How good that reference is depends on the developers. I'm working on a.Net project that uses Doxygen, and you see clearly which developer has taken the time to put some explanation in the "summary" part of the comments and who hasn't. If the explanation is there, the reference can be quite helpful. If not, you get the equivalent of the throbTheWangle example a few posts back.
IMHO MSDN could use a bit more context and more code examples. Sometimes they seem to assume the reader has a good deal of background knowledge in Microsoft technologies to start with.
Current example from my own job: We have a C# program, consisting of an executable with a bunch of DLLs also written in C#. When started, that program should check itself against some kind of hash to ensure it was not corrupted by something like a defective storage medium. Defending against hackers is not a requirement, we are only concerned about randomly flipped bits and bytes.
Someone suggested code signing, but I have not found out yet from MSDN how to use the signing mechanism to check if the files have been changed. Stackoverflow has at least some suggestions, although I have not found a really convincing one yet. As a semi-newbie in.NET, I'm still struggling with that one. Better documentation of code signing in.NET and what exactly it does might help.
Another issue for people that don't speak English is that Microsoft is frequently using automated translation for MSDN articles these days. The quality is perhaps not quite as bad as Google Translate, but it comes close. Fortunately, my English is good enough that I can just switch to the original version.
I think Valve (the owner of Steam) are going for Linux because they are afraid Microsoft will eventually turn Windows into a "walled garden" like Apple's iOS, introduce their own application store and force out competitors like Steam.
Gabe Newell said:
We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It is a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.
Currently, I spend my money on DRM-free games at gog.com, Humble Bundles, the occasional Android app and on DRM-free PC games like The Witcher. I've got more games than I have time to play and I find them more enjoyable than the current A-list games I've tried at a friend's house.
Sounds believable to me. GOG releases tend to be 10 year old games, but that is not as bad as it might sound. Game design has not really improved in the last 10 years. Graphics have, but even there "10 years old" starts to move into the realm of being adequate.
In that respect, one should judge the game by the availability of a server the user can run himself. If none is available, or if it is hardcoded that the software vendors' matchmaking server is used, then you can expect an eventual kill-off.
Actually, I like that (in the version where the big package also contains the game itself, not only the DLC).
Because I don't feel the need to buy the latest games right away, I'm fine with getting them by the time they received a few patches and have less bugs. So if there is a "Gold Edition" two years later, with the latest patches and all DLC included, that's just the thing for me:-)
Actually they are not even trying on the x86 architecture, where the requirement for the Windows logo is that the user can switch off Secure Boot. So you can always disable the feature.
Microsoft are trying on ARM and with Windows RT. On ARM, prerequisites for the Windows logo are that Secure Boot is enabled and cannot be switched off. I guess most vendors will take the easy path there and only put the Microsoft key in the firmware, so you really cannot boot these machines with something else than Windows RT.
Fortunately for the rest of the world, ARM tablets with Windows RT are not selling all that well. There are plenty of non-Microsoft tablets and smartphones around. Some of those also have locked bootloaders (Apple, I'm looking at you), but Microsoft is far from achieving a monopoly on ARM.
Now that's a matter of interpretation. Which is a job for the courts if there is a dispute, and ultimately for the Supreme Court. So far it seems the courts are OK with the status quo. Which is "no machine guns", but "lesser" weapons are allowed.
The RIAA is a legal organization that acts overtly. It also doesn't consist of a bunch of companies agreeing to intentionally limit their core business activities.
I'm not suggesting that the energy industry would do anything differently. What I would expect is an alliance of companies that feel threatened by the new competition, lets call it the EIAA. Acting legally and overtly, it is not like lobbying is illegal in the USA.
In the past, groups of companies have shown a considerable degree of cooperation in trying to influence politics. Usually that takes the form of founding trade organizations which then do the actual lobbying. For instance the RIAA when it comes to lobbying for stricter copyright laws. No assumption here, simply observation;-)
I guess it would depend on the cost of maintenance. If those things are rather fiddly and need lots of maintenance, concentrating them in one place with maintenance staff on site might be most economical.
