Roll on Haiku finally getting an ISO of their OS ready. Then real work on getting an Ubunutu equivalent of Haiku can start. Haiku has been non-ISO for too long, but recent developments (native GCC/G++ 4.0) mean that may end soon.
Ditto for ReactOS.
Then issues like this can go away (I hope).
For the record: I make my living writing software for MS operating systems. MSDN is awesome and makes OSDN look pathetic. But this type of thing by Microsoft only works against them, so I wish for a solution that sidesteps that mentality, hence Haiku and ReactOS.
Software patents should be abolished - compete on the quality of implementation.
Its pretty clear from the job posting on Linked In that this guy has to know about Netbooks and mobile devices. That is explicit. Also further down in the posting it mentions not only x86 but also ARM - which is definitely mobile territory and many think will soon be Netbook territory. I'll only get a Netbook when its got an ARM in it. And of course it'll have Ubuntu on it when that happens - no Windows for ARM at the moment.
OK, what about this for an idea? We already know about "Singularity" - the byte code OS from Microsoft - they could port that to a Netbook very quickly - just port the runtime to ARM and the rest works (ok, slight simplification, but a lot easier than porting Windows 7 to ARM).
OK, that was a wild idea, but you never know.
Anyway, my 2 penneth, they are targetting Netbooks.
With Windows 2000 and XP, search worked, especially once you turned off the smiling dog and configured XP search to work like 2000 search (i.e. it does what you want it to, not what it thinks you want it to).
With Vista, they made search awful. Firstly they simplified it so that for anything that a developer would want to do you had to do a search you knew would fail and then in the resulting dialog (because there is no other way to get that dialog, well not that I've found) you got to interact with possibly one of the worst ever designed search dialogs going. No way a non-techie could use it. Almost as if the Visual Studio 7 search dialog team had been let lose on Vista!
Now we get to Windows 7, and the search experience is worse! You still have to do the stupid search that you know will fail, but when it does fail there is no sensible way to do a better search. There is an abomination called Custom Search that isn't, there is no way to search the whole filesystem, including hidden files and non-indexed locations (if there is, please tell me!). Its awful.
I can see I'm going to have to write my own search dialog for use with Windows 7. Yes, its that bad.
The explorer file navigation pane is still missing the "up" button that was present in all versions of Windows prior to Vista. Yes I know I can click on the appropriate point on the dynamic thingy above but in my usage the new "user friendly" way introduced with Vista is slower to use and requires more accuracy in mouse usage than simply clicking the up button a few times.
On the plus side, I haven't tripped over any god-awful "you can't do that" admin dialogs like in Vista (where the best thing you can do is turn that feature off).
I just don't understand how every time they try to make Windows friendlier to novices they make it harder to use for everyone. And in the process Ubuntu just looks better and better, not withstanding the fact it is getting better and better. Seems like MS are trying to damage themselves. Just hope the Ubuntu guys see these changes in Vista/Windows 7 and don't go there with their UI.
I love the eye candy, but its worth nothing if the useful features are broken. Who wants a sports car fitted with a 1 litre 2 stroke engine?
The problem is, as I've been flamed for before, Linux is still nowhere near the point where a non-techie will consider adopting it.
I disagree, its more than ready.
My father is 70 and self-taught in terms of computers. He has a non-tech background, he worked for Customs and Excise, finding drug smugglers, identifying fraudulent tax and gambling schemes and implementing the dreaded VAT. Definitely not technical. Occasionally I get a call from him to ask "how do I do this?", or "what does this mean?", not much. He has used Windows all the time and refused to upgrade to Vista. He wants it to use Office, use the Web (Firefox), email (Thunderbird), write notes on historical research and do some image processing with his digital photos.
Then about a month ago out of the blue I found out that he had installed Ubuntu 8.10 on his PC.
He was really happy with it. Everything worked, it even resized his partitions nicely and kept his Windows stuff as well.
As I write this he is setting up a refurbished Dell multimedia system with XP and Ubuntu with no help from me (other than to tell him to choose NTFS rather than FAT32 when installing XP).
Also, things *do* work with the latest Ubuntu. Its so much better than say a year ago.
I recently setup two machines with Ubuntu and everything setup without me touching one config file, even the dual monitor ATI card. Just as easy (and faster) than setting up XP on the same hardware.
If a 70 year old non-techie can do that, anyone can. Linux has arrived, its called Ubuntu:-)
In that case, write, on paper, to the chairman and/or CEO of the company.
Frequently the people at the top have no idea of the screws instigated in their name by the people lower down.
It seems in the US, from what I read on this topic, Lexus === old folks, but in the UK its a premium brand for all ages. Knowing this will happen has guaranteed I will never consider Lexus as a serious choice in the future (back to considering German only cars).
