I had a program that needed to zip and unzip files. I could have gone away and researched the ZIP format, or I could simply use a ZIP object that was available. 5 minutes after downloading it, I was happily setting two properties of the object and calling the "unzip" method, and it just worked.
I hate to think how much work it would have taken to rewrite that from scratch.
The same thing happened with an image display addition to a property program I worked on. I could have written code to display 30-odd file-types, but there happened to be an object that did it already, worked perfectly and took less than an hour to get working.
Why would I spend all that time working on something I didn't have to?
The problem being, you're stuck with one group of people saying "It's been scientifically proved that they can play Rape Camp III for 168 hours a week withuout any detrimental effects."
while the other camp reports that "It's been scientifically proven that letting an under-7 watch someone else play Doom will cause them to slaughter their family in their beds."
If parents don't _know_ what effect the games have, how can they set reasonable limits? Sure, they could say "I don't like it, so you're banned!" but I suspect a fair chunk of parents would like to be fairer and more objective than that.
Why are the experiences in books any more real than the expdriences in a computer?
Re:Unfortunately
on
Mozilla 1.4 RC1
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· Score: 2, Insightful
if they change it, all thos corporate customers who are running older versions of IE/Windows will get very upset at not being able to use their clients on their servers.....
If you wrote to the Win32 API under windows 95 and were writing a standard application (not something doing complex under-the-hood stuff like anti-virus) then chances are it will still run on XP, 8 years later.
I frequently read about Linux programs that require such and such version of Linux.
Now, I understand that there are unusual cases in both directions, but by and large I don't think that either system breaks most of its applications with most of it's updates.
Your first point isn't true - lots of MS functionality is carefully kept in different libraries so that it can be easily patched.
Just because they came up with the standards they use doesn't mean they can't be made secure.
3 and 4 happen fairly constantly with Linux as well.
And just because a project is big it doesn't mean that working with it is impossible - it just means it'll take a fair few of Microsoft's thousands of developers.
It always amuses me when/. lags so far behind the times.
Slashdot should stick to news stories. Checking blogdex and daypop once a day gives me a far better grasp of what 'cool links' are makign their way around the internet.
The whole point of Phoenix is that only the essentials will be built in. If it's not something that 99% of the population wants, then it's an extension. That way people can build the Phoenix that they want.
I use the tabbed browser extensions myself and it would, indeed, be very useful to not have to add them in my hand. But it's a 2 minute job whenever I upgrade and I appreciate the design philosophy that means I don't have 30 things built in that I don't use.
Don't forget that when you have an absolutely defined hardware spec you can code direct to that hardware, which is a hell of a lot more efficient than writing software that targets OpenGL and hopes that the drivers work out ok.
I don't run Unix myself, but my email is provided by a hosting service that does. They have a Spamassassin option that I've taken up and of the 30-odd spams I get a day, maybe 2 get through to me. The rest get ***SPAM*** added to their subject lines and I filter them into a holding area to check later.
So far I've had to change the config file twice to add mailing lists to it, other that that it's not had a single false positive.
I'd say that the right thing to do (to start off with, anyway) is to refactor, not scrap it.
Take that 1600 line procedure and rewrite it more sensibly (modular, no gotos, break it into dozens of smaller procedures). Then do the same with the rest of the code. Remove duplication as you go through. You'll constantly have a system that works and is testable and you'll be able to reverse-engineer the spec as you go through.
If you tried to rewrite it from scratch, you'd have to analyse the whole thing to see what it did anyway - you might as well rewrite it as you go.
Absolutely - asking a private company to do that would be unfair.
Which is why a socialised medicine system (like the UK or Canada has) whereby society takes upon itself the burden of making sure that "nobody is left behind" is the only reasonable solution.
Well, the only reasonable solution that doesn't leave poor people to rot in the streets.
I don't know about you, but I can type darn near as fast as I can talk and I can certainly rearrange text faster with a keyboard/mouse combo than I could describe what I wanted using voice.
Voice as an adjunct to keyboard/mouse would certainly be handy though.
Nearly all spam happens because people send email through unsecured servers. If the servers were secutre enough to be able to identify (and thus tax) the sender, there wouldn't be a spam problem in the first place!
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Dear /. Please keep up the good work. I find the articles to be interesting and I enjoy the discussions on them too.
It's amazing how much cheaper chips and hard drives have both become in the last two years...
I had a program that needed to zip and unzip files. I could have gone away and researched the ZIP format, or I could simply use a ZIP object that was available. 5 minutes after downloading it, I was happily setting two properties of the object and calling the "unzip" method, and it just worked.
I hate to think how much work it would have taken to rewrite that from scratch.
The same thing happened with an image display addition to a property program I worked on. I could have written code to display 30-odd file-types, but there happened to be an object that did it already, worked perfectly and took less than an hour to get working.
