they successfully churn out software to solve these challenges in elegant and creative ways
Would those be the same "good programmers" who have churned out the last 20 years of critical Internet-facing vulnerabilities?
All that software sold, after all, so by some measure it was "successful". Just not by the old fuddy-duddy "not guaranteed never to steal your identity and strangle you in the night" definition.
We're not paid to be "good programmers". We're paid to "Git 'er Dun!" It's far more important to most employers that labor be quick and cheap than to be careful and precise. After all, a 10-year old kid can do this stuff! My little nephew Jimmy wrote a Pong game. All You Have To Do Is...
Java was explicitly designed to be OS- and hardware-independent.....
I take it then that you've never tried to write Java code that needs to communicate with USB or Serial devices. It cannot realistically be done in an OS independent manner.
Been there, tried to "done that". Decided to shoot myself instead *
Truthfully, it CAN be done. But it's a huge PITA.
* Well, almost.
That's getting the cart and horse transposed. JAVA was designed to be OS- and hardware-independent. If the OS or the hardware isn't independent, Java doesn't (directly) support it. It was, in fact, a major struggle to get environment variable access into Java, since not all OS's support environment variables. The war was only won when Sun realized that there was no net difference between no environment variables and an empty set of environment variables.
I have, BTW, done serial programming in pure Java, but it was so long ago, I don't remember any of it. Java can also work with USB devices providing they present themselves as abstract filesystem mechanisms. However, if you want access to the guts of things, Java isn't designed for that, since, as you pointed out, such code isn't "write once/run anywhere", because the underlying hardware isn't "write once/run anywhere". Not just in Java, but in in C, C++, Python, Haskell, Perl, whatever. To get support for specific hardware attributes, etc., you need JNI to bridge the gap between the abstract and the specific, and JNI is not intended for portable code.
Remember the story on this site about creating a time capsule to be opened in the future? And everyone was going on about various seals, gas interactions, acid free paper, etc.
Seems like a piece of paper stuck inside a bottle can last a hundred years.
Progress.
I think that the use of acid to bleach paper might actually post-date the post-card in question.
It wouldn't be very useful. The air in the bottle would be representative of only that particular day, in that particular place. For example, if it were bottled by a wood fire stove, it would have much higher concentrations of CO2 than the average mass of air
All grist for the mill, though. There have been studies where they do open old bottles and other airtight hollow objects (I think even things like binoculars) just to analyze the air.
One sample isn't worth much, but that's how you build knowledge somethings. One sample at a time.
Also, they don't just do straight chemical analysis. Isotopes can tell all sorts of stories.
If artificial tech was clearly the culprit in the extinction, then why not re-animate. American Bison didn't go extinct- but if they had, would be a justified candidate for re-animation as the rifle and money put them at unusual risk.
Mammoth? Not so sure. Humans may have been involved in their extinction- but using more "natural" predation goals.
Concerns about impacts of reintroduced species on current ecosystems are overstated- nature adapts irrespective of our ethical judgement.. It's all relative. Red in tooth and claw.
I wish I could feed whoever coined the phrase "Nature red in tooth and claw" to a starving Siberian tiger. It's a perversion of Darwinism used to justify atrocities and not infrequently applied to things that have little or nothing to do with genetics. It's also used to imply that There can Be Only One and there's no room for anyone else.
"The fittest" isn't always the nastiest, most heavily-armed critter on the block. If it was, butterflies would spit acid, and bunnies would sport 6-inch fangs and 4-inch razor-sharp talons. And forget about humans. No teeth to speak of, and those claws - ugh!
Sometimes "survival of the fittest" means having the softest, warmest fur, the brightest colors, the best singing voice, or the cleverest mind.
Is it even practical to bring back an extinct specie? I am wondering how many individuals with varied genetic code is required to avoid the issue of inbreeding.
Lets say I found two perfect genetic samples: One male and one female. I placed them into my magical DNA-To-Fertile-Adult(tm) machine, so now have two organisms set to reproduce. But then we run into a problem: Even if those two have 30 offsprings any further mating will result in genetic deterioration due to inbreeding.
So we need to have quite a bit more samples. What is a minimum population count that we need to hit in order to avoid this? Could we possibly have that many different samples of an extinct organism to fulfil such a quota?