I've lived with RSI since 1993 - you get used to recognising things that do not help ergonomically. This looks like one of those things.
One of the major problems with RSI is that prolonged activation of muscle groups leads to fatigue. The term for this is static loading.
This is why click and release mouse behaviour (to activate menus, then click again to choose) is better for your health than the alternative method (click and hold, release to choose) because the alternative forces you to hold the mouse button down until you make your choice.
This keyboard idea is doing the same thing.
I suspect healthy people may like this keyboard and those suffering from RSI will dislike it greatly.
And yet, the dragging is way behind the finger, the responses of input and menu popup is slow
My guess is that this is deliberate and to do with the input method (touching).
When you use a mouse or trackball its obvious what you want, separate buttons for clicking and a ball for moving.
When you have a touch pad (laptop) or touch screen you have one input (your finger). A press and hold by your finger starts some input and if you move it then the mouse cursor moves. A quick tap and you get a click. Same for double clicks.
Touch pads are easier than touch screens and you have other issues with touch screens (size - longer distance affects capacitive charge etc). I suspect all these things combine with the UI ideas they are trying to result in longer than expected times to decide "they want a pie menu", "they want a something else" decision. If they go into production with this they'll probably smarten all that up.
Then you have the issue of the video itself. How representative is the video of the real speed of the machine, or is it clever/unintentional editing that has resulted in some things seeming fast and others slow?
I find my Dell Inspiron's touchpad very useful, but occasionally the software misunderstands what I intended. I imagine this touch screen stuff will be good for some apps and awful for others (telephones aren't very good for painting pictures:-).
For the competition to mean anything the Dragon and Hydra teams should be trying to solve the same problem. But they aren't. The rules explicitly state they are solving different problems. Talking about starting your test with a built in bias (which ever way that bias is).
And thats not even counting the issues of talent of individual team members and if those particular participants are well suit to working well with each other (as opposed to working well with someone else or on their own).
Stuff and nonesense. As others have noted, good design and modularity are good starting points. I've worked with some great people in my time and none of us would ever want someone else editing the same file at the same time as they were.
I'm also not convinced that you will get the greatest talent entering this competition either. You may get lots of young, eager people, some of which may be talented, but anyone old enough to have been around to know what works for them and for their colleagues, I doubt very much they'd be interested. Fame, get on a TV show? No thanks, way too shallow and vacuous. Neither of which are attributes I've found in people I regard as talented.
FUD about licensing aside (dealt with already by another poster)...what do you think Qt is?
Already answered this in other posts. I never said MSDN was cross platform, but there are a variety of cross platform solutions available, such as wxWidgets (look at the Wikipedia entry for wxWidgets, it lists lots of other toolkits, including Qt).
What I was pointing out was that Qt seemed expensive and yet they get lots of Kudos but MS provides lots for free and get slammed. I was not equating cross platform == MS. If that wasn't clear, well sorry, thats life, the only person that doesn't make mistakes is the person that makes nothing.
Trolltech clearly messed up their quote for me a while back (or have radically changed their licensing). I can't find their original email to me as a disk crash wiped all that a few years ago.
I've got some new pricing from them which is much more sensible and realistic, both in terms of licensing and support costs. With these new numbers my $42,000 and $126,000 figures can be ignored.
Lots of different opinions on Qt, wxWidgets from many people. Some very partisan, others not so. Turns out some of my customers use wxWidgets and some use Qt. Also seems that if you already have a lot of MFC in your codebase that wxWidgets is a better match than Qt, although Qt does have a migration path.
Do you yourself code to win32 and/or mfc, and do you think it's a good framework?
Yes. I've been using it since 1996 (two codebases, both multiple millions of lines of C++). Before that I was knee deep in Motif/X11 (million lines of C) and occasionally OpenView. Also spent many years using Java (and hating the experience), an awful language (like programming in a straightjacket after assembly, C and C++).
MFC - Good framework? It works. Its usable. I ported a 2 million line C++ app from Win32 to Win64 (pre-rpdocution Itanium box running Whistler) in 2001. I made probably 10 lines of code changes to handle any Win32/Win64 API changes to make that port. I consider that to be well designed. We made plenty of other changes to make the port happen (to do with pointer storage and containers/templates) but thats a design issue from the original team that wrote the codebase in the first place.
When I worked with Motif/X11 on 7 different Unix boxes, everytime we ported to a new box we had to make more changes than I describe above just to port from Unix to Unix, not even changing machine word length. Then someone gives you a machine with an Alpha chip (64 bit) and all of a sudden you can't put pointers in certain X11 structures because they are 32 bit only. Nice design:-(
Thanks. Sounds like they misinterpreted the number of applications as the number of developers. We have no intention of sharing a license - the licensed person(s) will be the only person(s) using the license(s).
