From what I know, during the premier they get off to Atlantis, and then goof up and get themselves stuck there - it's mostly autonomous from the original show.
I don't think that's right. I've seen previews where Doctor Weir is telling the troops that they're not sure if they can get back, but they're going to find new technologies to defend Earth. I think the idea is that SGC will occasionally open a wormhole and they'll exchange data via radio.
Re:While this is very difficult to do in C/C++..
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 1
Well it's not much more difficult than doing it in Java, or even bash (well unless you want to use things like class.GetMethods() etc...)
three words: Dynamically Loaded Modules
C/C++ can do that just fine, but it's nowhere near as easy.
I suppose you haven't heard of the GNU build tools, autoconf and automake. Why do you think the "configure; make; make install" cycle works so well for many gnu tools across various operating systems.
And I suppose you haven't heard of binary distributions. Geez, normal users don't want to compile their software. What's so difficult to understand about that?
Putting that aside for a moment, the GNU auto* system is a decent example of a self-adapting system. It isn't great (too easy to break most of the time), but it works.
Re:Not quite the same thing, but...
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Go look at QueryPerformanceCounter(). It'll give you a *very* high-res 64-bit timer (3579545 counts per second on my puter).
That's what the DLL does. Sadly, Microsoft doesn't guarantee any sort of accuracy with that clock. Dual proc systems completely change the timing, too. My solution was to abstract out the timing into "ticks per second", then make the developer calculate for how long he wants between event. e.g.: frametime = timer.getTicksPerSecond()/60;//60 FPS
I hoped that this was more fiction than reality. Perhaps Prey is going to become a movie and they are writing this up to get people interested?
I thought it was more along the lines of a video game that was planned for release shortly after Duke Nukem Forever. I know I'm really waiting for those cool shadow effects they've been promising since '95!
(Does anyone know what happened to the prey engine?)
Not quite the same thing, but...
on
Biomorphic Software
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...related, is the practice of having a program interrogate its environment. Some of the most successful programs are highly portable pieces of code that check to see what OS services are available, what APIs are available, what dependency software is available, etc. and then constructs the final object tree based on the results.
While this is very difficult to do in C/C++, it's a very successful way of writing Java code. For example, a gaming timer I wrote first checks the JVM version. If it's on 1.5 it uses the new NANOTimer. If that fails, it checks the OS. If it's on Windows, it then checks for the presence of a native timer DLL. (Timing on Windows sucks.) If it fails to find and/or load the DLL, it then falls back to a clever algorithm for making the most of default Windows timing. If it's on some other OS, it uses the default timer (all OSes except windows can provide millisecond resolution without complaint).
[OT]: I still don't understand why they wrote Freenet in Java: I launched it once, its RAM usage kept increasing until it crashed... I don't think anyone will use it seriously with such requirements.
That has nothing to do with Java and everything to do with Freenet's code. Freenet chose Java because it was secure (no buffer overflows), cross platform, and to prevent exactly what you're describing: memory leaks. The problem is that memory leaks can happen in Java as well, they just manifest as object leaks. If you're throwing objects into collections and not cleaning them up, there's a good chance you're going to run out of memory. It's been awhile since I checked, but I believe the Freenet guys added some maximum memory flags to prevent this sort of situation.
It's also worth noting that most people use BitTorrent for larger files like ISOs. So even though the traffic in bytes in higher, I'm willing to byte when it comes to "number of files transferred", Kazaa still has the lead.
Sure. Although it's worth pointing out that P2P clients like Kazaa are some of the top places for distributing "funny" and "cute" videos like "grandma gets carried away by dog" or "monkey smells his butt". As far as I'm aware, most of these files lack any formal copyright protection and are therefore legal. So it is difficult to say that everything on the Kazaa network is illegal as well, for files of any size.
Haha, I don't think so. You as a slashdotter must be aware of the huge number of bittorent sites out there...
