I just got done (well, sorta) a simple, little, fairly generic class that enhances list boxes for a certain unnamed operating system and C++ class library. It's a class to make it real easy to edit list box items in place. Big deal.
Well, most of the time was spent trying to deal with the, IMHO, extremely non-intuitive way messages are processed by said OS. I mean, here I am carefully cleaning out the message queue to prevent the same function being called twice, and my call::PeekMessage() triggers handling of the message I'm trying to remove before it gets processed.
Anyway, the details are unimportant (but if you know a better way to do this, let me know), what matters is that I have to work in an environment where non-intuitive, sometimes even bizarre behaviors, pop up unexpectedly.
The lower level you are, the less you have this problem, though even Linus must have processor and hardware architecture quirks to deal with. But for everyone, the end result is that quite reasonable assumptions are occasionally false.
What's more, the rate of change is such that when we learn to deal with anomalous behaviors, they're likely to change. The anomalies will then bubble up from the hardware level to affect all the layers above it. As long as Moore's law holds up, the rate of change will make it extremely difficult for software to suck very much less.
Oh, there are absolutely things we can do, but there effect is going to be limited. It is the price we pay for rapid advances in computing power.
Ok, I see this claim "Gnome is OO without using an OOPL" and I don't know Gnome/GTK, so I've got to ask:
In what sense is Gnome object-oriented? How do you get OO features such as inheritance and function overloading without an OO language? Does Gnome manage to do this? Or is Gnome OO only in the UI sense, not the programming sense, in which case it would be completely beside the point made by the post to which it is a reply?
Since 1992, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act has required that if you tell telemarketers not to call you again, they put you on a list and not call again.
Most companies abide by these rules, so saying "please put me on your do-not-call list" very effectively cuts down on calls, and can be done without being rude to the operators who probably don't like calling you any more than you like being called by them.
Doesn't apply to charities, doesn't apply at work, won't bring about world peace, but it's something.
When I accepted employment by a start-up some years ago, I signed a non-compete, but not without consulting a lawyer, who made a few changes in the length and breadth of the agreement.
From what I learned then, such clauses have two competing features. First, its difficult to enforce them. A contract which takes away a persons ability to earn a living is invalid. That's the good news.
The bad news, as pointed out by my attorney, is that the threat of legal action itself may be a deterrent to getting hired. No matter how narrowly the clause is written, it might be construed by a potential employer as a lawsuit waiting to happen, and whothehellwantsthat.
This was my first election using a punch card system and they are soooo much worse that what I've used previously.
The machines hold the ballot about half an inch below the sheets with the candidates name. Unless you're looking straight down, it is not at all difficult to line up and punch the wrong hole.
Then, it's next to impossible to tell what hole you just punched while the ballot is in the machine. Once out of the machine, it's hard to tell what candidates the holes belongs to.
I've previously voted in booths where you can step back and scan what you've done before pulling the lever to place the vote. No such option with punch cards. I had to take the card out, then go through the ballot candidate by candidate, checking by number to confirm my vote.
Booths also prevent you from double voting. Not so punch cards.
To rectify any mistakes (if you happen to notice them), you've got to request a new ballot from personnel and then redo the entire vote. Most people like admitting mistakes even less than doing the same task twice.
Punch card voting machines combine the "features" of being difficult to use; difficult to identify errors; and difficult to fix any errors. If I designed a user interface that bad for ANY project I was working on, I certainly hope I would be fired, and we're using it for VOTING
I don't see what is so shitty about what ebay did in the first place.
The way I read the quote above, they discovered that for some period of time, their preferences form for new users had the wrong (i.e. off) defaults for subscribing. Users who signed up during that period may simply have not set any of the subscription settings, just used the defaults. EBay can't tell who DELIBERATELY decided to opt out and who just didn't decide, so they change the settings that MIGHT be default and give you a couple weeks to deliberately opt out if that's what you want. What's the big deal?
(BTW, I've opted out and haven't received any such letter, so it's certainly not been done to everybody.)
They did NOT, as so many seem to think, treat all opt-out selections as errors.
Sure, they want to make money and they can make more money be sending out notices. Good for them. I want internet companies to make money -- better that than more banner ads -- or worse, adding interstitial ads.
What Linux needs (not for you and me of course, but for our Moms) is idiot lights, some way of changing the boot text messages into pretty icons showing that various system have or haven't started -- doesn't Beos do something like this?
Finally, after years of relative inaction, there's a sudden burst of activity in the major desktop platforms--Windows, Mac and Linux...
Maybe I've missed something, but this is the first I've seen Linux mentioned in the broad market press as being among the major desktop platforms. Server, yes. Desktop, no.