Actually, it wouldn't be genetic deterioration. The problem with inbreeding is that the same defective genes are being expressed over and over again as dominant traits. If those traits are before/lethal within the breeding phase, then eventually the population goes extinct.
So actually, you want "deterioration" - mutation. Because then the resulting diversity raises the odds of long-term viability.
"My personal theory is that we killed all mammoths because they were delicious. Can't wait to taste one!"
Actually, if memory serves, according to the paleontologists that is pretty damned close to the truth.
From what I understand, some Inuits ('Eskimos') have found mammoths frozen in glaciers, eaten them, and found them delicious. Only have anecdoctal evidence, though... They were pretty damned good sized, and one of them would feed a tribe for a couple weeks or so, so it was definitely worth Cro-Magnon's effots to hunt them.
Check out straightdope.com. I can't recall specifically about Inuits, since a lot of mammoths are in Siberia, but not only local inhabitants have sampled mammoth. Some mammoths were discovered when people's dogs were found eating the odd trunk or limb sticking out of the landscape. And, if you're really obsessed with the idea, occasionally even non-native people have dined on mammoth. Just bring your checkbook.
Not surprising, really. We have plenty of archaeological sites showing people hunt mammoths. Even today, some people hunt, kill, and eat elephant.
how the hell is a rat going to make a bird bigger than an ostridge extinct? Even the eggs were probably not crackable by a rat, unless they learned to make tools. Now, perhaps a pig (Kune Kune) but that is not what you suggested.
You haven't been watching enough nature programs if you think rats can't get into eggs. Then again, rats are pretty famous for being able to get into anything.
Even if an egg was sufficiently well-armored, however, the minute it cracked, there would be a different story. A new-hatched chick is pretty helpless if a herd of hungry rats descends on it. Mom and Dad bird might not be able to defend it.
Private investors aren't interested in long-term investments - the "investment banking" industry has become big largely because it's eschewed actual growth-producing investment for complex financial instruments which are essentially a form of privatised taxation.
Well said. It is with deep regret that I have to report that back in the previous century I was working in a department that was one of the leading forces in bundling and selling mortgage and mortgage servicing portfolios. In other words, we were supposed to predict what those bundles should be worth over 10, 20, year years or so. um, yeah.
For doing this, we'd get something like.01 of 1% in fees as each billion-dollar bundle flew by. To mis-apply the late Senator Dirksen: a billion here (or.0001 thereof), a billion there...
You should also look at the Gnome 3 fall back mode. It looks and acts similar to Gnome 2, but is still Gnome 3. Ubuntu previously also shipped Gnome Classic Mode, but this was built on Gnome 2 and has since been discontinued. Cinnamon is Mint's version of Gnome's Fallback mode.
Similar, but not identical. If you can make the Gnome 2 applets run under Gnome 3, you know more than me, because I haven't discovered how (so much for user-friendly!) And the loss of the applets was one of the biggest things that I hated about Gnome 3. Sure, they've apparently slapped in some sort of "extension" system in the later release, but it seems to require rewriting everything.
If I've got to rewrite everything, I'd rather do it in Cinnamon. From what I've seen, it's a lot easier to work with than Gnome ever was when it comes to creating applets.
I thought you had to revert to the factory ROM before you could root at all on the Tablet.
Rooting the Nook and re-downloading to SD is a bit much. Why not just install the desktop app and bypass the middleman, as far as that goes? It's not like you really gain anything. The Nook's internal book store is still off-limits.
Anyway, the next-generation Nook will probably be based on Windows 8. With Secure Boot.
He's an idiotic Java weenie who thinks that 5000 long source files just to read the interface specification is a good thing rather than having it cleanly separated in a separate file. Managing header files is pretty much the least of your problems with C++ so he's clearly never used the language for anything but toy projects.
Unless you're still using COBOL, if you have 5000-line source files, you need to be slapped around some. Even 1000 lines is pushing it. That's not modular programming, it's spaghetti code, even when the language is structured and OOP.
Discrete header files were OK in C - there were rarely that many. In C++, it got a lot nastier, though You could have one header/class, multiple classes/header or mix-and-match - there really wasn't a standard. And THEN you got into "header hell", where the header and implementation got out of sync.