I've just been browsing their website and cannot find pricing information anywhere. Everytime I find a link on their site (or on other websites) that claims to point to pricing information it resolves to a different URL on trolltech's site and that URL has no pricing information. Even the BUY page has no pricing information.
I've contacted their sales team, but as yet, had no reply.
Interesting claims you make there. I had no idea Microsoft were licencing out the Win32 API on Linux and OS X for a flat-rate fee... I didn't say they were. I pointed out you could have the Platform SDK and Visual Studio for free. Add wxWidgets and you are fully cross platform.
Its mad, it doesn't bear scrutiny. And yet I find time after time people holding up Qt as wonderful, often in open source circles, whilst at the same time doing down Microsoft. But for the cost of one license for MSDN you can only license one application for Qt development, both per year. MS provides more value for equivalent fees.
I'm not knocking Qt's technical merits. I'm sure its great. We have customers telling us they use Qt and its great etc. No problem with that.
But, per application, recurring per year, its expensive, and yet Microsoft is attacked for its licensing while Qt is seemingly venerated, left right and centre, but Qt is the more expensive. MSDN professional costs the same (no matter how many applications) and you get shed load for that.
Just to give you an example: For MSDN we pay £563.xx (approx $1116) per year, but for Qt, our licensing fees would be $42,000. And should we port to Linux and Mac OS/X, our licensing fees for MSDN would be £453 (approx $1116) and our Qt fees would be $126,000).
So why does Qt get such veneration when the value for money is so poor compared to the industry pariah (sic), Microsoft (I've excluded Apple because so many of you seem blind to the proprietary hardware lock-in on every Apple product past and present).
Even if you want to just do open source, you can have the platform SDK and Visual Studio Express for free, which is greater value than Qt. Thats not what I'm discussing, but I had to include it to stop the "oh but Qt is free for Open source" replies that miss the point.
Well, I guess I might as well try to defend myself.
Why? I wasnt' attacking you. I was commenting on the 200 times a day. Something that you've revoked.
then you change the code to fix the tests. Crazy waste of time right? Yes, if you are coding trial and error. You should be coding what you know to be right, then testing that. There is a huge difference in approaches.
If you are coding in a trial and error fashion and using unit tests that way, I'd advise getting some tuition or changing career.
Thanks, I love you too. You are more than welcome. Trial and error is not the way to go about building a successful career.
Here's a question: how much time do you spend working out what happened when your code breaks? Practically none. Because I don't do trial and error. You don't need to do trial and error to beleive in unit tests.
What counts is that when you run the unit tests, they pass, and that they accurately test the conditions that need testing. I disagree with you.
You disagree that what matters when you run unit tests is that you run them at the right time, that they test the right thing and that they pass? Then why are you using them? If you don't care about the quality of them, what is the point?
I know it will most likely result in a swift abrasive response
Hardly, unlike you, I haven't personalised my response. You should try re-reading my first post. It was an attack on a possible method (trial and error), not an attack on you, as a person. It was filled with caveats (if statements) to cope with multiple conditions. You have self-selected yourself as a trial and error coder and you are proud of it (based on your reply). Amazing.
It is quite plausible that I am highly productive. Its also highly plausible that other people are too, some of which will be more productive than I. Its also highly plausible that, you should choose to accept those statements, perhaps my observations are correct. The instant I read 200 I knew you were wrong.
As to your comment that you can work while the tests are running - how in that case can you decide what to do next if you don't yet know what you last did worked. Thats the blind leading the blind.
Flame away if you want. I'm not entering in a flame war with you. Your methodology is wrong. Unit tests work, TDD works, but not the way you describe you use it, trial and error is NOT how to use Unit tests or TDD, design and test is. Huge difference. If you can't implement your design without guessing, that is trial and error.
Well, if you are testing your code 200 times a day, you are almost certainly wasting time. Lets run some numbers:
Assuming you work an 8 hour day, that means you are testing your code every 2 minutes and 24 seconds. Given that most of your tests will take this long to run (you've got a suite of them right?), that leaves you with zero time to actually do the work you are testing.
Frankly, if you are using Unit Tests you should be using them after major chunks of work, not in a trial and error fashion. Now if you were using them in a trial and error fashion - "lets change this, run the tests and see if they pass, no that didn't work, lets try this", etc, I could understand how you hit the 200 times per day mark.
If you are coding in a trial and error fashion and using unit tests that way, I'd advise getting some tuition or changing career.
If you aren't doing a trial and error, then I'd suggest that you've perhaps exaggerated the 200 times figure.
I'm a highly productive individual, in terms of writing software and I'd guess I'd have cause of getting out the unit tests a few times a day down to maybe once every few days. The rest of the time I'm actually implementing the design thats in my head/on paper etc.
