VB6 is recent history, at the point where the market was already leaving VB for Java in droves. Sorry, but you're a young'un.
VB 1.0 was made for DOS and pre-3.x versions of Windows of all things. VB's heyday was between version 3.0 and 5.0. Now we're sitting in a position where VB.NET != VB, and is a clone of C# with stupid switches to turn type safety on and off. Why would anyone continue to subject themselves to a half-baked, BASIC ripoff syntax that wasn't very good to begin with and is incompatible with previous versions when you can do the same thing with a real syntax like C#? (As someone who actually programmed BASIC in the day, I can say with certainty that VB is not BASIC. It's not even close.) There's just no reason I can see to continue using it. And I certainly wouldn't recommend teaching it as there's nothing of value there that can't be had better elsewhere.
Well first of all, it won't compile because VB doesn't use semicolons to end a line.
Good catch. It's so automatic at this point, I couldn't stop myself.:-)
Second, if you're using Option Strict On, then it won't implicitly cast X to a string, so it won't compile.
IF. Big IF. Regardless of whether modern tutorials tell you to turn it on or not now, it has been correct syntax in VB since the Dinosaurs roamed the earth. VB is not a strongly typed language. Period, end of story. The grandparent's point about VB vs. VBA was just silly.
Nice. Man do I wish that VB6 was available when I was doing VB coding. (If you can call it that.) It would have made my life so much easier. Of course, I would have preferred not to do VB in the first place, but there were just too many OS features I needed to interface with in the projects I did.
I suppose it's possible that was in VB5, but there was no documentation that suggested it at the time. (Not that Microsoft's online help was worth much.)
Absolutely true for VB6. But that has nothing to do with VB.Net,
Agreed. However, it's a part of history that is important for him to understand if he wants to know about the rise and fall of RAD tools and 4GL languages.
VB.Net is useful for far more RAD.
I'd actually argue with that, but not because VB.NET is incapable. VB has been completely overhauled to be compatible with C#. (Which is to say, that it's C# with a new faceplate.) So if you're going to be using the.NET libraries and features (which were designed for C#), why maintain the guise of programming in BASIC? Just move to C# and save yourself the trouble of dealing with the idiosyncracies that were ported to make VB.NET feel more VBish.
More precisely, C++ is a superset of C. Some of C++'s extensions are obvious (e.g. class support), while other extensions (e.g. streams and// style comments) are often not realized by those who think they are coding "pure" C. Some of the C++ extensions were backported into the C standard.
The first thing that I do is turn on "Option Explicit" and "Option Strict" in VB.NET. Typed varibles are enforced
And how will a new programmer understand how to use that option, why it should be on, or even what it does? If you've got them in a classroom, you can force all the machines to be configured that way, but how much of their education will consist of them screwing around at home?
Not to mention the fact that newbies can be dangerously clever. If their program doesn't compile, they're going to work hard to make it compile. At some point they might start fiddling with compiler options. (*Shiver* I remember doing stuff like that. Not a good idea.) Once they figure out that turning off that option makes their programs compile (and run flawlessly!), they'll take it to heart that they always need to do that. They *might* read up on what the switch does, but since they don't understand it, they'll assume it's an "Experts Only" thing and keep it off.
Before you know it, all your classroom machines will have their settings reversed. Oi Vey!
Also don't think that what you consider to be the pinnacle of all languages to be the easiet for someone else to learn.
I actually recommend BASIC (the real thing) to start off with. See my other posts in this topic for more info.:-)
I have used that as well, though I will grant you that I'd pretty much given up on Microsoft's interpretation of "Object Oriented Programming" by that point. If you've got some documentation that shows that "real" objects were possible in old-style VB, please do share. I'll be throwing things at the walls for all the trouble that could have saved me back then, but I'd still think it's a nice thing to know.:-)
No, the proper language to start all newbies on is Forth.
So you mean that we should purchase all new programmers an old SparcStation, hit Stop-A on boot, then tell them to have at it? Sounds like fun.:-P
Actually, I've recommended Assembler as a good alternative to BASIC, though it does take away some of the user friendliness. Just make sure that you give them a sensible instruction set to work with, so they don't have to be working voodoo just to add two numbers together. x86 Real Mode isn't it.;-)
Atari Assembler (6507, a variant of the 6502) isn't a bad choice because some of the emualtors (STELLA!) come with built in debuggers that can let the user watch the program execute. Of course, Hello World! is pretty darn difficult to write on a 2600.
