I agree totally with you - Win32 API has withstood the test of time, maybe is not fancy OO components or objects or all the kind of crud you expect in 'cutting edge' languages, but then I don't think it needs to be. Some of it is a bit messy, but then, some bits of.NET API are a bit messy and that's just been designed!
I read a lot of 'win32 api sux0rs' type posts, and none of them back up their assertions. Most don't even mention anything that they consider to be better.
I think an OS API needs to be small, simple and focussed. eg. you could have an OO system that represented each file as an object, but if you just wanted to update a file's timestamp, you'd have to read the file's details into an in-memory object, you'd update the object's data, and then write it all back to the file. That's be rather slow.. "elegant" maybe, but slow. A traditional API will have a simple 'UpdateFileProperties' that never needed to read the file in the first place. God knows Windows grinds away enough at the moment when it does anything, you'd not want to make it worse!
As for rollback in ths OS.. I think that's called System Restore:)
I read somewhere (possibly on the PHP bug system) that they were considering scrapping most fo the security features we've all grown the.. well, hate really, and replace them all with a virtualisation system. I did think at the time that the virtualisation system they'd implement to keep PHP-based vhosts separate and secure would be to run apache in many virtual OSes.
I suppose jailing applications is a well-known way of securing them, this really just improves on that, but with much more overhead. I wonder if anyone is thinking about providing "lightweight" virtualisation for applications instead of the whole OS?
I don't know, but (the article is/.ted) but it sounds more like MS's HTAs - their web-as-a-desktop-app system. (HTA = Hypertext Application). They used IE as a client front end to a local (or remote) web application. It was hosted in IE but without titlebar, buttons etc. It also ran in an increased security environment (as you'd expect a desktop app to interact with the filesystem, for example, that normal web apps hosted in a 'normal' browser would not get acess to).
It semed like a good idea, and enabled you to write desktop/web applications, but it never quite caught on, MS moved to Jav, sorry.NET, and lost interest in it.
Active Desktop was just a way of putting content on your dekstop instead of a static image. I think it was a little before its time due to everyone using dial-up modems instead of always-on broadband. If someone did it today, we'd have the advantage of a lot of experience in using web applications, faster networking and better security. Imagine what it could be in an Ubuntu environment, it could easily be a new desktop paradigm that makes Window's taskbar-based system look old and boring.
I went to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. And yes, it was the late 80s.
And yes, I miss sending email messages by inputting control codes directly via telnet - so amusing to send someone a mail from themselves.
Kids of today, just want to sit on facebook and collect 'friends' who aren't really, and expect it all to be done for them. No wonder I have to install 2 gig of RAM on my desktop to get any work done now. Can't wait for it to need 4Gig in a year or two:(
Too true. When I was a university, I had classes in.. assembler, Pascal, Concurrent Euclid, Simula, Prolog and C! I had to suffer statistical job throughput algorithms (stats! in a comp course, were they mad? Actually no.)
Now they teach any old crap 'cos its easy. Java for OO teaching , threading in theory only, memory constraints.. only taught in archeology classes. Shame those kids coming out of university will have to be taught how to program, but that's how it always was.
The trend now is to reduce the number of servers by putting them in VMs, so its your boss who is killing the environment! Perhaps you ought to mention the cost in electricity and carbon involved in not making your apps more efficient.
because the car goes 20 times faster, is way more comfortable, has lots of extra features, and doesn't require you to wear a helmet?
I think the point was that OpenGL and DirectX were pretty much the same thing once upon a time, but whilst MS kept on adding more and more good stuff, the OpenGL committee argued over what they might add, and as a result ended up adding very little. Committees - pah.
while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number,
They can see I have a pathetically small member?!? I *knew* I shouldn't have bought that webcam.
Oh.. number... sorry...:-)
Well, who cares if I don't have any friends - I mean, why else would I be using Facebook.
* disclaimer: I happen not to have a webcam, or use Facebook. And fortunately I was blessed by God. Still don't have any friends though, why else would I be posting on/. ?
not necessarily - I understand there is a lot of spare capacity in the internet backbones already, dark fibre and the like, so switching it all on would not be as costly as digging up the roads all over again.
