That's a perfectly stupid claim. I've had a computer at home for the last 20 years, and never once was the ability to play games an issue. I don't play games on my home computers rendering your claim false. For some people gaming is important, while for others it isn't.
Linux literally has a wider game library support for the sake of using nonproprietory hardware.
When is Steve Jobs going to realize this is the last frontier.
When the majority of Apple's customers and potential customers let it be known that they must be able to play more games than they can already.
Very honestly, most of these machines couldn't "kill omeone".
Hmm, a pain pump that doesn't correctly meter the morphine could easily kill someone.
I mean, if the radiation therapy machine crashes, nobody dies.
Wow, you mean if the control computer crashes leaving the shutter to the Cobalt source open nobody could die? How about gamma knife overexposing the brain stem, cooking the brain stem couldn't possibly kill someone. How about a faulty homing cycle where the radiation head homes to the patient table, even if a patient is there.
Do me a favor, don't work on human critical systems.
However there is one thing the article mentions that puts a flaw in this rather shaky logic, missions to the ISS are safer because the shuttle can be checked for problems and worked on there, unlike at Hubble.
Assuming that there are resources available to exam and repair the shuttle in orbit this might be an almost valid argument. Who exactly in orbit is qualified to fix the shuttle, and where to they get the tools and parts?
The article appears to ignore the possiblity of a ground based attack. Hell, it would probably be easier to attack the ground controller, and not have to worry about even trying to board the aircraft. To add insult to injury, it wpuld probably be almost impossible to track down if sufficiently motivated bad guys were involved.
Apple Solvent: Dissolving your freedom, one bit at a time.
Let's see if I understand this. Apple is dissolving your freedom by covering their corporate ass, particularly with regards to software they give away for free? The very same software nobody forces you to use? Yeah, Apple is sure dissolving your rights. Grow the fuck up.
Our civil liberties are reduced every time another activity is criminalized. Under the DMCA, possession and use of reverse engineering tools is a crime. Does that mean my possession and use fo GBD is now a crime?
This technique relies on the raster nature of CRTs... therefore, for our own safety, I think the government ought to buy us all nice large LCD monitors.
Nope, the govt will take away your nice LCD. It's so much easier to ensure your safety when you use an easy to monitor LCD.
Though I agree that most MS APIs are bad I also understand why they haven't been changed. Why are we still using sprintf instead of snprintf? Compability comes to mind. We are trying to keep source level compability with other UNIXes where MS is trying to keep source level compability with other versions of Windows(TM). In addition to compability problems changes would render current knowledge on MFC etc. completely useless. I'd think that those void pointers are there for historical reasons only.
I would prefer to have to completly relearn the API instead of having to deal with MFC. As best I can tell, MFC is a nasty kludge on top of the WIN32 API, which does go a long towards explaining the abundence of voids. Since a price was already being paid to have C++ wrappers for many functions, it would have made more sense to have the conversions to void done inside the wrappers.
Source level compatibility is a wonderful thing as long as it doesn't actually hinder work. In the case of windows, I think it would be a far better piece of software if teh just made a clean break with the past. Heck, they could provide some form of emulation for compatibilty, it's not that hard.
If you still disagree think about X and xlib. Why are we still using API that doesn't have any support for alpha blending, vector graphics, decent pixmap filtering etc. features supported by hardware in current graphics chips. We don't have even anti-aliased fonts which I myself take for granted in every other OS I use these days.
Let's not even get into X and xLib, just suffice to say X and xLib suck in their own particular ways. My current gripe with X is broken header files that use implicit type declarations, yet another bad practice.
I wouldn't call MS documentation poor. Perhaps they don't give you all the documentation for free, but there good documentation for the areas MS wants the developers to know. Sure there's undocumented features that MS uses in its own software and others follow with reverse engineering. It's MS source and it's up to them what they want to tell about it to developers.
I would call MS documentation poor, particularly when we did pay for it. One fine example is changing the title of a window. It took considerable time to figure out what should have been an easy task. If I pay Microsoft for development tools and documentation, I expect both to be useful. I have found books written by people who claim to have been associated with the design of MFC to be more useful than the docs with MFC. The problem here is that I shouldn't have to line the pockets of someone who couldn't be bothered to do the documentation right the first time.
If you don't like MS APIs or their OS don't support them. Notice that if you don't make programs for their OS you don't need to care about their API quality. What comes to coding style (I assume you mean code formating)... for example I cannot stand GNU coding "standards" - fortunately I have indent.
Not supporting an OS because I don't like it is a luxury I did not have. The customer unfortunatly convinced the boss that MS was the only acceptable platform. Quitting the job was not a viable option.