Rapid Application Development. Tools like Visual Basic and other 4GL langauges were intended to improve software development speed and accuracy by providing tools whereby the computer automatically did as much of the work as possible. The most common type of RAD tool was GUI Builders like Visual Basic. (Though there were quite a few for database development, networking, gaming, and other areas.)
The primary issue with such tools is that they tend to fail spectacularly as soon as they get outside their intended area of use. Visual Basic, for example, came along just in time to be abused for Client/Server development. Since VB wasn't designed with networking in mind, it was often faster and easier to do the code in C (and later Java). VB's life as a GUI front-end was extended thanks to the ability to link in COM+/ActiveX controls for more complex tasks, but GUIs eventually morphed into far more complex variants that the GUI Builder couldn't easily support. (Ever notice how you can spot a Visual Basic application visually?)
At that point, most serious programmers realized that they were taking longer to hack VB to do what they wanted rather than just coding it from scratch in another language. So they gave up on it and moved back to C/C++/Delphi and the new-kid-on-the-block, Java.
Uh, yeah. I did quite a bit of programming in VB5. The frustrating thing was that I could never set up an event system because objects were always static. Microsoft's documentation included with VB claimed that's how it was supposed to be. If you know how to implement proper instantiations, and pass objects as instances, please share. I'd love to know, because Microsoft sure as heck never documented it properly.
I don't think the grandparent (who is now, IMHO, unfairly rated at -1) was referring to grammar. The point I got from his post was that anyone who *just* learned about performance threading/sockets and considers himself a serious programmer, is anything but. The Java/C++ "snobs" are off thinking about how to implement a new compression algorithm, or how to improve packet routing on a cryptographically secure Peer 2 Peer network while the VB "programmers" are patting themselves on the back for "high performance" multithreading and sockets.
As you say, those are not real Computer Scientists or Engineers. They're sysadmins with delusions of grandeur.
VB always has been and always will be a RAD tool. Nothing more, nothing less.
Never, ever, ever, ever start a beginner programmer with Java. The OOP features are guaranteed to confuse the poor soul and turn him/her off to programming forever. The best option is to start a new programmer off with a traditional BASIC variant such as SmallBASIC. Such BASICs can be used to teach a new programmer about how software executes one line after another (don't laugh, this is a big problem for new coders), control structures, and how the computer stores/interprets numbers and strings.
I only wish we still had command line interpreters around. It was so nice when beginners could execute their instructions directly OR add them to a program. It made playing around and learning so much quicker.
Once they graduate to more complex programming, something like C is a good choice to introduce concepts like functions, data structures, pointers, libaries, compilers, and linkers. Once they get to the point where they start prefixing every function with a module name, then its time to introduce them to OOP and Java. The Java stuff should make a lot of sense at that point. ("You mean I can group these functions... err... methods together, then store the data inside that grouping so that I don't have to pass a STRUCT around? Sold!")
The result of this education is that you'll have a well-rounded programmer who's ready to run out and attack any problem. New languages should be easy for him/her to grasp, and they should be looking to learn more computer science beyond just language constructs.
Long Answer: Visual Basic is riddled with problems for those who are new to programming. The first problem that hits someone looking to learn programming is that he/she sees a pretty layout manager, but no code. It's quite possible to build an interface without ever writing a single line of code. When the entire point of the exercise is to learn coding, this is NOT a good thing.
The second problem is that Visual Basic doesn't clearly introduce the "programmer" to concepts like functions, interpreters, and compilers. Most of the functions in VB are automatically generated, giving the impression that these are magic incantations that shouldn't be touched by a "programmer". VB Studio has an interpreter, but it isn't interactive in the same way as BASIC interpreters. This makes it useless as a learning tool. The compiler is mostly a matter of setting a file name and hitting a button to produce an EXE. So the new programmer gains no understanding of how code gets translated into an executable. Concepts like linking, for example, are completely glossed over.