However. I don't know about you but I buy my bandwidth from a reseller of a retail arm of the telco who did dig up the roads in the first place. This means that I will never get twice the bandwidth for less money because the reseller I get it from purchases bandwidth directly. ie, they buy X mbps for £Y. If they wanted to double the bandwidth for all their users, they'd have to buy another X mbps which would still cost £Y. So, for all us end-users the cost literally would be double.
puke away punk. I think the style of using 1 letter codes for variable names wernt out of fashion in.. about 1980. You say:
I suspect that people are over-using Intellisense (auto-code fill-in), chosing writability over readability. and they tell us that you think
One should abbreviate the Customer Details object or array to "cust" or "CD" I'm sure your code, filled with variables like "CD" is immensely readable to everyone. lol. Perhaps you should ask someone to review it and let you know.
Intellisense is not the factor here, quite the opposite. I have intellisense on my IDE and I can hover over any variable and get a descriptipon of it's definition. If I were using that, then it would make no difference whether my variables were called C or CustomerFullAccountDetailsObject.
80 columns used to be the business when programs were written with short hand codes for everything - eg "strlen(custnme)", whereas nowadays you'd have "CustomerDetails.Name.Length()"
80-character limits are not goo dpractise anymore, simply because you can now fit more on one line and still have it readable, whereas you'd otherwise have to chop it up into several lines, or use abbreviations.
I think you have that slightly wrong - when you say "Usually people run Windows in a VM", I think you meant to say "Usually people run Windows".
Some of them will take the plunge into the uncharted waters by running Linux in a VM so it won't trash their desktop settings, apps etc, ut make no illusion that the majority of people using computers are using Windows, not Linux.
I don't think its the posture of the hand (it has evolved to move around after all), but the grip you need on one tightening up the muscles and tendons whist doing so. Think how much RSI you'd get resting your hand on a table all day.
Still, this is an interesting alternative: for $25 you get an optical mouse that is attached to your finger so the laser is aligned with the finger, no grip required (though clicking the buttons with your thumb may not be as good as, say, tapping the end on the table).
yeah, thats it. Chair all the way back, ergonomic cushion round the neck to reduce neckstrain, soothing music on the headphones to relieve stress,.... someone wake me up when its 5:30 please.
no, it is not a government agency, not even effectively. It is funded by laws passed by the government, and that's as far as it goes. Its not sponsored by the govmt, the licence fee was defined ages ago and now they cannot change it (the next review is in 2013). It has a charter describing the reason for its existence, and the restrictions that apply to it. It is run by a Trust that is charged with maintaining its independance.
There are plenty of cases where the price is set or restricted by the government for services that are definitely private companies (eg the post, the utilities). The only difference is that the BBC bills you on expected usage and not actual usage, but that's only because they cannot meter you picking up the tv signals. Maybe things will be different in 2012 and then we'll see the licence fee (and therefore the internet downloads) change to a subscriber basis.
if the criminals were being monitored, then they wouldn't be able to commit all the crimes and then the area wouldn't be described as 'high crime' areas now would they.
Besides, who are the ACLU giving these cameras to? Law-abiding citizens who live in these areas and are worried that the local scroats might have their civil liberties abused whilst they were committing vandalism, burglary and violent crimes against the person?
"Toadsmeg, big brother knows you and Kylie havn't been getting along well, but todays task is to go outside with him and fix the retro booster adjustment nozzles."
"the what man, like, do I have to put on the spacesuit, like man it so totally messes up my hair and like well kylie is just sooo much a bitch and has eaten all the crackers so like I need my space and with all the hassle of like man being in space like and everything I'm not sure if I want it"
Probably the small claims judgement was enough to prove your case is valid and your reputation remains untarnished with whatever the defendant claimed. You can always point to the judgement and say that a judge sided with you given all the details both you and the defendant gave. Perhaps the monetary aspect is unimportant to Kaplan in comparison, and probably taking a case to the full courts is unnecessary - and dangerous given the cost of lawyers and the time it all takes.
