My first thought when reading the summary above was that this would be an easy problem if managed by a central, relational database system.
Simply "roll back" the transaction that failed, and the dependencies would cancel themselves out. But, then I realized that the current RDBMS model only allows for a single transaction - you can't nest them.
Also, transactions are private only - you cannot transact with data in the middle of another transaction.
Thus, you might have ACID compliance, but only with one level of "undo".
How hard would it be to create an RDBMS that supports infinite levels of "undo" or transaction/rollback.
Such that you commit transaction A, which affects rows 1,2,3, and 11. Then, another transaction B which affects (further) rows 2, 3, and 12.
Then, if you roll back transaction A, transaction B would be similarly affected. I dunno - the depencies may get rediculous - but it seems that this could and should be done at some point.
Bright idea? Or another noise from an unpleasant orifice?
Don't you get it? Cameras are cheap and getting cheaper. They have a useful purpose to *somebody* almost anywhere.
When a camera costs $0.05, takes a megapixel frame, 30x per second, and a week of media costs only $0.05, why wouldn't you record just about everything around you?
Assuming Moore's law continues, (and it has for 30 years!) we're only a decade or two from that point!
There's an interesting article which for me was the first the make it all clear. Privacy as we once new it will cease to exist in any form within a century, and as we know it today, will disapear within a few decades.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. People frequently will willingly choose power over privacy. It's happened many times before: The telephone, the VCR, the "public place" camera, the cell phone. Each time, people gave up some privacy for some new ability they felt was worth it.
Since privacy has been losing ground for over 100 years, it's not safe to assume things will suddenly turn around.
I suggest you read the above article. It makes very clear the things we need to keep in mind as this natural progression continues.
I have a new cell phone, a freebie given to me by Verizon Wireless when I renewed my contract. I didn't even notice that it was GPS capable until it was pointed out to me be somebody else.
Apparently, if I call 911, they know within 50 feet or so where I am, unless I disable the GPS feature.
So, how hard could it be? Are we talking rocket science, or people bitching for the sake of bitching?
1. "I downloaded the software from the CD to my computer."
2. "I downloaded the file from the internet."
3. "I downloaded the file into my e-mail and sent it to him."
Only #2 is correct.
No, that's not correct. 1 and 3 are correct when they have a broad, acceptable definition and the overwhelming majority of people understand what is meant when it is used.
If, 100 years ago, someone said "I am feeling quite gay today." and then hugged you, it would have been understood that they were simply in a good mood.
Today, someone saying that would probably get the snot beat out of them if they weren't very, very careful.
There are plenty of examples of this, as the definitions and pronunciations of words mutate through time.
It's not as though grammar is written in some cosmic book in the sky, immutable for all time. Where the spelling nazis have their place is when words are used in a fashion inconsistent with common usage.
For example, "I'm going over their to get a slice of bread.".
But, in this case, "download" is commonly used and certainly understood. Dictionary.com recognizes the fuzzy nature of "download":
The distinction between downloading and uploading is hazy but downloading often refers to transfer from a larger "host" system (especially a server or mainframe) to a smaller "client" system, especially a microcomputer or specialised peripheral.
So, correct if you want. Just know that the very fact that you understood what was being communicated meant that the underlying purpose of language, communicating ideas, was achieved, and, to that degree, is "right".
Aren't those dudes prisoners of war? Didn't we pick them up from a country we were at war with?
Well, it's late. This post will probably never be read. But, when did the US ever declare war on Iraq?
In case you didn't notice, it never actually happened! Thus, the special case for a POW can't be made here, as THE US CONGRESS NEVER DECLARED WAR ON IRAQ.
BUT A *REALLY* FUCKING STUPID ONE! The kind that tend to destroy your reputation instantly.
Does anyone not agree?
Sort of like using vulgar language in a written article or post? I mean, come now. Colorful words as these merely server to remind one of the schoolyard!
I can almost hear the balls bouncing on the asphault...
i almost agree with your stance against computer training. i just hope your stance on television exceeds it.