One of my personal beefs with the older versions of VB (which have been corrected in.NET, for no other reason than because C# requires it) is that VB passes off this idiotic idea of grouped functions as "Object Oriented Programming". The fact that these "objects" can't be instantiated, nor can they be used as Abstract Data Types, makes them utterly useless for OOP development. I would even go as far as to say that VB's previous implemenation of OOP was misleading and dangerous.
VB also loses major points for failing to include typed variables. The automatic conversions between numbers, strings, and other types only serves to confuse a new programmer, especially when the auto-cast does the wrong thing. A new programmer should be taught to understand how data is represented by computers, not abstracted away so far that they can't understand how to fix problems.
Beyond that, VB tends to do a lot of confusing things that are not easily explainable. The lack of useful documentation and/or a good documentation browser only serves to increase confusion.
To be honest, I never understood why some non-VB developers thought of VB as a 'toy' language,
VB had/has its uses, but it's still just a RAD tool. As soon as you run into situations that the RAD tool can't handle, you should be using a real language rather than trying to hack it.
Re:"...treat women as a mysterious nut to crack."
on
Female Gamers Duke It Out
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Expecting them to be able to write a realistic female character doesn't make sense.
I'm thinking that getting Game Developers to write a realistic male would be nigh-impossible. Games tend to be a form of escapist fantasy that are intended to put you in situations you want to be in rather than situation you already are in.
Thus the male heros in games tend to be totally ripped, unnaturally smart, or outrageously funny. Now if you extend this to the female characters, what do you think happens?
Perhaps the only thing worse than the overendowed girls with useless body armor is the "tough girl" image. Thank goodness that the Samantha Carter character in StarGate moved away from the "I can pull 6Gs and win any hand-to-hand knife fight" character into a more realistic person. The show was much more interesting for it.
Now if only they hadn't had her get into a romantic relationship with every new regular on the show...
But I don't think that you understand the depth of this proposal when it's applied to the casual user
I honestly don't expect the casual user to try this. I'm only responding to Mr. Killjoy up there who was whining that iTunes wasn't backed up when he explicitly overwrote it. I'm not sure what he expected to happen.:-)
For the rest of the world, I fully expect that if they realize they've made a mistake (and they consider it important enough to fix!), they'll harness the power of the Internet to find a site like, oh say, this one. (Hint: That's just about every version of iTunes you could possibly need.)
Windows instructions: Select Add/Remove programs from the control panel. Select iTunes and click remove.
Two reboots later, you HOPE that all the DLLs and Services that iTunes installed are gone. And don't forget to remove Quicktime. You might need the versions to match. Another two reboots later...
1. Not my problem. TFA says that you can't downgrade iTunes. I'm (jokingly) pointing out that you can.
2. It's definitely not my problem that you are unable to look at the post above yours in this thread for a response that gives a location for older versions.
3. Even worse, it's not my problem that your humor sensor is busted. I might suggest getting that fixed.
Or has it not been over writing my older version the entire time I've been going through upgrades.
Oh, don't worry. You have been happily overwriting the iTunes versions. Next time, if it's important to you get a backup before you blow it away.
Dude, get on the fan-boi band wagon. It doesn't matter if anything came before. If google does, it will be "better."
Without hopping on the "fan-boi band wagon", Google probably will do it better than others. Keep in mind that part of the appeal of GMail was the fact that it was so much faster, easier, and more pleasant to use than any other webmail service. If you remember XDrive and many of their competitors, it's not hard (at all) to imagine that Google could show them up with a better, faster, and easier interface.
That being said, there's still the matter of how useful such services are. We'll have to see if the market actually accepts the service for what it was intended for, or if they decide to host nothing more than massive W4r3Z repositories that they share with their "friends".
The question is why perform it in hardware rather than software?
Playing devil's advocate for a minute, during video games the CPU is usually otherwise occupied by tasks associated with feeding the GPU and processing AI/Physics. Separating this into a hardware card could provide an explicit processing environment to do such an analysis in real-time without stealing CPU time from the game. Plus, this would then be available to all programs/games running on the machine, not just those that support it. (Conceivably it could be done in a driver, though.)