Of course. But I am also aware that many of them contain legal files as well. Examples of legal files include:
Linux Distros FreeBSD Distros Independent Movies (e.g. The recent Star Trek "reimagining") Public Domain or Free Books (it's becoming especially popular to give away very old technical books) Shareware Programs BitTorrent Clients (I kind of get a kick out of this myself)
...if someone could plot legit traffic against "illegal" traffic. My guess is that BitTorrent would account for a much higher percentage of legitimate file traffic as pretty much anyone who has a large file (e.g. Linux Distros) uses BitTorrent to distribute it.
No offence intended here, but have you ever developed a commercial app? Its what I do for a living. One of my biggest frustrations is the "design by committee".
Yes, I have developed a commercial app. Why do you think I put "yelling, screaming, and throwing things" in there? It's probably NOT the best process in the world, but amazingly enough it does work. In my experience, the departments eventually develop an uneasy truce that results in a good product going out the door.
That being said, my comments are the product of hindsight. In the past, I would have *loved* to strangle the VP of Design. She kicked myself and my boss out of meetings more than once for disagreeing with her. Actually, I think she kicked us out for disagreeing with her and being right!;-)
At least she didn't get her way and have partner banners lined all the way down the right hand side of the screen. That would have resulted in a tremendous waste of vertical space. Instead, I convinced her that we should have a banner that changes every few seconds. The marketing department latched onto this idea and began selling it to the partners like crazy. The guys with the most money got their banner to show up first and longest.
Hundreds or people tell him that he was wrong and post there suggestions
And how do you know if you're interpreting their suggestions correctly? Do they provide layouts, do they argue if your work isn't exactly like they wanted it, do they get in your face and square off with you? Think of the process as less of a "collaboration", and more of a "forged by fire" process.
The RIGHT way to do this is to get the best of both worlds by separating the functionality from the interface. You write your program to support every configuration known to man, much the way open source tends to do.
I disagree. The RIGHT way to do it is to have market competition. Some people will prefer Apple's approach for its ease, while others will prefer a MusicMatch (albeit with a better interface) type of approach. Both are perfectly valid, and the consumer should have the choice. It's a lot like cars. I can drive a Chevy and generally not have to worry about repairs, but when it's dead, it's dead. Or I could go with a Ford that is easy to work on yourself, but tends to require more repairs. (Warning: This is a generalization. Please don't argue the way things were with cars vs. now unless you have some on-topic point to make. )
Excuse me, but I've played around with both versions. And as Steve Jobs said when he introduced the Windows version: "they're exactly the same".
The only difference I've really been able to see is the frame-rate of the visualizer and the fade-in/fade-out effect when entering/quitting said visualizer.
Check the running programs on Windows sometime. There's a ton of "helper apps" trying to keep things in order. The Mac version uses the built in OS features that work much more smoothly. In addition, the Windows version attempts to track the files across your disk (a difficult procedure) while the Mac version simply sucks everything into its library. This is a difference in the way that the Mac and Windows operate at a core level. You can use the library on Windows, but you probably won't be very happy with it.
As for iTunes not supporting your external mp3 player: iTunes is free to install on your PC, you can't blame Apple for not supporting non-Apple players.
I'm not complaining. The guy I was replying to was complaining.
Then you must be implicitly be agreeing with me - iTunes does not make it easy for most people to do what they want to do (this, after all was the point of the article).
Hardly. You misunderstood the point of the software despite the best possible instructions Apple could provide. That's not their fault. And the software does what many people want to do. If it doesn't do what *you* want it to do (e.g. other MP3 players), then you need a different product. I don't complain that my Cavalier can't haul boulders. I buy a truck for that!
Further, if iTunes works best with a Mac (as you say), then you imply that I need to buy another piece of hardware to get it to work well. Yet again, this doesn't sound like making it easy for most people to do what, since we can all agree that Macs are hardly prevalent.
