I've often wondered why all of the player's gui's - Media Player, Real, and Quicktime - suck. All of the user interface research that has been done over the years must have been thrown away or forgotten.
I personally don't believe that they use HTML Help for stronger control of the market. I do believe that they too became victim to the "Let's do everything in HTML, and anything that doesn't fit in HTML let us make funky extensions within HTML to do" thinking that many other people and companies have.
I was thinking this very thought the last time that I was in Las Vegas. After an armageddon or something, all data of our civilization would be lost. The nevada sand storms would cover and preserve the Luxor hotel. The future civilization would dig and find the huge pyramid. What would they think went on there? It must have been some sort of religous gathering place for the slaves. And what of the significance of the Sphinx in front of the Luxor? Is it pointing to the other, slightly older Sphinx in what used to be Egypt? This one group of people must have migrated via a frozen channel or something. Or maybe they had aliens helping! What else could explain it? There is no evidence that this ancient civilization had any other high technology. { it is all dust now }
hehehe
Encrypted computer data will lead us into a new dark age of information if people are stupid and decide to archive books and artwork digitally and destroy the originals. Tablets and oil paintings are more effective to document history.
If you have a three or four letter username in your email address, you WILL get spam. I've watched spammers hit my email server with a full dictionary attack. They then remember the email addresses that didn't bounce. It is really irritating to see 1000 msgs failing to be bounced in your queue...
So the ISP does not have to sell your email address for you to get spam
Yes, I TOTALLY agree with you. Being well-rounded (not physically!) is of the utmost importance.
At the same time that I started with computers I also started with a dirt bike, and expanded into motorcross racing. I then moved to music (eee!) and MIDI and other live performance projects which merged back into the computer.
I wish I did continue with motorcross and other sports to become more well-rounded - as it was, I was forced in my mid 20's to become more socially active and well rounded, probably with still more to go.
I think you are misunderstanding the issue here. I also have been using computers since an early age.
There is a difference between what you and I did and what the kids in elementary school do now.
You and I hacked video games, learned 6502/6510 on our own, and learned how the computer worked intimately.
In the typical school setting nowadays, none of this happens. The schools usually present the computers as a fixed system in a class running a specific program. Not as an interesting tool to examine, understand, or learn to build or hack.
The difference is that you and I were pulled by the computers to learn them. I believe that kids being 'pushed' to learn specific apps would get nothing out of them. Imagine if in 1983 all the schools had computers - Probably all they would have done with them is teach the students the control codes for WordStar. Hardly useful later on in life. Any student who learned how to run the CP/M assembler to create command files would be told 'Stop that! It is not on the final exam!'
It really comes down to how the computers are presented to the students.
As an aside, one of my very good friends is an accomplished musician with a geophysics degree.
I know some people who's marriages were stressed 'because' of everquest. Of course, these marriages were doomed to start with - But in this respect Evercrack is better than real crack, because evercrack doesn't directly make you sick and chemically addicted.
So maybe evercrack is a good thing to have around... some people have addictive personalities, some addictions are better than others..
Correct, as long as you are not in a multi-threaded environment. If you are, then there will be synchronization overhead for all individual string operations, as even const methods can modify the reference count.
On my dual-g4, X11 apps run much faster under linux than they do under XonX. Aqua is real purdy but carbon apps like the finder are sometimes frustratingly unresponsive. Plus, a lot of stuff like SourceNavigator just does not compile under Mac-OSX but zips along great under linux ppc.
I run both and like both. Why criticize someone who is doing something that you are unwilling or unable to do?
Ok, so now you are not using operator +, you are using operator +=, in a very similiar way that one would use strcat. In fact, I wouldn't use strcat anyways, if it were a hotspot I would have a more efficient method that allowed chaining.
It solidifies the point - remember that just because there is a nifty 'operator +()' doesn't mean that it is always better to use just because it syntactically looks nice.
Of course premature optimization should be avoided. But people should keep in mind that by using operator overloading excessively, you may make it real tough to refactor the code that does turn out to be a hotspot in the end.
I have been very disappointed in the quality, bugginess, and speed of many implementations of the STL and standard library.
I know about expession templates, and also know why they are not used in std::string. The allocator I am not worried about - if there are no unnecessary temporaries, then there is no need for unnecessary allocations. However, at this point, many stl's are still doing this.
