"massive expensive development packages"?
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 2
Uh? Visual C++ is less than DKK 1000 (~USD 120), which basically means I can get my boss to buy it "just to test it". Qt is DKK 12,000 (~USD 1,500), which means that I have to already decide I want to use it, for my boss to allow the expense.
Yes, Visual C++ can be a lot more expensive, if I buy it together with a lot of crap I don't need.
Spam is killing the net, it has already turned Usenet into crap, and email from a "almost immidiate" communication form, to something that is read a couple of times a day when you have time to sort the gunuine messages from the spam. Currently spammers are trying to sabotage SMS messages in those part of the world where SMS (cell phones) has become widespread.
The real solution to spam is (I know the libertarians will disagree) efficient laws. However, without such laws it is up to the citizens (the libertarians will love this) to protect the usefullness of the net by refusing to do business with spammers and anyone who allows spammers access through their site. This responsibility is shared by both individuals, ISP's and backbone sites.
Ande yes, like any boycot or political action, sometimes people get hurt by this. Sometimes, like in this case, it is someone who provide useful survices, and "only spam a little". And sometimes, it is someone who have done nothing wrong except choose the wrong ISP. In these cases, the victims might try to blame the responsible citicens instead of the spammers, and when the audience is sufficiently ignorant of how the net works, like here on/., they might even be believed. Lots of/.'ers seem to think spam is a question of a few unwanted emails a week, they haven't seen with their own eyes all the useful fora that died under the weight of spammers since September 1993. They haven't seen what happens with spam when it isn't fought.
As I said, we need efficient laws. Without those, the choice is to let the citizens protect their own interest in the net (with all the problems that come with that), or to let the net die in the hands of spammers. I can't blame the citizens, especially those with a vested interest in a functioning net, choose the lesser evil.
People use email for file sharing on a low-quantity bases; by their very nature, Napster and Gnutella are blobs of 'HERE LOOKIT WHAT I GOT TAKE IT ALL' that, while very convenient and even amazing, are, in fact, against the law.
It would indeed be amazing if blobs of "HLWIGTIA" was against the law. I don't use Napster or Gnutella at all (because I am old fashioned), but I put lots of "HLWIGTIA" out on ftp and http, and I assure you, it is quite legal. What I got is rants written by me and available by http, and software written by me and available by ftp. Feel free to take it all.
P2P is just a fancy name for a file sharing method, and sharing files is not illegal. So I don't see the connection between the original case, and your analogue.
Analogues almost always muddy the debate, people start arguing the analogue instead of the original point.
If you had said "if airplanes had got a reputation for being primarily used for smuggling, and you wanted to prove they were useful for legal purposes, would you find examples of using airplanes for legal purposes?", the analogue would be almost one-to-one with the original scenario. However, like the original scenario, the answer would be obvious. If you want to demonstrate that a technology is useful for legal purposes, an obvious method is to find examples of such uses.
The XBox will be a high-end solution that appeals to hard-core gamers.
It is clear from the specs that Nokia is not going after that market. The development is also cheap, they are mostly reusing existing technology, much of it without any license. So they are probably going after low price.
I think they might succeed, a settop box which can also play games on the Quake II level, which are acutally pretty impressive to a non-gamer, at a price that is sufficiently low that you can buy one just to see if it is something for you, might open a large market.
If it looks good, is silent, have an easy to use shell, a TV recorder no worse than a VCR, a couple of bundled games, at a price below US$130, I just might buy one for the convenience. Even if it is slower than my ancient PC. And even though I'd probably not use the browser.
Blank video and audio cassettes are already taxed. Paper is kind of taxed, in that large institutions pay a special "tax" covering "expected copying (xeroxing) of copyrighted material".
Actually, everything is taxed (VAT), the above are special taxes that goes to a fund (CopyDan) which distribute the money to publishers, record companies and movie distributors. A tiny fraction goes to the artist, most of that goes to those who need it the least, i.e. the big sellers.
Sticks are not taxed, apart from VAT. However, if you mention it to our department of taxation, I'm sure that will be fixed in no time.
