If you need the sales then it was sort of necessary to put up with the crowds. I make enough money that I'd rather pay extra than stand in huge lines. But better is to get your holiday gifts in June or pay attention to sales throughout the year.
Got some holiday shopping done today. Big sale, but they pushed hard for me to sign up for their Mastercard, even though I already have their store card. Then they pushed hard to keep trying to get me to enter a phone number that matched their records, then they asked for an email, and I flat out refused despite the offer of savings and points. I just want to buy stuff and get out of there as soon as I could. (I suspect from the total that I didn't get the 50% off that was advertised everywhere).
57 is disappointing. Default color scheme was horrible, but that's fixable. But it's now slower than it used to be for all the hype of being faster. And legacy extensions are disallowed with no replacement for noscript yet. Even more preference settings have vanished, and some preferences were changed on me. The new tabs page is horrid (was in 56 also) and you can't get the old style back (ie, I prefer my home page in new tabs). New icons are ridiculous looking. I normally never update this soon, waiting for a dot release instead, but I thought it would fix a problem I was having that turns out to be fault of an updated extension instead.
So far, nothing is an improvement in any way. If they were smart, they'd add a "rollback" button.
I did it for about a month. It was pointless when you had access to USENET, and Compuserve was very difficult to use and navigate in comparison to everything else.
A good game should survive by itself, and any DLC is 100% optional and is not just a way to compete an unfinished game. Ideally the developer should not even be thinking about DLC until the game is done. Today though it seems like DLCs are planned up-front.
Most large gaming corporations aren't innovative either. They're like Hollywood in that sense, they have such huge budget that they keep recycling proven formulas.
My favorite games that I keep play or returning to do not have the best graphics, physics, whatever. They may even be buggy. What they don't have is 10 hours of gameplay, they come with hundreds of hours, replayability (not just because you unlocked Princess Leia), and so forth. New games rarely measure up.
They have them in the mmo I play. But they don't affect gameplay much, and subsidize the game for those who can play from start to end for free. It's a choice for players to decide to play free versus buying microtransactions versus subscribing.
So just don't buy the game, don't pay for the microtransactions. if a game *requires* microtransaction to "win" then boycott it. Granted, some players have bizarre definitions of "win" though. But if you need to buy a crate or unlock a character just to enjoy the game then it's past time to go outside and take a deep breath. That's far simpler than going on a rant and sending death threats - if you have that much energy then please spend it doing something useful. Of all the injustices in the world that need fixing, this microtransaction issue is insignificant.
The smart thing is always to find out about a game first before buying it. Never pre-purchase a game, that's just dumb. Especially from a major publisher as those are almost always the most hated companies in the country. (seriously, who still buys a game from EA or uses Origin??)
Oh, I couldn't tell if they were working without putting in a quarter... But I do see some, and there are web sites that list where they are. Yes, some are in bad shape. This could be wrong, but it's not me that's lying to you it would be the FCC.
True. It also used to be true that landlines supplied their own power, meaning that you could make emergency phone calls in a power outage. Now when there's a power outage, the mobile access points go down too, and the POTS phone you keep for emergencies needs to be plugged in to work.
That's for home only. The payphone is necessary for those without phones who are outside the home. So you won't find them in hipster neighborhoods, but you may find them in the poorer parts of town.
Looked at a local list of payphones, and I see some inside of pizza places, gas stations, at train stations, bus stops, outside the 7-11, university dorms, etc. There's even one outside of a Fry's Electronics store.
And those mobile phones, especially the newer ones, suck through battery life very quickly. When the battery dies and you need to make a call, having a pay phone is a nice thing. Oops, hipsters did all their payments from a phone so they don't have any quarters!
In the public sector, these "everyday users" are a smaller fraction of computer use. They are going to have a lot of programs run to manage streelights, roads, stoplights, water, sewage, fire, police, and so forth. They are going to have a very broadly distributed set of buildings, and an even more distributed set of computers and devices to be managed and used.