In Java, either you're working directly with the target class, so you're probably already going to end up referencing the source code anyway, or you're working with a generic API or SPI, in which case, and those are normally implemented as Interface classes, which are rarely more than a page or 2 long (at least if the author wants to foist it on me and continue living). Interface classes are a lot like C/C++ headers, but because they are bound more intimately with the class implementations, it's a lot harder to get them out of sync.
Performance. Flash may be pure hell, but at least it runs, and doesn't bring one's Web browser to a lurching halt like Java does.
No, it just causes my browser to slowly scroll to the ends of very long pages with no way to regain control over that or any other browser window until it's done, short of killing the browser itself and all browser windows, downloads, etc.
As for Java version and platform issues, I call BS. Java is the ONLY programming environment (not just language) that I know of that has explicit deprecation mechanisms built into the core spec so that things will continue to run long after they're obsolete. And anyone who's writing OS-specific code in Java applets doesn't deserve the 13 rupees/hour that they were paid to do so. Java was explicitly designed to be OS- and hardware-independent. They even sued Microsoft - and won - in the battle to make SURE it stayed OS- and hardware-independent.
I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.
I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.
Actually, one of the points agains the Kindle Fire in my book was that it offloaded so much to the Amazon servers. Who needs to remotely delete files when they're not really local to begin with?
I'd scratch Nook from that list if I were you, though. The color/tablet Nooks do not allow access to local book storage the way the original Nook did. So your local copy is now more imaginary than real.
Photos, unfortunately, have been used as re-infection vectors.
Interesting, do you have a link?
Sadly, it was more than just a link at the time.
I sent an email to my boss concerning a newly-announced Word virus. Unfortunately, it was 1 email lower in the inbox than a document from corporate HQ that was infected with the virus.
Something like 173 separate images on the department webserver were subsequently infected in addition to the hundreds of non-image files, and then it began to spread through the department.
Nope, he's a scumbag. For instance, let's talk about backwards compatibility and breaking people's code. A while ago the Mono project released a.Net wrapper for SQLite that various projects used and like all Mono-developed libraries it was designed to run under.Net as well as Mono. Then the Mono developers decided to discontinue development on it in favour of a new wrapper library that wasn't API compatible and actually broke the old library in newer Mono releases. So you could still run applications that relied on this Mono-supplied and Mono-developed library under Windows.Net quite trivially but they didn't work under Mono itself without downgrading to an ancient version which distros didn't ship anymore.
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like business as usual in the Windows world.
I'm pretty sure that 5081 refers to a specific single-field layout, not to 80-column punched cards as such. There were many layouts. I seem to recall using something very similar to this FORTRAN card even when I wasn't doing FORTRAN, and I don't think they had "FORTRAN STATEMENT" printed on them.
I don't recall anybody loathing punched cards. They were a simple, reliable, if somewhat bulky medium. It is true that magnetic discs represented a great improvement. In my case, floppies were never more than a backup medium, since the systems I worked with always had hard disks.
Yep. Dug into the closet and only the "blank" cards say 5081 on them. The yellow Assembler cards have a different number (two of them actually, since they're not Genuine IBM), blue COBOL cards are 3393 and the pink FORTRAN (sic) cards have a 88157 on them.
I recall being disgusted because after too many trips through the RJE card reader, a quarter-inch wide notch would wear out in the top center of the cards (where the picker pushed them) and quite a few incidents of woe from dropped decks, but the only floppy I ever got near on a mainframe was the one that held its microcode. For actual data and program entry people were either using punched cards or key-to-disk/disk-to-tape systems.
The sad thing is, you probably do remember your church school bible lessons, but that's still inconsistent with what's actually in the Bible and the historical context of the story.
The more fundamentalist the church, it seems the more they like their "one-liners". It's easy to say that every word in the Bible is true as long as you read it one sentence at a time. It's when you start cross-referencing and one part of it literally calls another part a "lying prophecy" that things start getting uncomfortable. And don't get me started on the story of King David. That book reads like two (or more?) similar but separate sets of stories was crudely stitched together.
Forget Sodom and Gomorrah. I was led to believe that one reason Abraham was considered to be such a great man was that he showed hospitality to strangers instead of treating them as fair game Afghanistan-style.