Of course, I think that assessment is wrong, Linux as a major player on the desktop is still some ways off. BTAIM, it's like the first time I saw Fox mentioned as one of the major networks -- something has changed.
Well I think the Olympic Committee is just trying to help out the internet by preventing the inefficient use of Internet bandwidth to view the competitions.
A television broadcast is much more efficient when everyone is watching the same thing at the same time. Except for things like highlight sequences, there is no reason to watch sports in general and the Olympics in particular unless you're watching live.
A) If I copy and paste from GPL'ed code to proprietary code, that's pretty clearly a violation, even if I then globablly replace "foo" with "bar" to make the code look a little different. But what if I have two windows and type into proprietary code identical code except for var name changes, still a violation? Probably.
B) What if I read through the code, study it so that I thoroughly understand the algorithm, then close the open source code window, open my proprietary project and recreate a similar, maybe even identical, algorithm in the proprietary source code. Let's say there are some functionally irrelevant differences that change the object code noticeably. Is this a violation of GPL? Is it fair use?
C) What if I look at the code and study it and fully understand it just for my own education, then a year later, faced with a similar problem in proprietary code, create a function which is quite similar to the GPL'ed code. Violation?
IANAL, but unless the author or FSF or some other party *patents* the algorithm, B and C are probably quite fair, and it sounds like B is what MS has been up to.
Of course if C is a violation of GPL or if open source code were patented with an aim to preventing use in proprietary code (I think there's a form of patent which doesn't prevent any use, but only prevents others from patenting the device or method), every company with any sense would hire only programmers who have contractually stipulated that they would never look at any open source code -- a state which would be worse for the open source so-called community than for proprietary software developers.
The only way I'm ever likely to spend a penny on a video game, is if I buy a console for its other uses -- and DVD is a big one. Inclusion of DVD playing on the PS2 is pretty much the only thing that matters to me. Playing games would be a bonus (admittedly one I'd be paying for).
That said, I'm gonna wait a while. Beside the current shortage-induced inflation of PS2 prices, Indrema offers some of the most appealing vapors that's ever wafted in my direction: DVD, DVR, web browsing with an LAN connection to my home gateway for the price of a PS2.
If Indrema has more than an ice cube's chance in hell, those non-game features why. If it materializes in a timely manner and enough people buy it for DVD, DVR, web (and free games), the market will be too large for non-free developers to ignore and maybe, just maybe, Indrema will be able to make some money and stay in business.
...yes the royalties will mean higher prices to consumers.
According to the article, about $1/box.
If its a valid patent, I can live with that. And if its not a valid patent, why did Samsung and the others settle? I'm sure its not because they can't afford the lawyers.
...that Intel screwed itself by committing to a new technology. Large corporations are much more likely to be conservative and screw themselves by refusing to bet on new technology -- take Xerox.
Well, I guess in both cases, management refused to listen to [at least some of] its engineers. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe if Intel engineers took a few more showers and ate a few more breath mints, this never would have happened.
The problems with this methodology begin in step 1.
Even in the rare case that you're interviewing people who will both use the result and sign off on the requirements, USERS LIE!
You can describe an exquisite detail the workings of a system which is completely inappropriate for what they have to accomplish, and they will sit there, look you in the eye and say, "Yes, that's exactly what we need."
Either that, or if you describe a system which does do what they need, they will deny it with all the conviction of a politician caught with his hand in the till.
Rapid prototyping is the only approach that works, and even then, you need to use a polygraph.
...if it isn't as a protest vote? I mean, even if you pretend that he could be elected, do you think that he could actually accomplish anything? And do you want him to? You don't hear anybody bashing Nader's policies because they just don't matter. In all the/. postings, hardly anything has been posted about what he'd do, just whether one should vote his conscience or not.
A few years back Ross Perot's Reform Policy was in the same position as the Greens now. Everything was fine as long as it had a charismatic leader and was just a protest vote, but along comes someone with an coherent viewpoint (it happens to be Buchanan, but it could have been someone else with different politics) and the party splits. It had to split, because there was no unifying goal except, throw out the Republicrat bastards.
I don't like a lot of the way things work either, but guess what, that's politics. Sure it can be modified somewhat and McCain's reform ideas would help, but politics does and always will involve power brokering. Deal with it! If Nader were to be elected he would either get in bed with the same power brokers that Republicrats do, or else he'd accomplish nothing.
