The name of the show, and the horrible movie that "spawn"ed it were the initial reason's I refused to watch. However several of my friends got me into the show and I am eternally happy they did so.
Aside from last season (#6) which generally sucked, the show has been great.
The problem with Buffy is that the show makes you remember what previously happened. If you like to think while watching TV (another oxymoron) your choices were Buffy or TLC or The History Channel.
Flat out Cross platform development sucks. And sucks royally. As an example you can write fantasticly great code on IRIX systems that works on an Octane but cores on an O2. Both running the same IRIX. The code works nowhere except Octane systems.
I've been writing very large apps that deploy on many *nix's, NT, W9X/NT, Linux for 9 years. In that time I've come to the conculusion that there is no true ANSI standard C or even more remotely C++ and STL.
All of the compilers are different and have their different bugs and implementations of C/C++.
gcc seems to be the most truthful to the "standard" but even that lacks in spots that will bite your butt on other platforms.
I've written code that has compiled on 13 platforms that dies on the 14th too many times to remember.
My personal favorite was the (then) DEC Alpha C++ compiler that puked on
// I don't like this but it will be fixed tomorrow
because the single quote wasn't closed. To this day I shun quotes in my comments.
Other all time favorites:
All compilers except Solaris allow for loops that declare variables inside the if statements even though according to ANSI the defintion of "int i" is ambigious. Lord knows finding and fixing that one cost more than a few dollars in 2MM lines of code.
MSVC. if there is a more stupidly liberal compiler out there, I'd like to run into it and develop on that pig only. (I'll take job offers at my email)
except gcc. That one tossed Linux into a problem for a day or so 'til we found it.
If you think gcc is the solution, be advised that it allowed the 'setarg(2)' without a problem, it was the 'setarg(4)' that it puked on. It's all a matter of how much buffer is allocated by the compiler by default.
When writing templates about the only complier that has a remote clue of how to do it correctly is HP. Everything else is a poor implementation/fake of templates.
AFAICT, the only way to truely do cross platform development is to write the code, compile and TEST on every platform you want to ship on and, experience the pain, and then relieve the pain/problems.
Even if you have 15 years of C/C++ experience you still will get bit on the butt when you least expect it.
There are no easy solutions. There is only hardship. Heck, that's why we are called "Software Engineers" not "Software Scientists". Us "Engineers"/"Hackers" know we are perfect, the "Scientists" truly belive they are and will always be perfect.
This is a VERY specialized market which regards 5K users/sites/licenses as ahead of the the field. Comercial SW producers bite/scratch/claw/undercut each other for a gain of 5 users at a cost of at least $4K/user in this area.
The market isn't the ~500-600 Million OS users, who do word processing and/or spreadsheets. Its working Engineers/Architechs of the world, who might reach 500K world wide.
To produce sofware for this market a company needs to employ MSs and PHDs with knowledge of the field they are writing software for. Ok, anyone can kick out software for this app, but to have the UI be anywhere near reliavant for the application there is a need for specific knowledge of the subject matter. The basic Math/Physics knowledge required is only earned through years of experience with the subject matter.
I know, and I am one, people who would like to put together a CAD package for OS distribution, but we do have to pay for the schooling we worked for, and worked hard for.
AFAIK, Bently Systems not only ported MicroStation to OS/2, but to get there ported ACIS to OS/2 and had zero return on the investment. But that was at least 5 years ago. Porting, ACIS flat out sucks. Mostly because ACIS just plain sucks and is very platform dependent. SolidWorks isn't far behind in the sucks category, and UG's 'solution' not only sucks but is FORTRAN based (including wonderful functions like CSTN3C (Convert Spline To Nurbs with 3 degress of Continuity).
Thats only the CAD world. Now add in about 10x more complexities when FEM stuff is involved. And the basic math behind FEA is easily thrice that of the basic geometry.
A basic CAD package, using ACIS, will take ~5 man years to develop. Adding analysis capabilities is yet another 5 man years. Having said all that. NLIB is pseudo-public. and Harmony is a for profit extension of NLIB.
Hey, who amonst us has not had a computer blow up on us. Those beings are dangerous. They have minds of their own. And sometimes MickyShit was even responsible for writing that mind. Or the subsequent blow up. Heck, my old AMD 386-40 was sitting in my closet for years. Then one day it got real pissed off about having my stinky hockey gear stored on top of it. That AMD just done blowed itself up, fragging everything with an Intel Inside logo it could find. The AMD was very undiscrimiate though. It destroyed 2 3DFX cards and a Seagate 20MB drive that had DR-DOS backed up on it. It was fargging horrible. BTW, WTF did/. start taking WWN seriously, and ignoring the Page 6 girls?
I was going to put this up as a question but Dr Evil, got me to look a litte further.
Given that I don't have exact trade dates for MC's trades, other than 'mid-August' I give this stock analysis.