Coding style refers to more than simplty formatting. It also refers to how language constructs are used. Void pointers exist for compatibility, not for passing the same data type to a function every time. To use void where a specific type can (and should) be used is poor coding style, particularly in C++ since it defeats type checking.
The fact that MS does provide some old ugly APIs doesn't automatically suggest that MS couldn't be perfect source for look for good code. Unfortunately MS seems to keep most of it's code secret. Do you really think that company that hires every top quality coder it can get would generate only bad code?
I didn't claim that the MS programmers like the state of the code. I did however claim that their code does not meet my standards. Regarding your question, I can only make judgements on the code I can see.
Do you people *really* have nothing better to do? Does Microsoft really hurt you that much? Do you really think that the world is meant to be
perfect and the software industry owes you something? What? Oh, you're thirteen! Of course...
The appallingly bad API that Microsoft provides with their tools is a very good reason to dislike Microsoft. In answer to you question, "did Microsoft hurt me?" Yes they did. Their incredibly poor level of documentation, coupled with an almost complete disregard for decent coding style, and the near constant abuse/redefinition of C++ has cost me more time that I care to consider when trying to do my work. I can accept the occasional use of void pointers when passing data to a function in C++, but having somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the functions in the API use one or more void arguments is completely unacceptable. The failure to provide decent examples/documentation for MFC is also unacceptable. When I am required to use MS products, that we had to pay a premium price for, I expect the products to be well documented and work correctly. Microsoft's development tools fail to meet both of my expectations, so I would have to concur that Microsoft is not the place to look for good code.
Could this be another cold-fusion, or are we looking at a revolution in bio-sciences that the current scientists fear?
It could be another cold-fusion, but we won't know until more work has been done. A scientist who is actually concientious isn't going to fear being shown that something they thought was impossible is acually possible. I can see a great amount of concern regarding ethical problems with this, and the ever popular problem with misinterpretation. Then there will also be the choruses of conspiracy theorists who will claim that scientists are keeping immortality for themselves.
In short, I don't see problems with the science, just with people.
Actually it isn't that easy to do OCR on a language that uses ideograms. Not only is there a harder recognition problem, but there is less context to draw from. Kanji can be viewed as an alphabet, where written Chinese is not.
In my research group there have been several people working on OCR from Chinese. They have met with only limited success owing to factors including sloppy calligraphy, relevance of stroke directions, and the massive number of symbols to be recognized.
It was a serious pain getting off of the Harris list. I went through the process of requesting I be removed from their list several times and nothing happened. At that point any mail from Harris is spam. Furthermore Harris is benefitting commercially from their polls, and has no incentive to stop delivering invitations unless someone forces them to follow their own rules.
When I was teaching a programming course, I told my TAs not to try to make code that didn't compile as submitted compile. This waws done for two reasons. The first is that the TAs have to much work already, and shouldn't be fixing the students code. The second is that the students were told how their code would be evaluated. If the code didn't compile because they couldn't follow directions, they were penalized.
If you go on the job and tell your emplyer that you don't like the tools they are using, you had better have a very good reason, or a current CV for when you get sacked.
The clothing with lots of pockets is great. The only problem is poor pocket placement and sizing. For example, I have a pair of paints where the watch pocket is 2" wide and 4" deep, making it fscking hard to reach my watch (yes I have a pocket watch).
SUVs are FUN to drive. Sure. They're not so great for the environment, and they're expensive to buy, and hard on gas, but they're FUN. Seriously, if you think that driving is ONLY about transportation, you should buy a bus pass, and use public transportation.
I'd love to be able to take public transit all the time, but it isn't possible. Unless you live in a very large city chances are good there is little or no public transportation available. Bear in mind, if you live in a small town any taxi service will be extremly expensive.
As for cars being only for transportation, if you think driving is fun, by all means do so. I would prefer that people not drive huge SUVs that will put their bumper throught my windshield in a head on collision. Of course that would actually require people to be concerned about the safety of other people on the road.
Borland has a long history of providing low cost tools. When Turbo Pascal first came out, it took the market by storm because of it's cost (not to forget about speed of compliation). Borland has consistently provided tools below $100 at least into the mid-90's.
It's true that the Turbo series of compilers was extremly fast, but the speed of the compiled code left something to be desired. I would prefer a compiler that is a little slower, but generates good code to one that is fast but generated slow code.
There is a fairly easy work around that piece of legislation. IT has been used in the financial community for a while now. What you need to do is have your Key being held by a custodian outside the UK jurisdiction. Then set up an agreement that in the case of any legal action against you the custodian is automatic required to refuse delivery of the key to you. That way you can not be held in contempt since you abide by the law requesting the key, but you are not getting it since something outside your control hinders it.