So if you're in a state that isn't in play and you want to register your protest, go ahead and vote for Nader. But if your state is in play, vote for the man who you think will do what's best for the country and can win. I think that's clearly Gore. On most other issues, the two aren't that far apart. But Gore's positions on protecting the environment and protecting the rights of Americans (especially women) are not just the better of two evils, but exactly what I want, while Bush's are exactly what I fear.
I'm a programmer, and I wouldn't be caught dead in a broken-down VCR. Most programmers I know are doing pretty well and live in fully-functional DVD players -- a few are even progressive scan.
Slashdot Mirror
At least we know that the inventor of the internet is currently unemployed, so he should be available as an expert witness to establish prior art.
Well, most of the time was spent trying to deal with the, IMHO, extremely non-intuitive way messages are processed by said OS. I mean, here I am carefully cleaning out the message queue to prevent the same function being called twice, and my call ::PeekMessage() triggers handling of the message I'm trying to remove before it gets processed.
Anyway, the details are unimportant (but if you know a better way to do this, let me know), what matters is that I have to work in an environment where non-intuitive, sometimes even bizarre behaviors, pop up unexpectedly.
The lower level you are, the less you have this problem, though even Linus must have processor and hardware architecture quirks to deal with. But for everyone, the end result is that quite reasonable assumptions are occasionally false.
What's more, the rate of change is such that when we learn to deal with anomalous behaviors, they're likely to change. The anomalies will then bubble up from the hardware level to affect all the layers above it. As long as Moore's law holds up, the rate of change will make it extremely difficult for software to suck very much less.
Oh, there are absolutely things we can do, but there effect is going to be limited. It is the price we pay for rapid advances in computing power.
In what sense is Gnome object-oriented?
How do you get OO features such as inheritance and function overloading without an OO language?
Does Gnome manage to do this?
Or is Gnome OO only in the UI sense, not the programming sense, in which case it would be completely beside the point made by the post to which it is a reply?
Most companies abide by these rules, so saying "please put me on your do-not-call list" very effectively cuts down on calls, and can be done without being rude to the operators who probably don't like calling you any more than you like being called by them.
Doesn't apply to charities, doesn't apply at work, won't bring about world peace, but it's something.
From what I learned then, such clauses have two competing features. First, its difficult to enforce them. A contract which takes away a persons ability to earn a living is invalid. That's the good news.
The bad news, as pointed out by my attorney, is that the threat of legal action itself may be a deterrent to getting hired. No matter how narrowly the clause is written, it might be construed by a potential employer as a lawsuit waiting to happen, and whothehellwantsthat.
This was my first election using a punch card system and they are soooo much worse that what I've used previously.
The machines hold the ballot about half an inch below the sheets with the candidates name. Unless you're looking straight down, it is not at all difficult to line up and punch the wrong hole.
Then, it's next to impossible to tell what hole you just punched while the ballot is in the machine. Once out of the machine, it's hard to tell what candidates the holes belongs to.
I've previously voted in booths where you can step back and scan what you've done before pulling the lever to place the vote. No such option with punch cards. I had to take the card out, then go through the ballot candidate by candidate, checking by number to confirm my vote.
Booths also prevent you from double voting. Not so punch cards.
To rectify any mistakes (if you happen to notice them), you've got to request a new ballot from personnel and then redo the entire vote. Most people like admitting mistakes even less than doing the same task twice.
Punch card voting machines combine the "features" of being difficult to use; difficult to identify errors; and difficult to fix any errors. If I designed a user interface that bad for ANY project I was working on, I certainly hope I would be fired, and we're using it for VOTING
The way I read the quote above, they discovered that for some period of time, their preferences form for new users had the wrong (i.e. off) defaults for subscribing. Users who signed up during that period may simply have not set any of the subscription settings, just used the defaults. EBay can't tell who DELIBERATELY decided to opt out and who just didn't decide, so they change the settings that MIGHT be default and give you a couple weeks to deliberately opt out if that's what you want. What's the big deal?
(BTW, I've opted out and haven't received any such letter, so it's certainly not been done to everybody.)
They did NOT, as so many seem to think, treat all opt-out selections as errors.
Sure, they want to make money and they can make more money be sending out notices. Good for them. I want internet companies to make money -- better that than more banner ads -- or worse, adding interstitial ads.
What Linux needs (not for you and me of course, but for our Moms) is idiot lights, some way of changing the boot text messages into pretty icons showing that various system have or haven't started -- doesn't Beos do something like this?
Job seekers back out of "agreements" all the time. Seems to me that its just fair for companies to be able to do the same thing.
No thanks.
Ack! the end of my sig is missing (its a TSE fragment) and I'm too lazy to fix it now.