Examining CORL in August: CORL closed on 02-AUG @ 4 5/16 and on 31-AUG closed @ 5 3/4. Altogether not a bad 1 month gain. The high close for the month was 6 3/8 on 30-AUG. The low close was 3 3/4 on 5-AUG.
The stocks low since 02-AUG was 4 3/8 on 18-AUG, down from the higest of the previous 10 trading days close of 4 7/8 on 16-AUG. So at best he saved himself 1/2 a point on the "insider trades". Not a bad VERY short term short, given massive quantities. Looking at a longer term however...
why not wait until 10-JAN-00 when CORL closed at 20 1/16 (a 52 week high) to sell? [14-JAN close of 20 5/8 up from a recent low of 19 1/16 and a Y2K low of 15 1/4]
Looking at this MC should be convicted of a seveal crimes.' 1) Needing cash for some purpose, 2) lacking foresite in knowing his company was on the way out of the depths of stock hell, and 3) poor market prognostication (as most of us are).
About the biggest 'crime' I see here is (2). The other possibilty is that the Canuck version of the SEC is looking for some publicity, or they are upset that the Corel Centre is about to (saddly) loose its prime tenant to some schmuck US city?
Hmmm, if MC made all this money, why is Yashin still not signed (other than the fact he's ignoring a vaild contract)?
The p0rn0 site that 'found' the Pam&Tom video was sucessful in US courts by saying that because of the news items generated by said video that the video had become/should be/must be public information. And that it should be public information because of the public news and interest that had been generated, therefore said p0rn0 vendor had a _right_ to publicly display the video.
The correlation here is that the defeat of DVD security is a news item, cf CNN.com, news.com, et. al. Hence the code to defeat that security should be public information. So why, aside from lack of cubic legal dollars, shouldn't I, or anyone else, be able to post it on a web sight?
AFAIK, the reverse engineering was done in Norway, where there are no laws against that kind of GodBlessed Awesome hacking.
Now that this is topic is general news, any American should be able to post the code in question. Like about here to be presented in the public interest in the USA (but not for our friends who don't live in the USA).
Slashdot Mirror
The name of the show, and the horrible movie that "spawn"ed it were the initial reason's I refused to watch. However several of my friends got me into the show and I am eternally happy they
did so.
Aside from last season (#6) which generally sucked, the show has been great.
The problem with Buffy is that the show makes you remember what previously happened. If you like to think while watching TV (another oxymoron) your choices were Buffy or TLC or The History Channel.
Flat out Cross platform development sucks. And sucks royally. As an example you can write fantasticly great code on IRIX systems that works on an Octane but cores on an O2. Both running the same IRIX. The code works nowhere except Octane systems.
// I don't like this but it will be fixed tomorrow
I've been writing very large apps that deploy on many *nix's, NT, W9X/NT, Linux for 9 years. In that time I've come to the conculusion that there is no true ANSI standard C or even more remotely C++ and STL.
All of the compilers are different and have their different bugs and implementations of C/C++.
gcc seems to be the most truthful to the "standard" but even that lacks in spots that will bite your butt on other platforms.
I've written code that has compiled on 13 platforms that dies on the 14th too many times to remember.
My personal favorite was the (then) DEC Alpha C++ compiler that puked on
because the single quote wasn't closed. To this day I shun quotes in my comments.
Other all time favorites:
All compilers except Solaris allow for loops that declare variables inside the if statements even though according to ANSI the defintion of "int i" is ambigious. Lord knows finding and fixing that one cost more than a few dollars in 2MM lines of code.
MSVC. if there is a more stupidly liberal compiler out there, I'd like to run into it and develop on that pig only. (I'll take job offers at my email)
All *nix compliers I've used for Motif allow
Arguments args[2]
XvSetArg(....0)
XvSetArg(....1)
XvSetArg(....2)
XvSetArg(....3)
except gcc. That one tossed Linux into a problem for a day or so 'til we found it.
If you think gcc is the solution, be advised that it allowed the 'setarg(2)' without a problem, it was the 'setarg(4)' that it puked on. It's all a matter of how much buffer is allocated by the compiler by default.
When writing templates about the only complier that has a remote clue of how to do it correctly is HP. Everything else is a poor implementation/fake of templates.
AFAICT, the only way to truely do cross platform development is to write the code, compile and TEST on every platform you want to ship on and, experience the pain, and then relieve the pain/problems.
Even if you have 15 years of C/C++ experience you still will get bit on the butt when you least expect it.
There are no easy solutions. There is only hardship. Heck, that's why we are called "Software Engineers" not "Software Scientists". Us "Engineers"/"Hackers" know we are perfect, the "Scientists" truly belive they are and will always be perfect.