Of course, if you are the focus of an investigation the existance of such an agreement will be discovered. In the US they would then claim contempt or obstruction, I suspect the UK would be similar. Financial institutions have more money, and consequently a better chance of avoiding contempt charges.
Slashdot Mirror
Well games is still the #1 issue.
Not really.
A real OS for home MUST be able to play games.
That's a perfectly stupid claim. I've had a computer at home for the last 20 years, and never once was the ability to play games an issue. I don't play games on my home computers rendering your claim false. For some people gaming is important, while for others it isn't.
Linux literally has a wider game library support for the sake of using nonproprietory hardware.
When is Steve Jobs going to realize this is the last frontier.
When the majority of Apple's customers and potential customers let it be known that they must be able to play more games than they can already.
Very honestly, most of these machines couldn't "kill omeone".
Hmm, a pain pump that doesn't correctly meter the morphine could easily kill someone.
I mean, if the radiation therapy machine crashes, nobody dies.
Wow, you mean if the control computer crashes leaving the shutter to the Cobalt source open nobody could die? How about gamma knife overexposing the brain stem, cooking the brain stem couldn't possibly kill someone. How about a faulty homing cycle where the radiation head homes to the patient table, even if a patient is there.
Do me a favor, don't work on human critical systems.
NASA is funded at the public teat, of course they're going to do something that catches headlines.
However there is one thing the article mentions that puts a flaw in this rather shaky logic, missions to the ISS are safer because the shuttle can be checked for problems and worked on there, unlike at Hubble.
Assuming that there are resources available to exam and repair the shuttle in orbit this might be an almost valid argument. Who exactly in orbit is qualified to fix the shuttle, and where to they get the tools and parts?
So pass the cost onto your customer.
So the GPS unit is required equipment for doing business. Write the cost off as a business expense.
Bingo!
The article appears to ignore the possiblity of a ground based attack. Hell, it would probably be easier to attack the ground controller, and not have to worry about even trying to board the aircraft. To add insult to injury, it wpuld probably be almost impossible to track down if sufficiently motivated bad guys were involved.
Apple Solvent: Dissolving your freedom, one bit at a time.
Let's see if I understand this. Apple is dissolving your freedom by covering their corporate ass, particularly with regards to software they give away for free? The very same software nobody forces you to use? Yeah, Apple is sure dissolving your rights. Grow the fuck up.
Our civil liberties are reduced every time another activity is criminalized. Under the DMCA, possession and use of reverse engineering tools is a crime. Does that mean my possession and use fo GBD is now a crime?
This technique relies on the raster nature of CRTs ... therefore, for our own safety, I think the government ought to buy us all nice large LCD monitors.
Nope, the govt will take away your nice LCD. It's so much easier to ensure your safety when you use an easy to monitor LCD.
set prompt="%{\033]0;%n@%m:%~\007%}"
This puts the info for the current user@host:directory in the title bar.
Have you guys ever heard the saying "IF YOU DONT LIKE IT, THEN DONT USE IT!"
Nice idea in theory, but almost completely impractical in reality.
Though I agree that most MS APIs are bad I also understand why they haven't been changed. Why are we still using sprintf instead of snprintf? Compability comes to mind. We are trying to keep source level compability with other UNIXes where MS is trying to keep source level compability with other versions of Windows(TM). In addition to compability problems changes would render current knowledge on MFC etc. completely useless. I'd think that those void pointers are there for historical reasons only.
I would prefer to have to completly relearn the API instead of having to deal with MFC. As best I can tell, MFC is a nasty kludge on top of the WIN32 API, which does go a long towards explaining the abundence of voids. Since a price was already being paid to have C++ wrappers for many functions, it would have made more sense to have the conversions to void done inside the wrappers.
Source level compatibility is a wonderful thing as long as it doesn't actually hinder work. In the case of windows, I think it would be a far better piece of software if teh just made a clean break with the past. Heck, they could provide some form of emulation for compatibilty, it's not that hard.
If you still disagree think about X and xlib. Why are we still using API that doesn't have any support for alpha blending, vector graphics, decent pixmap filtering etc. features supported by hardware in current graphics chips. We don't have even anti-aliased fonts which I myself take for granted in every other OS I use these days.
Let's not even get into X and xLib, just suffice to say X and xLib suck in their own particular ways. My current gripe with X is broken header files that use implicit type declarations, yet another bad practice.
I wouldn't call MS documentation poor. Perhaps they don't give you all the documentation for free, but there good documentation for the areas MS wants the developers to know. Sure there's undocumented features that MS uses in its own software and others follow with reverse engineering. It's MS source and it's up to them what they want to tell about it to developers.
