This would stop corrupt, self-serving politicians dead in their tracks,
How would it do that? They would put money aside from politics in various trusts, for example in family members name. What it would do is stop previous rich politicians. Those politicians for all their other flaws are often the least corrupt.
Why would anyone agree to your scheme who had substantial money unless the state payoff were huge?
Because they harbored Al Qaeda after Al Qaeda attacked us. They were an accessory after the fact on the fist major successful bombing operation since Pearl Harbor and the first major success operation in the continental United States since the war of 1812.
Iraq we replaced a regime we didn't like with one we are so/so with. Had we just crushed Saddam and left it would have been a success. Afghanistan you might remember was harboring the people who conducted a major bombing operation against America. What we have to show for it is the fall of the Taliban for over a decade. We also killed a bunch of Al Qaeda.
You do not have systems in the millions of lines with dynamic languages because you do not need that many lines to do just about anything.
Of course you do. Complex exceptions. Take your trading program. Assume that the various brokerages connecting all had different data standards, you had to work with their APIs. Assume that each and every stock had its own set of rules and restrictions and of various types. Assume that the stocks themselves weren't uniform but you still had to worry about certificate management and that varied by state and country.
The dynamic languages have libraries as well. The extra structures and complexity needed to use the Java libraries effectively as well as the extra verbiage increase the complexity and size of the code in Java.
I'm not sure I would generalize too much from Perl. Perl had a terrific run going from a text processing language to a system admin language to the standard for web development. Then it moved towards applications development. And then it faltered badly. They responded to the faltering with an overly ambitious and poorly managed next version which has sucked the life out of the language.
Perl is an example of picking a technology that died. Lots of people who have picked lots of technologies they thought were safe had similar problems. That's not a language issue. VMS-Cobol is doing much worse than IBM-Cobols not because of COBOL.
That's exactly the point. As the level of the language goes up you start thinking into terms of highly abstracted algorithms. Low level procedures become entirely opaque even to the programmer. I can see the Assembly code when I write C. I have no idea what the engine is doing in Visual Basic.
Because the productivity doesn't scale well as projects get larger. Dynamic languages are amazing at 20 line programs. They are pretty hot at 200 lines programs. At 2000 lines you are starting to feel the minus but they still work well. At 20,000 things start going badly wrong. By 2m, well there are 2m line programs mostly because all those things that are good about a dynamic language for 20 lines turn into disadvantages when you need hundreds of programmers to work together.
As contrasted with Java? Unless you want something that is really in Java's forte (i.e. working the a Java library) I'd be hard pressed to see where LISP is likely to lose.
Now the issue of course is as the number of programmers increases LISP's idiosyncratic behaviors and allowing each developer to express their individuality go from huge advantages to huge disadvantages. At a million+ lines of code Java's maintainability and standardization become key features. But at say 20-10,000 I'm hard pressed to see much that LISP wouldn't win at.
Excellent point. Though this is mainly high level vs. low level. For example Mathematica, PHP and Visual Basic often beat LISP in terms of productivity. Norvig was commenting that LISP beats Java while managing to also be faster than Java which is what is truly impressive.
There are some pretty good stats on productivity from Cocomo II group: http://csse.usc.edu/csse/research/COCOMOII/cocomo_main.html. First off you measure in terms of normalized lines of code which ends up being close to the same across languages. From there you can examine how large programs are in varieties of languages in terms of normalized lines of code and you get productivity measures:
Perl vs. Python for relatively similar levels of experience I'd assume the differences in productivity is going to be close to 0. You seem to need rather dramatic differences on high/low level scale to get much of a productivity boost. So for example C# and Java are both 2.5; Perl and Smalltak are both 6.
Moreover even between similar languages superiority can be hard to measure. Take for example the very complex and long arguments on garbage collection. Or on lazy vs. eager evaluation: where lazy can be crazy powerful but in exchange can induce algorithms / code that often become quadratic in time and memory. And then on top of all that there are the cultural issues.
I'm sorry, but that's fucking ridiculous. Laptops with touchscreens are a tiny, minuscule portion of last year's PC market (let alone the total current PC deployment base), and sacrificing "traditional" PC UI paradigms for a zero-market-share touch UI is a huge mistake.
You need to separate out: 1) I wouldn't do strategy X if I were had of Microsoft 2) Microsoft isn't implementing strategy X
The fact that you don't like ubiquitous computing does not mean that is not Microsoft's direction. Microsoft considers ubiquitous computing key to their long term strategy and vision. Moreover you are wrong on the facts regarding share. In 1Q2013 6% of all laptop sales were touchscreen by 3Q2013 it was almost 10%. That's not miniscule.
They absolutely are moving away from the traditional UI. Windows 8 being the first step in that direction.
Percentage of non-geeks who use anything other than the built-in software for watching DVDs: approximately 0.
When DVD players came out there was no player bundled with Windows yet people used them. I believe only Vista and Win 7 included players. Just to pick an Apple example, Apple doesn't bundle a Blu-Ray player yet people can watch Blu-Ray using 3rd party software.