In case you are wondering, we disallow any TV for about 5 months of the year. Boredom is an incredible motivator and a powerful incentive to develop the creative, inventive, and self-motivated part of the psyche. I want creative, inventive, and motivated children!
During this time, we allow computers only for the function of performing a function that can otherwise be performed easily in the real world. WarCraft III is out, but chess is OK. Homework (typing, typing tutor, etc) is fine, but not required of kids until around 12)
If we were truly millitant, we'd throw the TV out altogether, but I sure enjoy Sunday football, (Go 49'ers!) and the Simpsons is an indelible part of our family culture. So, from Jan 1 to the "normal" end of the school year is a good compromise for us.
different people get different things, and different people have different abilities, but if you simply go by "normal" you're marginalizing a lot of very important people.
Understand, here, that I don't disallow my kids from *using* the 5+ computers in my house, it's just not part of their required education.
At least for us, home-schooling is a genuine misnomer. Perhaps a better name would be "community based education". My kids go to the local college, take classes, go on field trips, and take writing courses.
But what we're talking about is required "education" on computers at tender ages before 10 years of age!
Don't confuse the issue of "allowing the student to persue their interests and talents" (which I'm all in favor of) with "require the students to perform actions in subjects X, Y, and Z".
If you want to know more about our preferred homeschooling methods (often called "child-led" education or "un-schooling", you might want to start here or perhaps here. It's all about trust!
I should have guessed that I'd see stuff like: "Yeah!?! Well I learned COBOL at age 4, just after I read the bible!!!" blah blah blah.
To which I can only ask... Do you consider this to be "normal" development? Can you imagine teaching children BASIC/FORTRAN whatever at age 6? Do you think it is optimum? Is it a necessary preparation for adult development?
And perhaps the most important question: How much time have you spent teaching small children?
I knew how to write basic BASIC statements by the age of 7 or so, but I can honestly state that while my children haven't been taught BASIC, I certainly haven't stopped them.
Sorry. You haven't convinced me.
(BTW, I have a 14 Y.O. son who, on his own decision, is attending junior college and doing very well at it - currently getting an A in his first college class, computer science, with virtually no help from me as he simply hasn't needed it)
If we are going to provide a list of registered offenders, we should provide a list of persons guilty of *any* crime!
We'd pretty quickly find that nearly *everybody* over 25 has done something wrong, and would quickly learn to get off our stupid, petty high horses, and realize that everybody makes mistakes.
What if technology was developed that allowed us to instantly see the crime and/or achievement history of anybody we met, instantly, with a HUD built into our brains?
Wouldn't that be "full disclosure"? At what point are we violating the privacy of other people? Isn't that the logical conclusion of the increased monitoring and disclosure we are seeing? What's the logical conclusion to the advances of technology?
So, why would we discriminate against sex offenders? What's the recitivism rate for those of *any* crime? I'd suspect we'd see numbers not so different...
Sorry, but I've seen it. I'm a father of 5 children, and we home-school all of them. So far, to great success.
Within educational circles there's the concept of an abstract. An abstract is a concept that is highly divorced from reality. For example, the word "tree" is an abstract, the tree growing in your front yard is not.
Children don't really begin to understand abstracts until around 10-12 years old. Sure, they can point to a tree, but the reality of abstract doesn't really sink in until that age.
Which explains why algebra is generally very difficult to teach to children less than about that age.
Small children need lots of reality - for that's what abstract concepts are rooted in. Let them play in the sand, let them cut paper, let them stack blocks. Let their imaginations soar, actually work to preserve that dreamlike state that fosters creativity and intelligence!
You can nag about pencil and paper, but there's a real reason why these are preferable to a keyboard - the tactile feedback of writing a letter helps root these into the mind as a practical concept rather than a pure abstract.
Little kids NEED to write big, tall, 2" high letters as their size makes them more real, more practical.
Even as a computer programmer with 5 computers in the house, (mine, wifes, gaming computer, firewall, and laptop) I refuse to make computer training more than a minor part of my younger childrens' education before 12 or so, and I would happily and aggressively campaign against computers in the primary grades as a waste of money and a waste of human resources.
