Wasn't the waterfall model such an attempt to bring the unruly art of hacking software into line with more established forms of engineering? Sadly a lot of existing techniques in other fields (such as the rigid front loading of design) just don't work so well in the flexible field of software. However, I feel newer methologies such as XP formalise the process just enough to add some structure to porjects and are more of a step in the right direction. I've noticed many people on slashdot attribute working reliable software to a fast code/test cycle which XP encourages...
I asked them for an ISA modem and decided to ship me a PCI winmodem too. When I finally got them to admit their mistake they said they would refund my money and never did. Now I know it's the company and not me...
What part of your machine do these OEM cds depend on? My Win98 CD no longer installs and Simply ship Systemax PCs (mine has a Systemax badge on the front).
I bought my shinny new computer last August from Simply. With it they shipped their own Windows 98 "Recovery CD". What this basically did was start a menu from a bootable cd and a slightly customised version of the Windows cab files to the hard drive and install from there.
To cut a long story short I had a lot of grief and used the CD to reinstall Windows a few times successfully. Then I decided that I wanted to install Linux and repartitioned my hard drive. I also slapped on BIOS update.
After I fdisked the drive clean from Linux I made the Windows partition with DOS fdisk. I ran the installation cd and it said that it could not be installed on my computer. I couldn't get at the cabs because they had been compressed into a propreity format single file on the cd. I borrowed a friend's "real" Windows 98 cd and lo it installed fine.
This is a real nuisance and Simply (hello) haven't gotten back to me about a replacement cd that installs properly. The thing is I'm not even sure what stops the installtion cd from installing on my computer anyway...
If they were going to stick to their own rules you wouldn't have received the mail saying that they reset your perferences (because you probably didn't sign up to those email notices). If they are going to force feed you spam you would have thought they would have at least done it right and caused a huge backlash... Oh? They managed that anyway.
I'm kind of curious. One of the things that is always mentioned when quantum computing is mentioned is that factoring two large numbers becomes feasible. Is that based upon the numbers we use today or does this go for any factorisation? Does this apply to any other problems that are presumed to be "difficult"?
Getting and running the NVidia drivers properly can be something of a challenge. I myself have managed to get them running on Mandrake 7.1 (even under 2.4 with the patch from the #nvidia irc channel). Your best bet is to poke around the Nvidia XFree 4.0 Drivers for Linux FAQ.
It's a pity that you had to resort to slashdot for help though. It shouldn't be this to install and if you do get stuck it shouldn't be so tricky to find help.
I've done minimal a minimal mandrake 7.2 install in under 20 minutes. This puts it close to the time it takes me to (re)install Windows 98 (14 minutes 20 seconds).
The truth is, if you want to strip out everything from the install you can. A minimal Mandrake install can be done in less than 500Mb. Just don't complain when stuff you want/need isn't installed. From most users' point of view it's better to have everything there in the first place.
And those who wan't a big OK button can have it too - just do a recommended install.
Finally, how many times have I installed Mandrake 7.2? Three. How many times have I reinstalled Windows? Countless. Over time I have spent more time reinstall windows than I have installing Mandrake!
My AMD had exactly the same problem. In the end I think I managed to use a boot disk with a working kernel on it to boot and a quick recompile solved it once and for all.
However, although this is disconcerting, I wouldn't blame this one on the kernel hackers - it could be argued that whoever compiled it should have turned it off. However, I blame this on the major chip vendors. If they help the linux community by releasing specs and information about chips ahead of release there is a better chance this kind of thing can be avoided (I notice the 2.4.0tests have P4 support in them...).
Moreover, why can't they do a quick test on Linux before shipping? I bet they don't ship a single chip before throughly testing it on M$'s OSes...
Although I suppose it could be seen as insightful (why settle for low bandwidth when all you need to do is work a little?).
Why am I really doing it? Becuase I get to meet a bunch of people I wouldn't otherwise have done and to also get into good habits. Sure you can pass a driving test with taking any lessons from an instructor but are you better driver for it? Doubtful.
Concerning the bandwidth thing, I had never used linux before arriving at uni. Over here in the UK bandwidth was limited and expensive (and will continue to be for a long time to come. Bizarely during peek times at university matters aren't much better. When I joined uni the computer society introduced me to it and I think it's fair to say that the linux community and the net a farily intertwinned.
Heck, loads of open source projects have started out based on uni bandwidth. Plenty of clever programmers have taken their degree work and pushed it somewhere new.