Last year, PC sales were sharply down while tablet sales were through the roof.
PC sales have been declining at about 11% per year since 2008. Nothing too much happened in 2013 though it was a few percent worse than trend. The strategy of staying with the XP style UI had failed for years before ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing is Microsoft's attempt to reverse the trend. Otherwise, they are likely going to lose the home / small business segment during this decade. They know that.
I'll be so bold as to predict that Microsoft won't make anyone do anything. They may really, really wish they could, but the market is coming to decide that they don't need traditional desktops or laptops.
Not quite. There is very little high end tablet adoption ($300+) among non-computer owners. That contrasts sharply with tablets in the $75-150 price point. It appears that most people feel that they don't need traditional desktops and laptops as much. That's lengthening replacement cycles but not eliminating users. The userbase is still growing, though slowly. Many customers prefer a tablet form factor and the visual applications (the ones you were being critical of a few sentences earlier). At some point tablets may be good enough to actually replace desktops and laptops either fully or so close to fully that people no longer feel the need to own. Microsoft wants to be prepared for that.
Microsoft would do well to admit this and change course accordingly.
What do you think they are doing? They have changed course. They are working hard to get ahead of the market. Do things like educate people like yourself about why you should spend the extra $250 on touch screen and removable hinge on your next laptop before you decide to walk away from x86 all together.
Did you get her a touchscreen laptop? It sounds like no. And that's why. Windows 8 doesn't work well on the wrong hardware.
As for the desktop, try a 2 an external setup with Metro on the laptop's touchscreen and desktop on the external monitor. That will help get her used to
I almost couldn't believe that I had to download VLC because Media Player won't play DVD's because Microsoft didn't include the codecs? Why the hell did manufacturers install a DVD payer in the machine.
Because they expected by this point you've been using DVD players for over a dozen years and have licenses for DVD playing software. Anyway Microsoft was giving away keys to Media pro-pack, for a while. If not yes just use any of the zillions of free alternatives.
This Operating System sucks balls. I for one will never be upgrading my main system - ever.
Exactly. So much of the criticism is from people who are using Windows 8 on the wrong hardware. Microsoft though is partially to blame. Just like Vista they assured everyone that this OS was for all computers, rather than just making a touchscreen or drawing pad mandatory for Windows 8.
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That was tried after WWI. Didn't work too well.
How would it do that? They would put money aside from politics in various trusts, for example in family members name. What it would do is stop previous rich politicians. Those politicians for all their other flaws are often the least corrupt.
Why would anyone agree to your scheme who had substantial money unless the state payoff were huge?
Because they harbored Al Qaeda after Al Qaeda attacked us. They were an accessory after the fact on the fist major successful bombing operation since Pearl Harbor and the first major success operation in the continental United States since the war of 1812.
Iraq we replaced a regime we didn't like with one we are so/so with. Had we just crushed Saddam and left it would have been a success.
Afghanistan you might remember was harboring the people who conducted a major bombing operation against America. What we have to show for it is the fall of the Taliban for over a decade. We also killed a bunch of Al Qaeda.
I've heard some stuff but don't know any specifics. What went wrong with the Python community?
Of course you do. Complex exceptions. Take your trading program. Assume that the various brokerages connecting all had different data standards, you had to work with their APIs. Assume that each and every stock had its own set of rules and restrictions and of various types. Assume that the stocks themselves weren't uniform but you still had to worry about certificate management and that varied by state and country.
How many lines are you up to?
I don't believe in a secret government. I think if congress cut the funding for the NSA tomorrow and told them to disband they would.
I suspect that dwheeler below is correct this was Visual Basic 4-6 not VB.NET. Old VB was a much higher level language, especially comparatively
15::1 is a bit high but plausible. As for running faster... that's unusual.
The dynamic languages have libraries as well. The extra structures and complexity needed to use the Java libraries effectively as well as the extra verbiage increase the complexity and size of the code in Java.
I'm not sure I would generalize too much from Perl. Perl had a terrific run going from a text processing language to a system admin language to the standard for web development. Then it moved towards applications development. And then it faltered badly. They responded to the faltering with an overly ambitious and poorly managed next version which has sucked the life out of the language.
Perl is an example of picking a technology that died. Lots of people who have picked lots of technologies they thought were safe had similar problems. That's not a language issue. VMS-Cobol is doing much worse than IBM-Cobols not because of COBOL.
That's exactly the point. As the level of the language goes up you start thinking into terms of highly abstracted algorithms. Low level procedures become entirely opaque even to the programmer. I can see the Assembly code when I write C. I have no idea what the engine is doing in Visual Basic.
Because the productivity doesn't scale well as projects get larger. Dynamic languages are amazing at 20 line programs. They are pretty hot at 200 lines programs. At 2000 lines you are starting to feel the minus but they still work well. At 20,000 things start going badly wrong. By 2m, well there are 2m line programs mostly because all those things that are good about a dynamic language for 20 lines turn into disadvantages when you need hundreds of programmers to work together.