Requiring the sender to use their own CPU cycles to encrypt messages is a classic variation on the "micropayments" approach to reducing spam volumes...
Which all sounds quite nice until you realize that it's a price that drops by 50% every 18 months or so. If everybody on the face of the earth started doing the same thing tomorrow, it'd take at most a few months before the spammers got the presses warmed back up.
Sorry, but we aren't going to DDOS the spammers. We need a system for holding them accountable.
I've been working as a freelance programmer/consultant for 4 years. To be fair, I have my wife and 5 kids at home.
I have an office, and I have a home-office. I switch between them. A few times per year I spend a week or two working at location with a client to improve relationships and help things work out when there's a big project afoot.
Also, have three (yes, THREE) phone lines:
1) Home phone. Only tell family and friends. Nobody you work with ever gets this number.
2) Work phone. On your biz card, on your website. Everybody you work with gets this number. Never answer it outside business hours. Never.
3) Cell phone. Mention on your work phone's voice mail with a "if this an emergency, call..." notice. If it's a doozy, people can call. Otherwise, they'll leave a message.
This has been one of the best ways I've yet found to separate home life from work life.
Of course, I'm happily married, and I'd like to think that I still have *some* creative spark, but then, I *am* here, at 6:33 PM on Turkey-Day eve, reading slashdot...
Definitely covers me - I have a co-located server with clients websites running on it. I rent all my bandwidth though - would never really have thought of myself as an ISP, although I guess I fall under the auspice of "Internet Service Provider" - the typical image is either a dial-up merchant, or someone like Colt/BT/Level3/(insert huge company here)
You RENT your bandwidth? So, let me ask you this - after you are done, do you have to give it back? How do you rent a service?
You *always* buy bandwidth. Typically, you'll pay $X per month for Y bandwidth usage, either in GB of transfer or avg rate of transfer.
It doesn't matter who you are, small or big, with a single 1U server, a rack, or your own unfettered OC3. You *always* pay a monthly charge for your connections to other providers.
Sorry, but I heard all about how *awful* Matrix 3 was. I went seeing it waiting for the worst.
And, Matrix 3 turned out to be *awesome*. It was exciting, action-packed, full of emotion, and romance. What is wrong with a trilogy that has alot of action, and ends in peace?
I didn't walk out of the theatre wondering if my car was really there, but I was very happy to have paid $15 to see a movie that was much better than average.
Wait - I think I know!
Matrix is, at the end, a love story. Families, lovers, and the like. And isn't slashdot largely populated by lonely, single geeks without a date? Geeks that wouldn't *understand* how deep the feelings of true love can really be?
However, when you compare Gnome to Qt you realise just how bloody awful free software can be. Gnome is the best advert for Qt there is.
I wrote an app in PHP-GTK. I found it stable, cross-platform, and most of all, usable. But there sure were alot of weirds.
For example, Clist rows aren't "widgets" in the full sense of the word. Thus, you can't use tooltips (descriptive little popup boxes) on them, even though they act in every other way like a widget.
The combo (dropdown list) widget won't let you set data specific to a particular entry. Instead, you have to store the entry-specific data in an array and load via a special call to set_data().
The entry (write stuff in a box) widget is clearly broken, especially on Windows, (it draws little boxes whenever you have a line break) and I can't get scintilla, (which replaces entry) to scroll the text up to follow you when you type.
The documentation is weak. Many functions are not well documented, and there is no mention of others. Sometimes I had to use the function "Get_Class_Methods()" just so I knew what my options were!
Nothing was insurmountable, and I was able to produce a functional application that's had positive acclaim in its marketplace, so I'm not too horribly upset. But it could be *alot* better.
Apple couldn't do it. Instead they call it "OS/X". (See "Oh Sex" for a pronunciation guide)
RedHat couldn't do it. Instead they call it "Fedora Core 1". (Pronunciation? Don't bother)
but Sun can do it! Think of the possibilities, though...
They could have "Solaris X" as the Unix system, and "Solarux" as their Linux distro! What a way to leverage their brand name onto something that's unrelated, and works even better!
I mean.. talk about SEXY... you'd pronounce it "Solari-Sex"...
