I've never used FileMerge, so I can't compare those two. Recently I had to merge two versions of my program involving ~100 files, a painful process that I had simply bruteforced before. The problem arose through a failure to effectively use CVS. Using a simple perl script, I was able to send files 2 at a time to TextWrangler, which would then diff the files and in the windows for the 2 files highlight the differences. Many programs can provide glorified diff functionality.
TextWrangler has a third window in which each difference is listed. What made it so easy was that assuming both files didn't change the same lines, it was as simple as clicking a button to synchronize each difference. When I closed the windows, my perl script detected which of the 2 files I had decided to modify, and made sure it was in the "merged" directory. Easy! I can't imagine an easier way to do it since everything is completely automated except for the decisions regarding which change to keep. The only time that I needed to do more than simply click buttons was when there had been changes to both segments of code.
I've found a use for BBEdit's free TextWrangler -- it's a really smooth program, and because it has a command line interface, TextWrangler is easy to get it to do what you want it to do. TextWrangler has the best system for merging two files that I've found.
Although I've come to use emacs more and more for quick source modifications and when programs are only 1 source file, I still appreciate the use of a good IDE like xcode (although I do think that visual studio is still a bit better) for the simplicity in navigating a large project. On the other hand, emacs does far better than xcode or visual studio at automatically indenting code.
I've found that the OSX developer program Sampler (which comes free with the developer distribution) is also a great program useful for getting a quick feel for where the bottle necks in my program are. Sampler is really intuitive to use, and it provides a nice way of navigating the calling tree of your program allowing you to see how different functions are spending what fraction of compute time. The only thing about Sampler that bugs me is that if I save the data, I haven't figured out how to get the data in terms of percents (as opposed to sample counts) when I load it later.
I guess what's interesting is this question of "how much are you willing to pay to be educated?" or how much are you willing to pay to get an advantage? I've been surprised to discover how many people go to math/science camps over their middle and high school summers to get an edge in their training.
on one hand, i think everybody likes the "democratic" idea of giving the good jobs to smart people... but once you have that kind of job, i think people tend to support the "aristocratic" we want our kids to get the same jobs. it seems that schools in the US have sort of allowed this to happen by spending money on things that ostensibly look like good ideas but in the end cuts the motivation of kids to *actually* learn the stuff. for example, if kids become too reliant upon technology to get their homework done (i learned how to integrate sin(x) last month so now i'm just going to use the TI-89), or become reliant upon cheating (this test isn't important, so i don't want to study), manipulation (pleeeeasssseee give me the A+), a feeling of entitlement (i deserve this grade since I studied for a couple minutes), and generally a lack of effort (i'd rather play basketball or i'd rather play WoW) then in the long run they're guaranteed to progressively do worse in school. you can only feel sorry for the high schooler who is would fail his classes (except that parents complain "my kid is a good kid and shouldn't fail") because he never actually learned the material in middle school because he never actually learned the material in elementary. it's really sad to hear high school teacher friends of mine talk about these kids.
it's all a question of responsibility.
the way i see "performance enhancers" playing a role is this. i think it's similar to using a TI-89 or Mathematica in calculus class. assuming no harmful side effects, it's great cause it will help you do things faster or better or whatever. but in the end, it's not *you* who did it, it was the machine or chemical that did it. so what's the problem with that? well, i think that in the end, it will only lend itself to students accepting less responsibility and accepting fewer or easier challenges. e.g. i don't have to study now or start my homework right now because i really want to finish this ; and it's ok because i can just pop a pill and do it later.
in the US at least, it seems that people have this feeling of entitlement. as i see it, having some chemical they can take would only serve to enhance that misconception.
Speaking of "recruiters"... I always wonder how the soldiers who caused such huge scandals at Abu Graib ever got in Iraq ever got into the army in the first place. Or for example the brother of the girl who took Evan's Sidekick and then proceeded to write threatening emails abusing his position. Or what about the US military in Okinawa who keep pissing off the local people by raping them?
Now obviously rape and other bad things accompany war, and so perhaps it's unreasonable to be surprised that these things could happen. But if I were a military recruiter, I certainly would try to minimize the amount of embarrassment my country could get.
