I've been waiting to get a MP3 player for quite a while now because I want something that can hold a large collection, but not require me to navigate an 8 character display. It sounds like this new Tivo will one day have this feature.
I know it doesn't seem like much, but that kind of integration and ease of use is what made Tivo so popular in the first place. I could really see these things beating out game consoles as the first major entertainment "center piece".
There is no MicrosoftWorld
I know Microsoft isn't the most popular company here, but lets at least try to be honest here. Microsoft does have plenty of user-directed-propaganda-fests. They just choose to distribute the information across the contry, rather than making users fly to California. Take a look.
Personaly, I haven't been to any of these presentations, (my wife does from time to time). I wish other companies would bring the show to the user like this. I would love to get information about Java directly from Sun without incurring the overhead of plane tickets and hotel rooms.
Rather than their typical life-saver colors, I would love to see this in earth tones. Mustard yellow, two shades of puky green, some shade of brown with a bit of grey. It just reminds me of a "modern" lamp from the 1930s. Maybe they should run with it.
No major country wipeouts by asteroids happened in the last few thousand years.
3 million people died in natural disasters in the last two decades(source). I'm just guessing, but I imagine asteroids caused very few of those. Maybe we should concentrate on the ones that cause death rather than the ones that scare people who watch too many movies.
Given the size of the X-Box controller, will this be another controller that only works for people with hands the size of Andre the Giant's hands?
I'm a pretty big guy (6'7 300+ lbs). I don't have small hands, and I can't even push the white button and the right trigger at the same time. Who DID they design these things for?
I'll probably get slammed for this, but design patterns are not abstract in any good sense of the word. They are boilerplates that allow infinite monkeys (or bad programmers) to piece applications.
It's like the difference between Legos and carpentry. Sure, it's a little harder to cut wood to the right length and you nails or screws to put it together, but would you want to live in a house made of legos?
I don't know how well you understand design patterns, but I've never heard anyone contend that design patterns were meant to be the meat of a program. They are simply tools to help you solve the parts of your problems that aren't new to the rest of the world. Why reinvent the wheel?
I think in your analogy, design patterns would better be described as nails. You can build a house without them, but why waste the time?
Although I enjoyed his book, and respect his opinion on matters of interface design, Joel Spolsky is no champion of well-designed code. In his book, he even suggests that a programming language shouldn't be used if another can create the same user interface in less time... as if the time it takes to create the first version of a product should take precedence of other factors such as maintainability of code, reuse, and flexibility. He does a good job of regurgitating the works of other interface specialists, but he is not an expert in code maintenance.
This is a lesson to be learned. Engineer your code from the beginning. Use easy to understand commenting, and strucutured code. Although it takes some discipline, you will almost never have to reconsider "re-writing from scratch".
Even if the people maintaining the code had anything to do with it's original design (doubtful), they can't do anything about it now.
A more practical solution would be to create tests, and refactor the code piece by piece. I am only beginning to use the ideas presented in Martin Fowler's "Refactoring", but they are really helping me clean up my code. More importantly, the changes are safe. Fowler's book warns me of problems I might run into, and gives hints as to what I should look for.
Although I'm using Java and am lucky enough to be using IntelliJ's IDEA (which is an IDE with built in refactoring capabilities), I'm sure there is a solution for Perl (even if it is more manual).
I know these are just books, but I really think this is the same thing Star Trek has always suffered from - lack of continuity. On the rare occasion things don't wrap themselves up perfectly within 60 minutes, any attempt at a story arc seems forced.
On the up side, you can watch the episodes (or the movies) in any order... you don't have to worry about back-story.
Personally, I think that anti-hate laws are a good thing. Freedom can only exist within limitations.
I agree. We just disagree on what the limitations should be.
Why is this a distinction? Do we want to drop all charges against Milosovich because he's 'not actively killing anyone' anymore?
You Americans have no statute of limitations so why should this matter? You're simply protecting your own and not supporting other nations (ie France)
If Milosovich wants to go on Larry King before we kill him, that's fine. There's no good reason to keep him from speaking (unless you think everyone is so weak minded, that they would follow him). Does that mean he should be forgiven? No.
If the people who are selling these things on Yahoo, are killers (which I think would be a big assumption), then put them on trial, and have them put in the big chair. If you just don't like what their auctioning, then don't buy it.
As far as supporting France, you can go F### yourself. My grandfather had most of his stomach removed after he dropped into France. He was never healthy again. If France needs our help, they know they have it. If they want to restrict freedoms in the name of fear, then they should expect exactly what they get.
Re:IDE - Editor or round trip engineering tool?
on
Java IDEs?
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· Score: 1
UML isn't just used for design. We use it to explain existing software. A class diagram (even a generated one) can explain a package at a glance... many times it would take pages of documentation to do the same.
We demand that all terrorist assets be frozen by all countries "or else" (which is not to say I don't agree with that action), but we won't brook anyone telling us to not sell essentially terrorist "memorabilia". Consistency is great, isn't it?
I have a small distinction to point out: The terrorist money being frozen would have been spent on killing civilians. Those terrorists are active today. Nazi memorabilia are, for the most part, historical artifacts (like a civil war flag or a gun fired by Napoleon). It's not like the money from Nazi memorabilia would go towards funding a new Nazi party.
The idea isn't just for AMD to be the cheapest. If they were consistantly 6 monthes behind Intel, but always offered a lower price, they would simply be regaurded as 'dicount chips'. They want to be known for offering comparable quality for a better price. The only way they will be seen as comparable to the market leader is to beat them on every benchmark... after all, they have a prejudice to overcome.
I don't know, but I already learned one interface (typing) to make my computer's life easier. Why should I do all the work?
Exactly! Wasn't the whole point of voice recognition to make computers interact with humans the same way we interact with each other?
Lets be realistic... the reason Palm uses Graffiti is because the keyboard was too small to use... not because it recognizes handwriting so well. Graffiti does not satisfy the goals of handwriting recognition, and this technology does not satisfy the goals of voice recognition.
Re:Corporate Thinking or Public Service?
on
J#
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· Score: 2
Yes, we all know its in Microsoft's nature to act this way. We even understand why. But does that mean we can't dislike them too? Just because we understand why they do these things, and even if we might do the same thing in their place... that doesn't make it a good thing... and it doesn't mean we can't bitch about it.
If acquitted, wouldn't it be based on the ridiculous nature of the law? He did break the law, after all (a stupid law, but a law none the less). Would he still be able to sue Adobe? Or would Adobe be well defended by the fact that the law existed at the time?
If Adobe drops the charges, could Skylarov sue Adobe in hopes that the case would again bring up the constitutionality of the law? Or would it even come into consideration?
I know Java isn't very popular here, but I have to say this... (I guess I wasn't going to be able to spend the karma on Christmas presents anyway)
I think this is a bit insulting to the people at Sun to say IVM is cross platform. Cross platform means a lot more than just being able to run on more than one OS.
Think about internationalization support. Does the ability to swap out text in the GUI constitute internationalization? No. Currency, calendars, colors and many other issues make up internationalization. The same principal applies to cross platform support.
Sun spent a lot of work grappling with issues such as how to provide the programmer with an operating system independent environment. They deal with memory management, threads and display capabilities in ways that work consistently from a kiosk to a cluster of Alphas. They spent a lot of time dealing with j2ee, making sure the application server environment was swappable. They spent a lot of time working on platform independence in general, and I think its insulting to Sun to say that slapping a virtual machine under a compiled language is any more than a small part of the platform independence offered by Java.
Remember the bionic man? Two bionic legs and a bionic arm?
If there's no bionic spine, the first time he would lift a truck, there'd be a sickening crunch in the middle. That's what we mean by the weakest link limiting the strength.
I don't think your example really relates. If each bot is working as a member of a hive, it can't bring down the others, can it? If 10 ants can lift a grape, then surely adding an 11th which is much weaker than the rest wouldn't hurt anything.
The question is... We'll be allowed to make copies ?
I know everyone seems to be worried about this. Personally, I think when the general public realizes that digital property is a much larger deal than Napster, we will get our full rights back. If not, physical ownership of digital material will be less flexible than the old mediums... and most of us can start looking for new careers.
So if given the choice, I'd rather get an old-fashioned paper book that I can keep for as long as I want rather that a cool e-paper one that will BSOD in a couple of years.
So your worried about loosing your books? Make a copy! The paper is just how you look at the book. All of my pictures over the last few years have been digital. They are all written on media that will be outdated within this decade. Does that mean I will loose all my pictures?
No, my pictures are much more safe in digital form. I have backups of several computers and on separate media in multiple locations. When my neighbor's house burned, they lost a lifetime worth of paper photos. Something people won't have to worry about in the near future.
BTW, e-paper doesn't require a charge to keep a picture. Dropping it in the bathtub might kill the storage device and the pc that parses the text, but even that should require more than a couple AAA batteries.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been waiting to get a MP3 player for quite a while now because I want something that can hold a large collection, but not require me to navigate an 8 character display. It sounds like this new Tivo will one day have this feature.
I know it doesn't seem like much, but that kind of integration and ease of use is what made Tivo so popular in the first place. I could really see these things beating out game consoles as the first major entertainment "center piece".
There is no MicrosoftWorld I know Microsoft isn't the most popular company here, but lets at least try to be honest here. Microsoft does have plenty of user-directed-propaganda-fests. They just choose to distribute the information across the contry, rather than making users fly to California. Take a look. Personaly, I haven't been to any of these presentations, (my wife does from time to time). I wish other companies would bring the show to the user like this. I would love to get information about Java directly from Sun without incurring the overhead of plane tickets and hotel rooms.
They must not be done unloading the tape... I don't see the "First Post"
Rather than their typical life-saver colors, I would love to see this in earth tones. Mustard yellow, two shades of puky green, some shade of brown with a bit of grey. It just reminds me of a "modern" lamp from the 1930s. Maybe they should run with it.
No major country wipeouts by asteroids happened in the last few thousand years. 3 million people died in natural disasters in the last two decades(source). I'm just guessing, but I imagine asteroids caused very few of those. Maybe we should concentrate on the ones that cause death rather than the ones that scare people who watch too many movies.
Given the size of the X-Box controller, will this be another controller that only works for people with hands the size of Andre the Giant's hands? I'm a pretty big guy (6'7 300+ lbs). I don't have small hands, and I can't even push the white button and the right trigger at the same time. Who DID they design these things for?
I'll probably get slammed for this, but design patterns are not abstract in any good sense of the word. They are boilerplates that allow infinite monkeys (or bad programmers) to piece applications. It's like the difference between Legos and carpentry. Sure, it's a little harder to cut wood to the right length and you nails or screws to put it together, but would you want to live in a house made of legos? I don't know how well you understand design patterns, but I've never heard anyone contend that design patterns were meant to be the meat of a program. They are simply tools to help you solve the parts of your problems that aren't new to the rest of the world. Why reinvent the wheel? I think in your analogy, design patterns would better be described as nails. You can build a house without them, but why waste the time?
Although I enjoyed his book, and respect his opinion on matters of interface design, Joel Spolsky is no champion of well-designed code. In his book, he even suggests that a programming language shouldn't be used if another can create the same user interface in less time... as if the time it takes to create the first version of a product should take precedence of other factors such as maintainability of code, reuse, and flexibility. He does a good job of regurgitating the works of other interface specialists, but he is not an expert in code maintenance.
This is a lesson to be learned. Engineer your code from the beginning. Use easy to understand commenting, and strucutured code. Although it takes some discipline, you will almost never have to reconsider "re-writing from scratch". Even if the people maintaining the code had anything to do with it's original design (doubtful), they can't do anything about it now. A more practical solution would be to create tests, and refactor the code piece by piece. I am only beginning to use the ideas presented in Martin Fowler's "Refactoring", but they are really helping me clean up my code. More importantly, the changes are safe. Fowler's book warns me of problems I might run into, and gives hints as to what I should look for. Although I'm using Java and am lucky enough to be using IntelliJ's IDEA (which is an IDE with built in refactoring capabilities), I'm sure there is a solution for Perl (even if it is more manual).
I know these are just books, but I really think this is the same thing Star Trek has always suffered from - lack of continuity. On the rare occasion things don't wrap themselves up perfectly within 60 minutes, any attempt at a story arc seems forced.
On the up side, you can watch the episodes (or the movies) in any order... you don't have to worry about back-story.
Personally, I think that anti-hate laws are a good thing. Freedom can only exist within limitations. I agree. We just disagree on what the limitations should be.
Why is this a distinction? Do we want to drop all charges against Milosovich because he's 'not actively killing anyone' anymore? You Americans have no statute of limitations so why should this matter? You're simply protecting your own and not supporting other nations (ie France) If Milosovich wants to go on Larry King before we kill him, that's fine. There's no good reason to keep him from speaking (unless you think everyone is so weak minded, that they would follow him). Does that mean he should be forgiven? No. If the people who are selling these things on Yahoo, are killers (which I think would be a big assumption), then put them on trial, and have them put in the big chair. If you just don't like what their auctioning, then don't buy it. As far as supporting France, you can go F### yourself. My grandfather had most of his stomach removed after he dropped into France. He was never healthy again. If France needs our help, they know they have it. If they want to restrict freedoms in the name of fear, then they should expect exactly what they get.
UML isn't just used for design. We use it to explain existing software. A class diagram (even a generated one) can explain a package at a glance... many times it would take pages of documentation to do the same.
We demand that all terrorist assets be frozen by all countries "or else" (which is not to say I don't agree with that action), but we won't brook anyone telling us to not sell essentially terrorist "memorabilia". Consistency is great, isn't it? I have a small distinction to point out: The terrorist money being frozen would have been spent on killing civilians. Those terrorists are active today. Nazi memorabilia are, for the most part, historical artifacts (like a civil war flag or a gun fired by Napoleon). It's not like the money from Nazi memorabilia would go towards funding a new Nazi party.
The idea isn't just for AMD to be the cheapest. If they were consistantly 6 monthes behind Intel, but always offered a lower price, they would simply be regaurded as 'dicount chips'. They want to be known for offering comparable quality for a better price. The only way they will be seen as comparable to the market leader is to beat them on every benchmark... after all, they have a prejudice to overcome.
I don't know, but I already learned one interface (typing) to make my computer's life easier. Why should I do all the work? Exactly! Wasn't the whole point of voice recognition to make computers interact with humans the same way we interact with each other? Lets be realistic... the reason Palm uses Graffiti is because the keyboard was too small to use... not because it recognizes handwriting so well. Graffiti does not satisfy the goals of handwriting recognition, and this technology does not satisfy the goals of voice recognition.
Yes, we all know its in Microsoft's nature to act this way. We even understand why. But does that mean we can't dislike them too? Just because we understand why they do these things, and even if we might do the same thing in their place... that doesn't make it a good thing... and it doesn't mean we can't bitch about it.
If acquitted, wouldn't it be based on the ridiculous nature of the law? He did break the law, after all (a stupid law, but a law none the less). Would he still be able to sue Adobe? Or would Adobe be well defended by the fact that the law existed at the time? If Adobe drops the charges, could Skylarov sue Adobe in hopes that the case would again bring up the constitutionality of the law? Or would it even come into consideration?
So what? Kahn was the ruler of Asia and most of Europe in 1996... Its a TV show! just enjoy it!
I know Java isn't very popular here, but I have to say this... (I guess I wasn't going to be able to spend the karma on Christmas presents anyway) I think this is a bit insulting to the people at Sun to say IVM is cross platform. Cross platform means a lot more than just being able to run on more than one OS. Think about internationalization support. Does the ability to swap out text in the GUI constitute internationalization? No. Currency, calendars, colors and many other issues make up internationalization. The same principal applies to cross platform support. Sun spent a lot of work grappling with issues such as how to provide the programmer with an operating system independent environment. They deal with memory management, threads and display capabilities in ways that work consistently from a kiosk to a cluster of Alphas. They spent a lot of time dealing with j2ee, making sure the application server environment was swappable. They spent a lot of time working on platform independence in general, and I think its insulting to Sun to say that slapping a virtual machine under a compiled language is any more than a small part of the platform independence offered by Java.
Remember the bionic man? Two bionic legs and a bionic arm? If there's no bionic spine, the first time he would lift a truck, there'd be a sickening crunch in the middle. That's what we mean by the weakest link limiting the strength. I don't think your example really relates. If each bot is working as a member of a hive, it can't bring down the others, can it? If 10 ants can lift a grape, then surely adding an 11th which is much weaker than the rest wouldn't hurt anything.
Get real? Gas prices here doubled in less than 4 hours! Check out the article
CNN is reporting that at least one plane was taken over with knives.
The question is... We'll be allowed to make copies ? I know everyone seems to be worried about this. Personally, I think when the general public realizes that digital property is a much larger deal than Napster, we will get our full rights back. If not, physical ownership of digital material will be less flexible than the old mediums... and most of us can start looking for new careers.
So if given the choice, I'd rather get an old-fashioned paper book that I can keep for as long as I want rather that a cool e-paper one that will BSOD in a couple of years. So your worried about loosing your books? Make a copy! The paper is just how you look at the book. All of my pictures over the last few years have been digital. They are all written on media that will be outdated within this decade. Does that mean I will loose all my pictures? No, my pictures are much more safe in digital form. I have backups of several computers and on separate media in multiple locations. When my neighbor's house burned, they lost a lifetime worth of paper photos. Something people won't have to worry about in the near future. BTW, e-paper doesn't require a charge to keep a picture. Dropping it in the bathtub might kill the storage device and the pc that parses the text, but even that should require more than a couple AAA batteries.