If/when I finally learn C++, it's going to have to be with the help of a book that teach C++ for Windows programming, or C++ for Linux programming. I took a data structures class in college and learned about binary trees and pointers and linked lists and all that stuff, but without being able to write a program that I could imagine actually using, I've had little incentive to remember how to overload the ++ operator.
Are there any good programming books that focus on learning to create GUI's and modern applications? Such as, something that addresses modern concepts like internet connections and DVD drives and database connectivity and such. I don't need to relearn the concepts behind OOP (although a quick overview of syntax would be nice), I want to know how programmers use this stuff, what they create vs. what they have access to (like common dialog boxes), and basically the steps between writing a "sort the list of student records" console app and writing a full-blown application (I know the latter takes a lot of time and code, but I don't know what direction to go in, or how programmers organize all the code).
Nice try, jackass. You just copied an article written by Robin "Roblimo" Miller, almost word for word. Is slashdot-karma so important to you that you have to plagiarize? Welcome to the world of Google.
Perens kicks ass! There's just no other way to describe my reaction. The guy is smart, his thoughts are collected, and he writes with his brain, not with his emotions. This is a guy that you can count on to come up with an excellent response to a ridiculous argument.
And you know, it's refreshing these days to see that some people still believe that the value of their work has nothing to do with the font, color, alignment, shape of the bullets, or animated "next" buttons. It's plain text. It's content. No Powerpoint templates with ridiculous wipes and swooping text. The guy knows that what he has to say can stand on its own merits, and doesn't require all that crap to distract you. Thanks, Bruce! (you know you're reading this thread...:)
Let's not forget that if it were commercially distributed by a government-blessed entity (i.e., the gov't printed stamps like they do with cigarrettes), it's quite likely that the drug would be safer. The anti-marijuana literature used to spout off fears that you "never know what you're getting," when you buy from a drug dealer. Realistically, I find it unlikely that a dealer would add a drug of presumably higher cost, much less one that you wouldn't be able to notice. However, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere, somebody ended up smoking a joint laced with some other drug, and had some nasty negative consequences.
A government-stamped joint would be safer, raise money for the government, and probably make a lot of law-breakers completely law-abiding citizens, which I imagine would deter them from other, more dangerous drugs. Might a pothead think twice before trying cocaine if the former were legal and the latter weren't? It might reinforce the real danger behind many other drugs.
And my credentials can be found in my last name.:)
That's because he typed in the whole url instead of making a link. Slashdot breaks up "words" at 50 characters, to avoid posts with five hundred characters that make the page extra-wide. The downside is you can't copy/paste a url unless you spot the space and remove it. Observe:
http://www.sco.com/products/openserver507/featur es/open_source_tools.html - that's the url, typed out completely. But there's a space in there! Here, use this link.
Now when did I say that homeless people aimed to be homeless? It sounds like you've practiced this response, and you jumped the gun a little bit. I didn't say "homeless people deserve to be homeless because they are idiots." I said that I found humor in the fact that a web site is discussing the rights of homeless people, because the homeless population is (for the most part, as others have pointed out) not present for the discussion.
Sorry if it strikes a nerve with you, but I wasn't making any statement about the worth of any individiual homeless person, and I wasn't saying they deserve to be homeless. And, by the way, it's not tragic. Tragedy is a literary or dramatic term for when a character meets an untimely demise due to a character flaw, a la Death of a Salesman. Thanks to shoddy reporting, now everybody thinks that every car accident is a tragedy.
It's easy to talk about homeless people in online forums because they won't notice what we're writing! Not that I am in favor of tagging the homeless. I just find it humorous, like making fun of Amish people on TV.
This is not a record, at least not yet. I see 1374 comments, and the current record goes to Strike On Iraq, just five months ago.
Although I wonder if that's just because fifty million potential slashdotters just can't get at their computers yet.
As an Albany, NY resident, I thought it was pretty freaky to be talking to somebody fifty miles away on the telephone when it all happened. "Uh-oh, the power just went out." "Really? It just went out here too." "No wait, it's back on. No, now it's back out. OK, now we're getting a little trickle..." "Holy F---ing S---! It's doing the exact f---ing same f---ing thing here!... Um, I'll call you back. This is seriously f---ed up."