Well? Why couldn't they?
Wait.... Maybe, just maybe.... who could say "Solaris X" without saying "Solaris-Sucks"????
How about, instead of having a few dozen networks, we just come up with one?
<SHAMELESS AUTO ANALOGY> Try this on for size:
How about, instead of having a few dozen models of cars, we just come up with one?
</SHAMELESS AUTO ANALOGY>
So, would it be a four door sedan? 18-wheel rig? California convertible? With my five kids, that one four-door, 18-wheel, convertible California convertible car had better seat seven!
I'm reminded of a Simpsons episode where Homer is given the chance (by a long lost family member) to design the *ultimate* car - which, in trying to please everyone, disgusted anyone who looked at it.
Every protocol is not equivalent. Each is optimized for a particular purpose. Games and DNS use UDP over IP because its capabilities fit the needs of games and DNS servers far better than, say, TCP or FTP.
And, while VOIP is growing, it's still quirky (at best) compared to a POTS connection, because the ubiquitous, cheap, anarchic connection model of the Internet just doesn't work well with voice, where a.25 second delay is noticable, and.75 second is PULL-OUT-THE-HAMMER-AND-SMASH-THE-PHONE aggrevating...
Slashdot Mirror
My first thought when reading the summary above was that this would be an easy problem if managed by a central, relational database system.
Simply "roll back" the transaction that failed, and the dependencies would cancel themselves out. But, then I realized that the current RDBMS model only allows for a single transaction - you can't nest them.
Also, transactions are private only - you cannot transact with data in the middle of another transaction.
Thus, you might have ACID compliance, but only with one level of "undo".
How hard would it be to create an RDBMS that supports infinite levels of "undo" or transaction/rollback.
Such that you commit transaction A, which affects rows 1,2,3, and 11. Then, another transaction B which affects (further) rows 2, 3, and 12.
Then, if you roll back transaction A, transaction B would be similarly affected. I dunno - the depencies may get rediculous - but it seems that this could and should be done at some point.
Bright idea? Or another noise from an unpleasant orifice?
Let me know what you think!
computer was sponsored
Come on, buddy. I mean, so one of the guys said "Hey, I've got that old Packard Bell 486 down in the cellar...".
I mean, is that so bad? How would you write that in any way other than "sponsored" when calculating expenses?
Sheeeez. Be a LITTLE forgiving, why don't you?
Don't you get it? Cameras are cheap and getting cheaper. They have a useful purpose to *somebody* almost anywhere.
When a camera costs $0.05, takes a megapixel frame, 30x per second, and a week of media costs only $0.05, why wouldn't you record just about everything around you?
Assuming Moore's law continues, (and it has for 30 years!) we're only a decade or two from that point!
There's an interesting article which for me was the first the make it all clear. Privacy as we once new it will cease to exist in any form within a century, and as we know it today, will disapear within a few decades.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. People frequently will willingly choose power over privacy. It's happened many times before: The telephone, the VCR, the "public place" camera, the cell phone. Each time, people gave up some privacy for some new ability they felt was worth it.
Since privacy has been losing ground for over 100 years, it's not safe to assume things will suddenly turn around.
I suggest you read the above article. It makes very clear the things we need to keep in mind as this natural progression continues.
I have a new cell phone, a freebie given to me by Verizon Wireless when I renewed my contract. I didn't even notice that it was GPS capable until it was pointed out to me be somebody else.
Apparently, if I call 911, they know within 50 feet or so where I am, unless I disable the GPS feature.
So, how hard could it be? Are we talking rocket science, or people bitching for the sake of bitching?
1. "I downloaded the software from the CD to my computer."
2. "I downloaded the file from the internet."
3. "I downloaded the file into my e-mail and sent it to him."
Only #2 is correct.
No, that's not correct. 1 and 3 are correct when they have a broad, acceptable definition and the overwhelming majority of people understand what is meant when it is used.
If, 100 years ago, someone said "I am feeling quite gay today." and then hugged you, it would have been understood that they were simply in a good mood.
Today, someone saying that would probably get the snot beat out of them if they weren't very, very careful.