So, in summary, yes now it is slower but maybe not in the future.... Is that fair to say? Does that mean c++ is not ready for prime time? of course not, I use it all the time. But you gotta know when to forgo the syntactical sugar that causes c++ to be unnecessarily slower than C (even when the C is coded safely).
The point is for the politics of the copyleft, spreading free-as-in-speech software everywhere. It doesn't matter that Mac-OSX is better than linux for a bunch of things. Mac-OSX is not GPL'd.
It doesn't stop me from running both.
Who are you to tell anyone what projects they should or should not work on???
example:
---------
std::string a = "hello", b=", ", c="world", d=".";
std::string e = a+b+c+d;
std::cout << e << std::endl;
---------
No c++ compiler can optimize the temporaries out. Each temporary created calls the default allocator for string, which usually is malloc and free which are usually dead slow in an smp/multithreaded environment.
In this case, using strcat is many many times faster that operator +.
If you couldn't disable him, now that would be ethically wrong!
No it wouldn't. Because you still have a choice to not use the software. However it would be ethically wrong if you did not have the right to choose a different software packages. Even then, the ethics are in the person who revokes your right.
Software has no ethics, right or wrong. People do.
--Jeff
how much oil could a gargoyle gargle if a gargoyle could gargle oil?
Slashdot Mirror
ABSOLUTELY!!!
In fact I have noticed that school libraries have gone downhill since net access was added to them. The internet is NOT a library!
Librarians CHOOSE which books to put on the shelf. Is that censorship?
Librarians also keep track of the books you borrow. Is that a privacy violation?
--Jeff
They will experience loss of sales due to the crappy copy protection scheme.
Then they will blame the losses on unlawful copying and distribution of their music!
They can use this as evidence in the future to promote the SSSCA or whatever new bill they want!
--Jeff
I've often wondered why all of the player's gui's - Media Player, Real, and Quicktime - suck. All of the user interface research that has been done over the years must have been thrown away or forgotten.
--Jeff
Microsoft has many programmers on the payroll. What I would like to know is WHAT DO THEY DO? Are they not capabile of writing their own zlib?
jeff
Correct, however remember that:
#include <mysql.h>
does make your product contain bits of their code.
If you can dynamically load and link to the shared library without utilizing any of their include files, you would be safe. I think...
Jeff
Well, the fact that the typical computer is faster nowadays doesn't mean that programmers should make inefficient code and algorithms.
It would be a good project to do real profiling on gtk/gnome apps to find out where the time is really being wasted.
--Jeff
Nope, IE on the Mac-OSX renders the html itself. The built in apple html renderers for help suck in numerous ways for any slightly complex documents.
--Jeff
I personally don't believe that they use HTML Help for stronger control of the market. I do believe that they too became victim to the "Let's do everything in HTML, and anything that doesn't fit in HTML let us make funky extensions within HTML to do" thinking that many other people and companies have.
--Jeff
I was thinking this very thought the last time that I was in Las Vegas. After an armageddon or something, all data of our civilization would be lost. The nevada sand storms would cover and preserve the Luxor hotel. The future civilization would dig and find the huge pyramid. What would they think went on there? It must have been some sort of religous gathering place for the slaves. And what of the significance of the Sphinx in front of the Luxor? Is it pointing to the other, slightly older Sphinx in what used to be Egypt? This one group of people must have migrated via a frozen channel or something. Or maybe they had aliens helping! What else could explain it? There is no evidence that this ancient civilization had any other high technology. { it is all dust now }
hehehe
Encrypted computer data will lead us into a new dark age of information if people are stupid and decide to archive books and artwork digitally and destroy the originals. Tablets and oil paintings are more effective to document history.
--Jeff
If you have a three or four letter username in your email address, you WILL get spam. I've watched spammers hit my email server with a full dictionary attack. They then remember the email addresses that didn't bounce. It is really irritating to see 1000 msgs failing to be bounced in your queue...
So the ISP does not have to sell your email address for you to get spam
--Jeff
Hey, doesn't his actions now mean that he is a 'HACKER' and now qualifies for a potential maximum life sentence in jail???
--jeff
Yes, I TOTALLY agree with you. Being well-rounded (not physically!) is of the utmost importance.
At the same time that I started with computers I also started with a dirt bike, and expanded into motorcross racing. I then moved to music (eee!) and MIDI and other live performance projects which merged back into the computer.
I wish I did continue with motorcross and other sports to become more well-rounded - as it was, I was forced in my mid 20's to become more socially active and well rounded, probably with still more to go.
--Jeff
I think you are misunderstanding the issue here. I also have been using computers since an early age.
There is a difference between what you and I did and what the kids in elementary school do now.
You and I hacked video games, learned 6502/6510 on our own, and learned how the computer worked intimately.
In the typical school setting nowadays, none of this happens. The schools usually present the computers as a fixed system in a class running a specific program. Not as an interesting tool to examine, understand, or learn to build or hack.
The difference is that you and I were pulled by the computers to learn them. I believe that kids being 'pushed' to learn specific apps would get nothing out of them. Imagine if in 1983 all the schools had computers - Probably all they would have done with them is teach the students the control codes for WordStar. Hardly useful later on in life. Any student who learned how to run the CP/M assembler to create command files would be told 'Stop that! It is not on the final exam!'
It really comes down to how the computers are presented to the students.
As an aside, one of my very good friends is an accomplished musician with a geophysics degree.
--Jeff
I think that any marriage 'ruined' by everquest was already headed for divorce even without everquest.
--Jeff
I know some people who's marriages were stressed 'because' of everquest. Of course, these marriages were doomed to start with - But in this respect Evercrack is better than real crack, because evercrack doesn't directly make you sick and chemically addicted.
So maybe evercrack is a good thing to have around... some people have addictive personalities, some addictions are better than others..
--Jeff
Well, is that true or not?
Or is it irrelevant?
--Jeff
Correct, as long as you are not in a multi-threaded environment. If you are, then there will be synchronization overhead for all individual string operations, as even const methods can modify the reference count.
--Jeff
On my dual-g4, X11 apps run much faster under linux than they do under XonX. Aqua is real purdy but carbon apps like the finder are sometimes frustratingly unresponsive. Plus, a lot of stuff like SourceNavigator just does not compile under Mac-OSX but zips along great under linux ppc.
I run both and like both. Why criticize someone who is doing something that you are unwilling or unable to do?
--jeff
Ok, so now you are not using operator +, you are using operator +=, in a very similiar way that one would use strcat. In fact, I wouldn't use strcat anyways, if it were a hotspot I would have a more efficient method that allowed chaining.
It solidifies the point - remember that just because there is a nifty 'operator +()' doesn't mean that it is always better to use just because it syntactically looks nice.
Of course premature optimization should be avoided. But people should keep in mind that by using operator overloading excessively, you may make it real tough to refactor the code that does turn out to be a hotspot in the end.
I have been very disappointed in the quality, bugginess, and speed of many implementations of the STL and standard library.
--jeff
I know about expession templates, and also know why they are not used in std::string. The allocator I am not worried about - if there are no unnecessary temporaries, then there is no need for unnecessary allocations. However, at this point, many stl's are still doing this.
So, in summary, yes now it is slower but maybe not in the future.... Is that fair to say? Does that mean c++ is not ready for prime time? of course not, I use it all the time. But you gotta know when to forgo the syntactical sugar that causes c++ to be unnecessarily slower than C (even when the C is coded safely).
--jeff
The point is for the politics of the copyleft, spreading free-as-in-speech software everywhere. It doesn't matter that Mac-OSX is better than linux for a bunch of things. Mac-OSX is not GPL'd.
It doesn't stop me from running both.
Who are you to tell anyone what projects they should or should not work on???
--jeff
example:
---------
std::string a = "hello", b=", ", c="world", d=".";
std::string e = a+b+c+d;
std::cout << e << std::endl;
---------
No c++ compiler can optimize the temporaries out. Each temporary created calls the default allocator for string, which usually is malloc and free which are usually dead slow in an smp/multithreaded environment.
In this case, using strcat is many many times faster that operator +.
--Jeff
No it wouldn't. Because you still have a choice to not use the software. However it would be ethically wrong if you did not have the right to choose a different software packages. Even then, the ethics are in the person who revokes your right.
Software has no ethics, right or wrong. People do.
--Jeff
how much oil could a gargoyle gargle if a gargoyle could gargle oil?
Ummm... How about the built in standard dialog box called 'File Open' ?
Windows has rudimentary capabilities to make dialog boxes resizable. The problem is that most programmers are lazy.
--Jeff
Yay! No Bill Gates in Space!
Oh, maybe that could have been a good thing!
--jeff