After about twenty minutes, my power came back on. I booted up my computer, started up the servers, made sure everything could see the outside world, then I posted a quick note on my site. Then I went to slashdot to see if there was any mention on here, and there wasn't, so I figured I'd karma-whore up a first post before the story even broke. The power went out right between "preview" and "submit." My first thought was, "Damn! I could've been modded up to five for that one!"
Ever since I switched to 1280x1024 I haven't noticed much difference in screen space, but I was shocked when I saw that screenshot at 1024x768. Holy crap, I can't believe I used to use 640x480!
And I thought it was a rule that if you take a desktop screenshot, you have to use a really high resolution (1600x1200 at least) so as to impress others with your obviously expensive display hardware. Even if it's just the desktop size, not the resolution.
I hope the folks at madpenguin are reading this, because I have a very stern warning for you: FINISH CONFIGURING YOUR DAMN SERVER! Go to madpenguin.org and look at that left-hand navigation bar. Look at the top:
Reminder:Please remember to remove the following files from your PostNuke directory
install.php file
install directory
If you do not remove these files then users can obtain the password to your database!
So, as you can see, these people are wearing a big fat "hack me" sign. I'd post the password here to drive home the point, but by simply browsing to one of the files the site warns us about, this can be figured out easily. Just view the source.
That message once again,
FINISH CONFIGURING YOUR DAMN SERVER! OTHERWISE, SOMEBODY COULD EASILY HACK INTO YOUR SYSTEM!
Could you imagine if MS had originally released Win95 with such a small footprint?
I imagine I would have liked the OS a lot more. When it first came out, I stuck with 3.11 (until I found out about Diablo) because it ran much faster and had a smaller footprint. I remember being thoroughly disappointed at the performance hit when I first booted into Win95...
Now I know that a smaller footprint doesn't automatically mean more better performance. However, there seems to be an unofficial connection between the two, because the programmer who strives for a small footprint is probably a better programmer, and is looking for ways to best optimize his/her code. Also, with such a small footprint there is quite likely less bugs. Cutting down that much bloat probably means that identical pieces of code could be cut down to one instance, and if that one instance has a bug, it will not only be more noticeable (since it gets executed more often) but also easier to fix.
But I think I know why MS didn't take this approach - money. Sloppier code = less development costs, and bigger bloat means more hardware upgrades, which means more Windows licenses (and Office licenses, etc.). Not to mention the general public would be more impressed with a gigantic OS than a tiny one. So I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
I wonder how much bloat could be removed from XP while still maintaining 90% of the features.
I have one of those. The horizontal movement stopped working for some reason, but I prefer this type for scrolling. Just apply pressure up or down and it scrolls.
I love that it finally has TAB completion in the CMD (which my asst admin sees as old fashioned) but other than that it is crap.
Tab completion in XP is still miles behind the unix-style completion. As far as I can tell, XP just completes with its first guess - if there's more than one match, you have to backspace and try again.
The unix style is much more intelligent - if there's more than one match, you'll usually get some audio feedback and it will complete up to the point where there's a difference. If you double-tab, you'll get a listing of all the possible matches (sometime it's just on a single tab) and if there's a big list of matches, you'll usually get prompted if you really want to see the whole list.
This is as area where unix has had a big head start, though. How long has unix tab completion been around, anyway? The Google search wasn't very helpful.
If only there was a way to do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after... maybe, just maybe this story will get reposted to slashdot tomorrow, but... no, slashdot doesn't post dupes!
This would be one of those times I wouldn't complain if this story was somehow accidentally reposted every day for a few weeks.
I like this idea, because it's one more step to deconstructing the idea of time. Personally, I don't think that there is such thing as time - it's some sort of model that we humans have come up with to explain change in our environment. I don't think we have the mental capacity to really comprehend what is really happening, and the notion of time has been easy enough for us to understand that we've accepted it as the correct model. But in reality, time doesn't exist. What happened in the past is no longer reality - it only exists in our memories (and film, and tapes, and hard drives, etc.). It was reality, but only for an instant. Time is not a dimension, because as a dimension it is full of "exceptions" to the rules we have for other dimensions. You can't go back in time. You can't go forward in time. You can't stay at the same time. You can't have a negative amount of time. And how fast are we moving through time?