There are plenty of examples of this, as the definitions and pronunciations of words mutate through time.
It's not as though grammar is written in some cosmic book in the sky, immutable for all time. Where the spelling nazis have their place is when words are used in a fashion inconsistent with common usage.
For example, "I'm going over their to get a slice of bread.".
But, in this case, "download" is commonly used and certainly understood. Dictionary.com recognizes the fuzzy nature of "download":
The distinction between downloading and
uploading is hazy but downloading often refers to transfer
from a larger "host" system (especially a server or
mainframe) to a smaller "client" system, especially a
microcomputer or specialised peripheral.
So, correct if you want. Just know that the very fact that you understood what was being communicated meant that the underlying purpose of language, communicating ideas, was achieved, and, to that degree, is "right".
I think that the first and best use of this technology would be to help the editors of Slashdot find duplicate articles!
Think about the possiblities...
Of course, the biggest problem with that is that there wouldn't be nearly as many cool articles to read!
Aren't those dudes prisoners of war? Didn't we pick them up from a country we were at war with?
Well, it's late. This post will probably never be read. But, when did the US ever declare war on Iraq?
In case you didn't notice, it never actually happened! Thus, the special case for a POW can't be made here, as THE US CONGRESS NEVER DECLARED WAR ON IRAQ.
Granted, yes, it was a single mistake...
BUT A *REALLY* FUCKING STUPID ONE! The kind that tend to destroy your reputation instantly.
Does anyone not agree?
Sort of like using vulgar language in a written article or post? I mean, come now. Colorful words as these merely server to remind one of the schoolyard!
I can almost hear the balls bouncing on the asphault...
Troll? How is the parent post a troll?
I cannot think of anything more relevant!
Before we get all high and mighty, and conclude that we in the United States are so much better, superior, or luckier, remember about the prisoners the US is holding RIGHT NOW in Guantanamo Bay.
These prisoners of the US Government were held for a year or more.
Let's clean up our own act before we get all high and mighty about the Chinese, heh?
i almost agree with your stance against computer training. i just hope your stance on television exceeds it.
In case you are wondering, we disallow any TV for about 5 months of the year. Boredom is an incredible motivator and a powerful incentive to develop the creative, inventive, and self-motivated part of the psyche. I want creative, inventive, and motivated children!
During this time, we allow computers only for the function of performing a function that can otherwise be performed easily in the real world. WarCraft III is out, but chess is OK. Homework (typing, typing tutor, etc) is fine, but not required of kids until around 12)
If we were truly millitant, we'd throw the TV out altogether, but I sure enjoy Sunday football, (Go 49'ers!) and the Simpsons is an indelible part of our family culture. So, from Jan 1 to the "normal" end of the school year is a good compromise for us.
different people get different things, and different people have different abilities, but if you simply go by "normal" you're marginalizing a lot of very important people.
Understand, here, that I don't disallow my kids from *using* the 5+ computers in my house, it's just not part of their required education.
At least for us, home-schooling is a genuine misnomer. Perhaps a better name would be "community based education". My kids go to the local college, take classes, go on field trips, and take writing courses.
But what we're talking about is required "education" on computers at tender ages before 10 years of age!
Don't confuse the issue of "allowing the student to persue their interests and talents" (which I'm all in favor of) with "require the students to perform actions in subjects X, Y, and Z".
If you want to know more about our preferred homeschooling methods (often called "child-led" education or "un-schooling", you might want to start here or perhaps here. It's all about trust!
I should have guessed that I'd see stuff like: "Yeah!?! Well I learned COBOL at age 4, just after I read the bible!!!" blah blah blah.
To which I can only ask... Do you consider this to be "normal" development? Can you imagine teaching children BASIC/FORTRAN whatever at age 6? Do you think it is optimum? Is it a necessary preparation for adult development?
And perhaps the most important question: How much time have you spent teaching small children?
I knew how to write basic BASIC statements by the age of 7 or so, but I can honestly state that while my children haven't been taught BASIC, I certainly haven't stopped them.
Sorry. You haven't convinced me.