I believe in incremental development, but that doesn't mean blowing huge wads of time needlessly running unit tests. Which means, by implication, the unit tests ARE NOT part of the build process. They are something I run at times of my choosing when I think the work I'm doing is at a point that may benefit from such tests.
Making the unit tests part of the build process is like requiring a roadworthiness test for you car every one mile you drive it. Sure the car is safe, but its not very productive at getting you from A to B, you could walk faster.
What counts is that when you run the unit tests, they pass, and that they accurately test the conditions that need testing.
And the correlation between the two is? That's right there is no correlation and neither should there be an expected correlation.
So black people play games predominantly written by whites, great, white people consume cocaine predominantly manufactured by Latinos and white people also consume heroine predominantly manufactured by people that get the raw ingredients from exceedingly poor farmers in Afghanistan. Should I be expecting most of Columbia to be crack addicts and most of Afghanistan to be Herion addicts? No, so why should I be concerned that there is a disparity between consumption and creation of video games? Jeez, the level of thinking here is *REALLY* poor.
This is a story about nothing.
Breaking news today a Martian arrived on Earth that can play Pacman really well. We fully expect an invasion of Martians that can play Defender, Mr Do's Castle and Robotron equally well.
Dude.. You live in Chicago, it's a grid, lucky you.
Unlucky him. No character in a place like that.
It also has streets change names at random places for reasons that, while historically interesting, make no navigational sense.
Ah, so its like the UK. Where places have some history and character. Great. Sounds like a place I'd like. I know the music is up to the job.
Hate to burst your bubble dude, but for some of us, the thing you envy (the grid) is sterile and featureless.
Who orders food before they get to a restaurant they've never been to? Practically no one. Its not a reason to own a GPS. It is a marketing strawman. If you have not been to that restaurant before you don't know their menu, and you don't know their execution, thus ordering before you get there will gaurantee you only order what you know, not what they are capable of.
For those of you that can't live without a GPS, I pity you. Map reading is a bloody useful skill. One that you will need should
your batteries fail you when you are several thousand metres above sea level on a mountain somewhere (and yes, that is worth doing, so get some exercise!) Yes, a GPS is useful, but life goes on without one and the damn thing does not need to be able to play MP3s, its a navigational device, not a disco.
In hindsight it is obvious that someone should have offered to buy the remains of SCO while in Chapter 11.
Once they had ownership they'd turn over all "assets" (assuming there are any) to public domain or the Linux
Foundation (or whatever, you get the gist) and then immediately dissolve the company.
Something I haven't seen mentioned is that because this is an RFID tag it should be possible to deny ingress or egress to the property by swamping the radio spectrum used by the tag. That should be reasonably easy to do. Effectively a Denial of Ingress attack. So you could lock this Australian guy in his own house (or lock him out) and he'd have no answer. Short of turning the system off and using a real key of course.
As I said in my previous post, its pointless. Replacing a low tech, no wires, super low maintenance solution with technology, power, etc. Completely the wrong direction. Not even environmentally friendly, the manufacturing costs (including the polution for the silicon parts etc) for the tech version are going to be way higher than for the key version.
Why have a key to open your front door....?
on
Australia's Geekiest Man
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?
Because I don't want the door to open just because I'm near it.
Because I don't want the door to lock just because I'm not near it.
Because I don't want to be locked in if there is a power failure.
Because I don't want to be locked out if there is a power failure.
Because I don't want cancer caused by the implant.
Because its a damn stupid idea..
Just because its a use of technology doesn't make it clever or cool.
I'm sure some of you can think of other reasons I haven't enumerated here.
RFID tags and proximity cards (like on some cars) are not a good replacement for a key. They do not behave the same way.
We have a modern key-less system at the local swimming pool. Keys have been replaced with a wristband with a single button about the size of a UK 5pence piece (a dime in the US I think). Most of the time they work well. But when the conductance isn't quite right (usually the surfaces are too wet) they don't work. In a swimming pool and the changing rooms, the chances of things being too wet, is er, rather high. A different pool I go to uses real keys. I never, ever have a problem opening a locker at that pool. The key does what it is meant to do, that is, be a key, not a clever, technology over-engineered replacement for a key that requires operator intervention by the key creators to fix malfunctions.
We have a lecturer (professor?) here in the UK that does stupid stuff like this all the time. Gets him in the media.
I'm sure he loves it. Really, really sad. Why don't people use their creativity a bit more usefully?
Slashdot Mirror
Roll on Haiku finally getting an ISO of their OS ready. Then real work on getting an Ubunutu equivalent of Haiku can start. Haiku has been non-ISO for too long, but recent developments (native GCC/G++ 4.0) mean that may end soon.
Ditto for ReactOS.