If they are low-maintenance, individual units win economically.
I doubt the "all over the world". China for instance is unlikely to bow to US lobby demands.
So if LENR turns out to be real, I expect the following sequence of events to happen: 1) Western energy industry giants badmouth the technology and lobby against it. 2) China, Russia and maybe India will use it anyway. 3) Above countries have considerable economic advantages, get stronger in comparison to USA. 4) US politicians panic. Having LENR is declared a matter of national security, opposition from energy industry giants is overruled;-)
Re:It's not all about power....differentiators are
on
Sony Announces the PS4
·
· Score: 1
Well, I wanted to establish a realistic price estimate for comparable PC, with components that are available today. Based on similar capability at least in the specs. I agree that a comparable PC might be cheaper by the time the PS4 is out. I also agree that the PS4 will be cheaper to manufacture.
BTW, I wonder if AMD will come up with similar PC mainboards for its APUs. These things are increasingly running into bandwidth limits, and the higher bandwidth of the GDDR5 would help. It might be worth the tradeoff of not being able to put in more RAM later.
Compare to current models. You will find that a GeForce GT 640 (GDDR5) or a Radeon HD7750 should do the job. That is today's lower midrange, if you buy a PC for gaming, you might want something faster;-)
Re:It's not all about power....differentiators are
on
Sony Announces the PS4
·
· Score: 1
The dual core Zacate E-450 at 1,65 GHz reaches a score of 806 in the Passmark CPU test. Here is a comparison to the bulldozer: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+E-450+APU&id=250 If we are optimistic on behalf of the PS4 and assume that the 8 cores are four times as fast and there is also a boost from higher clock speed, we might get something like a Passmark score of 4000. Which brings us to the level of a AMD FX-4100, $ 105 on Newegg right now. A matching mainboard: at least $50. If you look at the GPU, it is more like a HD7850, around $200. RAM is a bit hard to compare, as PCs don't have GDDR5 main memory. 8 GByte of "slow, ordinary" DDR3 are around $60. HDD: Sony did not specify the sitze, but lets take a 3.5", 1TByte for comparison. Around $80. A halfway decent case: $60. and finally a power supply, 400W or more: $50.
So far we are at about $600. Add a keyboard & mouse, and we approach $650. Of course that PC is way more versatile than the PS4, so I would prefer it over the console (I might also get a different CPU, the FX-4100 was mainly for comparison).
Yet according to iFixit, Microsoft used a lot of screws (which are actually good for repairability, compared to rivets for instance) in the Surface pro. So far, it could be a repair-friendly device.
Where they arguably went wrong was gluing in the screen and battery. That really makes it hard to change parts without ruining the case.
I use Office 2012 at work, albeit not as my main tool. After a bit over a year I was at the point where I was reasonably familiar with the ribbon and started to prefer it over Office 2000 (which I used before). So I think there is a bit of an advantage to the new UI, but it is a small one and requires a lot of time to learn the new ways of interacting with the program. Probably not worth it from a usability point of view.
Office 2012 crashes a lot less than Office 2000 though, so it was good to get the new version anyway.
At home, however, I prefer Libre Office: Legally available for free as in beer, and it is more than sufficient for the few letters I write:-)
So Microsoft invest in a company that is strong in x86 desktops and laptops?
That is exactly the kind of product where Microsoft already has a strong position and has the least to fear. I guess their best bet would be smartphones and tablets that extend their corporate solutions, especially Office and Outlook, to the new form factors.
They get some of that right (there is an Office version for Windows8 RT), even if Office RT lacks a few features of the x86 version. But Outlook is still missing, which has to hurt.
Uhhhh...I thought that was what those 75% off Steam sales were for? I don't care about reselling the games...
For me it is more about the possibility that Steam might go out of business some day and leave my games unusable. But I agree about the 75% off - at that point I'm willing to take the risk and accept the dependency on Steam.