This is simply out of scope for the conversation. How is it iTunes' fault that Windows doesn't function very well? Apple met a market demand by porting it to Windows. Normally iTunes is part of a "total package" that is easy to use top to bottom. You're using a Windows "total package" that we agree is unsuitable to "ease of use", then complain when programs based on that platform behave as they were designed.
I don't use iTunes because it couldn't handle the collection of MP3's and WMA's that I had. I wouldn't call that easy to use. As best I could tell, it wanted me to re-rip or somehow translate the files.
Funny. It works fine for me with all MP3s, WMAs, and other formats. It shouldn't want to "re-rip" anything. It just creates a complete library.
Also, I couldn't find support for the music player I have.
Remember that ease of use thing? Apple's solution is to support their "easy to use" device, the iPod. That makes Apple money, and makes the user experience better. (Most MP3 players have lousy software interfaces.)
I would definitely say that iTunes didn't make it easy to do what I wanted to do. But I gave it a try, at least, which is more than some would do.
Doesn't sound like you got past the install. Don't know if that's "trying it". In any case, iTunes works best on the Mac. The Windows version has all kinds of little programs to work around everything that Windows won't do.
IMHO, the reason why OS GUIs tend to suck is that there's no one to argue with. When the developer sits down, he thinks about it for awhile and develops what he thinks is best.
When a commercial developer works on a GUI, he first has to sit down with his peers, the art department, marketing, and eventually focus groups to yell, scream, and throw things. Out of these heated arguments tends to evolve a product that has a better balance between functionality, looks, and ease of use then what the developer could have produced by himself.
Of course, different companies have different focuses. Microsoft's focus is to pack features like crazy, then try to find a way to make it usable. Apple's focus is to make a product that does the core job first, then evaluate how necessary the extra features are.
Duh. Apple has made an entire market out of creating "easy to use" software and hardware. The trick is that it actually has to be designed and re-factored a few times before you have a cohesive product rather than a collection of features.
Try again, I'm quite married with two kids. I had a chance to get an E8500 (8x300MHz, 9x8Gig Fibre Channel, 8Gig RAM, etc.) for only $3000! My wife said I could spend the money if I could find a use for it. Damn.
My wife has been trying to get me to unload every computer that hasn't been turned on in the past 5 years.
Ah, see there's your problem. All my machines are turned on at all times. The iBook and Desktop PC are obvious, the Ultra 10 runs my wife's recipe database, and the old P120 runs FreeBSD and acts as a Firewall, NAT, Web Server, mail server, etc. While the Symbolics machine may not have an outward use, I can simply explain to my wife that it's a research project for me. She'd understand.;-)
Hotmail recently gave users 250MB of storage. If that's not directly related to Google starting Gmail, I don't know what is;^)
Now if only Hotmail:
- Had Spam filters as good as GMail - Grouped messages into threads - Allowed emails to be labeled into "psuedo-groups" - Had a blazingly fast interface - Keyboard Shortcuts - Cross-platform DHTML everything
Are you a fucking retard? Those games are all in Java. I play them on my Mac all the time.
Yahoo used to pack all their games in CAB files just to piss off the rest of the Java community. (CAB files were NEVER part of the Java standard!!!) Yahoo got constant emails from people who couldn't play their games until they finally switched to ZIP/JAR files. Not sure, but some of their games may still use CABs.
In high school I took a creative writing class and one story I wrote had reference to a character waving his tentacles around, but my spell checker had changed my attempt at "tentacles" to "testicles".
That's similar to a common warning from teachers about spell checkers. Spell checkers don't notice when you misspell "public library" as "pubic library".
Did it look like the Nintendo's Game and Watch type handheld? The game that I have has a wolf that tries to catch the eggs in a basket that are being thrown by the rabbit. Where did you find the one for the Palm Pilot?
Yep. That's the one. The modern version is so damn cheap that it's almost as fun trying to get the buttons work right as it is playing the game.
The Palm game is called "CatchIT" and can be downloaded here.
Slashdot Mirror
From what I know, during the premier they get off to Atlantis, and then goof up and get themselves stuck there - it's mostly autonomous from the original show.