Then issues like this can go away (I hope).
For the record: I make my living writing software for MS operating systems. MSDN is awesome and makes OSDN look pathetic. But this type of thing by Microsoft only works against them, so I wish for a solution that sidesteps that mentality, hence Haiku and ReactOS.
Software patents should be abolished - compete on the quality of implementation.
Its pretty clear from the job posting on Linked In that this guy has to know about Netbooks and mobile devices. That is explicit. Also further down in the posting it mentions not only x86 but also ARM - which is definitely mobile territory and many think will soon be Netbook territory. I'll only get a Netbook when its got an ARM in it. And of course it'll have Ubuntu on it when that happens - no Windows for ARM at the moment.
OK, what about this for an idea? We already know about "Singularity" - the byte code OS from Microsoft - they could port that to a Netbook very quickly - just port the runtime to ARM and the rest works (ok, slight simplification, but a lot easier than porting Windows 7 to ARM).
OK, that was a wild idea, but you never know.
Anyway, my 2 penneth, they are targetting Netbooks.
With Windows 2000 and XP, search worked, especially once you turned off the smiling dog and configured XP search to work like 2000 search (i.e. it does what you want it to, not what it thinks you want it to).
With Vista, they made search awful. Firstly they simplified it so that for anything that a developer would want to do you had to do a search you knew would fail and then in the resulting dialog (because there is no other way to get that dialog, well not that I've found) you got to interact with possibly one of the worst ever designed search dialogs going. No way a non-techie could use it. Almost as if the Visual Studio 7 search dialog team had been let lose on Vista!
Now we get to Windows 7, and the search experience is worse! You still have to do the stupid search that you know will fail, but when it does fail there is no sensible way to do a better search. There is an abomination called Custom Search that isn't, there is no way to search the whole filesystem, including hidden files and non-indexed locations (if there is, please tell me!). Its awful.
I can see I'm going to have to write my own search dialog for use with Windows 7. Yes, its that bad.
The explorer file navigation pane is still missing the "up" button that was present in all versions of Windows prior to Vista. Yes I know I can click on the appropriate point on the dynamic thingy above but in my usage the new "user friendly" way introduced with Vista is slower to use and requires more accuracy in mouse usage than simply clicking the up button a few times.
On the plus side, I haven't tripped over any god-awful "you can't do that" admin dialogs like in Vista (where the best thing you can do is turn that feature off).
I just don't understand how every time they try to make Windows friendlier to novices they make it harder to use for everyone. And in the process Ubuntu just looks better and better, not withstanding the fact it is getting better and better. Seems like MS are trying to damage themselves. Just hope the Ubuntu guys see these changes in Vista/Windows 7 and don't go there with their UI.
I love the eye candy, but its worth nothing if the useful features are broken. Who wants a sports car fitted with a 1 litre 2 stroke engine?
Stephen
The problem is, as I've been flamed for before, Linux is still nowhere near the point where a non-techie will consider adopting it.
I disagree, its more than ready.
My father is 70 and self-taught in terms of computers. He has a non-tech background, he worked for Customs and Excise, finding drug smugglers, identifying fraudulent tax and gambling schemes and implementing the dreaded VAT. Definitely not technical. Occasionally I get a call from him to ask "how do I do this?", or "what does this mean?", not much. He has used Windows all the time and refused to upgrade to Vista. He wants it to use Office, use the Web (Firefox), email (Thunderbird), write notes on historical research and do some image processing with his digital photos.
Then about a month ago out of the blue I found out that he had installed Ubuntu 8.10 on his PC. He was really happy with it. Everything worked, it even resized his partitions nicely and kept his Windows stuff as well.
As I write this he is setting up a refurbished Dell multimedia system with XP and Ubuntu with no help from me (other than to tell him to choose NTFS rather than FAT32 when installing XP).
Also, things *do* work with the latest Ubuntu. Its so much better than say a year ago. I recently setup two machines with Ubuntu and everything setup without me touching one config file, even the dual monitor ATI card. Just as easy (and faster) than setting up XP on the same hardware.
If a 70 year old non-techie can do that, anyone can. Linux has arrived, its called Ubuntu :-)
Stephen
Frequently the people at the top have no idea of the screws instigated in their name by the people lower down.
It seems in the US, from what I read on this topic, Lexus === old folks, but in the UK its a premium brand for all ages. Knowing this will happen has guaranteed I will never consider Lexus as a serious choice in the future (back to considering German only cars).
Thats seriously bad marketing.
I've lived with RSI since 1993 - you get used to recognising things that do not help ergonomically. This looks like one of those things.
One of the major problems with RSI is that prolonged activation of muscle groups leads to fatigue. The term for this is static loading.