I would call MS documentation poor, particularly when we did pay for it. One fine example is changing the title of a window. It took considerable time to figure out what should have been an easy task. If I pay Microsoft for development tools and documentation, I expect both to be useful. I have found books written by people who claim to have been associated with the design of MFC to be more useful than the docs with MFC. The problem here is that I shouldn't have to line the pockets of someone who couldn't be bothered to do the documentation right the first time.
If you don't like MS APIs or their OS don't support them. Notice that if you don't make programs for their OS you don't need to care about their API quality. What comes to coding style (I assume you mean code formating)... for example I cannot stand GNU coding "standards" - fortunately I have indent.
Not supporting an OS because I don't like it is a luxury I did not have. The customer unfortunatly convinced the boss that MS was the only acceptable platform. Quitting the job was not a viable option.
Coding style refers to more than simplty formatting. It also refers to how language constructs are used. Void pointers exist for compatibility, not for passing the same data type to a function every time. To use void where a specific type can (and should) be used is poor coding style, particularly in C++ since it defeats type checking.
The fact that MS does provide some old ugly APIs doesn't automatically suggest that MS couldn't be perfect source for look for good code. Unfortunately MS seems to keep most of it's code secret. Do you really think that company that hires every top quality coder it can get would generate only bad code?
I didn't claim that the MS programmers like the state of the code. I did however claim that their code does not meet my standards. Regarding your question, I can only make judgements on the code I can see.
Do you people *really* have nothing better to do? Does Microsoft really hurt you that much? Do you really think that the world is meant to be perfect and the software industry owes you something? What? Oh, you're thirteen! Of course...
The appallingly bad API that Microsoft provides with their tools is a very good reason to dislike Microsoft. In answer to you question, "did Microsoft hurt me?" Yes they did. Their incredibly poor level of documentation, coupled with an almost complete disregard for decent coding style, and the near constant abuse/redefinition of C++ has cost me more time that I care to consider when trying to do my work. I can accept the occasional use of void pointers when passing data to a function in C++, but having somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the functions in the API use one or more void arguments is completely unacceptable. The failure to provide decent examples/documentation for MFC is also unacceptable. When I am required to use MS products, that we had to pay a premium price for, I expect the products to be well documented and work correctly. Microsoft's development tools fail to meet both of my expectations, so I would have to concur that Microsoft is not the place to look for good code.
Could this be another cold-fusion, or are we looking at a revolution in bio-sciences that the current scientists fear?
It could be another cold-fusion, but we won't know until more work has been done. A scientist who is actually concientious isn't going to fear being shown that something they thought was impossible is acually possible. I can see a great amount of concern regarding ethical problems with this, and the ever popular problem with misinterpretation. Then there will also be the choruses of conspiracy theorists who will claim that scientists are keeping immortality for themselves.
In short, I don't see problems with the science, just with people.
Actually it isn't that easy to do OCR on a language that uses ideograms. Not only is there a harder recognition problem, but there is less context to draw from. Kanji can be viewed as an alphabet, where written Chinese is not.
In my research group there have been several people working on OCR from Chinese. They have met with only limited success owing to factors including sloppy calligraphy, relevance of stroke directions, and the massive number of symbols to be recognized.
It was a serious pain getting off of the Harris list. I went through the process of requesting I be removed from their list several times and nothing happened. At that point any mail from Harris is spam. Furthermore Harris is benefitting commercially from their polls, and has no incentive to stop delivering invitations unless someone forces them to follow their own rules.
At the very least, you could mess up the targeting systems with excessive vibration.
When I was teaching a programming course, I told my TAs not to try to make code that didn't compile as submitted compile. This waws done for two reasons. The first is that the TAs have to much work already, and shouldn't be fixing the students code. The second is that the students were told how their code would be evaluated. If the code didn't compile because they couldn't follow directions, they were penalized.
If you go on the job and tell your emplyer that you don't like the tools they are using, you had better have a very good reason, or a current CV for when you get sacked.
Phil. K. Dick couldn't register either. Of course, no repectable author would have such an offensive name.
I had one, it broke. Also, a very deep pocket places the watch in an uncomfortable position for sitting.
The clothing with lots of pockets is great. The only problem is poor pocket placement and sizing. For example, I have a pair of paints where the watch pocket is 2" wide and 4" deep, making it fscking hard to reach my watch (yes I have a pocket watch).
I'd love to be able to take public transit all the time, but it isn't possible. Unless you live in a very large city chances are good there is little or no public transportation available. Bear in mind, if you live in a small town any taxi service will be extremly expensive.
As for cars being only for transportation, if you think driving is fun, by all means do so. I would prefer that people not drive huge SUVs that will put their bumper throught my windshield in a head on collision. Of course that would actually require people to be concerned about the safety of other people on the road.