> So, where is this ideal world you live in, where "If you build it, > they will come"? > Seems to me that you want a guarantee. Sorry, life (and business!) > just don't work that way.
Ah - but therein lies the rub where App-Store development differs from the traditional software chain.
The guarantee I want is simply that if I build it, I will be allowed to sell it.
We use two business models: 1) We build and sell to many customers 2) We build and sell to one customer
App store is a little bit of a blend between the two, and that's why it's difficult for business to build non-trivial apps for it (and I'm not interested in recipe databases or fart machines).
In business model #1, before we start, we look around and make sure there is a good market. We build the software, and either we did a good job and people buy it, or we did a bad job and they don't.
In business model #2, before we start, we sign a contract with said customer, and make sure that they're not going to cause us to post a loss even if they change their minds halfway through the process. Usually this is achieved by getting money up front.
The App Store can be seen as a single customer in terms of software acceptance: either they like it, or they don't. But there is no contract describing the acceptance procedure, and no money changes hands.
I don't have a problem in the #1 scenario gambling on whether the company will do a good job or not. What I have a problem is gambling on whether we'll even be allowed to try to sell the software or not. To me, that's completely unacceptable. It's one thing to fail because you did a bad job: it's another thing entirely to fail because a single individual outside your company had a bad one day.
No, it sounds like to me he came to the same conclusions as I did -- If I buy some more hardware, developer SDKs, and invest a few man-months in bringing a team up to speed on iPhone development and build an app -- there is very real possibility that I will not be permitted to sell the resultant software. Worse yet, there is no fixed set of rules which I can follow which will guarantee that I will be allowed to do so.
What this means, then, is that there is a non-zero chance I will piss all that money down the drain and have little to show for it except some toys. That is completely unacceptable from a business perspective; unfortunately, I am prohibited from gambling with company money, which is exactly what this is -- a poor draw of the cards can result in a total loss before the sales chain even enters the equation.
Wow, if you're going to post something and purposefully come off like an arrogant asshole, you think you'd at least post about stuff you knew about, where the guy you're responding to is actually *wrong*.
Our office actually got quite excited about the phone book for 3 years in a row. There was a listing for Jablomie, Heywood -- we wanted to see long it would take the phone company to purge it.
Even running without the JIT, it is significantly faster. Note that the current JIT only kicks in on loops anyhow (method JIT is still very very alpha quality).
And I doubt GCC is planning to simply bugfix and and translate to C++ -- the project is likely to be similar: better namespacing, occasional use of templates, RAII, etc - clean up old code as we go, add new code using new idioms as appropriate; produce better code overall because of the richer vocabulary.
> And, of course, this will slow down the compiler at least twice, maybe even more.
Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine switched from C to C++ about 18 months ago.
In case you haven't been keeping up, it's a hell of a lot faster than it used to be.
Now, that said, it takes longer to compile -- but who cares about how longer it takes to compile your compiler. What matters is how fast the resultant compiler is.
Or, you can be an excellent English teacher, who knows how to parse a sentence into it's component pieces, but haven't the slightest clue as to how to write a novel, or a play.
There is a LOT more to writing good C++ code than learning the grammar. Any decent coder can jump the C to C++ grammar ladder in a few days. It takes a lot longer than that to be able to effectively express ideas in the language, using idioms that are appropriate, backed by K-lines of experience that teach you what works and what doesn't.
I had an open source project hosted on Kenai -- Sun's answer to Google Code and Git Hub. I was happily using it for mercurial, wiki, mailing lists, etc, ad nauseum.
Until one day I woke and could not.
Not only could I not push changes, I couldn't authenticate to the wiki, or the bug tracker either. I couldn't even create a new account, because every new account I created mysteriously didn't work either.
I sent an email into the support guys, and they looked into it.... eventually. It turns out Sun has some kind of "no fly list" and my name was on it. It turns out that I was also unable to access any other Sun services -- including Solaris patch updates on SunSolve.com!