If the publishers can live with getting only 15 Euros (minus Steam fees) per game from me, fine.
Athiests in particular seem to like to point out all of the unethical acts, and unprovable beliefs of religion as a basis for their unbelief. It's as though that's supposed to irrefutably end the argument.
Well... I consider myself an agnostic, and the above alone does not end the argument for me. But it tends to lessen the credibility of the religion. It becomes worse if the religion is of the dogmatic variety, where you are told to let the leadership do the thinking and accept the doctrine as presented. Because that implies that it might be a cult rather than a "honest" religion.
Ultimately, the above led me to dismiss the Catholic variety of Christianity. I still have sympathy for the general philosophy, but I have no more interest in participating in the religion's rituals. I also tend not to believe its scripture on a detailed level anymore, although I cannot rule out the existence of God.
But the evidence is insufficient to convince me of God's existence, so I prefer a honest "I don't know" over an insecure claim of believing in $Deity.
You can call down many Christian churches for absurd beliefs and fantastical mythos, but few behave towards errant members as Scientology still insists on doing to those who won't accept its absolute authority.
Who knows, maybe Scientology will also mellow out after a few centuries? I think the difference between Scientology and Christianity is smaller than you claim.
Of course, there are engineering jobs in factories. Like planning new assembly lines and overseeing their installation - that can be as complex as product development.
When I mentioned well-paying factory jobs, I meant those that do not require an engineering degree, but still some skill. For instance a machinist who makes parts according to a blueprint, and does not need someone else to program his CNC mill for him (if he needs someone else, it becomes a butt basic assembly line job).
Slashdot Mirror
How good that reference is depends on the developers. .Net project that uses Doxygen, and you see clearly which developer has taken the time to put some explanation in the "summary" part of the comments and who hasn't. If the explanation is there, the reference can be quite helpful. If not, you get the equivalent of the throbTheWangle example a few posts back.
I'm working on a
IMHO MSDN could use a bit more context and more code examples. Sometimes they seem to assume the reader has a good deal of background knowledge in Microsoft technologies to start with.
Current example from my own job:
We have a C# program, consisting of an executable with a bunch of DLLs also written in C#. When started, that program should check itself against some kind of hash to ensure it was not corrupted by something like a defective storage medium. Defending against hackers is not a requirement, we are only concerned about randomly flipped bits and bytes.
Someone suggested code signing, but I have not found out yet from MSDN how to use the signing mechanism to check if the files have been changed. Stackoverflow has at least some suggestions, although I have not found a really convincing one yet. As a semi-newbie in .NET, I'm still struggling with that one. Better documentation of code signing in .NET and what exactly it does might help.
Another issue for people that don't speak English is that Microsoft is frequently using automated translation for MSDN articles these days. The quality is perhaps not quite as bad as Google Translate, but it comes close. Fortunately, my English is good enough that I can just switch to the original version.
I think Valve (the owner of Steam) are going for Linux because they are afraid Microsoft will eventually turn Windows into a "walled garden" like Apple's iOS, introduce their own application store and force out competitors like Steam.
Gabe Newell said:
We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It is a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.
quoted from http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/26/gabe-newell-windows-8-is-a-catastrophe
Currently, I spend my money on DRM-free games at gog.com, Humble Bundles, the occasional Android app and on DRM-free PC games like The Witcher. I've got more games than I have time to play and I find them more enjoyable than the current A-list games I've tried at a friend's house.
Sounds believable to me. GOG releases tend to be 10 year old games, but that is not as bad as it might sound.
Game design has not really improved in the last 10 years. Graphics have, but even there "10 years old" starts to move into the realm of being adequate.
In that respect, one should judge the game by the availability of a server the user can run himself.
If none is available, or if it is hardcoded that the software vendors' matchmaking server is used, then you can expect an eventual kill-off.
Actually, I like that (in the version where the big package also contains the game itself, not only the DLC).