That being said, my bull****-o-meter started spiking the moment I read the summary. There's not that much that can be done on the user's end. You may be able to guide a packet down faster pipes and switches, but more likely all the traffic between you and the destination has some saturation. (Seriously, what are those expensive switches and routers doing if they're not already trying to optimize traffic?)
The bloggers mentioned in the story, who presumably are able to articulate their own opinions, received Wal*Mart email and began to simply copy the PR text into the blogs.
Wait, I don't understand. This is news? I thought it was common knowledge that a large portion of bloggers (the majority?) simply copy text from elsewhere as their "blog". Take Digg as an example. Digg integrates with many blogging services, allowing users to write commentary on the story, and link back to the Digg page from their blog. The feature is quite popular as most of the front page stories have a "blog" attached to them.
Now with such a feature, you would expect each blogger to provide insightful commentary on the issue at hand, right? Wrong. The majority of the blogs do nothing more than replicate the exact text from the Digg story. Not only are these blogs redundant, but they add another level of indirection to anyone who might happen upon them. ("Oh, so I go from blog, to Digg, to Link, right?") Ok, so the better blogs have a direct link AND a Digg link. But this is really nothing more than sydication of rather fluffy content.
Now these blogs aren't entirely without value. In many cases, it's a way of aligning your tastes with those of a particular blogger. i.e. That blogger only links to articles you want to know about. It's also good for the site that's being Dugg, as they have more links to their site.
But no, there's nothing magically articulate about bloggers. Plenty of them are happy to syndicate.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever actually done any serious programming in anything other than VB? (And no, I don't mean, "I created a Hello World! program.")
VB6 is recent history, at the point where the market was already leaving VB for Java in droves. Sorry, but you're a young'un.
VB 1.0 was made for DOS and pre-3.x versions of Windows of all things. VB's heyday was between version 3.0 and 5.0. Now we're sitting in a position where VB.NET != VB, and is a clone of C# with stupid switches to turn type safety on and off. Why would anyone continue to subject themselves to a half-baked, BASIC ripoff syntax that wasn't very good to begin with and is incompatible with previous versions when you can do the same thing with a real syntax like C#? (As someone who actually programmed BASIC in the day, I can say with certainty that VB is not BASIC. It's not even close.) There's just no reason I can see to continue using it. And I certainly wouldn't recommend teaching it as there's nothing of value there that can't be had better elsewhere.
Well first of all, it won't compile because VB doesn't use semicolons to end a line.
:-)
Good catch. It's so automatic at this point, I couldn't stop myself.
Second, if you're using Option Strict On, then it won't implicitly cast X to a string, so it won't compile.
IF. Big IF. Regardless of whether modern tutorials tell you to turn it on or not now, it has been correct syntax in VB since the Dinosaurs roamed the earth. VB is not a strongly typed language. Period, end of story. The grandparent's point about VB vs. VBA was just silly.
More evidence of the VB "elite".
Lemme ask you. What happens when this code executes (Apologies if my VB is a bit rusty):If you answered, "X gets cast into a String", you've just proven my point.
Hmmm... lemme see. I said, "fixed in VB.NET"? Check. The rest of it still holds true.
instead of suggesting a better language or tool and giving a comparison, you painted us up with your nits over a programming language.
Better choices. =)
Nice. Man do I wish that VB6 was available when I was doing VB coding. (If you can call it that.) It would have made my life so much easier. Of course, I would have preferred not to do VB in the first place, but there were just too many OS features I needed to interface with in the projects I did.
I suppose it's possible that was in VB5, but there was no documentation that suggested it at the time. (Not that Microsoft's online help was worth much.)
Absolutely true for VB6. But that has nothing to do with VB.Net,
.NET libraries and features (which were designed for C#), why maintain the guise of programming in BASIC? Just move to C# and save yourself the trouble of dealing with the idiosyncracies that were ported to make VB.NET feel more VBish.
Agreed. However, it's a part of history that is important for him to understand if he wants to know about the rise and fall of RAD tools and 4GL languages.
VB.Net is useful for far more RAD.
I'd actually argue with that, but not because VB.NET is incapable. VB has been completely overhauled to be compatible with C#. (Which is to say, that it's C# with a new faceplate.) So if you're going to be using the
isn't C a subset of C++?