So, I have to send an e-mail to Sun, and wait. And wait and wait and wait. Weeks go by, then months. I had to move my project, being unable to push to my public repo was killing me. Happy Google Code customer now.
Anyhow, finally months later, I get a message from Sun: "Whoops, sorry, we've turned you back on"
> Why would I ever want to make a deal that gives the other guy everything in > exchange for, in reality, nothing?
I have found that releasing software under FOSS licenses, even those less restrictive than the GPL, can be very useful indeed. Sometimes I get patches, sometimes I get bug reports, sometimes I get docs. Sometimes I can share implementation tips with others in the field, and send "Help Me!" messages with real working examples. It also makes it easier to find developers, because they are already 'up to speed' on my stuff when they start coding for me. FOSS is win-win in many regards, it doesn't have to do be via source contribution by any stretch.
You should be able to install a remote starter on an EIS-equipped Benz by just hiding a spare EIS key somewhere inside the console and tweaking the wiring approrpriately, no? That's the solution used by a lot of ignition interlock systems.
Here's a neat factoid - CAN bus isn't just twisted-pair anyhow, Benz is rolling out fiber for the high-speed CAN bus these days.
I was pretty surprised the first time I bumped into CAN bus; I was at party talking to a couple of guys swapping network troubleshoot techniques. At first, I thought they were fellow nerds, turns out they worked down at the local mercedes dealership. Had some really interesting conversations with them and hit the books. CAN is almost as old as ethernet, it's an IEEE spec, originally developed by... Bosch, IIRC. It's a totally real un-routed packetized micro LAN. Neat stuff!
> in a.NET language if I add two strings together in c# "Hello" + "World" It constructs > a new immutable string. But if I do String.Format("{0}{1}","Hello","World" it is much > faster and uses less memory
REALLY?
JavaScript engines -- with the exception of the one shipping with IE prior to version 9 -- have been cheating on this for performance reasons for a decade. It's a very important performance optimization, because of the html += "" idiom that is so prevalent on the web.
A similar idiom to String.Format exists in javaScript as well: string = [ "Hello", "World" ].join();
I think the lesson here is one of: a).NET languages suck, or b) Premature optimization is the root of all evil
6 years is hardly ancient when it comes to disks in the DC.
I have quite a few which are 8 or 9 inside servers - I don't believe in proactive disk replacement, I believe in wholesale server/enclosure replacement at the end of the lifecycle and on-demand servicing in between (everything is at least N+1 so I can tolerate the odd failure).
I had about 60 disks fail over the last few years that literally failed within a couple of months of the 5-year warranty running out. Seagate must have a clock in them or something (mostly ST31451-FCs). Those disks were exposed to temperatures between 38 and 41 C for their entire running lifetime. I imagine the inside of those enclosures was pretty loud, too. Oh, I define "fail" as "start getting enough read errors that the host notices, either in terms of actually reported soft errors or increased service times".
Wait 'till move to a UNIX where/tmp is actually mounted on a ramdisk. SunOS for one, is like that -- and has been for as long as I can remember (1992?)
What the hell, you guys have been neighbors all the time, you speak the same language, you are both developed countries; and all of the sudden the border security just climbs and climbs and climbs...? What reasons are there?
The Americans are insane.
Specifically, they are in the midst of transforming a free society into a fascist dictatorship.
Slashdot Mirror
Never mind the fact that the character's name is "Denny", not "Donny".
> So, where is this ideal world you live in, where "If you build it,
> they will come"?
> Seems to me that you want a guarantee. Sorry, life (and business!)
> just don't work that way.
Ah - but therein lies the rub where App-Store development differs from the traditional software chain.
The guarantee I want is simply that if I build it, I will be allowed to sell it.
We use two business models:
1) We build and sell to many customers
2) We build and sell to one customer
App store is a little bit of a blend between the two, and that's why it's difficult for business to build non-trivial apps for it (and I'm not interested in recipe databases or fart machines).