Looking at gods from a historical perspective, the general trend is that God(s) get (mostly) gentler as time goes forward. A cynic might also observer that life in general has also gotten easier and think we were continuiously remaking God in our own image. However, since Greek times God has been held to be eternal and unchanging, so that's obviously heresy, regardless of what your lying senses tell you.
Beware the trap of using PC thinking on non-PC devices. Copy and paste wasn't available on the iPad because Apple are a bunch of obnoxious snots who think that the only way to do things is the way that THEY want you to do things; I had copy-and-paste on mobile devices before there even WAS an iPad.
As for pixel editing, I can't even do that on a DESKTOP without blowing the screen up 800% or so (disclaimer: IANAA - I am not an artist). For an actual artist, I'd think that drawing directly on the pad (so to speak) would actually be better than using a monitor. Although a stylus beats "finger painting" for me.
Ultimately, all devices are what a big company allows you to buy, as the current controversy over Windows secure booting reminds us. In the case of Bluetooth, however, one of the unfortunate things about Android was that Google's initial Bluetooth implementations were far short of the full stack. I had much better Bluetooth support on Windows Mobile 5 than I did on Android 1.6. The limits are sometimes more on the maturity of the OS than on the hardware.
The portable device market has some growing to do, no question. But just like Windows and Office, it doesn't have to be perfect, just "good enough". For a lot of people, "good enough" is pretty much already here.
Machine completely flattened? That's stupid. There's nothing wrong with any of the hardware components in the computer, only with the 1s and 0s. In other words, software. The kind that, you know, can be erased and reinstalled from trusted sources.
Well, it used to be. Then someone figured out how to infect the NVRAM in the BIOS. All things considered, it's less work, less money, less time to reduce the system to its component atoms and start completely over for most people. Plus, any hardware over 8 hour olds is out-of-date, anyway!
Yes, but make sure you back up any photos and other irreplaceable bits of information first!
Do not back up anything that's executable though.
Photos, unfortunately, have been used as re-infection vectors.
The only sure bet is a 10-lb sledgehammer applied until the machine is completely flattened. Then nuke it from orbit, just in case.
Unfortunately, however, the worst of the damage isn't in the computer, it's was leaked out onto the Internet. Including, but not restricted to the SSN. Good luck with that.
I think from the point of view of the average person, PC = "big box that sits on/near desktop". Relative horsepower is immaterial. My cell phone is more powerful than an IBM System/370 Model 168. And doesn't require 7-foot tall tape/DASD units, punched-card equipment or a water chiller. And the System 370's were freakin' mainframes.
Minicomputers as such are extinct. No more DG, No more DEC, No more Prime. Their closest relatives are the IBM i5 (small mainframe) or Power/AIX systems (which are just proprietary PC servers). Once again, it's the form factor that people think of more than the functionality - see above paragraph.
Personally, I think I get more precision on my input on a tablet than on a traditional PC, except for when typing is involved. Actually, I can "graphitti" faster than I can type, but that mode is out of style at the moment. Software blessings depend on what you buy - I prefer stuff I can side-load or download myself, and in fact, I doubt my next e-reader will "belong" to a bookstore for that very reason.
I'm still typing this on a PC with a keyboard at a monitor, but that's because my current portable device has a 7-inch screen and won't listen to my Bluetooth keyboard. The PC itself, however, is primarily offloading to an entire server farm. I'd pull less power and have more desk space if I had an iPad in an easel. Except, of course that I don't want Apple's shackles on me.
Sounds like you're just not using the right kind of paper for a large image. Switch to paper made for printing large images with inkjet and you'll see a world of difference.
Although you can get by with other stuff, Inkjet paper was supposed to have a clay coating that keep the liquid from soaking the fibers. Although I've been printing laser for so long that I don't really know anymore.
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they successfully churn out software to solve these challenges in elegant and creative ways
Would those be the same "good programmers" who have churned out the last 20 years of critical Internet-facing vulnerabilities?
All that software sold, after all, so by some measure it was "successful". Just not by the old fuddy-duddy "not guaranteed never to steal your identity and strangle you in the night" definition.