The only errors this catches are discrepancies in the header and source, which of course would be avoided by this feature.
A discrepancy means one of the places is (likely to be) wrong compared to what was intended. If you eliminate one place, there is no a priori reason to assume it will be the wrong one that is eliminated. Redundancy in specifications thus helps catching errors, because you have to be wrong twice for the error to go uncatched. Same principle as parity checks.
Virtualness is an implementation issue which is exposed in the base class because of linker limitations
Virtualness have nothing to do with implementation, and everything to do with specification. When calling foo->bar (), the caller know excatly what the function will do if bar is non-virtual, and must assume anything can have changed if bar is virtual. This is important for writting robust code. Functions should be made virtual only after careful thought.
This issue has been confused by some poor OOP language which doesn't have the ability to specify non-virtual function. These languages should not be used for robust software.
However with sufficiently advanced linking technology, no mangling need be done at all. Its a kludge to get around old linkers.
It simply doesn't matter. The same information must be represented, the form (a mangled string, or a struct) is simply an implementation detail.
> 1. Losing the pointless duplication of
> declarations in.h files.
Not necessarily a good thing. Redundance catches errors.
> 2. Virtual methods can be determined by the
> linker, so the programmer no longer needs to
> specify virtual-ness at all.
Definitely not a good thing, virtualness is important when reasoning about a class. After a call to a virtual function much more state is uncertain than after a call to a non-virtual call.
> 4. Inlining and template instatiation can be
> post poned until link given a sufficiently
> sophisticated intermediate format. In fact the
> compiler can inline any method or function.
This has been the case for a long time, with gcc -repo or Sun CC.
> 5. No more name mangling.
The type information has to be represented somehow, name mangling is not really different from other means.
I doubt you will have to fight for features already in C99, while Bjarne probably won't get his wish for a common C/C++ standard fullfiled, I assume the new C++ standard will adopt most of the C99 features. Even though the C standard commite didn't made the job easy. I.e. C99 has a complex keyword, giving trouble for the C++ complex template.
Here is the problems I had when trying to compile code (that worked on GCC 2.95 and Borland 5.0) with Visual C++.
- The compiler crashes if you look at it the worng way. Internal errors everywhere.
- The for scope was wrong. Luckily, someone suggested a macro that would compensate for that.
- Lots of silly arbitrary limits, for example debug symbols can at most be 255 chars. That is ok for C, but not for a mangled C++ template. There is a pragma that remove the warning, except that it doesn't work for static objects.
On the other hand, their development environtment is nice, and their library beats GNU and Borland.
Will 7.0 make me happy?
There were no BSD for 386 at the time
on
Linux Anecdotes
·
· Score: 2
Bill Jolitz 386 was released after Linux had gain momemtum, and BSD 4.4 Lite and FreeBSD was much later than that.
He might or might not have heard of the partial releases of BSD (for VAX and Tahoe) (Net 1 and Net 2), and in any case they probably wouldn't have helped him much. I doubt he at that time was qualified to port BSD to 386. Remember, he used Linux as a tool to learn about the 386.
> This seems to be the pervailing attitude among
> those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are
> stupid, so stupid that we must make all their
> decisions for them.
Maybe, but that is not what Doug Miller say.
Smart users want a desktop with a uniform interface, because a uniform interface make you spend less time getting adusted to the quirks of each application, and more time doin actual work.
Currently, if you want a Linux desktop with the best graphical applications, you get a few KDE applications, a few Gnome applications, a Motif application or two, an OPEN LOOK application, a number of Athena applications, a lot of Xlib applications, and maybe some TCL/TK, InterViews and GNUStep tools.
This is bad for users, and also bad for developers who will not know what desktop to target their software for.
Doug is correct, lots of different approaches is good from an academic point of view, but it gets in the way of actually getting work done.
Oracle could use it for NC's or whatever they call network computers / thin clients / internet appliances today.
Red Hat would have no use for it, even from a dumb end user point of view, BeOS is inferior to Red Hat Linux for all the same reasons Red Hat Linux is inferiour to Windows 95. It supports even less hardware, it has even less end user oriented applications, and the default interface is even uglier.
