used has had some sort of "fragmentation" or binary compatability issues as it has rolled versions.
I think the story poster was trying to highlight that the IT media seems to be concentrating on potential linux fragmentation without looking at other OS's.
That said, as far as the topic goes, if it is fud, it is fud-light. I've personally experienced significant issues moving our source base forward from Win16->Win32, and then sprinkling "if (HIBYTE(HIWORD(::GetVersion())) lessthanssymbol 0x80)"'s arround my printing code. If I was to bitch it would be with printing and gdi in particular. (I can't seem to get the less than symbol to appear when posting "plain old text" I must be an idiot.) =)
Also, the various releases of comctrl32.dll have subtly changed certain message behavior of some controls our software uses. Admittadly it was somewhat cosmetic, but we have a commitment to making sure our UI is consistant across software releases, so it was something we had to spend time working around.
The thing I remember most about the 95 beta was trying to get it the hell off my machine! =) It took me quite a while to find all the files it had dumped on my harddrive. Ah well.
I think that encrypted communication becomes truely strong when it becomes ubiquitous. If the government can focus on which comminiques to decrypt, they can focus a massive amount of processing power on the problem, but if they are just as likely to get someones recipe for steamed cabbage as they are to get an admission of crime, they would really have to think about their policy on this stuff.
What makes this kind of legislation important is that while it won't infringe on your ability to get encryption software, it will stop companies from rolling out built in strong encryption, thereby keeping strong encryption from becoming ubiquitous in the consumer and business worlds.
I'm curious how this will affect waba...(http://www.wabasoft.com).
Waba is a cross platform java programming tool for Wince and Palmos devices that I found worked pretty darned well.
(It probably isn't a _true_ java implementation, but looked enough like one for me not to care about the difference)
Ah well...
OK, so we know that companies report losses/gains in financial reports under GAAP rules, but do those rules apply as a standard in our (US) criminal or civil litigation system?
Everyone is all over the board with the Mitnik thing, and I'm not sure I've gotten enough reliable information to make a personal judgement on it, but I hope the parties involved all realize this kind of accounting as relatively useless for establishing damages. As far as 2600 using it as a reason for his being held without bail seems kind of silly though. *shrug*
I have to dissagree with you on this. The embedded systems that you refer to have a controled set of inputs and can therefore be fully tested to find the complete set of outputs, given failure assumptions about the hardware.
Application and OS developement are entirely different beasts, and are subject to massive complexities that (I personally believe) cannot be fully solved with "building block" methodologies.
So do we have different licenses for different programming tasks? I just don't think that we are at a point where licensing can be meaningful since processes aren't fully under control (and at times cannot be).
This is that whole accountability vs. anonymity thing. That is, complete anonymity == no accountability (whether that truth is exploited or not). Of course, this is all your basic food for thought in that mandatory CS Ethics class that they require now, so I'll just shut up. =)
I'm not sure, but this seems kind of like engineered information to support US companies looking for "relief" from the current IT job crunch.
Its amazing how companies dig on supply and demand until we start talking about capital/labor markets. =)
Of course, all metrics have problems, and the L.O.C. thing has been well covered, blah, blah, blah... I just don't like the idea of someone telling me that my 60 hours a week aren't good enough.
oh well...enough whining... I have to get cracking if I'm going to beat my "nonunion mexican equivilent" (to quote the simpsons).
Of course, there are many reasonable compilers that don't flag it at any warning level.
I dissagree about readability too. Its a "free" practice adjustment. *shrug* Follow your heart AC.
...but a neat little trick that I saw (and now use) is to rearrange the evaluation order to:
// instead of (iRet == 0)
int iRet = strcmp(x,y);
if (0 == iRet)
blah();
That way, if you happen to accidently type 1 = instead of 2 (==), you die at compile time rather than runtime.
Of course, this is not applicable to the given example (since the function doesn't evaluate to a valid LHS of an =), but I figured Id throw it out there in case someone hadn't seen it before.
Well, OK. But as someone who does Windows developement by day, I can tell you that I would love to have the source available...most notably comctrl32 and GDI32 source. Not to compile up, or to fix, but just to see what MS is doing in some strange circumstances that would help me better write my code that uses those DLLs.
Basicly, I would no longer have to take their documentation (or lack thereof) on faith!
OK. Conceded. MS has a solution for your problem, whether your problem is 3d developement, network programming, or plain old vanilla applications.
HOWEVER, I still feel that many of the windows API are just a simple case of bad design. They are CERTAINLY inconsistantly designed. I furthermore think that the MS solution is almost always inferior. Rate them yourself... CORBA-COM? D3D-GL? Win32(GUI portion)-Xtk?
I like my work a whole lot more when I don't have to fight the API (or the compiler).
I am also looking at this from a programming point of view instead of a user interface point of view. Consistancy of UI is important- blah blah blah. We've heard it before. I believe you. That said, I personally don't care too much about GUIs. I think they cloud the process unless done right, and I don't think MS does them right very often. Please, go out, write the best GUIs out there. I will appreciate it, others will appreciate it.
All that said. I write WinXX software because I get paid for it. I go home at night and write *nix software because I love it. Someday I'll get paid to write *nix software, and there will be dancing in the streets, and good old biblical celebration.
->You are right: it is complete.
->Complete or not, I would rather work with consistant, well designed API.
If I sound cross, my apologies.
I'm with you until you get to that "...it is an extremely complete GUI API". I guess I can't dissagree about completeness, but I would suggest that the API itself is incredibly bloated. My main beefs are with Win32 printing, ComCtrl32 objects, RichEd32 objects, and to a lesser degree GDI32 (although I have been burned more than once by their 16 bit limitations).
::EndPage() or CDC::EndPage() sometime (the CDC is a thin wrapper). There is a seperate section for EVERY SINGLE FLAVOR of windows. 5 windows, 5 behaviors (I'm counting win311 and wince here).
I do the printing module for a commercial tax application, and it is a MESS of IfNT() crap, not to mention inconsistancies in 95 and 98 that make me do a lot of redundant work-- just to be safe. Check out the documentation for
I would rather have a consistant API that may be a little sketchy in parts and make me do a little more work than forcing me to code around all the different configurations and hoping to god that they don't change behavior underneath me forcing me to ship disks again for MS changes. (I know DLLs are supposed to be backwards compatible, but in the ComCtrl case, I've noticed the details get fudged. The list control comes to mind.)
As an aside, I should mention that I find MFC pretty thin in most cases (Doc-View printing comes to mind as an exception)... The only reason I dislike it is that it immediately ties me to the "One MS Solution". I mean, we spent 10 years on a C++ standard... wouldn't it be nice to take advantage of it now that it is here?
Ah well \