I don't think that's right. I've seen previews where Doctor Weir is telling the troops that they're not sure if they can get back, but they're going to find new technologies to defend Earth. I think the idea is that SGC will occasionally open a wormhole and they'll exchange data via radio.
Well it's not much more difficult than doing it in Java, or even bash (well unless you want to use things like class.GetMethods() etc...)
three words: Dynamically Loaded Modules
C/C++ can do that just fine, but it's nowhere near as easy.
I suppose you haven't heard of the GNU build tools, autoconf and automake. Why do you think the "configure; make; make install" cycle works so well for many gnu tools across various operating systems.
And I suppose you haven't heard of binary distributions. Geez, normal users don't want to compile their software. What's so difficult to understand about that?
Putting that aside for a moment, the GNU auto* system is a decent example of a self-adapting system. It isn't great (too easy to break most of the time), but it works.
Go look at QueryPerformanceCounter(). It'll give you a *very* high-res 64-bit timer (3579545 counts per second on my puter).
//60 FPS
That's what the DLL does. Sadly, Microsoft doesn't guarantee any sort of accuracy with that clock. Dual proc systems completely change the timing, too. My solution was to abstract out the timing into "ticks per second", then make the developer calculate for how long he wants between event. e.g.: frametime = timer.getTicksPerSecond()/60;
I hoped that this was more fiction than reality. Perhaps Prey is going to become a movie and they are writing this up to get people interested?
I thought it was more along the lines of a video game that was planned for release shortly after Duke Nukem Forever. I know I'm really waiting for those cool shadow effects they've been promising since '95!
(Does anyone know what happened to the prey engine?)
...related, is the practice of having a program interrogate its environment. Some of the most successful programs are highly portable pieces of code that check to see what OS services are available, what APIs are available, what dependency software is available, etc. and then constructs the final object tree based on the results.
While this is very difficult to do in C/C++, it's a very successful way of writing Java code. For example, a gaming timer I wrote first checks the JVM version. If it's on 1.5 it uses the new NANOTimer. If that fails, it checks the OS. If it's on Windows, it then checks for the presence of a native timer DLL. (Timing on Windows sucks.) If it fails to find and/or load the DLL, it then falls back to a clever algorithm for making the most of default Windows timing. If it's on some other OS, it uses the default timer (all OSes except windows can provide millisecond resolution without complaint).
[OT]: I still don't understand why they wrote Freenet in Java: I launched it once, its RAM usage kept increasing until it crashed... I don't think anyone will use it seriously with such requirements.
That has nothing to do with Java and everything to do with Freenet's code. Freenet chose Java because it was secure (no buffer overflows), cross platform, and to prevent exactly what you're describing: memory leaks. The problem is that memory leaks can happen in Java as well, they just manifest as object leaks. If you're throwing objects into collections and not cleaning them up, there's a good chance you're going to run out of memory. It's been awhile since I checked, but I believe the Freenet guys added some maximum memory flags to prevent this sort of situation.
It's also worth noting that most people use BitTorrent for larger files like ISOs. So even though the traffic in bytes in higher, I'm willing to byte when it comes to "number of files transferred", Kazaa still has the lead.
Sure. Although it's worth pointing out that P2P clients like Kazaa are some of the top places for distributing "funny" and "cute" videos like "grandma gets carried away by dog" or "monkey smells his butt". As far as I'm aware, most of these files lack any formal copyright protection and are therefore legal. So it is difficult to say that everything on the Kazaa network is illegal as well, for files of any size.
Haha, I don't think so. You as a slashdotter must be aware of the huge number of bittorent sites out there...