// style comments) are often not realized by those who think they are coding "pure" C. Some of the C++ extensions were backported into the C standard.
More precisely, C++ is a superset of C. Some of C++'s extensions are obvious (e.g. class support), while other extensions (e.g. streams and
The first thing that I do is turn on "Option Explicit" and "Option Strict" in VB.NET. Typed varibles are enforced
:-)
And how will a new programmer understand how to use that option, why it should be on, or even what it does? If you've got them in a classroom, you can force all the machines to be configured that way, but how much of their education will consist of them screwing around at home?
Not to mention the fact that newbies can be dangerously clever. If their program doesn't compile, they're going to work hard to make it compile. At some point they might start fiddling with compiler options. (*Shiver* I remember doing stuff like that. Not a good idea.) Once they figure out that turning off that option makes their programs compile (and run flawlessly!), they'll take it to heart that they always need to do that. They *might* read up on what the switch does, but since they don't understand it, they'll assume it's an "Experts Only" thing and keep it off.
Before you know it, all your classroom machines will have their settings reversed. Oi Vey!
Also don't think that what you consider to be the pinnacle of all languages to be the easiet for someone else to learn.
I actually recommend BASIC (the real thing) to start off with. See my other posts in this topic for more info.
I have used that as well, though I will grant you that I'd pretty much given up on Microsoft's interpretation of "Object Oriented Programming" by that point. If you've got some documentation that shows that "real" objects were possible in old-style VB, please do share. I'll be throwing things at the walls for all the trouble that could have saved me back then, but I'd still think it's a nice thing to know. :-)
No, the proper language to start all newbies on is Forth.
:-P
;-)
So you mean that we should purchase all new programmers an old SparcStation, hit Stop-A on boot, then tell them to have at it? Sounds like fun.
Actually, I've recommended Assembler as a good alternative to BASIC, though it does take away some of the user friendliness. Just make sure that you give them a sensible instruction set to work with, so they don't have to be working voodoo just to add two numbers together. x86 Real Mode isn't it.
Atari Assembler (6507, a variant of the 6502) isn't a bad choice because some of the emualtors (STELLA!) come with built in debuggers that can let the user watch the program execute. Of course, Hello World! is pretty darn difficult to write on a 2600.
Rapid Application Development. Tools like Visual Basic and other 4GL langauges were intended to improve software development speed and accuracy by providing tools whereby the computer automatically did as much of the work as possible. The most common type of RAD tool was GUI Builders like Visual Basic. (Though there were quite a few for database development, networking, gaming, and other areas.)
The primary issue with such tools is that they tend to fail spectacularly as soon as they get outside their intended area of use. Visual Basic, for example, came along just in time to be abused for Client/Server development. Since VB wasn't designed with networking in mind, it was often faster and easier to do the code in C (and later Java). VB's life as a GUI front-end was extended thanks to the ability to link in COM+/ActiveX controls for more complex tasks, but GUIs eventually morphed into far more complex variants that the GUI Builder couldn't easily support. (Ever notice how you can spot a Visual Basic application visually?)
At that point, most serious programmers realized that they were taking longer to hack VB to do what they wanted rather than just coding it from scratch in another language. So they gave up on it and moved back to C/C++/Delphi and the new-kid-on-the-block, Java.
Uh, yeah. I did quite a bit of programming in VB5. The frustrating thing was that I could never set up an event system because objects were always static. Microsoft's documentation included with VB claimed that's how it was supposed to be. If you know how to implement proper instantiations, and pass objects as instances, please share. I'd love to know, because Microsoft sure as heck never documented it properly.
I don't think the grandparent (who is now, IMHO, unfairly rated at -1) was referring to grammar. The point I got from his post was that anyone who *just* learned about performance threading/sockets and considers himself a serious programmer, is anything but. The Java/C++ "snobs" are off thinking about how to implement a new compression algorithm, or how to improve packet routing on a cryptographically secure Peer 2 Peer network while the VB "programmers" are patting themselves on the back for "high performance" multithreading and sockets.
As you say, those are not real Computer Scientists or Engineers. They're sysadmins with delusions of grandeur.
VB always has been and always will be a RAD tool. Nothing more, nothing less.