I would imagine that businesses face the same issue -- maybe it doesn't matter how the employers feel on a certain topic. It probably only matters if an employee embarrasses the company.
the question is not what incentive do you have to switch... nobody will turn down computing power if it's cheap enough. if microsoft promotes their machines by seeding a couple highly discounted machines at well known research centers, then they have a way in. this is regardless of the quality of the offering. well, the worse it is, the more microsoft would have to discount it at first.
e.g. a grad student's advisor would say -- look, we have all this new computing power that nobody else is using! go port your code!
well, the toner and windex are actually easy to explain i think. if someone suspects that they can make an easy million by doing something (anything) they'll do it, even if it involves ignoring common sense.
look... what would have pleased the crowds more? more blood and gore? some sex scenes? the first and third kept both minimal, which is important if you don't want to detract from the story line.
were you hoping that neo would have some sort of answer to agent smith? did his answer (or lack of) make or break the movie? what were you expecting? the foundations of human purpose and choice to be laid out? were you expecting more of same philosophies from the first movie?
granted this movie wasn't as confusing as the second one was, and the core of this movie wasn't as readily apparent as in the first one. i think they did the best that they could short of spelling out some sort of belief system, which is in general not done in movies. does a movie loose it's appeal if it fails to critizise someone or something for something?
my opinion: i'm the sort of person who (for example) prefers games like tetris to the latest greatest, and as such, movie effects don't add or take away from a movie. i don't like movies that focus on action. i liked this movie because of it's simple timeless plotline (that the hero sacrificed himself before the enemy for his friends) as well as dealing with the nature of a choice and purpose. i also liked the dune messiah blindness aspect. i liked the punch. i liked the uncertainty of the oracle.
teachers who are really hard have tended to be disliked, but for me, they were the best. the harder they pushed, the more that i tried, so the more i learned. my ap chemistry teacher was that way, she abused the class the whole year, according to her strategy. but in the end, 87% of the class got 5's on the exam, and i don't think any of us regretted it.
Slashdot Mirror
the goal of microsoft is to make money.
the goal of bill gates' charity is to help people.
why should it be surprising if gates uses different methods to accomplish different goals?
I've never used FileMerge, so I can't compare those two. Recently I had to merge two versions of my program involving ~100 files, a painful process that I had simply bruteforced before. The problem arose through a failure to effectively use CVS. Using a simple perl script, I was able to send files 2 at a time to TextWrangler, which would then diff the files and in the windows for the 2 files highlight the differences. Many programs can provide glorified diff functionality.
TextWrangler has a third window in which each difference is listed. What made it so easy was that assuming both files didn't change the same lines, it was as simple as clicking a button to synchronize each difference. When I closed the windows, my perl script detected which of the 2 files I had decided to modify, and made sure it was in the "merged" directory. Easy! I can't imagine an easier way to do it since everything is completely automated except for the decisions regarding which change to keep. The only time that I needed to do more than simply click buttons was when there had been changes to both segments of code.
I've found a use for BBEdit's free TextWrangler -- it's a really smooth program, and because it has a command line interface, TextWrangler is easy to get it to do what you want it to do. TextWrangler has the best system for merging two files that I've found.
Although I've come to use emacs more and more for quick source modifications and when programs are only 1 source file, I still appreciate the use of a good IDE like xcode (although I do think that visual studio is still a bit better) for the simplicity in navigating a large project. On the other hand, emacs does far better than xcode or visual studio at automatically indenting code.
I've found that the OSX developer program Sampler (which comes free with the developer distribution) is also a great program useful for getting a quick feel for where the bottle necks in my program are. Sampler is really intuitive to use, and it provides a nice way of navigating the calling tree of your program allowing you to see how different functions are spending what fraction of compute time. The only thing about Sampler that bugs me is that if I save the data, I haven't figured out how to get the data in terms of percents (as opposed to sample counts) when I load it later.