(BTW, I have a 14 Y.O. son who, on his own decision, is attending junior college and doing very well at it - currently getting an A in his first college class, computer science, with virtually no help from me as he simply hasn't needed it)
If we are going to provide a list of registered offenders, we should provide a list of persons guilty of *any* crime!
We'd pretty quickly find that nearly *everybody* over 25 has done something wrong, and would quickly learn to get off our stupid, petty high horses, and realize that everybody makes mistakes.
What if technology was developed that allowed us to instantly see the crime and/or achievement history of anybody we met, instantly, with a HUD built into our brains?
Wouldn't that be "full disclosure"? At what point are we violating the privacy of other people? Isn't that the logical conclusion of the increased monitoring and disclosure we are seeing? What's the logical conclusion to the advances of technology?
So, why would we discriminate against sex offenders? What's the recitivism rate for those of *any* crime? I'd suspect we'd see numbers not so different...
Sorry, but I've seen it. I'm a father of 5 children, and we home-school all of them. So far, to great success.
Within educational circles there's the concept of an abstract. An abstract is a concept that is highly divorced from reality. For example, the word "tree" is an abstract, the tree growing in your front yard is not.
Children don't really begin to understand abstracts until around 10-12 years old. Sure, they can point to a tree, but the reality of abstract doesn't really sink in until that age.
Which explains why algebra is generally very difficult to teach to children less than about that age.
Small children need lots of reality - for that's what abstract concepts are rooted in. Let them play in the sand, let them cut paper, let them stack blocks. Let their imaginations soar, actually work to preserve that dreamlike state that fosters creativity and intelligence!
You can nag about pencil and paper, but there's a real reason why these are preferable to a keyboard - the tactile feedback of writing a letter helps root these into the mind as a practical concept rather than a pure abstract.
Little kids NEED to write big, tall, 2" high letters as their size makes them more real, more practical.
Even as a computer programmer with 5 computers in the house, (mine, wifes, gaming computer, firewall, and laptop) I refuse to make computer training more than a minor part of my younger childrens' education before 12 or so, and I would happily and aggressively campaign against computers in the primary grades as a waste of money and a waste of human resources.
Requiring the sender to use their own CPU cycles to encrypt messages is a classic variation on the "micropayments" approach to reducing spam volumes...
Which all sounds quite nice until you realize that it's a price that drops by 50% every 18 months or so. If everybody on the face of the earth started doing the same thing tomorrow, it'd take at most a few months before the spammers got the presses warmed back up.
Sorry, but we aren't going to DDOS the spammers. We need a system for holding them accountable.
Have you EVER gotten the advertised specs from your high tech products?
eh, yeah.
My SBC/Pacific Bell DSL line is advertised as 384/128, down/up speeds. I routinely see something more like 1500/320.
I'm right now downloading Fedora Core 1 at > 1 Mbit.
-Ben
I've been working as a freelance programmer/consultant for 4 years. To be fair, I have my wife and 5 kids at home.
I have an office, and I have a home-office. I switch between them. A few times per year I spend a week or two working at location with a client to improve relationships and help things work out when there's a big project afoot.
Also, have three (yes, THREE) phone lines:
1) Home phone. Only tell family and friends. Nobody you work with ever gets this number.
2) Work phone. On your biz card, on your website. Everybody you work with gets this number. Never answer it outside business hours. Never.
3) Cell phone. Mention on your work phone's voice mail with a "if this an emergency, call..." notice. If it's a doozy, people can call. Otherwise, they'll leave a message.
This has been one of the best ways I've yet found to separate home life from work life.
Nash himself said he felt his best years were behind him at age 30
That's very typical. As people get older, they get less creative. As people get married, they become unimaginative dolts.
Of course, I'm happily married, and I'd like to think that I still have *some* creative spark, but then, I *am* here, at 6:33 PM on Turkey-Day eve, reading slashdot...
Maybe they're right, after all?