I've agreed with that for years. Haskell is like using a programming language out of 2025 today.
As contrasted with Java? Unless you want something that is really in Java's forte (i.e. working the a Java library) I'd be hard pressed to see where LISP is likely to lose.
Now the issue of course is as the number of programmers increases LISP's idiosyncratic behaviors and allowing each developer to express their individuality go from huge advantages to huge disadvantages. At a million+ lines of code Java's maintainability and standardization become key features. But at say 20-10,000 I'm hard pressed to see much that LISP wouldn't win at.
Excellent point. Though this is mainly high level vs. low level. For example Mathematica, PHP and Visual Basic often beat LISP in terms of productivity. Norvig was commenting that LISP beats Java while managing to also be faster than Java which is what is truly impressive.
Terrific suggestion regarding Debian benchmark!
There are some pretty good stats on productivity from Cocomo II group: http://csse.usc.edu/csse/research/COCOMOII/cocomo_main.html. First off you measure in terms of normalized lines of code which ends up being close to the same across languages. From there you can examine how large programs are in varieties of languages in terms of normalized lines of code and you get productivity measures:
Assembly .4
C 1
COBOL 1.5
C# 2.5
Java 2.5
Visual Basic 4.5
Perl 6
SQL 10
etc...
Perl vs. Python for relatively similar levels of experience I'd assume the differences in productivity is going to be close to 0. You seem to need rather dramatic differences on high/low level scale to get much of a productivity boost. So for example C# and Java are both 2.5; Perl and Smalltak are both 6.
Moreover even between similar languages superiority can be hard to measure. Take for example the very complex and long arguments on garbage collection. Or on lazy vs. eager evaluation: where lazy can be crazy powerful but in exchange can induce algorithms / code that often become quadratic in time and memory. And then on top of all that there are the cultural issues.
Better is simply not a granular enough metric.
There is already a pretty good collection http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/
There is also a website with the implementations of the Perl cookbook in a bunch of languages: http://pleac.sourceforge.net/
Windows 7 SP1 was 1.9g. Nothing unusual with the size. As for reinstall for compulsive clicker I don't even know what you mean.
You need to separate out:
1) I wouldn't do strategy X if I were had of Microsoft
2) Microsoft isn't implementing strategy X
The fact that you don't like ubiquitous computing does not mean that is not Microsoft's direction. Microsoft considers ubiquitous computing key to their long term strategy and vision. Moreover you are wrong on the facts regarding share. In 1Q2013 6% of all laptop sales were touchscreen by 3Q2013 it was almost 10%. That's not miniscule.
They absolutely are moving away from the traditional UI. Windows 8 being the first step in that direction.
When DVD players came out there was no player bundled with Windows yet people used them. I believe only Vista and Win 7 included players. Just to pick an Apple example, Apple doesn't bundle a Blu-Ray player yet people can watch Blu-Ray using 3rd party software.
PC sales have been declining at about 11% per year since 2008. Nothing too much happened in 2013 though it was a few percent worse than trend. The strategy of staying with the XP style UI had failed for years before ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing is Microsoft's attempt to reverse the trend. Otherwise, they are likely going to lose the home / small business segment during this decade. They know that.
Not quite. There is very little high end tablet adoption ($300+) among non-computer owners. That contrasts sharply with tablets in the $75-150 price point. It appears that most people feel that they don't need traditional desktops and laptops as much. That's lengthening replacement cycles but not eliminating users. The userbase is still growing, though slowly. Many customers prefer a tablet form factor and the visual applications (the ones you were being critical of a few sentences earlier). At some point tablets may be good enough to actually replace desktops and laptops either fully or so close to fully that people no longer feel the need to own. Microsoft wants to be prepared for that.
What do you think they are doing? They have changed course. They are working hard to get ahead of the market. Do things like educate people like yourself about why you should spend the extra $250 on touch screen and removable hinge on your next laptop before you decide to walk away from x86 all together.
10/01/2023 You have 2 years to install service packs. 8.1 is a service pack for 8.
And 8 to 8.1 is an install and reboot. Nothing heavy about it compared to any other service pack.
Did you get her a touchscreen laptop? It sounds like no. And that's why. Windows 8 doesn't work well on the wrong hardware.
As for the desktop, try a 2 an external setup with Metro on the laptop's touchscreen and desktop on the external monitor. That will help get her used to
Because they expected by this point you've been using DVD players for over a dozen years and have licenses for DVD playing software. Anyway Microsoft was giving away keys to Media pro-pack, for a while. If not yes just use any of the zillions of free alternatives.
They'll make you. You just aren't on target yet.
Exactly. So much of the criticism is from people who are using Windows 8 on the wrong hardware. Microsoft though is partially to blame. Just like Vista they assured everyone that this OS was for all computers, rather than just making a touchscreen or drawing pad mandatory for Windows 8.
They don't want to sell Windows 7 for consumer they want to sell Windows 7 for enterprise. Enterprise hardware has Windows 7 drivers.