A small claims court is possibly much more like real justice without all the legal baggage and vested interest that's built up over time.
writes with a link to the Press Esc blog, discussing a possible replacement for crude oil in plastics so soon we'll be able to throw away the contents, and eat the packaging. Result (considering some of the plastic-wrapped junk food I eat)
I do that too - only I try the opt-opt website/email first, give them a week to get me off the list and then blacklist them if I receive further emails. Strangely, I've only had 1 instance of the website opt-out form work.
* for purposes of this discussion I do not include real, obvious spam in the opt-out - only 'legitimate' companies that I have had some sort of email relationship with.
In the applications I work with, that are several million lines of code and have add-on modules, normal unit tests don't cut it either. You end up testing a lot and ensuring you have facilities to stop a hung app to get a crashdump so you can see the problem, fix it and ensure it doesn't happen again. Similarly with non-threaded apps, a crashdump is sent, you see the problem and fix it. Meanwhile you do the best you can to ensure no bugs get through even though you know some will.
No app is 100% verifiably correct, not even tested, tested and tested spacecraft control systems, to medical applications, to aircraft control systems. These things are tested so much but you still get the odd bug in them.
let try again, please read what I typed, not what you think I typed:) "They don't need to add threading within a javascript script."
The engine doesn't need to be MT, you just need to run several instances of it. ie 1 engine per tab, and another one to handle the main browser. Then you don't need to put any thread-aware code in the engine at all. (this is a bit like the unix debates between forking and threading - I'm saying you can 'fork' a new JS engine to handle each tab instead of having a single JS engine that processes each tab concurrently)
Currently the JS engine doesn't do threading, so when you click the home button, everything else stops for a little bit. Sure, you don't notice it, but you do when 1 tab starts loading a pdf.
I think some of the argument about threading in JS is confused between adding thread facilities to the JS language, and simply adding better concurrency support to firefox. I really don't care for javascript+threads but I do care about a responsive UI of firefox.
try out keepass, which has features that defeat even keyloggers (who would only get a ctrl-v message).
Actually, come to think of it, why doesn't Mozilla take the keepass code, compile it in to firefox, and put a different ui on it? How much easier would that be than writing a new one from scratch, that won't be as quick to develop, good, or as secure.
When you get a fax, do you wonder if there are demons inside the fax machine typing it? Damn demons! This explains why it takes so long for the fax to come out and why its always fuzzy and at a slight angle - why can't we have angels in these machines? then my faxes would appear as shining gold, crisp, easily read script, and the spam adverts would be replaced with wittily crafted jokes.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree totally with you - Win32 API has withstood the test of time, maybe is not fancy OO components or objects or all the kind of crud you expect in 'cutting edge' languages, but then I don't think it needs to be. Some of it is a bit messy, but then, some bits of .NET API are a bit messy and that's just been designed!
.. I think that's called System Restore :)
I read a lot of 'win32 api sux0rs' type posts, and none of them back up their assertions. Most don't even mention anything that they consider to be better.
I think an OS API needs to be small, simple and focussed. eg. you could have an OO system that represented each file as an object, but if you just wanted to update a file's timestamp, you'd have to read the file's details into an in-memory object, you'd update the object's data, and then write it all back to the file. That's be rather slow.. "elegant" maybe, but slow. A traditional API will have a simple 'UpdateFileProperties' that never needed to read the file in the first place. God knows Windows grinds away enough at the moment when it does anything, you'd not want to make it worse!
As for rollback in ths OS
I read somewhere (possibly on the PHP bug system) that they were considering scrapping most fo the security features we've all grown the .. well, hate really, and replace them all with a virtualisation system. I did think at the time that the virtualisation system they'd implement to keep PHP-based vhosts separate and secure would be to run apache in many virtual OSes.
I suppose jailing applications is a well-known way of securing them, this really just improves on that, but with much more overhead. I wonder if anyone is thinking about providing "lightweight" virtualisation for applications instead of the whole OS?
I don't know, but (the article is /.ted) but it sounds more like MS's HTAs - their web-as-a-desktop-app system. (HTA = Hypertext Application). They used IE as a client front end to a local (or remote) web application. It was hosted in IE but without titlebar, buttons etc. It also ran in an increased security environment (as you'd expect a desktop app to interact with the filesystem, for example, that normal web apps hosted in a 'normal' browser would not get acess to).
.NET, and lost interest in it.