This is why click and release mouse behaviour (to activate menus, then click again to choose) is better for your health than the alternative method (click and hold, release to choose) because the alternative forces you to hold the mouse button down until you make your choice.
This keyboard idea is doing the same thing.
I suspect healthy people may like this keyboard and those suffering from RSI will dislike it greatly.
Info on RSI and remedial exercises: http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/rsi/rsi_srk.html
Stephen
Peadophilia is, statistically speaking, less of a threat to your children than lightning.
Odds of being struck by lightning in the US. Do various searches on the internet. Values between 244,000:1 and 576,000:1.
Assuming a US population of 250 million, with the lower number, that means there should be about 1000 victims of paedophilia in the US per year.
With the higher number, about 500 per year.
Doesn't matter which you pick, you are wrong. Its still true if you have a US population of 350 million.
And yet, the dragging is way behind the finger, the responses of input and menu popup is slow
My guess is that this is deliberate and to do with the input method (touching).
When you use a mouse or trackball its obvious what you want, separate buttons for clicking and a ball for moving.
When you have a touch pad (laptop) or touch screen you have one input (your finger). A press and hold by your finger starts some input and if you move it then the mouse cursor moves. A quick tap and you get a click. Same for double clicks.
Touch pads are easier than touch screens and you have other issues with touch screens (size - longer distance affects capacitive charge etc). I suspect all these things combine with the UI ideas they are trying to result in longer than expected times to decide "they want a pie menu", "they want a something else" decision. If they go into production with this they'll probably smarten all that up.
Then you have the issue of the video itself. How representative is the video of the real speed of the machine, or is it clever/unintentional editing that has resulted in some things seeming fast and others slow?
I find my Dell Inspiron's touchpad very useful, but occasionally the software misunderstands what I intended. I imagine this touch screen stuff will be good for some apps and awful for others (telephones aren't very good for painting pictures :-).
For the competition to mean anything the Dragon and Hydra teams should be trying to solve the same problem. But they aren't. The rules explicitly state they are solving different problems. Talking about starting your test with a built in bias (which ever way that bias is).
And thats not even counting the issues of talent of individual team members and if those particular participants are well suit to working well with each other (as opposed to working well with someone else or on their own).
Stuff and nonesense. As others have noted, good design and modularity are good starting points. I've worked with some great people in my time and none of us would ever want someone else editing the same file at the same time as they were.
I'm also not convinced that you will get the greatest talent entering this competition either. You may get lots of young, eager people, some of which may be talented, but anyone old enough to have been around to know what works for them and for their colleagues, I doubt very much they'd be interested. Fame, get on a TV show? No thanks, way too shallow and vacuous. Neither of which are attributes I've found in people I regard as talented.
FUD about licensing aside (dealt with already by another poster)...what do you think Qt is?
Already answered this in other posts. I never said MSDN was cross platform, but there are a variety of cross platform solutions available, such as wxWidgets (look at the Wikipedia entry for wxWidgets, it lists lots of other toolkits, including Qt).
What I was pointing out was that Qt seemed expensive and yet they get lots of Kudos but MS provides lots for free and get slammed. I was not equating cross platform == MS. If that wasn't clear, well sorry, thats life, the only person that doesn't make mistakes is the person that makes nothing.
Trolltech clearly messed up their quote for me a while back (or have radically changed their licensing). I can't find their original email to me as a disk crash wiped all that a few years ago.
I've got some new pricing from them which is much more sensible and realistic, both in terms of licensing and support costs. With these new numbers my $42,000 and $126,000 figures can be ignored.
Lots of different opinions on Qt, wxWidgets from many people. Some very partisan, others not so. Turns out some of my customers use wxWidgets and some use Qt. Also seems that if you already have a lot of MFC in your codebase that wxWidgets is a better match than Qt, although Qt does have a migration path.
Do you yourself code to win32 and/or mfc, and do you think it's a good framework?
Yes. I've been using it since 1996 (two codebases, both multiple millions of lines of C++). Before that I was knee deep in Motif/X11 (million lines of C) and occasionally OpenView. Also spent many years using Java (and hating the experience), an awful language (like programming in a straightjacket after assembly, C and C++).
MFC - Good framework? It works. Its usable. I ported a 2 million line C++ app from Win32 to Win64 (pre-rpdocution Itanium box running Whistler) in 2001. I made probably 10 lines of code changes to handle any Win32/Win64 API changes to make that port. I consider that to be well designed. We made plenty of other changes to make the port happen (to do with pointer storage and containers/templates) but thats a design issue from the original team that wrote the codebase in the first place.
When I worked with Motif/X11 on 7 different Unix boxes, everytime we ported to a new box we had to make more changes than I describe above just to port from Unix to Unix, not even changing machine word length. Then someone gives you a machine with an Alpha chip (64 bit) and all of a sudden you can't put pointers in certain X11 structures because they are 32 bit only. Nice design :-(
If you have a point to make, make it. I have no idea what you mean with your negatives comment.