You may never experience speeds so high elsewhere. Your poxy ADSL lines can't compare to a fight pipe. Of course you'll have to be up at around midnight to get it but there's nothing like downloading a redhat image at 600k+/s...
This is kinda funny 'cos I was actually trying to redesign the SUCS site a while back and made a beta based on the old linux.com (I think it also pays homage to Helix Gnome).
If I'd known peoplle were so dead against it I wouldn't have done it... I actually thought that the linux.com site (and therefore source) were distributed under the GNU licence, which would allow me to make and change it as long as I gave credit.
At the very least, I think architecture differences would hold any conversion back by at least a year. So unless Konami are devloping an Xbox version alongside (?) and haven't signed some Sony exclusivity licence then I think the earliest we would see an Xbox version would be a year after the PS2 one.
I would not be surprised to hear that square would devlop for Nintendo again. After all, wasn't one of their orginal arguments for going to the the PS that there wasn't enough room on a catridge for their games? Now Nintendo is using some sort of DVD hybrid that should no longer stand...
Incidentally, FF is another game that the Xbox could really do with. If nothing else it would establish it in Japan. I would be interested to find out what M$ thinks its core markets are - presumably the US and Europe rather than the usual console US and Japan?
Well I ain't no M$ lacky but I have to admit to being interested in the X-Box. I've just finished reading the latest Edge and comparisons to the PS2 are favourable (but then again I may be falling victim to the FUD). At the moment there appear to be a lot of promises of PC style games being swiftly ported over which will raise questions of platform suitability. Unlike a PC, I feel the only periphrals a consumer should have to buy are extra pads.
However, from a console point of view I would like to see more Japenese firms developing for it. It is unlikely that something like Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 will be ported to it any time soon and this is the sort of killer app it needs.
It appears that it will be technically easier to code for than a PS2 which should see a large number of games released for it quickly. Of course, as with all consoles, the real question is will you want to play them? If they are just going to be PC ports then the only benefit will be the ease of use...
The lack of a back catalogue doesn't really bother me since very few people go and buy a cutting edge console just to play the same old games.
The hard drive appears to be something of a nice touch but am I going to have to schedule a cleanup defrag every month?
I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded with Sony at the moment. With any luck, there will be enough room for both players and we'll see better games as a consequence.
Ok you got me there! I've added a comment about it applying to heights to as per your comments and those in the bug 25612 (which shows this bug has been around for ages). Thanks!
Hey if I tell you that this is a known bug and give you a bug number will you give moz a few (dozen) more tries?:)
I think that bug 39901 is what you are seeing (I submitted it a while ago). Yes it is valid bug and yes it is important. I'm very sorry that your bug was not being entered into bugzilla - you don't describe what was going wrong though. Do you have any bug numbers of bugs that have gone wrong? I haven't really heard of this happening before (but then again I'm not as active in moz as I used to be).
Bugzilla can be a pain to use and most of my bugs end up being duplicates but it's better to have duplicates than for a bug to go undiscovered. Maybe if you had tried the newsgroups or irc (/server irc.mozilla.org/join #mozillazine #mozilla) you would have found someone who would have helped you out...
I remember reading a good article that discussed this (maybe as long ago as yesterday) but I can't find the url.
It more or less said that although such a CLI may be an improvement, many users do not enjoy typing when it comes to controlling their computers. Worse still, what does a Natural lanaguage CLI often forces them to type more (e.g. you are supposed to ask jeeves "What is the tallest mountain in the world?" rather than type "tallest mountain world" into Google say. Worse still, most people are slow typists so this would also count against such an interface.
Some people prefer keyboards and that is good. Some people prefer GUIs and that is also good. However forcing the user to used grammar and punctuation in the CLI is unlikely to win the GUI majority over.
No matter how good a games story, however finely crafted it is etc. people will want to cheat. Take a quick look at the number of FFVII/FFVIII, Res Evil et al walkthroughs there are. I consider these to be some of best scripted games out there yet there are people out there who play them from start to finish with a guide in hand.
In fact, I vaguely remember a cheat for Monkey Island II that let you instantly skip to the end (I think it was Alt-W). People will always want to cheat no matter how good the game is if only to see what happens.
That's what Bugzilla is all about. The problem with making any large program are the number of interactions that take place. Time spent adding these features is time that can't be spent hunting for bugs unless OTHER people are helping to find and document those bugs. Remember, you don't have to be a programmer to help contribute!
During my previous year at uni we were taught Pascal through Delphi. Thanks to the Linux port of Freepascal, I was able to work on my work after the library closed and only a few small alterations were needed to get Delphi code to work under it. It proved so good I've now recommened that friends thinking about buying Turbo Pascal try this first...