Because I don't feel the need to buy the latest games right away, I'm fine with getting them by the time they received a few patches and have less bugs. So if there is a "Gold Edition" two years later, with the latest patches and all DLC included, that's just the thing for me :-)
I don't think they will get their way there.
Actually they are not even trying on the x86 architecture, where the requirement for the Windows logo is that the user can switch off Secure Boot. So you can always disable the feature.
Microsoft are trying on ARM and with Windows RT. On ARM, prerequisites for the Windows logo are that Secure Boot is enabled and cannot be switched off. I guess most vendors will take the easy path there and only put the Microsoft key in the firmware, so you really cannot boot these machines with something else than Windows RT.
Fortunately for the rest of the world, ARM tablets with Windows RT are not selling all that well. There are plenty of non-Microsoft tablets and smartphones around. Some of those also have locked bootloaders (Apple, I'm looking at you), but Microsoft is far from achieving a monopoly on ARM.
Now that's a matter of interpretation. Which is a job for the courts if there is a dispute, and ultimately for the Supreme Court. So far it seems the courts are OK with the status quo. Which is "no machine guns", but "lesser" weapons are allowed.
The RIAA is a legal organization that acts overtly. It also doesn't consist of a bunch of companies agreeing to intentionally limit their core business activities.
I'm not suggesting that the energy industry would do anything differently. What I would expect is an alliance of companies that feel threatened by the new competition, lets call it the EIAA. Acting legally and overtly, it is not like lobbying is illegal in the USA.
Well, I wrote "if LENR is real". Also, if NASA takes it serious enough to do research on it, it seems premature to claim it does not exist.
In the past, groups of companies have shown a considerable degree of cooperation in trying to influence politics. Usually that takes the form of founding trade organizations which then do the actual lobbying. For instance the RIAA when it comes to lobbying for stricter copyright laws. No assumption here, simply observation ;-)
For an example of suppression that has at least some evidence behind it, consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries.
I guess it would depend on the cost of maintenance. If those things are rather fiddly and need lots of maintenance, concentrating them in one place with maintenance staff on site might be most economical.
If they are low-maintenance, individual units win economically.
I doubt the "all over the world". China for instance is unlikely to bow to US lobby demands.
So if LENR turns out to be real, I expect the following sequence of events to happen: ;-)
1) Western energy industry giants badmouth the technology and lobby against it.
2) China, Russia and maybe India will use it anyway.
3) Above countries have considerable economic advantages, get stronger in comparison to USA.
4) US politicians panic. Having LENR is declared a matter of national security, opposition from energy industry giants is overruled
Well, I wanted to establish a realistic price estimate for comparable PC, with components that are available today. Based on similar capability at least in the specs. I agree that a comparable PC might be cheaper by the time the PS4 is out. I also agree that the PS4 will be cheaper to manufacture.
BTW, I wonder if AMD will come up with similar PC mainboards for its APUs. These things are increasingly running into bandwidth limits, and the higher bandwidth of the GDDR5 would help. It might be worth the tradeoff of not being able to put in more RAM later.
Wikipedia helps. Go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_8_.288xxx.29_series.
Look up the specs of the 8800 GTX. You will find it has a theoretical processing power of 518 GFlops, 768MB of video RAM and a memory bandwidth of 86.4 GByte/s.
Compare to current models. You will find that a GeForce GT 640 (GDDR5) or a Radeon HD7750 should do the job. That is today's lower midrange, if you buy a PC for gaming, you might want something faster ;-)
The dual core Zacate E-450 at 1,65 GHz reaches a score of 806 in the Passmark CPU test.
Here is a comparison to the bulldozer: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+E-450+APU&id=250
If we are optimistic on behalf of the PS4 and assume that the 8 cores are four times as fast and there is also a boost from higher clock speed, we might get something like a Passmark score of 4000. Which brings us to the level of a AMD FX-4100, $ 105 on Newegg right now.
A matching mainboard: at least $50.
If you look at the GPU, it is more like a HD7850, around $200.
RAM is a bit hard to compare, as PCs don't have GDDR5 main memory. 8 GByte of "slow, ordinary" DDR3 are around $60.