When you consider all of that, it makes sense that there are no discreet instances in time. Why, for there to be discreet instances, there would have to be some real way to measure time - and to do that, you'd need to measure it once, go back, and measure it again. How would you even measure it the first time? Stand there with a stop watch, click, it, then click it again? "How long was that one, Bob?" "Three seconds, Phill!"
I firmly belive that time is a construct designed by humans as a "close enough" explanation, but there is something out there that is way beyond our comprehension. I'd tell you what that was, but I have no idea, and you wouldn't understand, anyway.
Heh, just wait to see what they've got in store for him, especially when HBO, TBS, or whoever says, "We wont do business with you unless you stop skipping our commercials." Tivo and Replay would be immune to that, the cable companies aren't.
I see your point for some stations, but HBO and TBS are both owned by AOL/Time Warner. So is Cinemax, TNT, Cartoon Network, CNN, TMC, Court TV, WB, and NY1. And they own so many media companies, that just about every station has to pay them for something they do.
The fact is, AOLTW is probably going to be a major trendsetter in this arena, simply because they own so many of the companies that could oppose their decisions. I'm staying clear of this whole mess (I use Dish Network's dishplayer, and the TCO is cheaper anyway) because I don't feel like giving this 500lb gorilla any money when there's an easily attainable alternate solution.
Not only that, usually the messageboard application that the professor is using is a piece of crap, requires IE for no particular reason, is ugly, and won't let you log in. Granted, I'm probably pickier than most students when it comes to web-based applications, but the one I had to use for a class a fwe years back was horrible. I think "Slashcode Administration" should be a 300-level course, and they should maintain the messageboards for the other classes. Wouldn't that be fun?
I was thinking it would make more sense to have a sort of "master" device with an IP, and each "child" device would be listening to the "master" on a different protocol, like bluetooth (yes I know it's an oversimplification but bear with me, we're talking about the future), and maybe allocate 24 bits for addressing these devices. After all, if each person has a need for 100 IP addresses, would we want them to all be wired, and independent of each other? Seems to me they would have to be organized and listening to one or two master devices, at which point I have to wonder why they'd all need to be external devices. Not to mention synchronization. I don't want my synchronization efforts to be carried out to each phone, PDA, PC, TV, etc. I want the appointments and phone list to be stored on the master device(s) and those devices can beam out updates to my other stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you believe that this kind of code could make it in here? It's the kind of thing that developers would call "ugly."
If/when I finally learn C++, it's going to have to be with the help of a book that teach C++ for Windows programming, or C++ for Linux programming. I took a data structures class in college and learned about binary trees and pointers and linked lists and all that stuff, but without being able to write a program that I could imagine actually using, I've had little incentive to remember how to overload the ++ operator.
Are there any good programming books that focus on learning to create GUI's and modern applications? Such as, something that addresses modern concepts like internet connections and DVD drives and database connectivity and such. I don't need to relearn the concepts behind OOP (although a quick overview of syntax would be nice), I want to know how programmers use this stuff, what they create vs. what they have access to (like common dialog boxes), and basically the steps between writing a "sort the list of student records" console app and writing a full-blown application (I know the latter takes a lot of time and code, but I don't know what direction to go in, or how programmers organize all the code).
Nice try, jackass. You just copied an article written by Robin "Roblimo" Miller, almost word for word. Is slashdot-karma so important to you that you have to plagiarize? Welcome to the world of Google.
Perens kicks ass! There's just no other way to describe my reaction. The guy is smart, his thoughts are collected, and he writes with his brain, not with his emotions. This is a guy that you can count on to come up with an excellent response to a ridiculous argument.
:)
And you know, it's refreshing these days to see that some people still believe that the value of their work has nothing to do with the font, color, alignment, shape of the bullets, or animated "next" buttons. It's plain text. It's content. No Powerpoint templates with ridiculous wipes and swooping text. The guy knows that what he has to say can stand on its own merits, and doesn't require all that crap to distract you. Thanks, Bruce! (you know you're reading this thread...