With WxWidgets you can go open source or close source. Read their license.
http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/newlicen.htm
Thanks. Sounds like they misinterpreted the number of applications as the number of developers. We have no intention of sharing a license - the licensed person(s) will be the only person(s) using the license(s).
I've just been browsing their website and cannot find pricing information anywhere. Everytime I find a link on their site (or on other websites) that claims to point to pricing information it resolves to a different URL on trolltech's site and that URL has no pricing information. Even the BUY page has no pricing information.
I've contacted their sales team, but as yet, had no reply.
Trolltech has never licensed Qt per application.
In which case their sales team either misunderstood our requirements or mis-informed us when we contacted them some time ago.
If what you say is correct, that changes things considerably.
Or you could code only for Windows/Mac/Linux, write your own library, or go open source. Notice all those or's.
You can replace all those ORs with ANDs if you use wxWidgets. Problem solved.
Well, I asked Qt directly about the pricing. It was a few years ago.
If I was misinformed, they did themselves a great dis-service, as if the pricing was not per-application it would be acceptable.
As for single code-base solutions, have you heard of wxWidgets? Hence my pricing analysis.
Why does Qt get such kudos?
Its mad, it doesn't bear scrutiny. And yet I find time after time people holding up Qt as wonderful, often in open source circles, whilst at the same time doing down Microsoft. But for the cost of one license for MSDN you can only license one application for Qt development, both per year. MS provides more value for equivalent fees.
I'm not knocking Qt's technical merits. I'm sure its great. We have customers telling us they use Qt and its great etc. No problem with that.
But, per application, recurring per year, its expensive, and yet Microsoft is attacked for its licensing while Qt is seemingly venerated, left right and centre, but Qt is the more expensive. MSDN professional costs the same (no matter how many applications) and you get shed load for that.
Just to give you an example: For MSDN we pay £563.xx (approx $1116) per year, but for Qt, our licensing fees would be $42,000. And should we port to Linux and Mac OS/X, our licensing fees for MSDN would be £453 (approx $1116) and our Qt fees would be $126,000).
So why does Qt get such veneration when the value for money is so poor compared to the industry pariah (sic), Microsoft (I've excluded Apple because so many of you seem blind to the proprietary hardware lock-in on every Apple product past and present).
Even if you want to just do open source, you can have the platform SDK and Visual Studio Express for free, which is greater value than Qt. Thats not what I'm discussing, but I had to include it to stop the "oh but Qt is free for Open source" replies that miss the point.
Why? I wasnt' attacking you. I was commenting on the 200 times a day. Something that you've revoked.
then you change the code to fix the tests. Crazy waste of time right? Yes, if you are coding trial and error. You should be coding what you know to be right, then testing that. There is a huge difference in approaches. If you are coding in a trial and error fashion and using unit tests that way, I'd advise getting some tuition or changing career. Thanks, I love you too. You are more than welcome. Trial and error is not the way to go about building a successful career. Here's a question: how much time do you spend working out what happened when your code breaks? Practically none. Because I don't do trial and error. You don't need to do trial and error to beleive in unit tests. What counts is that when you run the unit tests, they pass, and that they accurately test the conditions that need testing. I disagree with you.You disagree that what matters when you run unit tests is that you run them at the right time, that they test the right thing and that they pass? Then why are you using them? If you don't care about the quality of them, what is the point?
I know it will most likely result in a swift abrasive responseHardly, unlike you, I haven't personalised my response. You should try re-reading my first post. It was an attack on a possible method (trial and error), not an attack on you, as a person. It was filled with caveats (if statements) to cope with multiple conditions. You have self-selected yourself as a trial and error coder and you are proud of it (based on your reply). Amazing.
It is quite plausible that I am highly productive. Its also highly plausible that other people are too, some of which will be more productive than I. Its also highly plausible that, you should choose to accept those statements, perhaps my observations are correct. The instant I read 200 I knew you were wrong.
As to your comment that you can work while the tests are running - how in that case can you decide what to do next if you don't yet know what you last did worked. Thats the blind leading the blind.
Flame away if you want. I'm not entering in a flame war with you. Your methodology is wrong. Unit tests work, TDD works, but not the way you describe you use it, trial and error is NOT how to use Unit tests or TDD, design and test is. Huge difference. If you can't implement your design without guessing, that is trial and error.
Well, if you are testing your code 200 times a day, you are almost certainly wasting time. Lets run some numbers:
Assuming you work an 8 hour day, that means you are testing your code every 2 minutes and 24 seconds. Given that most of your tests will take this long to run (you've got a suite of them right?), that leaves you with zero time to actually do the work you are testing.