We're not paid to be "good programmers". We're paid to "Git 'er Dun!" It's far more important to most employers that labor be quick and cheap than to be careful and precise. After all, a 10-year old kid can do this stuff! My little nephew Jimmy wrote a Pong game. All You Have To Do Is...
Java was explicitly designed to be OS- and hardware-independent. ....
I take it then that you've never tried to write Java code that needs to communicate with USB or Serial devices. It cannot realistically be done in an OS independent manner.
Been there, tried to "done that". Decided to shoot myself instead *
Truthfully, it CAN be done. But it's a huge PITA.
* Well, almost.
That's getting the cart and horse transposed. JAVA was designed to be OS- and hardware-independent. If the OS or the hardware isn't independent, Java doesn't (directly) support it. It was, in fact, a major struggle to get environment variable access into Java, since not all OS's support environment variables. The war was only won when Sun realized that there was no net difference between no environment variables and an empty set of environment variables.
I have, BTW, done serial programming in pure Java, but it was so long ago, I don't remember any of it. Java can also work with USB devices providing they present themselves as abstract filesystem mechanisms. However, if you want access to the guts of things, Java isn't designed for that, since, as you pointed out, such code isn't "write once/run anywhere", because the underlying hardware isn't "write once/run anywhere". Not just in Java, but in in C, C++, Python, Haskell, Perl, whatever. To get support for specific hardware attributes, etc., you need JNI to bridge the gap between the abstract and the specific, and JNI is not intended for portable code.
Remember the story on this site about creating a time capsule to be opened in the future? And everyone was going on about various seals, gas interactions, acid free paper, etc.
Seems like a piece of paper stuck inside a bottle can last a hundred years.
Progress.
I think that the use of acid to bleach paper might actually post-date the post-card in question.
It wouldn't be very useful. The air in the bottle would be representative of only that particular day, in that particular place. For example, if it were bottled by a wood fire stove, it would have much higher concentrations of CO2 than the average mass of air
All grist for the mill, though. There have been studies where they do open old bottles and other airtight hollow objects (I think even things like binoculars) just to analyze the air.
One sample isn't worth much, but that's how you build knowledge somethings. One sample at a time.
Also, they don't just do straight chemical analysis. Isotopes can tell all sorts of stories.
If artificial tech was clearly the culprit in the extinction, then why not re-animate. American Bison didn't go extinct- but if they had, would be a justified candidate for re-animation as the rifle and money put them at unusual risk.
Mammoth? Not so sure. Humans may have been involved in their extinction- but using more "natural" predation goals.
Concerns about impacts of reintroduced species on current ecosystems are overstated- nature adapts irrespective of our ethical judgement..
It's all relative. Red in tooth and claw.
I wish I could feed whoever coined the phrase "Nature red in tooth and claw" to a starving Siberian tiger. It's a perversion of Darwinism used to justify atrocities and not infrequently applied to things that have little or nothing to do with genetics. It's also used to imply that There can Be Only One and there's no room for anyone else.
"The fittest" isn't always the nastiest, most heavily-armed critter on the block. If it was, butterflies would spit acid, and bunnies would sport 6-inch fangs and 4-inch razor-sharp talons. And forget about humans. No teeth to speak of, and those claws - ugh!
Sometimes "survival of the fittest" means having the softest, warmest fur, the brightest colors, the best singing voice, or the cleverest mind.
Is it even practical to bring back an extinct specie? I am wondering how many individuals with varied genetic code is required to avoid the issue of inbreeding.
Lets say I found two perfect genetic samples: One male and one female. I placed them into my magical DNA-To-Fertile-Adult(tm) machine, so now have two organisms set to reproduce. But then we run into a problem: Even if those two have 30 offsprings any further mating will result in genetic deterioration due to inbreeding.
So we need to have quite a bit more samples. What is a minimum population count that we need to hit in order to avoid this? Could we possibly have that many different samples of an extinct organism to fulfil such a quota?
Actually, it wouldn't be genetic deterioration. The problem with inbreeding is that the same defective genes are being expressed over and over again as dominant traits. If those traits are before/lethal within the breeding phase, then eventually the population goes extinct.
So actually, you want "deterioration" - mutation. Because then the resulting diversity raises the odds of long-term viability.
"My personal theory is that we killed all mammoths because they were delicious. Can't wait to taste one!"