Shark
This is a VERY specialized market which regards 5K users/sites/licenses as ahead of the the field. Comercial SW producers bite/scratch/claw/undercut each other for a gain of 5 users at a cost of at least $4K/user in this area.
The market isn't the ~500-600 Million OS users, who do word processing and/or spreadsheets. Its working Engineers/Architechs of the world, who might reach 500K world wide.
To produce sofware for this market a company needs to employ MSs and PHDs with knowledge of the field they are writing software for. Ok, anyone can kick out software for this app, but to have the UI be anywhere near reliavant for the application there is a need for specific knowledge of the subject matter. The basic Math/Physics knowledge required is only earned through years of experience with the subject matter.
I know, and I am one, people who would like to put together a CAD package for OS distribution, but we do have to pay for the schooling we worked for, and worked hard for.
AFAIK, Bently Systems not only ported MicroStation to OS/2, but to get there ported ACIS to OS/2 and had zero return on the investment. But that was at least 5 years ago.
Porting, ACIS flat out sucks. Mostly because ACIS just plain sucks and is very platform dependent. SolidWorks isn't far behind in the sucks category, and UG's 'solution' not only sucks but is FORTRAN based (including wonderful functions like CSTN3C (Convert Spline To Nurbs with 3 degress of Continuity).
Thats only the CAD world. Now add in about 10x more complexities when FEM stuff is involved. And the basic math behind FEA is easily thrice that of the basic geometry.
A basic CAD package, using ACIS, will take ~5 man years to develop. Adding analysis capabilities is yet another 5 man years.
Having said all that. NLIB is pseudo-public. and Harmony is a for profit extension of NLIB.
Hey, who amonst us has not had a computer blow up on us. Those beings are dangerous. They have minds of their own. And sometimes MickyShit was even responsible for writing that mind. Or the subsequent blow up. Heck, my old AMD 386-40 was sitting in my closet for years. Then one day it got real pissed off about having my stinky hockey gear stored on top of it. That AMD just done blowed itself up, fragging everything with an Intel Inside logo it could find. The AMD was very undiscrimiate though. It destroyed 2 3DFX cards and a Seagate 20MB drive that had DR-DOS backed up on it. It was fargging horrible. BTW, WTF did /. start taking WWN seriously, and ignoring the Page 6 girls?
I was going to put this up as a question but Dr Evil, got me to look a litte further.
Given that I don't have exact trade dates for MC's trades, other than 'mid-August' I give this stock analysis.
Examining CORL in August:
CORL closed on 02-AUG @ 4 5/16 and on 31-AUG closed @ 5 3/4. Altogether not a bad 1 month gain.
The high close for the month was 6 3/8 on 30-AUG. The low close was 3 3/4 on 5-AUG.
The stocks low since 02-AUG was 4 3/8 on 18-AUG, down from the higest of the previous 10 trading
days close of 4 7/8 on 16-AUG. So at best he saved himself 1/2 a point on the "insider trades". Not a bad VERY short term short, given massive quantities. Looking at a longer term however...
why not wait until 10-JAN-00 when CORL closed at 20 1/16 (a 52 week high) to sell? [14-JAN close of 20 5/8 up from a recent low of 19 1/16 and a Y2K low of 15 1/4]
Looking at this MC should be convicted of a seveal crimes.' 1) Needing cash for some purpose, 2) lacking foresite in knowing his company was on the way out of the depths of stock hell, and 3) poor market prognostication (as most of us are).
About the biggest 'crime' I see here is (2). The other possibilty is that the Canuck version of the SEC is looking for some publicity, or they are upset that the Corel Centre is about to (saddly) loose its prime tenant to some schmuck US city?
Hmmm, if MC made all this money, why is Yashin still not signed (other than the fact he's ignoring a vaild contract)?
Just curious, did he have anything worth saying
after he he paste 42 times?
Nothing like providing evidence to prove
ones thesis, eh?
To Muddy Waters a touch,
The p0rn0 site that 'found' the Pam&Tom video
was sucessful in US courts by saying that
because of the news items generated by said video
that the video had become/should be/must be public
information. And that it should be public information because of the public news and interest that had been generated, therefore said p0rn0 vendor had a _right_ to publicly display the
video.
The correlation here is that the defeat of DVD security is a news item, cf CNN.com, news.com, et. al. Hence the code to defeat that security should be public information. So why, aside from lack of
cubic legal dollars, shouldn't I, or anyone else, be able to post it on a web sight?
AFAIK, the reverse engineering was done in Norway, where there are no laws against that kind of GodBlessed Awesome hacking.
Now that this is topic is general news, any American should be able to post the code in
question. Like about here to be presented in the public interest in the USA (but not for our friends who don't live in the USA).
Can we dump this anal-retentive idiot who
can't link stories propertly on his own website?
Actually I'd prefer to just stick him in the same
room as a hungry jackal, Linda Tripp, and The Monica.