Let's not forget that if it were commercially distributed by a government-blessed entity (i.e., the gov't printed stamps like they do with cigarrettes), it's quite likely that the drug would be safer. The anti-marijuana literature used to spout off fears that you "never know what you're getting," when you buy from a drug dealer. Realistically, I find it unlikely that a dealer would add a drug of presumably higher cost, much less one that you wouldn't be able to notice. However, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere, somebody ended up smoking a joint laced with some other drug, and had some nasty negative consequences.
:)
A government-stamped joint would be safer, raise money for the government, and probably make a lot of law-breakers completely law-abiding citizens, which I imagine would deter them from other, more dangerous drugs. Might a pothead think twice before trying cocaine if the former were legal and the latter weren't? It might reinforce the real danger behind many other drugs.
And my credentials can be found in my last name.
That's because he typed in the whole url instead of making a link. Slashdot breaks up "words" at 50 characters, to avoid posts with five hundred characters that make the page extra-wide. The downside is you can't copy/paste a url unless you spot the space and remove it. Observe:
r es/open_source_tools.html - that's the url, typed out completely. But there's a space in there! Here, use this link.
http://www.sco.com/products/openserver507/featu
Now when did I say that homeless people aimed to be homeless? It sounds like you've practiced this response, and you jumped the gun a little bit. I didn't say "homeless people deserve to be homeless because they are idiots." I said that I found humor in the fact that a web site is discussing the rights of homeless people, because the homeless population is (for the most part, as others have pointed out) not present for the discussion.
Sorry if it strikes a nerve with you, but I wasn't making any statement about the worth of any individiual homeless person, and I wasn't saying they deserve to be homeless. And, by the way, it's not tragic. Tragedy is a literary or dramatic term for when a character meets an untimely demise due to a character flaw, a la Death of a Salesman. Thanks to shoddy reporting, now everybody thinks that every car accident is a tragedy.
Crap, you're right. I was thinking of the ones who always ask me for money or cigarrettes. Ever been to Penn Station? Not a lot of readers there.
It's easy to talk about homeless people in online forums because they won't notice what we're writing! Not that I am in favor of tagging the homeless. I just find it humorous, like making fun of Amish people on TV.
This is not a record, at least not yet. I see 1374 comments, and the current record goes to Strike On Iraq, just five months ago.
... Um, I'll call you back. This is seriously f---ed up."
Although I wonder if that's just because fifty million potential slashdotters just can't get at their computers yet.
As an Albany, NY resident, I thought it was pretty freaky to be talking to somebody fifty miles away on the telephone when it all happened. "Uh-oh, the power just went out." "Really? It just went out here too." "No wait, it's back on. No, now it's back out. OK, now we're getting a little trickle..." "Holy F---ing S---! It's doing the exact f---ing same f---ing thing here!
After about twenty minutes, my power came back on. I booted up my computer, started up the servers, made sure everything could see the outside world, then I posted a quick note on my site. Then I went to slashdot to see if there was any mention on here, and there wasn't, so I figured I'd karma-whore up a first post before the story even broke. The power went out right between "preview" and "submit." My first thought was, "Damn! I could've been modded up to five for that one!"
Ever since I switched to 1280x1024 I haven't noticed much difference in screen space, but I was shocked when I saw that screenshot at 1024x768. Holy crap, I can't believe I used to use 640x480!
And I thought it was a rule that if you take a desktop screenshot, you have to use a really high resolution (1600x1200 at least) so as to impress others with your obviously expensive display hardware. Even if it's just the desktop size, not the resolution.
Nevermind, I got a reply from them. The server had been hacked already, and they were in the process of re-configuring things.
That message once again,
Could you imagine if MS had originally released Win95 with such a small footprint?
I imagine I would have liked the OS a lot more. When it first came out, I stuck with 3.11 (until I found out about Diablo) because it ran much faster and had a smaller footprint. I remember being thoroughly disappointed at the performance hit when I first booted into Win95...