Actually, if memory serves, according to the paleontologists that is pretty damned close to the truth.
From what I understand, some Inuits ('Eskimos') have found mammoths frozen in glaciers, eaten them, and found them delicious. Only have anecdoctal evidence, though... They were pretty damned good sized, and one of them would feed a tribe for a couple weeks or so, so it was definitely worth Cro-Magnon's effots to hunt them.
Check out straightdope.com. I can't recall specifically about Inuits, since a lot of mammoths are in Siberia, but not only local inhabitants have sampled mammoth. Some mammoths were discovered when people's dogs were found eating the odd trunk or limb sticking out of the landscape. And, if you're really obsessed with the idea, occasionally even non-native people have dined on mammoth. Just bring your checkbook.
Not surprising, really. We have plenty of archaeological sites showing people hunt mammoths. Even today, some people hunt, kill, and eat elephant.
how the hell is a rat going to make a bird bigger than an ostridge extinct? Even the eggs were probably not crackable by a rat, unless they learned to make tools. Now, perhaps a pig (Kune Kune) but that is not what you suggested.
You haven't been watching enough nature programs if you think rats can't get into eggs. Then again, rats are pretty famous for being able to get into anything.
Even if an egg was sufficiently well-armored, however, the minute it cracked, there would be a different story. A new-hatched chick is pretty helpless if a herd of hungry rats descends on it. Mom and Dad bird might not be able to defend it.
Private investors aren't interested in long-term investments - the "investment banking" industry has become big largely because it's eschewed actual growth-producing investment for complex financial instruments which are essentially a form of privatised taxation.
Well said. It is with deep regret that I have to report that back in the previous century I was working in a department that was one of the leading forces in bundling and selling mortgage and mortgage servicing portfolios. In other words, we were supposed to predict what those bundles should be worth over 10, 20, year years or so. um, yeah.
For doing this, we'd get something like .01 of 1% in fees as each billion-dollar bundle flew by. To mis-apply the late Senator Dirksen: a billion here (or .0001 thereof), a billion there...
You should also look at the Gnome 3 fall back mode. It looks and acts similar to Gnome 2, but is still Gnome 3. Ubuntu previously also shipped Gnome Classic Mode, but this was built on Gnome 2 and has since been discontinued. Cinnamon is Mint's version of Gnome's Fallback mode.
Similar, but not identical. If you can make the Gnome 2 applets run under Gnome 3, you know more than me, because I haven't discovered how (so much for user-friendly!) And the loss of the applets was one of the biggest things that I hated about Gnome 3. Sure, they've apparently slapped in some sort of "extension" system in the later release, but it seems to require rewriting everything.
If I've got to rewrite everything, I'd rather do it in Cinnamon. From what I've seen, it's a lot easier to work with than Gnome ever was when it comes to creating applets.
I thought you had to revert to the factory ROM before you could root at all on the Tablet.
Rooting the Nook and re-downloading to SD is a bit much. Why not just install the desktop app and bypass the middleman, as far as that goes? It's not like you really gain anything. The Nook's internal book store is still off-limits.
Anyway, the next-generation Nook will probably be based on Windows 8. With Secure Boot.
I'm a former hater but I really like Unity now.
I think Unity could be amazing with the 12.10 release.
I previously used Gnome 3, which is a perfectly serviceable desktop, but I prefer Unity.
Obviously your definition of "serviceable" is more flexible than mine.
I swapped Gnome 3 out for Cinnamon. Not quite everything I used to routinely do in Gnome 2, but closer than Gnome 3.
He's an idiotic Java weenie who thinks that 5000 long source files just to read the interface specification is a good thing rather than having it cleanly separated in a separate file. Managing header files is pretty much the least of your problems with C++ so he's clearly never used the language for anything but toy projects.
Unless you're still using COBOL, if you have 5000-line source files, you need to be slapped around some. Even 1000 lines is pushing it. That's not modular programming, it's spaghetti code, even when the language is structured and OOP.
Discrete header files were OK in C - there were rarely that many. In C++, it got a lot nastier, though You could have one header/class, multiple classes/header or mix-and-match - there really wasn't a standard. And THEN you got into "header hell", where the header and implementation got out of sync.