I guess what's interesting is this question of "how much are you willing to pay to be educated?" or how much are you willing to pay to get an advantage? I've been surprised to discover how many people go to math/science camps over their middle and high school summers to get an edge in their training.
on one hand, i think everybody likes the "democratic" idea of giving the good jobs to smart people... but once you have that kind of job, i think people tend to support the "aristocratic" we want our kids to get the same jobs. it seems that schools in the US have sort of allowed this to happen by spending money on things that ostensibly look like good ideas but in the end cuts the motivation of kids to *actually* learn the stuff. for example, if kids become too reliant upon technology to get their homework done (i learned how to integrate sin(x) last month so now i'm just going to use the TI-89), or become reliant upon cheating (this test isn't important, so i don't want to study), manipulation (pleeeeasssseee give me the A+), a feeling of entitlement (i deserve this grade since I studied for a couple minutes), and generally a lack of effort (i'd rather play basketball or i'd rather play WoW) then in the long run they're guaranteed to progressively do worse in school. you can only feel sorry for the high schooler who is would fail his classes (except that parents complain "my kid is a good kid and shouldn't fail") because he never actually learned the material in middle school because he never actually learned the material in elementary. it's really sad to hear high school teacher friends of mine talk about these kids.
it's all a question of responsibility.
the way i see "performance enhancers" playing a role is this. i think it's similar to using a TI-89 or Mathematica in calculus class. assuming no harmful side effects, it's great cause it will help you do things faster or better or whatever. but in the end, it's not *you* who did it, it was the machine or chemical that did it. so what's the problem with that? well, i think that in the end, it will only lend itself to students accepting less responsibility and accepting fewer or easier challenges. e.g. i don't have to study now or start my homework right now because i really want to finish this ; and it's ok because i can just pop a pill and do it later.
in the US at least, it seems that people have this feeling of entitlement. as i see it, having some chemical they can take would only serve to enhance that misconception.
Speaking of "recruiters"... I always wonder how the soldiers who caused such huge scandals at Abu Graib ever got in Iraq ever got into the army in the first place. Or for example the brother of the girl who took Evan's Sidekick and then proceeded to write threatening emails abusing his position. Or what about the US military in Okinawa who keep pissing off the local people by raping them?
Now obviously rape and other bad things accompany war, and so perhaps it's unreasonable to be surprised that these things could happen. But if I were a military recruiter, I certainly would try to minimize the amount of embarrassment my country could get.
I would imagine that businesses face the same issue -- maybe it doesn't matter how the employers feel on a certain topic. It probably only matters if an employee embarrasses the company.
the question is not what incentive do you have to switch... nobody will turn down computing power if it's cheap enough. if microsoft promotes their machines by seeding a couple highly discounted machines at well known research centers, then they have a way in. this is regardless of the quality of the offering. well, the worse it is, the more microsoft would have to discount it at first.
e.g. a grad student's advisor would say -- look, we have all this new computing power that nobody else is using! go port your code!
if you want to read that article, google has it cached! :-)
: ww w.mainsoft.com/news/press_releases/2000_3_22_01.ht ml+windows+march+site:mainsoft.com&hl=en&lr=lang_e n&ie=UTF-8
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:1CcYkHWI7QUJ
well, the toner and windex are actually easy to explain i think. if someone suspects that they can make an easy million by doing something (anything) they'll do it, even if it involves ignoring common sense.
look... what would have pleased the crowds more? more blood and gore? some sex scenes? the first and third kept both minimal, which is important if you don't want to detract from the story line.
were you hoping that neo would have some sort of answer to agent smith? did his answer (or lack of) make or break the movie? what were you expecting? the foundations of human purpose and choice to be laid out? were you expecting more of same philosophies from the first movie?
granted this movie wasn't as confusing as the second one was, and the core of this movie wasn't as readily apparent as in the first one. i think they did the best that they could short of spelling out some sort of belief system, which is in general not done in movies. does a movie loose it's appeal if it fails to critizise someone or something for something?
my opinion: i'm the sort of person who (for example) prefers games like tetris to the latest greatest, and as such, movie effects don't add or take away from a movie. i don't like movies that focus on action. i liked this movie because of it's simple timeless plotline (that the hero sacrificed himself before the enemy for his friends) as well as dealing with the nature of a choice and purpose. i also liked the dune messiah blindness aspect. i liked the punch. i liked the uncertainty of the oracle.
this topic requested an opinion, there's mine.
i liked it
why don't we just stick radio tags under our skin? put a credit card number on the signal, and then they can justify all tracking. how fun!
teachers who are really hard have tended to be disliked, but for me, they were the best. the harder they pushed, the more that i tried, so the more i learned. my ap chemistry teacher was that way, she abused the class the whole year, according to her strategy. but in the end, 87% of the class got 5's on the exam, and i don't think any of us regretted it.