Now I know that a smaller footprint doesn't automatically mean more better performance. However, there seems to be an unofficial connection between the two, because the programmer who strives for a small footprint is probably a better programmer, and is looking for ways to best optimize his/her code. Also, with such a small footprint there is quite likely less bugs. Cutting down that much bloat probably means that identical pieces of code could be cut down to one instance, and if that one instance has a bug, it will not only be more noticeable (since it gets executed more often) but also easier to fix.
But I think I know why MS didn't take this approach - money. Sloppier code = less development costs, and bigger bloat means more hardware upgrades, which means more Windows licenses (and Office licenses, etc.). Not to mention the general public would be more impressed with a gigantic OS than a tiny one. So I'm disappointed, but not surprised.
I wonder how much bloat could be removed from XP while still maintaining 90% of the features.
I have one of those. The horizontal movement stopped working for some reason, but I prefer this type for scrolling. Just apply pressure up or down and it scrolls.
Who on earth would submit their own geocities page to slashdot?
That's why SCO needs to tell the Linux community where that code is (something more specific than "in the kernel").
Clearly SCO doesn't want the secret code removed from the kernel, it wants people to use the code and pay SCO for it.
The unix style is much more intelligent - if there's more than one match, you'll usually get some audio feedback and it will complete up to the point where there's a difference. If you double-tab, you'll get a listing of all the possible matches (sometime it's just on a single tab) and if there's a big list of matches, you'll usually get prompted if you really want to see the whole list.
This is as area where unix has had a big head start, though. How long has unix tab completion been around, anyway? The Google search wasn't very helpful.
This would be one of those times I wouldn't complain if this story was somehow accidentally reposted every day for a few weeks.
I like this idea, because it's one more step to deconstructing the idea of time. Personally, I don't think that there is such thing as time - it's some sort of model that we humans have come up with to explain change in our environment. I don't think we have the mental capacity to really comprehend what is really happening, and the notion of time has been easy enough for us to understand that we've accepted it as the correct model. But in reality, time doesn't exist. What happened in the past is no longer reality - it only exists in our memories (and film, and tapes, and hard drives, etc.). It was reality, but only for an instant. Time is not a dimension, because as a dimension it is full of "exceptions" to the rules we have for other dimensions. You can't go back in time. You can't go forward in time. You can't stay at the same time. You can't have a negative amount of time. And how fast are we moving through time?
When you consider all of that, it makes sense that there are no discreet instances in time. Why, for there to be discreet instances, there would have to be some real way to measure time - and to do that, you'd need to measure it once, go back, and measure it again. How would you even measure it the first time? Stand there with a stop watch, click, it, then click it again? "How long was that one, Bob?" "Three seconds, Phill!"
I firmly belive that time is a construct designed by humans as a "close enough" explanation, but there is something out there that is way beyond our comprehension. I'd tell you what that was, but I have no idea, and you wouldn't understand, anyway.
The fact is, AOLTW is probably going to be a major trendsetter in this arena, simply because they own so many of the companies that could oppose their decisions. I'm staying clear of this whole mess (I use Dish Network's dishplayer, and the TCO is cheaper anyway) because I don't feel like giving this 500lb gorilla any money when there's an easily attainable alternate solution.
Not only that, usually the messageboard application that the professor is using is a piece of crap, requires IE for no particular reason, is ugly, and won't let you log in. Granted, I'm probably pickier than most students when it comes to web-based applications, but the one I had to use for a class a fwe years back was horrible. I think "Slashcode Administration" should be a 300-level course, and they should maintain the messageboards for the other classes. Wouldn't that be fun?
I was thinking it would make more sense to have a sort of "master" device with an IP, and each "child" device would be listening to the "master" on a different protocol, like bluetooth (yes I know it's an oversimplification but bear with me, we're talking about the future), and maybe allocate 24 bits for addressing these devices. After all, if each person has a need for 100 IP addresses, would we want them to all be wired, and independent of each other? Seems to me they would have to be organized and listening to one or two master devices, at which point I have to wonder why they'd all need to be external devices. Not to mention synchronization. I don't want my synchronization efforts to be carried out to each phone, PDA, PC, TV, etc. I want the appointments and phone list to be stored on the master device(s) and those devices can beam out updates to my other stuff.