Never, ever, ever, ever start a beginner programmer with Java. The OOP features are guaranteed to confuse the poor soul and turn him/her off to programming forever. The best option is to start a new programmer off with a traditional BASIC variant such as SmallBASIC. Such BASICs can be used to teach a new programmer about how software executes one line after another (don't laugh, this is a big problem for new coders), control structures, and how the computer stores/interprets numbers and strings.
I only wish we still had command line interpreters around. It was so nice when beginners could execute their instructions directly OR add them to a program. It made playing around and learning so much quicker.
Once they graduate to more complex programming, something like C is a good choice to introduce concepts like functions, data structures, pointers, libaries, compilers, and linkers. Once they get to the point where they start prefixing every function with a module name, then its time to introduce them to OOP and Java. The Java stuff should make a lot of sense at that point. ("You mean I can group these functions... err... methods together, then store the data inside that grouping so that I don't have to pass a STRUCT around? Sold!")
The result of this education is that you'll have a well-rounded programmer who's ready to run out and attack any problem. New languages should be easy for him/her to grasp, and they should be looking to learn more computer science beyond just language constructs.
Really Short Answer: No.
.NET, for no other reason than because C# requires it) is that VB passes off this idiotic idea of grouped functions as "Object Oriented Programming". The fact that these "objects" can't be instantiated, nor can they be used as Abstract Data Types, makes them utterly useless for OOP development. I would even go as far as to say that VB's previous implemenation of OOP was misleading and dangerous.
Short Answer: Are you out of your bleeding mind?
Long Answer: Visual Basic is riddled with problems for those who are new to programming. The first problem that hits someone looking to learn programming is that he/she sees a pretty layout manager, but no code. It's quite possible to build an interface without ever writing a single line of code. When the entire point of the exercise is to learn coding, this is NOT a good thing.
The second problem is that Visual Basic doesn't clearly introduce the "programmer" to concepts like functions, interpreters, and compilers. Most of the functions in VB are automatically generated, giving the impression that these are magic incantations that shouldn't be touched by a "programmer". VB Studio has an interpreter, but it isn't interactive in the same way as BASIC interpreters. This makes it useless as a learning tool. The compiler is mostly a matter of setting a file name and hitting a button to produce an EXE. So the new programmer gains no understanding of how code gets translated into an executable. Concepts like linking, for example, are completely glossed over.
One of my personal beefs with the older versions of VB (which have been corrected in
VB also loses major points for failing to include typed variables. The automatic conversions between numbers, strings, and other types only serves to confuse a new programmer, especially when the auto-cast does the wrong thing. A new programmer should be taught to understand how data is represented by computers, not abstracted away so far that they can't understand how to fix problems.
Beyond that, VB tends to do a lot of confusing things that are not easily explainable. The lack of useful documentation and/or a good documentation browser only serves to increase confusion.
To be honest, I never understood why some non-VB developers thought of VB as a 'toy' language,
VB had/has its uses, but it's still just a RAD tool. As soon as you run into situations that the RAD tool can't handle, you should be using a real language rather than trying to hack it.
Expecting them to be able to write a realistic female character doesn't make sense.
I'm thinking that getting Game Developers to write a realistic male would be nigh-impossible. Games tend to be a form of escapist fantasy that are intended to put you in situations you want to be in rather than situation you already are in.
Thus the male heros in games tend to be totally ripped, unnaturally smart, or outrageously funny. Now if you extend this to the female characters, what do you think happens?
Perhaps the only thing worse than the overendowed girls with useless body armor is the "tough girl" image. Thank goodness that the Samantha Carter character in StarGate moved away from the "I can pull 6Gs and win any hand-to-hand knife fight" character into a more realistic person. The show was much more interesting for it.
Now if only they hadn't had her get into a romantic relationship with every new regular on the show...
But I don't think that you understand the depth of this proposal when it's applied to the casual user
:-)
I honestly don't expect the casual user to try this. I'm only responding to Mr. Killjoy up there who was whining that iTunes wasn't backed up when he explicitly overwrote it. I'm not sure what he expected to happen.
For the rest of the world, I fully expect that if they realize they've made a mistake (and they consider it important enough to fix!), they'll harness the power of the Internet to find a site like, oh say, this one. (Hint: That's just about every version of iTunes you could possibly need.)