Oracle would not have these problems (except the ugliness, which could be fixed), as it would be bundled with the hardware and applications.
...not in the hope of ever getting a return, but in order to make sure the default Solaris 9+ desktop (Gnome) continue to evolve. And to make Solaris support a priority among the developers.
All the various Unix and/or hardware companies switching from CDE to Gnome have some interest in seing it continue to evolve.
> What kind of punishment or reward can you get
> for voting for DPL?
Lower or higher priority when finding time to evaluate patches and suggestions. I don't know about Debian, but that is a huge problem for gcc and gdb development, there are more people writing patches than people qualified or trusted enough to evaluate them for inclusion.
At the best, it is a very poor excuse for a communication protocol between developers. Usually, however, all it does is to prevent works for being done, and make developers hate each other.
It is like B&D languages or flowcharts, if your development procedures really are so poor that you need them, they will be insufficient to compensate. On the other hand, if your development procedures are any good, they will only get in the way of doing actual work.
However, these ideas appeal to narrow minded project managers with no clue of how efficient teamwork works, so they nonetheless get used in a lot of projects, most of which fails.
> Ridiculous. Counterfeit money allows someone to
> steal merchandise from merchants, without the
> merchant getting paid for it.
Spammers have stolen for thousands of dollars of my time, and much more from the ISP's.
> Spam's effect on electronic communication is
> more like a fat person's affect on your
> sidewalk. While he's there, you can't use the
> sidewalk, but once he passes, it's usable again.
Right except the spammers _haven't_ passed, and they have been their so long that most people have forgotten the sidewalk even existed.
> Spam needs technical solutions,
I bullet through the head of the spammer is the only lasting techincal solution.
> not legislators passing a bunch of stupid laws.
Well, then *remove* the laws that prevent us from implementing the technical solutions.
You are probably new to the net, but I have seen virtual communities die because of spam. It is not a pretty sight. Had you expeirenced that first hand, you would not be so soft on spammers.
Don't compare it with violent crime, compare it with counterfeit money. Spam has the same effect on electronic communication as coutnerfeit money has on the economy. If we think electronic communication is going to be of real importance, we should fight spam as we fight counterfeit money.
Violent crimes have different issues, maybe the punishment is too light or too severe (although you can get executed for violent crimes), but that is independent on the length of economic crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh? Visual C++ is less than DKK 1000 (~USD 120), which basically means I can get my boss to buy it "just to test it". Qt is DKK 12,000 (~USD 1,500), which means that I have to already decide I want to use it, for my boss to allow the expense.
Yes, Visual C++ can be a lot more expensive, if I buy it together with a lot of crap I don't need.
Spam is killing the net, it has already turned Usenet into crap, and email from a "almost immidiate" communication form, to something that is read a couple of times a day when you have time to sort the gunuine messages from the spam. Currently spammers are trying to sabotage SMS messages in those part of the world where SMS (cell phones) has become widespread.
/., they might even be believed. Lots of /.'ers seem to think spam is a question of a few unwanted emails a week, they haven't seen with their own eyes all the useful fora that died under the weight of spammers since September 1993. They haven't seen what happens with spam when it isn't fought.
The real solution to spam is (I know the libertarians will disagree) efficient laws. However, without such laws it is up to the citizens (the libertarians will love this) to protect the usefullness of the net by refusing to do business with spammers and anyone who allows spammers access through their site. This responsibility is shared by both individuals, ISP's and backbone sites.
Ande yes, like any boycot or political action, sometimes people get hurt by this. Sometimes, like in this case, it is someone who provide useful survices, and "only spam a little". And sometimes, it is someone who have done nothing wrong except choose the wrong ISP. In these cases, the victims might try to blame the responsible citicens instead of the spammers, and when the audience is sufficiently ignorant of how the net works, like here on
As I said, we need efficient laws. Without those, the choice is to let the citizens protect their own interest in the net (with all the problems that come with that), or to let the net die in the hands of spammers. I can't blame the citizens, especially those with a vested interest in a functioning net, choose the lesser evil.