However, most mail programs don't do well at unifying mail and calendars, which is one thing that Outlook does do well. It would be nice if Outlook were more open and used more standards. But as it is, MS Exchange dominates the market, along with Outlook, for tiny companies all the way to giant enterprises. That's probably the primary reason that MS Office maintains its dominance.
Oh, I agree. Laptops are just never going to be ergonomic. First, they won't work on actual laps, the screen is too far away, the lap isn't level, and they get too hot. But if you use the keyboard on a laptop then the screen is not in an optimal viewing position. Even with younger people with better eyes, I tend to see them hunched over when using a laptop. So I always want the external keyboard, mouse, AND monitor up at eye level.
I can not get used to laptop keyboards anyway. 99% of the time I am at my desk when using a laptop which means using an external keyboard and mouse. So when I have to use the laptop directly it's always crude and clumsy.
That said, I like my macbook pro (2015) better than most, that flatter keys feel better than the classic large key style, and is definitely quieter. Better yet, the last desktop I bought from Dell came with the same flatter key style for it's full size keyboard so it's the same feel at work or home. I assume the Mac Air would be far too small for me.
I think the point I was trying to make is that many C programmers are conditioned to know that macros can be bloaty. Usually the programmer knows up front that speed or size is important. My experience is that many C++ programmers are conditioned to work fast, and not worry about size or speed because there's always a bigger and faster processor coming soon. I'm not trying to say that all the programmers are this way, but it's a distinct trend I've seen.
I've seen the "one tool fits all" style of thinking in C++ a lot. Ie, if you've got std::map, then that's all you need. I saw someone implement something that should have just been a simple array lookup, a small fixed size array of 5 elements, which could have been done in plain C; but he used std::map for this which made it larger and slower and took more programmer time. Even std::vector would have been preferable. And the programmer knew that space was at a premium.
I do like templates if used sparingly and not in an STL style where whole objects are copied into containers instead of just pointers or references. I've used templates that just provided pointer type safety with a more generic underlying library that took void*. I used to like the RogueWave C++ classes, until the STL took hold.
I seriously would like to swap some projects from C to a simplified C++ (no generics, no exceptions). This would add some very important features: - strong typing - better code organization (via classes and namespaces).
Actually, I'd be very happy if the devs just started using C99 or C11 standards...:-)
And yet, those lines-of-code people quite often keep their jobs for long periods. That's because these people always look busy, they've always got their names attached to tons of source code checkins, and the boss may be fooled into thinking this is productivity.
The dev writing 7 lines of code a month may actually be more valuable overall, but it becomes difficult to prove that when it's time to hand out raises.
I am using a chip with only 20KB or RAM, and 128KB of code space. Efficiency is mandatory there, you can't just replace that by getting a faster computer, duck taping a raspberry pi to the side.
Note that computers today do not feel any faster than they did 25 years ago when running typical applications. Part of this is the near universal taboo by developers from doing any optimization.
I find it terribly hard to believe that these programmers' time is really that expensive given the low quality of product they create.
Templates were crappy at the start. They're still crappy now. Mostly because they're just smart macros, and it is way to easy to have this turn into serious bloat. I have seen a big misuse of macros so that one line expands out to a hundreds of kilobytes of generated object code, but this is rare and the people who write code like that often get laughed at. In C++, such a situation is somewhat common in my experience, the developers are trained to ignore the fact that the code is bulky and not optimized very well (and trained to never optimize, even ten years later is "premature optimization"). If a template could re-use actual object code instead of a dumbed down re-use of source code, it would be a better feature.
I had a product once with a hard limit of 1MB of object code, and it was in C++ but written in a C like manner to save space. One dev decided he wanted to use C++ strings in it, he literally converted C strings to C++ strings just so that he could use "==". The first use of c++ strings added half a megabyte of code all by itself, and each comparison too up more space than a simple strcmp would have. And that is one of the drawbacks here for C++; developers are trained to do rapid prototyping always and never look behind the curtain to see the how bad the result is.
Slashdot Mirror
If you need the sales then it was sort of necessary to put up with the crowds. I make enough money that I'd rather pay extra than stand in huge lines. But better is to get your holiday gifts in June or pay attention to sales throughout the year.