Of course. But I am also aware that many of them contain legal files as well. Examples of legal files include:
Linux Distros
FreeBSD Distros
Independent Movies (e.g. The recent Star Trek "reimagining")
Public Domain or Free Books (it's becoming especially popular to give away very old technical books)
Shareware Programs
BitTorrent Clients (I kind of get a kick out of this myself)
...if someone could plot legit traffic against "illegal" traffic. My guess is that BitTorrent would account for a much higher percentage of legitimate file traffic as pretty much anyone who has a large file (e.g. Linux Distros) uses BitTorrent to distribute it.
No offence intended here, but have you ever developed a commercial app? Its what I do for a living. One of my biggest frustrations is the "design by committee".
;-)
Yes, I have developed a commercial app. Why do you think I put "yelling, screaming, and throwing things" in there? It's probably NOT the best process in the world, but amazingly enough it does work. In my experience, the departments eventually develop an uneasy truce that results in a good product going out the door.
That being said, my comments are the product of hindsight. In the past, I would have *loved* to strangle the VP of Design. She kicked myself and my boss out of meetings more than once for disagreeing with her. Actually, I think she kicked us out for disagreeing with her and being right!
At least she didn't get her way and have partner banners lined all the way down the right hand side of the screen. That would have resulted in a tremendous waste of vertical space. Instead, I convinced her that we should have a banner that changes every few seconds. The marketing department latched onto this idea and began selling it to the partners like crazy. The guys with the most money got their banner to show up first and longest.
Hundreds or people tell him that he was wrong and post there suggestions
And how do you know if you're interpreting their suggestions correctly? Do they provide layouts, do they argue if your work isn't exactly like they wanted it, do they get in your face and square off with you? Think of the process as less of a "collaboration", and more of a "forged by fire" process.
The RIGHT way to do this is to get the best of both worlds by separating the functionality from the interface. You write your program to support every configuration known to man, much the way open source tends to do.
I disagree. The RIGHT way to do it is to have market competition. Some people will prefer Apple's approach for its ease, while others will prefer a MusicMatch (albeit with a better interface) type of approach. Both are perfectly valid, and the consumer should have the choice. It's a lot like cars. I can drive a Chevy and generally not have to worry about repairs, but when it's dead, it's dead. Or I could go with a Ford that is easy to work on yourself, but tends to require more repairs. (Warning: This is a generalization. Please don't argue the way things were with cars vs. now unless you have some on-topic point to make.
)
Excuse me, but I've played around with both versions. And as Steve Jobs said when he introduced the Windows version: "they're exactly the same".
The only difference I've really been able to see is the frame-rate of the visualizer and the fade-in/fade-out effect when entering/quitting said visualizer.
Check the running programs on Windows sometime. There's a ton of "helper apps" trying to keep things in order. The Mac version uses the built in OS features that work much more smoothly. In addition, the Windows version attempts to track the files across your disk (a difficult procedure) while the Mac version simply sucks everything into its library. This is a difference in the way that the Mac and Windows operate at a core level. You can use the library on Windows, but you probably won't be very happy with it.
As for iTunes not supporting your external mp3 player: iTunes is free to install on your PC, you can't blame Apple for not supporting non-Apple players.
I'm not complaining. The guy I was replying to was complaining.
Then you must be implicitly be agreeing with me - iTunes does not make it easy for most people to do what they want to do (this, after all was the point of the article).
Hardly. You misunderstood the point of the software despite the best possible instructions Apple could provide. That's not their fault. And the software does what many people want to do. If it doesn't do what *you* want it to do (e.g. other MP3 players), then you need a different product. I don't complain that my Cavalier can't haul boulders. I buy a truck for that!
Further, if iTunes works best with a Mac (as you say), then you imply that I need to buy another piece of hardware to get it to work well. Yet again, this doesn't sound like making it easy for most people to do what, since we can all agree that Macs are hardly prevalent.
This is simply out of scope for the conversation. How is it iTunes' fault that Windows doesn't function very well? Apple met a market demand by porting it to Windows. Normally iTunes is part of a "total package" that is easy to use top to bottom. You're using a Windows "total package" that we agree is unsuitable to "ease of use", then complain when programs based on that platform behave as they were designed.