P2P is just a fancy name for a file sharing method, and sharing files is not illegal. So I don't see the connection between the original case, and your analogue.
Analogues almost always muddy the debate, people start arguing the analogue instead of the original point.
If you had said "if airplanes had got a reputation for being primarily used for smuggling, and you wanted to prove they were useful for legal purposes, would you find examples of using airplanes for legal purposes?", the analogue would be almost one-to-one with the original scenario. However, like the original scenario, the answer would be obvious. If you want to demonstrate that a technology is useful for legal purposes, an obvious method is to find examples of such uses.
The XBox will be a high-end solution that appeals to hard-core gamers.
It is clear from the specs that Nokia is not going after that market. The development is also cheap, they are mostly reusing existing technology, much of it without any license. So they are probably going after low price.
I think they might succeed, a settop box which can also play games on the Quake II level, which are acutally pretty impressive to a non-gamer, at a price that is sufficiently low that you can buy one just to see if it is something for you, might open a large market.
If it looks good, is silent, have an easy to use shell, a TV recorder no worse than a VCR, a couple of bundled games, at a price below US$130, I just might buy one for the convenience. Even if it is slower than my ancient PC. And even though I'd probably not use the browser.
which makes this different.
Blank video and audio cassettes are already taxed. Paper is kind of taxed, in that large institutions pay a special "tax" covering "expected copying (xeroxing) of copyrighted material".
Actually, everything is taxed (VAT), the above are special taxes that goes to a fund (CopyDan) which distribute the money to publishers, record companies and movie distributors. A tiny fraction goes to the artist, most of that goes to those who need it the least, i.e. the big sellers.
Sticks are not taxed, apart from VAT. However, if you mention it to our department of taxation, I'm sure that will be fixed in no time.
This issue has been confused by some poor OOP language which doesn't have the ability to specify non-virtual function. These languages should not be used for robust software.
It simply doesn't matter. The same information must be represented, the form (a mangled string, or a struct) is simply an implementation detail.#1, basically, this is the "use class" again. class is the abstraction mechanism for creating new types, not typedef.
#2, we are trying to get away from the preprocessor, not towards it.
> 1. Losing the pointless duplication of .h files.
> declarations in
Not necessarily a good thing. Redundance catches errors.
> 2. Virtual methods can be determined by the
> linker, so the programmer no longer needs to
> specify virtual-ness at all.
Definitely not a good thing, virtualness is important when reasoning about a class. After a call to a virtual function much more state is uncertain than after a call to a non-virtual call.
> 4. Inlining and template instatiation can be
> post poned until link given a sufficiently
> sophisticated intermediate format. In fact the
> compiler can inline any method or function.
This has been the case for a long time, with gcc -repo or Sun CC.
> 5. No more name mangling.
The type information has to be represented somehow, name mangling is not really different from other means.
Uses "class" to create new types.
/* not an error! */
I like that this works:
typedef double time;
typedef double distance;
typedef double speed;
time hours = 2.0;
distance miles = 30.0;
speed mph = miles / hours;
I doubt you will have to fight for features already in C99, while Bjarne probably won't get his wish for a common C/C++ standard fullfiled, I assume the new C++ standard will adopt most of the C99 features. Even though the C standard commite didn't made the job easy. I.e. C99 has a complex keyword, giving trouble for the C++ complex template.
// Work around broken for-scoping
#define for if(0);else for
> The reason why it's not the default setting is obvious.
GCC implement the "new" semantic, but still accept code that would be valid with the old semantic with a warning (by default).
> The C++ definition used to say the scope of
> variable was the scope that surrounded the for
> loop.
That was many, many years ago.
Here is the problems I had when trying to compile code (that worked on GCC 2.95 and Borland 5.0) with Visual C++.
- The compiler crashes if you look at it the worng way. Internal errors everywhere.
- The for scope was wrong. Luckily, someone suggested a macro that would compensate for that.