Got some holiday shopping done today. Big sale, but they pushed hard for me to sign up for their Mastercard, even though I already have their store card. Then they pushed hard to keep trying to get me to enter a phone number that matched their records, then they asked for an email, and I flat out refused despite the offer of savings and points. I just want to buy stuff and get out of there as soon as I could. (I suspect from the total that I didn't get the 50% off that was advertised everywhere).
57 is disappointing. Default color scheme was horrible, but that's fixable. But it's now slower than it used to be for all the hype of being faster. And legacy extensions are disallowed with no replacement for noscript yet. Even more preference settings have vanished, and some preferences were changed on me. The new tabs page is horrid (was in 56 also) and you can't get the old style back (ie, I prefer my home page in new tabs). New icons are ridiculous looking. I normally never update this soon, waiting for a dot release instead, but I thought it would fix a problem I was having that turns out to be fault of an updated extension instead.
So far, nothing is an improvement in any way. If they were smart, they'd add a "rollback" button.
Haven't thought about for over 35 years.
I did it for about a month. It was pointless when you had access to USENET, and Compuserve was very difficult to use and navigate in comparison to everything else.
A good game should survive by itself, and any DLC is 100% optional and is not just a way to compete an unfinished game. Ideally the developer should not even be thinking about DLC until the game is done. Today though it seems like DLCs are planned up-front.
Most large gaming corporations aren't innovative either. They're like Hollywood in that sense, they have such huge budget that they keep recycling proven formulas.
My favorite games that I keep play or returning to do not have the best graphics, physics, whatever. They may even be buggy. What they don't have is 10 hours of gameplay, they come with hundreds of hours, replayability (not just because you unlocked Princess Leia), and so forth. New games rarely measure up.
They have them in the mmo I play. But they don't affect gameplay much, and subsidize the game for those who can play from start to end for free. It's a choice for players to decide to play free versus buying microtransactions versus subscribing.
So just don't buy the game, don't pay for the microtransactions. if a game *requires* microtransaction to "win" then boycott it. Granted, some players have bizarre definitions of "win" though. But if you need to buy a crate or unlock a character just to enjoy the game then it's past time to go outside and take a deep breath. That's far simpler than going on a rant and sending death threats - if you have that much energy then please spend it doing something useful. Of all the injustices in the world that need fixing, this microtransaction issue is insignificant.
The smart thing is always to find out about a game first before buying it. Never pre-purchase a game, that's just dumb. Especially from a major publisher as those are almost always the most hated companies in the country. (seriously, who still buys a game from EA or uses Origin??)
Oh, I couldn't tell if they were working without putting in a quarter... But I do see some, and there are web sites that list where they are. Yes, some are in bad shape.
This could be wrong, but it's not me that's lying to you it would be the FCC.
I don't care, he's much less annoying that the anonymous stalkers.
Even the summary says that the US has them too.
True. It also used to be true that landlines supplied their own power, meaning that you could make emergency phone calls in a power outage. Now when there's a power outage, the mobile access points go down too, and the POTS phone you keep for emergencies needs to be plugged in to work.
Well, if it fills up often, it may earn more then $300 a year.
That's for home only. The payphone is necessary for those without phones who are outside the home. So you won't find them in hipster neighborhoods, but you may find them in the poorer parts of town.
Looked at a local list of payphones, and I see some inside of pizza places, gas stations, at train stations, bus stops, outside the 7-11, university dorms, etc. There's even one outside of a Fry's Electronics store.
And those mobile phones, especially the newer ones, suck through battery life very quickly. When the battery dies and you need to make a call, having a pay phone is a nice thing. Oops, hipsters did all their payments from a phone so they don't have any quarters!
In the public sector, these "everyday users" are a smaller fraction of computer use. They are going to have a lot of programs run to manage streelights, roads, stoplights, water, sewage, fire, police, and so forth. They are going to have a very broadly distributed set of buildings, and an even more distributed set of computers and devices to be managed and used.