Maybe I've missed something, but this is the first I've seen Linux mentioned in the broad market press as being among the major desktop platforms. Server, yes. Desktop, no.
Of course, I think that assessment is wrong, Linux as a major player on the desktop is still some ways off. BTAIM, it's like the first time I saw Fox mentioned as one of the major networks -- something has changed.
I was just about done making a replacement set of rotors from old AOL CDs
A television broadcast is much more efficient when everyone is watching the same thing at the same time. Except for things like highlight sequences, there is no reason to watch sports in general and the Olympics in particular unless you're watching live.
That's why NBC..... what? ..... Oh. Nevermind.
A) If I copy and paste from GPL'ed code to proprietary code, that's pretty clearly a violation, even if I then globablly replace "foo" with "bar" to make the code look a little different. But what if I have two windows and type into proprietary code identical code except for var name changes, still a violation? Probably.
B) What if I read through the code, study it so that I thoroughly understand the algorithm, then close the open source code window, open my proprietary project and recreate a similar, maybe even identical, algorithm in the proprietary source code. Let's say there are some functionally irrelevant differences that change the object code noticeably. Is this a violation of GPL? Is it fair use?
C) What if I look at the code and study it and fully understand it just for my own education, then a year later, faced with a similar problem in proprietary code, create a function which is quite similar to the GPL'ed code. Violation?
IANAL, but unless the author or FSF or some other party *patents* the algorithm, B and C are probably quite fair, and it sounds like B is what MS has been up to.
Of course if C is a violation of GPL or if open source code were patented with an aim to preventing use in proprietary code (I think there's a form of patent which doesn't prevent any use, but only prevents others from patenting the device or method), every company with any sense would hire only programmers who have contractually stipulated that they would never look at any open source code -- a state which would be worse for the open source so-called community than for proprietary software developers.
Oh yeah. Recession. That's exactly the time I'm going to be hiring salaried geeks instead of freelancers. You betcha'.
That said, I'm gonna wait a while. Beside the current shortage-induced inflation of PS2 prices, Indrema offers some of the most appealing vapors that's ever wafted in my direction: DVD, DVR, web browsing with an LAN connection to my home gateway for the price of a PS2.
If Indrema has more than an ice cube's chance in hell, those non-game features why. If it materializes in a timely manner and enough people buy it for DVD, DVR, web (and free games), the market will be too large for non-free developers to ignore and maybe, just maybe, Indrema will be able to make some money and stay in business.
I guess y'all aren't boasting about your amihotornot.com scores, are you?
According to the article, about $1/box.
If its a valid patent, I can live with that. And if its not a valid patent, why did Samsung and the others settle? I'm sure its not because they can't afford the lawyers.
Well, I guess in both cases, management refused to listen to [at least some of] its engineers. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe if Intel engineers took a few more showers and ate a few more breath mints, this never would have happened.
Even in the rare case that you're interviewing people who will both use the result and sign off on the requirements, USERS LIE!
You can describe an exquisite detail the workings of a system which is completely inappropriate for what they have to accomplish, and they will sit there, look you in the eye and say, "Yes, that's exactly what we need."
Either that, or if you describe a system which does do what they need, they will deny it with all the conviction of a politician caught with his hand in the till.
Rapid prototyping is the only approach that works, and even then, you need to use a polygraph.
Unfortunately, I don't think there are any half-decent educational institutions nearby.
Just imagine how pissed Bill's going to be when his accountant tells him his charitable donation to Corel isn't tax deductible.
A few years back Ross Perot's Reform Policy was in the same position as the Greens now. Everything was fine as long as it had a charismatic leader and was just a protest vote, but along comes someone with an coherent viewpoint (it happens to be Buchanan, but it could have been someone else with different politics) and the party splits. It had to split, because there was no unifying goal except, throw out the Republicrat bastards.
I don't like a lot of the way things work either, but guess what, that's politics. Sure it can be modified somewhat and McCain's reform ideas would help, but politics does and always will involve power brokering. Deal with it! If Nader were to be elected he would either get in bed with the same power brokers that Republicrats do, or else he'd accomplish nothing.
So if you're in a state that isn't in play and you want to register your protest, go ahead and vote for Nader. But if your state is in play, vote for the man who you think will do what's best for the country and can win. I think that's clearly Gore. On most other issues, the two aren't that far apart. But Gore's positions on protecting the environment and protecting the rights of Americans (especially women) are not just the better of two evils, but exactly what I want, while Bush's are exactly what I fear.
I'm a programmer, and I wouldn't be caught dead in a broken-down VCR. Most programmers I know are doing pretty well and live in fully-functional DVD players -- a few are even progressive scan.