In business model #1, before we start, we look around and make sure there is a good market. We build the software, and either we did a good job and people buy it, or we did a bad job and they don't.
In business model #2, before we start, we sign a contract with said customer, and make sure that they're not going to cause us to post a loss even if they change their minds halfway through the process. Usually this is achieved by getting money up front.
The App Store can be seen as a single customer in terms of software acceptance: either they like it, or they don't. But there is no contract describing the acceptance procedure, and no money changes hands.
I don't have a problem in the #1 scenario gambling on whether the company will do a good job or not. What I have a problem is gambling on whether we'll even be allowed to try to sell the software or not. To me, that's completely unacceptable. It's one thing to fail because you did a bad job: it's another thing entirely to fail because a single individual outside your company had a bad one day.
No, it sounds like to me he came to the same conclusions as I did -- If I buy some more hardware, developer SDKs, and invest a few man-months in bringing a team up to speed on iPhone development and build an app -- there is very real possibility that I will not be permitted to sell the resultant software. Worse yet, there is no fixed set of rules which I can follow which will guarantee that I will be allowed to do so.
What this means, then, is that there is a non-zero chance I will piss all that money down the drain and have little to show for it except some toys. That is completely unacceptable from a business perspective; unfortunately, I am prohibited from gambling with company money, which is exactly what this is -- a poor draw of the cards can result in a total loss before the sales chain even enters the equation.
Wow, if you're going to post something and purposefully come off like an arrogant asshole, you think you'd at least post about stuff you knew about, where the guy you're responding to is actually *wrong*.
Our office actually got quite excited about the phone book for 3 years in a row. There was a listing for Jablomie, Heywood -- we wanted to see long it would take the phone company to purge it.
Even running without the JIT, it is significantly faster. Note that the current JIT only kicks in on loops anyhow (method JIT is still very very alpha quality).
And I doubt GCC is planning to simply bugfix and and translate to C++ -- the project is likely to be similar: better namespacing, occasional use of templates, RAII, etc - clean up old code as we go, add new code using new idioms as appropriate; produce better code overall because of the richer vocabulary.
> If the government passes this bill, do you think they would axe this tax?
Here's a hint: Income Tax is a temporary measure to help pay for World War I.
> And, of course, this will slow down the compiler at least twice, maybe even more.
Mozilla's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine switched from C to C++ about 18 months ago.
In case you haven't been keeping up, it's a hell of a lot faster than it used to be.
Now, that said, it takes longer to compile -- but who cares about how longer it takes to compile your compiler. What matters is how fast the resultant compiler is.
Or, you can be an excellent English teacher, who knows how to parse a sentence into it's component pieces, but haven't the slightest clue as to how to write a novel, or a play.
There is a LOT more to writing good C++ code than learning the grammar. Any decent coder can jump the C to C++ grammar ladder in a few days. It takes a lot longer than that to be able to effectively express ideas in the language, using idioms that are appropriate, backed by K-lines of experience that teach you what works and what doesn't.
> We need a term to describe things which appear to be science but in fact which are not.
I propose the term "Junk Science"
> People like this should be sent away, far far away and they dilute the gene pool.
Yes, to Utah.
In fact, Salt Lake City was actually founded specifically to house Morons, way back in 1847.
The real question is - why are these people allowed to own Blackberries?
I had an open source project hosted on Kenai -- Sun's answer to Google Code and Git Hub. I was happily using it for mercurial, wiki, mailing lists, etc, ad nauseum.
Until one day I woke and could not.
Not only could I not push changes, I couldn't authenticate to the wiki, or the bug tracker either. I couldn't even create a new account, because every new account I created mysteriously didn't work either.
I sent an email into the support guys, and they looked into it.... eventually. It turns out Sun has some kind of "no fly list" and my name was on it. It turns out that I was also unable to access any other Sun services -- including Solaris patch updates on SunSolve.com!