Windows instructions: Select Add/Remove programs from the control panel. Select iTunes and click remove.
Two reboots later, you HOPE that all the DLLs and Services that iTunes installed are gone. And don't forget to remove Quicktime. You might need the versions to match. Another two reboots later...
Where does OS X keep the old version pray tell?
1. Not my problem. TFA says that you can't downgrade iTunes. I'm (jokingly) pointing out that you can.
2. It's definitely not my problem that you are unable to look at the post above yours in this thread for a response that gives a location for older versions.
3. Even worse, it's not my problem that your humor sensor is busted. I might suggest getting that fixed.
Or has it not been over writing my older version the entire time I've been going through upgrades.
Oh, don't worry. You have been happily overwriting the iTunes versions. Next time, if it's important to you get a backup before you blow it away.
Have a nice day!
Try here. The site has both Windows and OS X versions. Found with a quick google search.
Apple says iTunes can't be downgraded.
:-P
Yes it can! It's easy! Just move the new version to the trash, then put the old version in its place. Voila! You're now running an old version.
[...]
What's that? You say that they're talking about Windows? Pfff. Who uses Windows? I mean, do users have any clue how hard it is to uninstall... Oh.
(Yes, my tongue is again located in the cheek area.)
Dude, get on the fan-boi band wagon. It doesn't matter if anything came before. If google does, it will be "better."
Without hopping on the "fan-boi band wagon", Google probably will do it better than others. Keep in mind that part of the appeal of GMail was the fact that it was so much faster, easier, and more pleasant to use than any other webmail service. If you remember XDrive and many of their competitors, it's not hard (at all) to imagine that Google could show them up with a better, faster, and easier interface.
That being said, there's still the matter of how useful such services are. We'll have to see if the market actually accepts the service for what it was intended for, or if they decide to host nothing more than massive W4r3Z repositories that they share with their "friends".
The question is why perform it in hardware rather than software?
Playing devil's advocate for a minute, during video games the CPU is usually otherwise occupied by tasks associated with feeding the GPU and processing AI/Physics. Separating this into a hardware card could provide an explicit processing environment to do such an analysis in real-time without stealing CPU time from the game. Plus, this would then be available to all programs/games running on the machine, not just those that support it. (Conceivably it could be done in a driver, though.)
That being said, my bull****-o-meter started spiking the moment I read the summary. There's not that much that can be done on the user's end. You may be able to guide a packet down faster pipes and switches, but more likely all the traffic between you and the destination has some saturation. (Seriously, what are those expensive switches and routers doing if they're not already trying to optimize traffic?)
The bloggers mentioned in the story, who presumably are able to articulate their own opinions, received Wal*Mart email and began to simply copy the PR text into the blogs.
Wait, I don't understand. This is news? I thought it was common knowledge that a large portion of bloggers (the majority?) simply copy text from elsewhere as their "blog". Take Digg as an example. Digg integrates with many blogging services, allowing users to write commentary on the story, and link back to the Digg page from their blog. The feature is quite popular as most of the front page stories have a "blog" attached to them.
Now with such a feature, you would expect each blogger to provide insightful commentary on the issue at hand, right? Wrong. The majority of the blogs do nothing more than replicate the exact text from the Digg story. Not only are these blogs redundant, but they add another level of indirection to anyone who might happen upon them. ("Oh, so I go from blog, to Digg, to Link, right?") Ok, so the better blogs have a direct link AND a Digg link. But this is really nothing more than sydication of rather fluffy content.
Here's a few examples of what I'm talking about:
http://nik-hil.blogspot.com/
http://www.r00tware.com/
http://hackerslife.blogspot.com/
http://www.petesblog.com/
These are examples of "real" blogs with sydicated Digg content mixed in:
http://jacobsonster.blogspot.com/
http://howgoodisthis.wordpress.com/
Now these blogs aren't entirely without value. In many cases, it's a way of aligning your tastes with those of a particular blogger. i.e. That blogger only links to articles you want to know about. It's also good for the site that's being Dugg, as they have more links to their site.
But no, there's nothing magically articulate about bloggers. Plenty of them are happy to syndicate.