Read what Jacob Neilson has to say about Micropayment. I reckon Nik is spot on this point, but it could be open to abuse - do you pay per listen or per track? What happens when you trade it to someone else? Can you sell it on etc?
This has made me wonder where all the fun basics have gone. When I was younger there used to be things like AMOS which although messy, was fun (and easy) to write in. Surely there has got to be an easier way to get into writing games than C++ combined with direct X/open GL?
It's not easy to make a fast paced arcade game in VB...
Leave some easily accessible languages about and tell the kids about them. Something like pacal/delphi is way too structured - who doesn't remember using a goto in basic?
When I was young I got into programming by typing in listings of other people's code from magazines. I don't know why this helped but it gave me a feel for using the computer without having to think of anything specific to program. Thus I got a feel for the programming environment (BBC Basic) and learnt how to TYPE which is helpful if you intend to program.
I also remember at school one of the most popular things to do was modify other people's code. Many hours were whiled away turning a single player snakes game into a four player death match. Bugs were reported by those who wanted to play the game while others debugged on a different machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't the waterfall model such an attempt to bring the unruly art of hacking software into line with more established forms of engineering? Sadly a lot of existing techniques in other fields (such as the rigid front loading of design) just don't work so well in the flexible field of software. However, I feel newer methologies such as XP formalise the process just enough to add some structure to porjects and are more of a step in the right direction. I've noticed many people on slashdot attribute working reliable software to a fast code/test cycle which XP encourages...
I asked them for an ISA modem and decided to ship me a PCI winmodem too. When I finally got them to admit their mistake they said they would refund my money and never did. Now I know it's the company and not me...
What part of your machine do these OEM cds depend on? My Win98 CD no longer installs and Simply ship Systemax PCs (mine has a Systemax badge on the front).
To cut a long story short I had a lot of grief and used the CD to reinstall Windows a few times successfully. Then I decided that I wanted to install Linux and repartitioned my hard drive. I also slapped on BIOS update.
After I fdisked the drive clean from Linux I made the Windows partition with DOS fdisk. I ran the installation cd and it said that it could not be installed on my computer. I couldn't get at the cabs because they had been compressed into a propreity format single file on the cd. I borrowed a friend's "real" Windows 98 cd and lo it installed fine.
This is a real nuisance and Simply (hello) haven't gotten back to me about a replacement cd that installs properly. The thing is I'm not even sure what stops the installtion cd from installing on my computer anyway...
--
You've got to fight the spammers that be!
I'm kind of curious. One of the things that is always mentioned when quantum computing is mentioned is that factoring two large numbers becomes feasible. Is that based upon the numbers we use today or does this go for any factorisation? Does this apply to any other problems that are presumed to be "difficult"?
That should have been Mandrake 7.2 not 7.1. I did have it kind of working with 7.1 but that's another story :)
It's a pity that you had to resort to slashdot for help though. It shouldn't be this to install and if you do get stuck it shouldn't be so tricky to find help.
The truth is, if you want to strip out everything from the install you can. A minimal Mandrake install can be done in less than 500Mb. Just don't complain when stuff you want/need isn't installed. From most users' point of view it's better to have everything there in the first place.
And those who wan't a big OK button can have it too - just do a recommended install.
Finally, how many times have I installed Mandrake 7.2? Three. How many times have I reinstalled Windows? Countless. Over time I have spent more time reinstall windows than I have installing Mandrake!
However, although this is disconcerting, I wouldn't blame this one on the kernel hackers - it could be argued that whoever compiled it should have turned it off. However, I blame this on the major chip vendors. If they help the linux community by releasing specs and information about chips ahead of release there is a better chance this kind of thing can be avoided (I notice the 2.4.0tests have P4 support in them...).
Moreover, why can't they do a quick test on Linux before shipping? I bet they don't ship a single chip before throughly testing it on M$'s OSes...
Why am I really doing it? Becuase I get to meet a bunch of people I wouldn't otherwise have done and to also get into good habits. Sure you can pass a driving test with taking any lessons from an instructor but are you better driver for it? Doubtful.
Concerning the bandwidth thing, I had never used linux before arriving at uni. Over here in the UK bandwidth was limited and expensive (and will continue to be for a long time to come. Bizarely during peek times at university matters aren't much better. When I joined uni the computer society introduced me to it and I think it's fair to say that the linux community and the net a farily intertwinned.