In Java, either you're working directly with the target class, so you're probably already going to end up referencing the source code anyway, or you're working with a generic API or SPI, in which case, and those are normally implemented as Interface classes, which are rarely more than a page or 2 long (at least if the author wants to foist it on me and continue living). Interface classes are a lot like C/C++ headers, but because they are bound more intimately with the class implementations, it's a lot harder to get them out of sync.
Performance. Flash may be pure hell, but at least it runs, and doesn't bring one's Web browser to a lurching halt like Java does.
No, it just causes my browser to slowly scroll to the ends of very long pages with no way to regain control over that or any other browser window until it's done, short of killing the browser itself and all browser windows, downloads, etc.
As for Java version and platform issues, I call BS. Java is the ONLY programming environment (not just language) that I know of that has explicit deprecation mechanisms built into the core spec so that things will continue to run long after they're obsolete. And anyone who's writing OS-specific code in Java applets doesn't deserve the 13 rupees/hour that they were paid to do so. Java was explicitly designed to be OS- and hardware-independent. They even sued Microsoft - and won - in the battle to make SURE it stayed OS- and hardware-independent.
I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.
I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.
Actually, one of the points agains the Kindle Fire in my book was that it offloaded so much to the Amazon servers. Who needs to remotely delete files when they're not really local to begin with?
I'd scratch Nook from that list if I were you, though. The color/tablet Nooks do not allow access to local book storage the way the original Nook did. So your local copy is now more imaginary than real.
Photos, unfortunately, have been used as re-infection vectors.
Interesting, do you have a link?
Sadly, it was more than just a link at the time.
I sent an email to my boss concerning a newly-announced Word virus. Unfortunately, it was 1 email lower in the inbox than a document from corporate HQ that was infected with the virus.
Something like 173 separate images on the department webserver were subsequently infected in addition to the hundreds of non-image files, and then it began to spread through the department.
It was a busy day.
Nope, he's a scumbag. For instance, let's talk about backwards compatibility and breaking people's code. A while ago the Mono project released a .Net wrapper for SQLite that various projects used and like all Mono-developed libraries it was designed to run under .Net as well as Mono. Then the Mono developers decided to discontinue development on it in favour of a new wrapper library that wasn't API compatible and actually broke the old library in newer Mono releases. So you could still run applications that relied on this Mono-supplied and Mono-developed library under Windows .Net quite trivially but they didn't work under Mono itself without downgrading to an ancient version which distros didn't ship anymore.
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like business as usual in the Windows world.
I'm pretty sure that 5081 refers to a specific single-field layout, not to 80-column punched cards as such. There were many layouts. I seem to recall using something very similar to this FORTRAN card even when I wasn't doing FORTRAN, and I don't think they had "FORTRAN STATEMENT" printed on them.
I don't recall anybody loathing punched cards. They were a simple, reliable, if somewhat bulky medium. It is true that magnetic discs represented a great improvement. In my case, floppies were never more than a backup medium, since the systems I worked with always had hard disks.
Yep. Dug into the closet and only the "blank" cards say 5081 on them. The yellow Assembler cards have a different number (two of them actually, since they're not Genuine IBM), blue COBOL cards are 3393 and the pink FORTRAN (sic) cards have a 88157 on them.
I recall being disgusted because after too many trips through the RJE card reader, a quarter-inch wide notch would wear out in the top center of the cards (where the picker pushed them) and quite a few incidents of woe from dropped decks, but the only floppy I ever got near on a mainframe was the one that held its microcode. For actual data and program entry people were either using punched cards or key-to-disk/disk-to-tape systems.
The sad thing is, you probably do remember your church school bible lessons, but that's still inconsistent with what's actually in the Bible and the historical context of the story.
The more fundamentalist the church, it seems the more they like their "one-liners". It's easy to say that every word in the Bible is true as long as you read it one sentence at a time. It's when you start cross-referencing and one part of it literally calls another part a "lying prophecy" that things start getting uncomfortable. And don't get me started on the story of King David. That book reads like two (or more?) similar but separate sets of stories was crudely stitched together.
Forget Sodom and Gomorrah. I was led to believe that one reason Abraham was considered to be such a great man was that he showed hospitality to strangers instead of treating them as fair game Afghanistan-style.