Frankly, if you are using Unit Tests you should be using them after major chunks of work, not in a trial and error fashion. Now if you were using them in a trial and error fashion - "lets change this, run the tests and see if they pass, no that didn't work, lets try this", etc, I could understand how you hit the 200 times per day mark.
If you are coding in a trial and error fashion and using unit tests that way, I'd advise getting some tuition or changing career.
If you aren't doing a trial and error, then I'd suggest that you've perhaps exaggerated the 200 times figure.
I'm a highly productive individual, in terms of writing software and I'd guess I'd have cause of getting out the unit tests a few times a day down to maybe once every few days. The rest of the time I'm actually implementing the design thats in my head/on paper etc.
I believe in incremental development, but that doesn't mean blowing huge wads of time needlessly running unit tests. Which means, by implication, the unit tests ARE NOT part of the build process. They are something I run at times of my choosing when I think the work I'm doing is at a point that may benefit from such tests.
Making the unit tests part of the build process is like requiring a roadworthiness test for you car every one mile you drive it. Sure the car is safe, but its not very productive at getting you from A to B, you could walk faster.
What counts is that when you run the unit tests, they pass, and that they accurately test the conditions that need testing.
yet only 2% of game developers are black.
And the correlation between the two is? That's right there is no correlation and neither should there be an expected correlation.
So black people play games predominantly written by whites, great, white people consume cocaine predominantly manufactured by Latinos and white people also consume heroine predominantly manufactured by people that get the raw ingredients from exceedingly poor farmers in Afghanistan. Should I be expecting most of Columbia to be crack addicts and most of Afghanistan to be Herion addicts? No, so why should I be concerned that there is a disparity between consumption and creation of video games? Jeez, the level of thinking here is *REALLY* poor.
This is a story about nothing.
Breaking news today a Martian arrived on Earth that can play Pacman really well. We fully expect an invasion of Martians that can play Defender, Mr Do's Castle and Robotron equally well.
Dude.. You live in Chicago, it's a grid, lucky you.
Unlucky him. No character in a place like that.
It also has streets change names at random places for reasons that, while historically interesting, make no navigational sense.
Ah, so its like the UK. Where places have some history and character. Great. Sounds like a place I'd like. I know the music is up to the job.
Hate to burst your bubble dude, but for some of us, the thing you envy (the grid) is sterile and featureless.
Who orders food before they get to a restaurant they've never been to? Practically no one. Its not a reason to own a GPS. It is a marketing strawman. If you have not been to that restaurant before you don't know their menu, and you don't know their execution, thus ordering before you get there will gaurantee you only order what you know, not what they are capable of.
For those of you that can't live without a GPS, I pity you. Map reading is a bloody useful skill. One that you will need should your batteries fail you when you are several thousand metres above sea level on a mountain somewhere (and yes, that is worth doing, so get some exercise!) Yes, a GPS is useful, but life goes on without one and the damn thing does not need to be able to play MP3s, its a navigational device, not a disco.
Stephen
In hindsight it is obvious that someone should have offered to buy the remains of SCO while in Chapter 11. Once they had ownership they'd turn over all "assets" (assuming there are any) to public domain or the Linux Foundation (or whatever, you get the gist) and then immediately dissolve the company.
Anyone got a time machine?
Something I haven't seen mentioned is that because this is an RFID tag it should be possible to deny ingress or egress to the property by swamping the radio spectrum used by the tag. That should be reasonably easy to do. Effectively a Denial of Ingress attack. So you could lock this Australian guy in his own house (or lock him out) and he'd have no answer. Short of turning the system off and using a real key of course.
As I said in my previous post, its pointless. Replacing a low tech, no wires, super low maintenance solution with technology, power, etc. Completely the wrong direction. Not even environmentally friendly, the manufacturing costs (including the polution for the silicon parts etc) for the tech version are going to be way higher than for the key version.
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?
RFID tags and proximity cards (like on some cars) are not a good replacement for a key. They do not behave the same way.
We have a modern key-less system at the local swimming pool. Keys have been replaced with a wristband with a single button about the size of a UK 5pence piece (a dime in the US I think). Most of the time they work well. But when the conductance isn't quite right (usually the surfaces are too wet) they don't work. In a swimming pool and the changing rooms, the chances of things being too wet, is er, rather high. A different pool I go to uses real keys. I never, ever have a problem opening a locker at that pool. The key does what it is meant to do, that is, be a key, not a clever, technology over-engineered replacement for a key that requires operator intervention by the key creators to fix malfunctions.
We have a lecturer (professor?) here in the UK that does stupid stuff like this all the time. Gets him in the media. I'm sure he loves it. Really, really sad. Why don't people use their creativity a bit more usefully?