It semed like a good idea, and enabled you to write desktop/web applications, but it never quite caught on, MS moved to Jav, sorry
Active Desktop was just a way of putting content on your dekstop instead of a static image. I think it was a little before its time due to everyone using dial-up modems instead of always-on broadband. If someone did it today, we'd have the advantage of a lot of experience in using web applications, faster networking and better security. Imagine what it could be in an Ubuntu environment, it could easily be a new desktop paradigm that makes Window's taskbar-based system look old and boring.
I went to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. And yes, it was the late 80s.
:(
And yes, I miss sending email messages by inputting control codes directly via telnet - so amusing to send someone a mail from themselves.
Kids of today, just want to sit on facebook and collect 'friends' who aren't really, and expect it all to be done for them. No wonder I have to install 2 gig of RAM on my desktop to get any work done now. Can't wait for it to need 4Gig in a year or two
Too true. When I was a university, I had classes in.. assembler, Pascal, Concurrent Euclid, Simula, Prolog and C! I had to suffer statistical job throughput algorithms (stats! in a comp course, were they mad? Actually no.)
Now they teach any old crap 'cos its easy. Java for OO teaching , threading in theory only, memory constraints.. only taught in archeology classes. Shame those kids coming out of university will have to be taught how to program, but that's how it always was.
The trend now is to reduce the number of servers by putting them in VMs, so its your boss who is killing the environment! Perhaps you ought to mention the cost in electricity and carbon involved in not making your apps more efficient.
because the car goes 20 times faster, is way more comfortable, has lots of extra features, and doesn't require you to wear a helmet?
I think the point was that OpenGL and DirectX were pretty much the same thing once upon a time, but whilst MS kept on adding more and more good stuff, the OpenGL committee argued over what they might add, and as a result ended up adding very little. Committees - pah.
They can see I have a pathetically small member?!? I *knew* I shouldn't have bought that webcam.
Oh.. number... sorry... :-)
Well, who cares if I don't have any friends - I mean, why else would I be using Facebook.
* disclaimer: I happen not to have a webcam, or use Facebook. And fortunately I was blessed by God. Still don't have any friends though, why else would I be posting on /. ?
not necessarily - I understand there is a lot of spare capacity in the internet backbones already, dark fibre and the like, so switching it all on would not be as costly as digging up the roads all over again.
However. I don't know about you but I buy my bandwidth from a reseller of a retail arm of the telco who did dig up the roads in the first place. This means that I will never get twice the bandwidth for less money because the reseller I get it from purchases bandwidth directly. ie, they buy X mbps for £Y. If they wanted to double the bandwidth for all their users, they'd have to buy another X mbps which would still cost £Y. So, for all us end-users the cost literally would be double.
Intellisense is not the factor here, quite the opposite. I have intellisense on my IDE and I can hover over any variable and get a descriptipon of it's definition. If I were using that, then it would make no difference whether my variables were called C or CustomerFullAccountDetailsObject.
80 columns used to be the business when programs were written with short hand codes for everything - eg "strlen(custnme)", whereas nowadays you'd have "CustomerDetails.Name.Length()"
80-character limits are not goo dpractise anymore, simply because you can now fit more on one line and still have it readable, whereas you'd otherwise have to chop it up into several lines, or use abbreviations.
I think you have that slightly wrong - when you say "Usually people run Windows in a VM", I think you meant to say "Usually people run Windows".
Some of them will take the plunge into the uncharted waters by running Linux in a VM so it won't trash their desktop settings, apps etc, ut make no illusion that the majority of people using computers are using Windows, not Linux.
I don't think its the posture of the hand (it has evolved to move around after all), but the grip you need on one tightening up the muscles and tendons whist doing so. Think how much RSI you'd get resting your hand on a table all day.