Definitely covers me - I have a co-located server with clients websites running on it. I rent all my bandwidth though - would never really have thought of myself as an ISP, although I guess I fall under the auspice of "Internet Service Provider" - the typical image is either a dial-up merchant, or someone like Colt/BT/Level3/(insert huge company here)
You RENT your bandwidth? So, let me ask you this - after you are done, do you have to give it back? How do you rent a service?
You *always* buy bandwidth. Typically, you'll pay $X per month for Y bandwidth usage, either in GB of transfer or avg rate of transfer.
It doesn't matter who you are, small or big, with a single 1U server, a rack, or your own unfettered OC3. You *always* pay a monthly charge for your connections to other providers.
Sorry, but I heard all about how *awful* Matrix 3 was. I went seeing it waiting for the worst.
And, Matrix 3 turned out to be *awesome*. It was exciting, action-packed, full of emotion, and romance. What is wrong with a trilogy that has alot of action, and ends in peace?
I didn't walk out of the theatre wondering if my car was really there, but I was very happy to have paid $15 to see a movie that was much better than average.
Wait - I think I know!
Matrix is, at the end, a love story. Families, lovers, and the like. And isn't slashdot largely populated by lonely, single geeks without a date? Geeks that wouldn't *understand* how deep the feelings of true love can really be?
Don't say I didn't mention this possibility...
However, when you compare Gnome to Qt you realise just how bloody awful free software can be. Gnome is the best advert for Qt there is.
I wrote an app in PHP-GTK. I found it stable, cross-platform, and most of all, usable. But there sure were alot of weirds.
For example, Clist rows aren't "widgets" in the full sense of the word. Thus, you can't use tooltips (descriptive little popup boxes) on them, even though they act in every other way like a widget.
The combo (dropdown list) widget won't let you set data specific to a particular entry. Instead, you have to store the entry-specific data in an array and load via a special call to set_data().
The entry (write stuff in a box) widget is clearly broken, especially on Windows, (it draws little boxes whenever you have a line break) and I can't get scintilla, (which replaces entry) to scroll the text up to follow you when you type.
The documentation is weak. Many functions are not well documented, and there is no mention of others. Sometimes I had to use the function "Get_Class_Methods()" just so I knew what my options were!
Nothing was insurmountable, and I was able to produce a functional application that's had positive acclaim in its marketplace, so I'm not too horribly upset. But it could be *alot* better.
Apple couldn't do it. Instead they call it "OS/X". (See "Oh Sex" for a pronunciation guide)
RedHat couldn't do it. Instead they call it "Fedora Core 1". (Pronunciation? Don't bother)
but Sun can do it! Think of the possibilities, though...
They could have "Solaris X" as the Unix system, and "Solarux" as their Linux distro! What a way to leverage their brand name onto something that's unrelated, and works even better!
I mean.. talk about SEXY... you'd pronounce it "Solari-Sex"...
Well? Why couldn't they?
Wait.... Maybe, just maybe.... who could say "Solaris X" without saying "Solaris-Sucks"????
Does the primary language of the person who programs your dialog boxes really matter?
Depends. How would this go over in your book:
"Please to OK click for error disk format data upon hard"
Was there possible disk error, or are you about to format the hard drive?
Welcome to ESL! (English as Second Language)
<SHAMELESS AUTO ANALOGY>
Try this on for size:
How about, instead of having a few dozen models of cars, we just come up with one?
</SHAMELESS AUTO ANALOGY>
.25 second delay is noticable, and .75 second is PULL-OUT-THE-HAMMER-AND-SMASH-THE-PHONE aggrevating...
So, would it be a four door sedan? 18-wheel rig? California convertible? With my five kids, that one four-door, 18-wheel, convertible California convertible car had better seat seven!
I'm reminded of a Simpsons episode where Homer is given the chance (by a long lost family member) to design the *ultimate* car - which, in trying to please everyone, disgusted anyone who looked at it.
Every protocol is not equivalent. Each is optimized for a particular purpose. Games and DNS use UDP over IP because its capabilities fit the needs of games and DNS servers far better than, say, TCP or FTP.
And, while VOIP is growing, it's still quirky (at best) compared to a POTS connection, because the ubiquitous, cheap, anarchic connection model of the Internet just doesn't work well with voice, where a