Why would I spend all that time working on something I didn't have to?
Well, Africa would be doing fine, selling crops to europe and the US if both of those didn't insist on massive subsidies to farmers.
We're literally killing people by subsidising our farmers.
However, at the end of each bit of the cycle, the areas are richer than at the start.
Thre are now more educated people in India, they have a better economy and they've got moer infrastructure than before.
As the money gets pumped from place to place, there's a gradual (and slow) increase in the quality of living.
Eventually you run out of people who will work for rice and you have to step up to paying a slightly higher amount, and the big cycle begins again.
The problem being, you're stuck with one group of people saying
"It's been scientifically proved that they can play Rape Camp III for 168 hours a week withuout any detrimental effects."
while the other camp reports that
"It's been scientifically proven that letting an under-7 watch someone else play Doom will cause them to slaughter their family in their beds."
If parents don't _know_ what effect the games have, how can they set reasonable limits? Sure, they could say "I don't like it, so you're banned!" but I suspect a fair chunk of parents would like to be fairer and more objective than that.
I know nobody with an x-box.
I know about 15 people with PCs.
At least 4 of them want to play Halo...
So long as you can persuade people that they don't need the sales and marketing that big labels can get you...
It's set after Matrix Revolutions. Which indicates that there will still be a Matrix then....
Why are the experiences in books any more real than the expdriences in a computer?
if they change it, all thos corporate customers who are running older versions of IE/Windows will get very upset at not being able to use their clients on their servers.....
If you wrote to the Win32 API under windows 95 and were writing a standard application (not something doing complex under-the-hood stuff like anti-virus) then chances are it will still run on XP, 8 years later.
I frequently read about Linux programs that require such and such version of Linux.
Now, I understand that there are unusual cases in both directions, but by and large I don't think that either system breaks most of its applications with most of it's updates.
How on earth is this a troll?
The poster asked for debate - I responded with a point by point response to his post.
And I get labelled a troll for not being anti-MS!
Your first point isn't true - lots of MS functionality is carefully kept in different libraries so that it can be easily patched.
Just because they came up with the standards they use doesn't mean they can't be made secure.
3 and 4 happen fairly constantly with Linux as well.
And just because a project is big it doesn't mean that working with it is impossible - it just means it'll take a fair few of Microsoft's thousands of developers.
It always amuses me when /. lags so far behind the times.
Slashdot should stick to news stories. Checking blogdex and daypop once a day gives me a far better grasp of what 'cool links' are makign their way around the internet.
No, I want it built in.
The whole point of Phoenix is that only the essentials will be built in. If it's not something that 99% of the population wants, then it's an extension. That way people can build the Phoenix that they want.
I use the tabbed browser extensions myself and it would, indeed, be very useful to not have to add them in my hand. But it's a 2 minute job whenever I upgrade and I appreciate the design philosophy that means I don't have 30 things built in that I don't use.
Don't forget that when you have an absolutely defined hardware spec you can code direct to that hardware, which is a hell of a lot more efficient than writing software that targets OpenGL and hopes that the drivers work out ok.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim." - Djkstra
Radio Userland have been around for at least 5 years, if not longer.
I don't run Unix myself, but my email is provided by a hosting service that does. They have a Spamassassin option that I've taken up and of the 30-odd spams I get a day, maybe 2 get through to me. The rest get ***SPAM*** added to their subject lines and I filter them into a holding area to check later.
So far I've had to change the config file twice to add mailing lists to it, other that that it's not had a single false positive.
I'd say that the right thing to do (to start off with, anyway) is to refactor, not scrap it.
Take that 1600 line procedure and rewrite it more sensibly (modular, no gotos, break it into dozens of smaller procedures). Then do the same with the rest of the code. Remove duplication as you go through. You'll constantly have a system that works and is testable and you'll be able to reverse-engineer the spec as you go through.
If you tried to rewrite it from scratch, you'd have to analyse the whole thing to see what it did anyway - you might as well rewrite it as you go.
Absolutely - asking a private company to do that would be unfair.
Which is why a socialised medicine system (like the UK or Canada has) whereby society takes upon itself the burden of making sure that "nobody is left behind" is the only reasonable solution.
Well, the only reasonable solution that doesn't leave poor people to rot in the streets.
I don't know about you, but I can type darn near as fast as I can talk and I can certainly rearrange text faster with a keyboard/mouse combo than I could describe what I wanted using voice.
Voice as an adjunct to keyboard/mouse would certainly be handy though.
Nearly all spam happens because people send email through unsecured servers. If the servers were secutre enough to be able to identify (and thus tax) the sender, there wouldn't be a spam problem in the first place!
Well, Canada does seem kinda European...