Heck, loads of open source projects have started out based on uni bandwidth. Plenty of clever programmers have taken their degree work and pushed it somewhere new.
You may never experience speeds so high elsewhere. Your poxy ADSL lines can't compare to a fight pipe. Of course you'll have to be up at around midnight to get it but there's nothing like downloading a redhat image at 600k+/s...
A slightly different spin on what you have descibed could be spreading these programs as virii. There have already been distributed.net trojans.
If I'd known peoplle were so dead against it I wouldn't have done it... I actually thought that the linux.com site (and therefore source) were distributed under the GNU licence, which would allow me to make and change it as long as I gave credit.
On another note, there is an interesting article on web design lifting and how to prevent it in High Five.
I would not be surprised to hear that square would devlop for Nintendo again. After all, wasn't one of their orginal arguments for going to the the PS that there wasn't enough room on a catridge for their games? Now Nintendo is using some sort of DVD hybrid that should no longer stand...
Incidentally, FF is another game that the Xbox could really do with. If nothing else it would establish it in Japan. I would be interested to find out what M$ thinks its core markets are - presumably the US and Europe rather than the usual console US and Japan?
However, from a console point of view I would like to see more Japenese firms developing for it. It is unlikely that something like Konami's Metal Gear Solid 2 will be ported to it any time soon and this is the sort of killer app it needs.
It appears that it will be technically easier to code for than a PS2 which should see a large number of games released for it quickly. Of course, as with all consoles, the real question is will you want to play them? If they are just going to be PC ports then the only benefit will be the ease of use...
The lack of a back catalogue doesn't really bother me since very few people go and buy a cutting edge console just to play the same old games.
The hard drive appears to be something of a nice touch but am I going to have to schedule a cleanup defrag every month?
I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded with Sony at the moment. With any luck, there will be enough room for both players and we'll see better games as a consequence.
Ok you got me there! I've added a comment about it applying to heights to as per your comments and those in the bug 25612 (which shows this bug has been around for ages). Thanks!
I think that bug 39901 is what you are seeing (I submitted it a while ago). Yes it is valid bug and yes it is important. I'm very sorry that your bug was not being entered into bugzilla - you don't describe what was going wrong though. Do you have any bug numbers of bugs that have gone wrong? I haven't really heard of this happening before (but then again I'm not as active in moz as I used to be).
Bugzilla can be a pain to use and most of my bugs end up being duplicates but it's better to have duplicates than for a bug to go undiscovered. Maybe if you had tried the newsgroups or irc (/server irc.mozilla.org /join #mozillazine #mozilla) you would have found someone who would have helped you out...
It more or less said that although such a CLI may be an improvement, many users do not enjoy typing when it comes to controlling their computers. Worse still, what does a Natural lanaguage CLI often forces them to type more (e.g. you are supposed to ask jeeves "What is the tallest mountain in the world?" rather than type "tallest mountain world" into Google say. Worse still, most people are slow typists so this would also count against such an interface.
Some people prefer keyboards and that is good. Some people prefer GUIs and that is also good. However forcing the user to used grammar and punctuation in the CLI is unlikely to win the GUI majority over.
In fact, I vaguely remember a cheat for Monkey Island II that let you instantly skip to the end (I think it was Alt-W). People will always want to cheat no matter how good the game is if only to see what happens.
That's what Bugzilla is all about. The problem with making any large program are the number of interactions that take place. Time spent adding these features is time that can't be spent hunting for bugs unless OTHER people are helping to find and document those bugs. Remember, you don't have to be a programmer to help contribute!
During my previous year at uni we were taught Pascal through Delphi. Thanks to the Linux port of Freepascal, I was able to work on my work after the library closed and only a few small alterations were needed to get Delphi code to work under it. It proved so good I've now recommened that friends thinking about buying Turbo Pascal try this first...
Read what Jacob Neilson has to say about Micropayment. I reckon Nik is spot on this point, but it could be open to abuse - do you pay per listen or per track? What happens when you trade it to someone else? Can you sell it on etc?
It's not easy to make a fast paced arcade game in VB...
When I was young I got into programming by typing in listings of other people's code from magazines. I don't know why this helped but it gave me a feel for using the computer without having to think of anything specific to program. Thus I got a feel for the programming environment (BBC Basic) and learnt how to TYPE which is helpful if you intend to program.
I also remember at school one of the most popular things to do was modify other people's code. Many hours were whiled away turning a single player snakes game into a four player death match. Bugs were reported by those who wanted to play the game while others debugged on a different machine.