Looking at gods from a historical perspective, the general trend is that God(s) get (mostly) gentler as time goes forward. A cynic might also observer that life in general has also gotten easier and think we were continuiously remaking God in our own image. However, since Greek times God has been held to be eternal and unchanging, so that's obviously heresy, regardless of what your lying senses tell you.
Beware the trap of using PC thinking on non-PC devices. Copy and paste wasn't available on the iPad because Apple are a bunch of obnoxious snots who think that the only way to do things is the way that THEY want you to do things; I had copy-and-paste on mobile devices before there even WAS an iPad.
As for pixel editing, I can't even do that on a DESKTOP without blowing the screen up 800% or so (disclaimer: IANAA - I am not an artist). For an actual artist, I'd think that drawing directly on the pad (so to speak) would actually be better than using a monitor. Although a stylus beats "finger painting" for me.
Ultimately, all devices are what a big company allows you to buy, as the current controversy over Windows secure booting reminds us. In the case of Bluetooth, however, one of the unfortunate things about Android was that Google's initial Bluetooth implementations were far short of the full stack. I had much better Bluetooth support on Windows Mobile 5 than I did on Android 1.6. The limits are sometimes more on the maturity of the OS than on the hardware.
The portable device market has some growing to do, no question. But just like Windows and Office, it doesn't have to be perfect, just "good enough". For a lot of people, "good enough" is pretty much already here.
Machine completely flattened? That's stupid. There's nothing wrong with any of the hardware components in the computer, only with the 1s and 0s. In other words, software. The kind that, you know, can be erased and reinstalled from trusted sources.
Well, it used to be. Then someone figured out how to infect the NVRAM in the BIOS. All things considered, it's less work, less money, less time to reduce the system to its component atoms and start completely over for most people. Plus, any hardware over 8 hour olds is out-of-date, anyway!
Yes, but make sure you back up any photos and other irreplaceable bits of information first!
Do not back up anything that's executable though.
Photos, unfortunately, have been used as re-infection vectors.
The only sure bet is a 10-lb sledgehammer applied until the machine is completely flattened. Then nuke it from orbit, just in case.
Unfortunately, however, the worst of the damage isn't in the computer, it's was leaked out onto the Internet. Including, but not restricted to the SSN. Good luck with that.
Nice sig.
I think from the point of view of the average person, PC = "big box that sits on/near desktop". Relative horsepower is immaterial. My cell phone is more powerful than an IBM System/370 Model 168. And doesn't require 7-foot tall tape/DASD units, punched-card equipment or a water chiller. And the System 370's were freakin' mainframes.
Minicomputers as such are extinct. No more DG, No more DEC, No more Prime. Their closest relatives are the IBM i5 (small mainframe) or Power/AIX systems (which are just proprietary PC servers). Once again, it's the form factor that people think of more than the functionality - see above paragraph.
Personally, I think I get more precision on my input on a tablet than on a traditional PC, except for when typing is involved. Actually, I can "graphitti" faster than I can type, but that mode is out of style at the moment. Software blessings depend on what you buy - I prefer stuff I can side-load or download myself, and in fact, I doubt my next e-reader will "belong" to a bookstore for that very reason.
I'm still typing this on a PC with a keyboard at a monitor, but that's because my current portable device has a 7-inch screen and won't listen to my Bluetooth keyboard. The PC itself, however, is primarily offloading to an entire server farm. I'd pull less power and have more desk space if I had an iPad in an easel. Except, of course that I don't want Apple's shackles on me.
Sounds like you're just not using the right kind of paper for a large image. Switch to paper made for printing large images with inkjet and you'll see a world of difference.
Although you can get by with other stuff, Inkjet paper was supposed to have a clay coating that keep the liquid from soaking the fibers. Although I've been printing laser for so long that I don't really know anymore.
Finally, after years of complaints and consumer demand, Lexmark bows to the will of the customer and does what everyone so desperately wanted, leave.
Yep. When Lexmark was part of IBM, their printers were allegedly pretty decent, but I already had a printer, so I never got a Lexmark.
By the time I went shopping again, though, Lexmark had done their slimy DMCA thing. I swore I'd never buy a printer from a company that did that.
There might not be all that many players in the printer market, but there's enough that I could use the Invisible Hand and give them the Finger.
So I did.