*shrug*
Everyone has their bad days.
Is this really true? Look at spatial nautilus. The whole gnome community are on fire.
Correction, the GNOME community is complaining and the Nautilus coders are ignoring. An argument tends to suggest two-way interaction.
I don't use iTunes because it couldn't handle the collection of MP3's and WMA's that I had. I wouldn't call that easy to use. As best I could tell, it wanted me to re-rip or somehow translate the files.
Funny. It works fine for me with all MP3s, WMAs, and other formats. It shouldn't want to "re-rip" anything. It just creates a complete library.
Also, I couldn't find support for the music player I have.
Remember that ease of use thing? Apple's solution is to support their "easy to use" device, the iPod. That makes Apple money, and makes the user experience better. (Most MP3 players have lousy software interfaces.)
I would definitely say that iTunes didn't make it easy to do what I wanted to do. But I gave it a try, at least, which is more than some would do.
Doesn't sound like you got past the install. Don't know if that's "trying it". In any case, iTunes works best on the Mac. The Windows version has all kinds of little programs to work around everything that Windows won't do.
IMHO, the reason why OS GUIs tend to suck is that there's no one to argue with. When the developer sits down, he thinks about it for awhile and develops what he thinks is best.
When a commercial developer works on a GUI, he first has to sit down with his peers, the art department, marketing, and eventually focus groups to yell, scream, and throw things. Out of these heated arguments tends to evolve a product that has a better balance between functionality, looks, and ease of use then what the developer could have produced by himself.
Of course, different companies have different focuses. Microsoft's focus is to pack features like crazy, then try to find a way to make it usable. Apple's focus is to make a product that does the core job first, then evaluate how necessary the extra features are.
Duh. Apple has made an entire market out of creating "easy to use" software and hardware. The trick is that it actually has to be designed and re-factored a few times before you have a cohesive product rather than a collection of features.
Case in point: iTunes vs. MusicMatch
You're obviously not married. :)
;-)
Try again, I'm quite married with two kids. I had a chance to get an E8500 (8x300MHz, 9x8Gig Fibre Channel, 8Gig RAM, etc.) for only $3000! My wife said I could spend the money if I could find a use for it. Damn.
My wife has been trying to get me to unload every computer that hasn't been turned on in the past 5 years.
Ah, see there's your problem. All my machines are turned on at all times. The iBook and Desktop PC are obvious, the Ultra 10 runs my wife's recipe database, and the old P120 runs FreeBSD and acts as a Firewall, NAT, Web Server, mail server, etc. While the Symbolics machine may not have an outward use, I can simply explain to my wife that it's a research project for me. She'd understand.
Hotmail recently gave users 250MB of storage. If that's not directly related to Google starting Gmail, I don't know what is ;^)
Now if only Hotmail:
- Had Spam filters as good as GMail
- Grouped messages into threads
- Allowed emails to be labeled into "psuedo-groups"
- Had a blazingly fast interface
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Cross-platform DHTML everything
Are you a fucking retard? Those games are all in Java. I play them on my Mac all the time.
Yahoo used to pack all their games in CAB files just to piss off the rest of the Java community. (CAB files were NEVER part of the Java standard!!!) Yahoo got constant emails from people who couldn't play their games until they finally switched to ZIP/JAR files. Not sure, but some of their games may still use CABs.
In high school I took a creative writing class and one story I wrote had reference to a character waving his tentacles around, but my spell checker had changed my attempt at "tentacles" to "testicles".
That's similar to a common warning from teachers about spell checkers. Spell checkers don't notice when you misspell "public library" as "pubic library".
Did it look like the Nintendo's Game and Watch type handheld? The game that I have has a wolf that tries to catch the eggs in a basket that are being thrown by the rabbit. Where did you find the one for the Palm Pilot?
Yep. That's the one. The modern version is so damn cheap that it's almost as fun trying to get the buttons work right as it is playing the game.
The Palm game is called "CatchIT" and can be downloaded here.