Still, this is an interesting alternative: for $25 you get an optical mouse that is attached to your finger so the laser is aligned with the finger, no grip required (though clicking the buttons with your thumb may not be as good as, say, tapping the end on the table).
yeah, thats it. Chair all the way back, ergonomic cushion round the neck to reduce neckstrain, soothing music on the headphones to relieve stress, .... someone wake me up when its 5:30 please.
no, it is not a government agency, not even effectively. It is funded by laws passed by the government, and that's as far as it goes. Its not sponsored by the govmt, the licence fee was defined ages ago and now they cannot change it (the next review is in 2013). It has a charter describing the reason for its existence, and the restrictions that apply to it. It is run by a Trust that is charged with maintaining its independance.
a rs_licfee06.html
Here's a good set of links: http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/seminars/semin
There are plenty of cases where the price is set or restricted by the government for services that are definitely private companies (eg the post, the utilities). The only difference is that the BBC bills you on expected usage and not actual usage, but that's only because they cannot meter you picking up the tv signals. Maybe things will be different in 2012 and then we'll see the licence fee (and therefore the internet downloads) change to a subscriber basis.
if the criminals were being monitored, then they wouldn't be able to commit all the crimes and then the area wouldn't be described as 'high crime' areas now would they.
Besides, who are the ACLU giving these cameras to? Law-abiding citizens who live in these areas and are worried that the local scroats might have their civil liberties abused whilst they were committing vandalism, burglary and violent crimes against the person?
Depends on the volunteers they'd get....
Day 217, Toadsmeg is called into the diary room.
"Toadsmeg, big brother knows you and Kylie havn't been getting along well, but todays task is to go outside with him and fix the retro booster adjustment nozzles."
"the what man, like, do I have to put on the spacesuit, like man it so totally messes up my hair and like well kylie is just sooo much a bitch and has eaten all the crackers so like I need my space and with all the hassle of like man being in space like and everything I'm not sure if I want it"
surely that's the American Way?
Probably the small claims judgement was enough to prove your case is valid and your reputation remains untarnished with whatever the defendant claimed. You can always point to the judgement and say that a judge sided with you given all the details both you and the defendant gave. Perhaps the monetary aspect is unimportant to Kaplan in comparison, and probably taking a case to the full courts is unnecessary - and dangerous given the cost of lawyers and the time it all takes.
A small claims court is possibly much more like real justice without all the legal baggage and vested interest that's built up over time.
I don't think Datacentreknowledge.com cares about the DC, they care about the adverts on their link-scavenging 'blog'.
the link to the DC build is at http://www.pipenetworks.com/dc3/ but it's slashdotted - come back tomorrow.
I do that too - only I try the opt-opt website/email first, give them a week to get me off the list and then blacklist them if I receive further emails. Strangely, I've only had 1 instance of the website opt-out form work.
* for purposes of this discussion I do not include real, obvious spam in the opt-out - only 'legitimate' companies that I have had some sort of email relationship with.
In the applications I work with, that are several million lines of code and have add-on modules, normal unit tests don't cut it either. You end up testing a lot and ensuring you have facilities to stop a hung app to get a crashdump so you can see the problem, fix it and ensure it doesn't happen again. Similarly with non-threaded apps, a crashdump is sent, you see the problem and fix it. Meanwhile you do the best you can to ensure no bugs get through even though you know some will.
No app is 100% verifiably correct, not even tested, tested and tested spacecraft control systems, to medical applications, to aircraft control systems. These things are tested so much but you still get the odd bug in them.
let try again, please read what I typed, not what you think I typed :) "They don't need to add threading within a javascript script."
The engine doesn't need to be MT, you just need to run several instances of it. ie 1 engine per tab, and another one to handle the main browser. Then you don't need to put any thread-aware code in the engine at all.
(this is a bit like the unix debates between forking and threading - I'm saying you can 'fork' a new JS engine to handle each tab instead of having a single JS engine that processes each tab concurrently)
Currently the JS engine doesn't do threading, so when you click the home button, everything else stops for a little bit. Sure, you don't notice it, but you do when 1 tab starts loading a pdf.
I think some of the argument about threading in JS is confused between adding thread facilities to the JS language, and simply adding better concurrency support to firefox. I really don't care for javascript+threads but I do care about a responsive UI of firefox.
try out keepass, which has features that defeat even keyloggers (who would only get a ctrl-v message).
Actually, come to think of it, why doesn't Mozilla take the keepass code, compile it in to firefox, and put a different ui on it? How much easier would that be than writing a new one from scratch, that won't be as quick to develop, good, or as secure.