However, most mail programs don't do well at unifying mail and calendars, which is one thing that Outlook does do well. It would be nice if Outlook were more open and used more standards. But as it is, MS Exchange dominates the market, along with Outlook, for tiny companies all the way to giant enterprises. That's probably the primary reason that MS Office maintains its dominance.
No, it was downvoted. And all of his critics here seem to be Anonymous Cowards. Almost like they're stalkers.
Downvoted because he has a few enemies that downvote everything. What? You thought slashdot was an escape from petty social media?
Oh, I agree. Laptops are just never going to be ergonomic. First, they won't work on actual laps, the screen is too far away, the lap isn't level, and they get too hot. But if you use the keyboard on a laptop then the screen is not in an optimal viewing position. Even with younger people with better eyes, I tend to see them hunched over when using a laptop. So I always want the external keyboard, mouse, AND monitor up at eye level.
I can not get used to laptop keyboards anyway. 99% of the time I am at my desk when using a laptop which means using an external keyboard and mouse. So when I have to use the laptop directly it's always crude and clumsy.
That said, I like my macbook pro (2015) better than most, that flatter keys feel better than the classic large key style, and is definitely quieter. Better yet, the last desktop I bought from Dell came with the same flatter key style for it's full size keyboard so it's the same feel at work or home. I assume the Mac Air would be far too small for me.
I think the point I was trying to make is that many C programmers are conditioned to know that macros can be bloaty. Usually the programmer knows up front that speed or size is important. My experience is that many C++ programmers are conditioned to work fast, and not worry about size or speed because there's always a bigger and faster processor coming soon. I'm not trying to say that all the programmers are this way, but it's a distinct trend I've seen.
I've seen the "one tool fits all" style of thinking in C++ a lot. Ie, if you've got std::map, then that's all you need. I saw someone implement something that should have just been a simple array lookup, a small fixed size array of 5 elements, which could have been done in plain C; but he used std::map for this which made it larger and slower and took more programmer time. Even std::vector would have been preferable. And the programmer knew that space was at a premium.
I do like templates if used sparingly and not in an STL style where whole objects are copied into containers instead of just pointers or references. I've used templates that just provided pointer type safety with a more generic underlying library that took void*. I used to like the RogueWave C++ classes, until the STL took hold.
I seriously would like to swap some projects from C to a simplified C++ (no generics, no exceptions). This would add some very important features:
- strong typing
- better code organization (via classes and namespaces).
Actually, I'd be very happy if the devs just started using C99 or C11 standards... :-)
And yet, those lines-of-code people quite often keep their jobs for long periods. That's because these people always look busy, they've always got their names attached to tons of source code checkins, and the boss may be fooled into thinking this is productivity.
The dev writing 7 lines of code a month may actually be more valuable overall, but it becomes difficult to prove that when it's time to hand out raises.
I am using a chip with only 20KB or RAM, and 128KB of code space. Efficiency is mandatory there, you can't just replace that by getting a faster computer, duck taping a raspberry pi to the side.
Note that computers today do not feel any faster than they did 25 years ago when running typical applications. Part of this is the near universal taboo by developers from doing any optimization.
I find it terribly hard to believe that these programmers' time is really that expensive given the low quality of product they create.
Templates were crappy at the start. They're still crappy now. Mostly because they're just smart macros, and it is way to easy to have this turn into serious bloat. I have seen a big misuse of macros so that one line expands out to a hundreds of kilobytes of generated object code, but this is rare and the people who write code like that often get laughed at. In C++, such a situation is somewhat common in my experience, the developers are trained to ignore the fact that the code is bulky and not optimized very well (and trained to never optimize, even ten years later is "premature optimization"). If a template could re-use actual object code instead of a dumbed down re-use of source code, it would be a better feature.
I had a product once with a hard limit of 1MB of object code, and it was in C++ but written in a C like manner to save space. One dev decided he wanted to use C++ strings in it, he literally converted C strings to C++ strings just so that he could use "==". The first use of c++ strings added half a megabyte of code all by itself, and each comparison too up more space than a simple strcmp would have. And that is one of the drawbacks here for C++; developers are trained to do rapid prototyping always and never look behind the curtain to see the how bad the result is.