So, I have to send an e-mail to Sun, and wait. And wait and wait and wait. Weeks go by, then months. I had to move my project, being unable to push to my public repo was killing me. Happy Google Code customer now.
Anyhow, finally months later, I get a message from Sun: "Whoops, sorry, we've turned you back on"
Like I'm going back.
> And it only took him about a week to make that transition between christmas and new years.
Remarkably, everybody I've ever met takes about a week to make that transition.
Maybe they should hire a professional top-tier comedian.. like Jerry Seinfeld.
> Why would I ever want to make a deal that gives the other guy everything in
> exchange for, in reality, nothing?
I have found that releasing software under FOSS licenses, even those less restrictive than the GPL, can be very useful indeed. Sometimes I get patches, sometimes I get bug reports, sometimes I get docs. Sometimes I can share implementation tips with others in the field, and send "Help Me!" messages with real working examples. It also makes it easier to find developers, because they are already 'up to speed' on my stuff when they start coding for me. FOSS is win-win in many regards, it doesn't have to do be via source contribution by any stretch.
I think "Andreas" is probably a guy.
But I agree about the Peru part. :)
You should be able to install a remote starter on an EIS-equipped Benz by just hiding a spare EIS key somewhere inside the console and tweaking the wiring approrpriately, no? That's the solution used by a lot of ignition interlock systems.
Here's a neat factoid - CAN bus isn't just twisted-pair anyhow, Benz is rolling out fiber for the high-speed CAN bus these days.
I was pretty surprised the first time I bumped into CAN bus; I was at party talking to a couple of guys swapping network troubleshoot techniques. At first, I thought they were fellow nerds, turns out they worked down at the local mercedes dealership. Had some really interesting conversations with them and hit the books. CAN is almost as old as ethernet, it's an IEEE spec, originally developed by... Bosch, IIRC. It's a totally real un-routed packetized micro LAN. Neat stuff!
> in a .NET language if I add two strings together in c# "Hello" + "World" It constructs
> a new immutable string. But if I do String.Format("{0}{1}","Hello","World" it is much
> faster and uses less memory
REALLY?
JavaScript engines -- with the exception of the one shipping with IE prior to version 9 -- have been cheating on this for performance reasons for a decade. It's a very important performance optimization, because of the html += "" idiom that is so prevalent on the web.
A similar idiom to String.Format exists in javaScript as well: string = [ "Hello", "World" ].join();
I think the lesson here is one of: .NET languages suck, or
a)
b) Premature optimization is the root of all evil
Maybe both :p
Thanks. I've been wondering WTF happened to SkyTel for eons.
6 years is hardly ancient when it comes to disks in the DC.
I have quite a few which are 8 or 9 inside servers - I don't believe in proactive disk replacement, I believe in wholesale server/enclosure replacement at the end of the lifecycle and on-demand servicing in between (everything is at least N+1 so I can tolerate the odd failure).
I had about 60 disks fail over the last few years that literally failed within a couple of months of the 5-year warranty running out. Seagate must have a clock in them or something (mostly ST31451-FCs). Those disks were exposed to temperatures between 38 and 41 C for their entire running lifetime. I imagine the inside of those enclosures was pretty loud, too. Oh, I define "fail" as "start getting enough read errors that the host notices, either in terms of actually reported soft errors or increased service times".
CD copying is legal in Canada, so I doubt the CBSA gives a rat's ass about your mp3 collection.
> If you ever used anything cocoa-based, you're partially responsible for child
> slave labour in Africa.
HA! I *knew* there was a reason to stay on Mac OS 9!
> The day they try to take trees out of the park because a kid may climb them and fall and get hurt, I'm gonna flip out.
Have you noticed that playground equipment is virtually nowhere to be found anymore?
Wait 'till move to a UNIX where /tmp is actually mounted on a ramdisk. SunOS for one, is like that -- and has been for as long as I can remember (1992?)
The Americans are insane.
Specifically, they are in the midst of transforming a free society into a fascist dictatorship.
Naomi Wolfe explains this much better than I could:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment