The choice of which to remove was not arbitrary -- there is information in it. Switching means that you will be right 2/3 of the time because you will be right *unless* your initial guess was right. Staying with your original guess X doesn't change the fact that there was only a 1/3 chance of X being right in the first place.
I think the problem is just that none of the new formats have been hugely successful. Minidisc is doing pretty well (not pre-recorded, maybe) and HDCD is good (as a compatible extension of CD) but generally people are happy with CDs + something smaller for portability. Originals on CD (or an enhanced version), downloadable for portability.
The book "Generative Programming" covers this, referring to Microsoft's up-and-coming "Intensional Programming" system, IIRC. An excellent book. I'm anti-M$, I confess, but this looks interesting.
Yup, this is one of their sillier lies. sudo protects things with fairly fine granularity. As a programmer, shared memory and other IPC resources have a similar system of protection to files, and of course filesystems contain things other than files anyway.
X servers have access control, numerous other things have access control. Did Microsoft deliberately get this written by a clueless individual so that they have "plausible deniability?"
While the bigest gains may come from choosing the right algorithms, in the real world it's often vital to choose the right algorithms _and_ choose a language which can be efficient and use the idioms which make it efficient.
For tasks where performance is critical, choice of programming environments is restricted. For the many tasks where an extra 100ms doesn't matter, use whichever language lets you develop solid software most quickly.
And if _anyone_ ever tries to persuade you to choose a particular language for a commercial project on purely technical grounds, ignore them. The availability of expertise and good development systems is usually more important than most technical issues.
To say that a program must compile under Environment A isn't to say that it must be developed in that same environment. Write (fairly) Standard C++ and it will compile under a wide range of environments, wherever you choose to develop it.
I would prefer to require that students' code should compile on all of: g++, Codewarrior, BCB, SGI Mipspro, Comeau C++ (though I realize that checking that would be impractical). That would ensure that students learn the very useful skill of learning the difference between portable code and platform-specific extensions.
This still wouldn't say which environment they had to use to develop the code, and might give some useful feel for to what extent it is possible (or impossible) to write portable code.
Spam should be outlawed: because it costs the receiver time (and often money), at the sender's choice. Similarly it is illegal, in some countries, to send unsolicited messages by fax. Whether source code is a form of speech or not (I can talk it, so it is, trivially) is another question. "Just bits" can reasonably be protected by copyright law. It's reasonable to copyright music, or source code. It's not reasonable to copyright algorithms or any other piece of mathematics. What on earth you mean by saying that "source code is a constitutional right" is a mystery to me. But then the very American idea that expressing something as "speech" might override copyright protection is also a mystery to me, so maybe I should duck out of this discussion. Freedom of Speech has limits, and this is one of them.
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The choice of which to remove was not arbitrary -- there is information in it. Switching means that you will be right 2/3 of the time because you will be right *unless* your initial guess was right. Staying with your original guess X doesn't change the fact that there was only a 1/3 chance of X being right in the first place.
;)
Trust me, I'm a mathematician
I think the problem is just that none of the new formats have been hugely successful. Minidisc is doing pretty well (not pre-recorded, maybe) and HDCD is good (as a compatible extension of CD) but generally people are happy with CDs + something smaller for portability. Originals on CD (or an enhanced version), downloadable for portability.
The book "Generative Programming" covers this, referring to Microsoft's up-and-coming "Intensional Programming" system, IIRC. An excellent book. I'm anti-M$, I confess, but this looks interesting.
C++ exceptions allow for exceptional control paths and clean non-local error handling. Anonymous Coward still doesn't have his/her facts straight.
You going to pay for the bill? Shouldn't have piped that to lpr, dammit.
You'll probably need 99%+ compatibility to get any office apps to run usably.
Yup, this is one of their sillier lies. sudo protects things with fairly fine granularity. As a programmer, shared memory and other IPC resources have a similar system of protection to files, and of course filesystems contain things other than files anyway.
X servers have access control, numerous other things have access control. Did Microsoft deliberately get this written by a clueless individual so that they have "plausible deniability?"
...my brain. It's the most useful device I have when I want to hack.
While the bigest gains may come from choosing the right algorithms, in the real world it's often vital to choose the right algorithms _and_ choose a language which can be efficient and use the idioms which make it efficient. For tasks where performance is critical, choice of programming environments is restricted. For the many tasks where an extra 100ms doesn't matter, use whichever language lets you develop solid software most quickly. And if _anyone_ ever tries to persuade you to choose a particular language for a commercial project on purely technical grounds, ignore them. The availability of expertise and good development systems is usually more important than most technical issues.
To say that a program must compile under Environment A isn't to say that it must be developed in that same environment. Write (fairly) Standard C++ and it will compile under a wide range of environments, wherever you choose to develop it. I would prefer to require that students' code should compile on all of: g++, Codewarrior, BCB, SGI Mipspro, Comeau C++ (though I realize that checking that would be impractical). That would ensure that students learn the very useful skill of learning the difference between portable code and platform-specific extensions. This still wouldn't say which environment they had to use to develop the code, and might give some useful feel for to what extent it is possible (or impossible) to write portable code.
Spam should be outlawed: because it costs the receiver time (and often money), at the sender's choice. Similarly it is illegal, in some countries, to send unsolicited messages by fax. Whether source code is a form of speech or not (I can talk it, so it is, trivially) is another question. "Just bits" can reasonably be protected by copyright law. It's reasonable to copyright music, or source code. It's not reasonable to copyright algorithms or any other piece of mathematics. What on earth you mean by saying that "source code is a constitutional right" is a mystery to me. But then the very American idea that expressing something as "speech" might override copyright protection is also a mystery to me, so maybe I should duck out of this discussion. Freedom of Speech has limits, and this is one of them.