- Lots of silly arbitrary limits, for example debug symbols can at most be 255 chars. That is ok for C, but not for a mangled C++ template. There is a pragma that remove the warning, except that it doesn't work for static objects.
On the other hand, their development environtment is nice, and their library beats GNU and Borland.
Will 7.0 make me happy?
Bill Jolitz 386 was released after Linux had gain momemtum, and BSD 4.4 Lite and FreeBSD was much later than that.
He might or might not have heard of the partial releases of BSD (for VAX and Tahoe) (Net 1 and Net 2), and in any case they probably wouldn't have helped him much. I doubt he at that time was qualified to port BSD to 386. Remember, he used Linux as a tool to learn about the 386.
> This seems to be the pervailing attitude among
> those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are
> stupid, so stupid that we must make all their
> decisions for them.
Maybe, but that is not what Doug Miller say.
Smart users want a desktop with a uniform interface, because a uniform interface make you spend less time getting adusted to the quirks of each application, and more time doin actual work.
Currently, if you want a Linux desktop with the best graphical applications, you get a few KDE applications, a few Gnome applications, a Motif application or two, an OPEN LOOK application, a number of Athena applications, a lot of Xlib applications, and maybe some TCL/TK, InterViews and GNUStep tools.
This is bad for users, and also bad for developers who will not know what desktop to target their software for.
Doug is correct, lots of different approaches is good from an academic point of view, but it gets in the way of actually getting work done.
Oracle could use it for NC's or whatever they call network computers / thin clients / internet appliances today.
Red Hat would have no use for it, even from a dumb end user point of view, BeOS is inferior to Red Hat Linux for all the same reasons Red Hat Linux is inferiour to Windows 95. It supports even less hardware, it has even less end user oriented applications, and the default interface is even uglier.
Oracle would not have these problems (except the ugliness, which could be fixed), as it would be bundled with the hardware and applications.
...not in the hope of ever getting a return, but in order to make sure the default Solaris 9+ desktop (Gnome) continue to evolve. And to make Solaris support a priority among the developers.
All the various Unix and/or hardware companies switching from CDE to Gnome have some interest in seing it continue to evolve.
n/t
> What kind of punishment or reward can you get
> for voting for DPL?
Lower or higher priority when finding time to evaluate patches and suggestions. I don't know about Debian, but that is a huge problem for gcc and gdb development, there are more people writing patches than people qualified or trusted enough to evaluate them for inclusion.
At the best, it is a very poor excuse for a communication protocol between developers. Usually, however, all it does is to prevent works for being done, and make developers hate each other.
It is like B&D languages or flowcharts, if your development procedures really are so poor that you need them, they will be insufficient to compensate. On the other hand, if your development procedures are any good, they will only get in the way of doing actual work.
However, these ideas appeal to narrow minded project managers with no clue of how efficient teamwork works, so they nonetheless get used in a lot of projects, most of which fails.
> Ridiculous. Counterfeit money allows someone to
> steal merchandise from merchants, without the
> merchant getting paid for it.
Spammers have stolen for thousands of dollars of my time, and much more from the ISP's.
> Spam's effect on electronic communication is
> more like a fat person's affect on your
> sidewalk. While he's there, you can't use the
> sidewalk, but once he passes, it's usable again.
Right except the spammers _haven't_ passed, and they have been their so long that most people have forgotten the sidewalk even existed.
> Spam needs technical solutions,
I bullet through the head of the spammer is the only lasting techincal solution.
> not legislators passing a bunch of stupid laws.
Well, then *remove* the laws that prevent us from implementing the technical solutions.
You are probably new to the net, but I have seen virtual communities die because of spam. It is not a pretty sight. Had you expeirenced that first hand, you would not be so soft on spammers.
Don't compare it with violent crime, compare it with counterfeit money. Spam has the same effect on electronic communication as coutnerfeit money has on the economy. If we think electronic communication is going to be of real importance, we should fight spam as we fight counterfeit money.
Violent crimes have different issues, maybe the punishment is too light or too severe (although you can get executed for violent crimes), but that is independent on the length of economic crimes.