HDD: Sony did not specify the sitze, but lets take a 3.5", 1TByte for comparison. Around $80.
A halfway decent case: $60.
and finally a power supply, 400W or more: $50.
So far we are at about $600. Add a keyboard & mouse, and we approach $650. Of course that PC is way more versatile than the PS4, so I would prefer it over the console (I might also get a different CPU, the FX-4100 was mainly for comparison).
Yet according to iFixit, Microsoft used a lot of screws (which are actually good for repairability, compared to rivets for instance) in the Surface pro. So far, it could be a repair-friendly device.
Where they arguably went wrong was gluing in the screen and battery. That really makes it hard to change parts without ruining the case.
Oops...
it is actually Office 2010. It seems I was confused when writing that post :(
I use Office 2012 at work, albeit not as my main tool. After a bit over a year I was at the point where I was reasonably familiar with the ribbon and started to prefer it over Office 2000 (which I used before). So I think there is a bit of an advantage to the new UI, but it is a small one and requires a lot of time to learn the new ways of interacting with the program. Probably not worth it from a usability point of view.
Office 2012 crashes a lot less than Office 2000 though, so it was good to get the new version anyway.
At home, however, I prefer Libre Office: :-)
Legally available for free as in beer, and it is more than sufficient for the few letters I write
By cutting the support of enterprise distributions they simply tell me to move elsewhere
So Google wants us to go back to Firefox? ;-)
SCNR
So Microsoft invest in a company that is strong in x86 desktops and laptops?
That is exactly the kind of product where Microsoft already has a strong position and has the least to fear. I guess their best bet would be smartphones and tablets that extend their corporate solutions, especially Office and Outlook, to the new form factors.
They get some of that right (there is an Office version for Windows8 RT), even if Office RT lacks a few features of the x86 version. But Outlook is still missing, which has to hurt.
Uhhhh...I thought that was what those 75% off Steam sales were for? I don't care about reselling the games...
For me it is more about the possibility that Steam might go out of business some day and leave my games unusable. But I agree about the 75% off - at that point I'm willing to take the risk and accept the dependency on Steam.
If the publishers can live with getting only 15 Euros (minus Steam fees) per game from me, fine.
Athiests in particular seem to like to point out all of the unethical acts, and unprovable beliefs of religion as a basis for their unbelief. It's as though that's supposed to irrefutably end the argument.
Well... I consider myself an agnostic, and the above alone does not end the argument for me. But it tends to lessen the credibility of the religion. It becomes worse if the religion is of the dogmatic variety, where you are told to let the leadership do the thinking and accept the doctrine as presented. Because that implies that it might be a cult rather than a "honest" religion.
Ultimately, the above led me to dismiss the Catholic variety of Christianity. I still have sympathy for the general philosophy, but I have no more interest in participating in the religion's rituals. I also tend not to believe its scripture on a detailed level anymore, although I cannot rule out the existence of God.
But the evidence is insufficient to convince me of God's existence, so I prefer a honest "I don't know" over an insecure claim of believing in $Deity.
You can call down many Christian churches for absurd beliefs and fantastical mythos, but few behave towards errant members as Scientology still insists on doing to those who won't accept its absolute authority.
A few hundred years ago, Christian churches happily burned "heretics". Prominent examples include
- Jan Hus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus)
- and Giordano Bruno (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno)
both of them murdered by the Roman Catholic Church.
Protestant churches were not quite innocent either (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_martyrs).
Who knows, maybe Scientology will also mellow out after a few centuries? I think the difference between Scientology and Christianity is smaller than you claim.
Of course, there are engineering jobs in factories. Like planning new assembly lines and overseeing their installation - that can be as complex as product development.
When I mentioned well-paying factory jobs, I meant those that do not require an engineering degree, but still some skill. For instance a machinist who makes parts according to a blueprint, and does not need someone else to program his CNC mill for him (if he needs someone else, it becomes a butt basic assembly line job).