The above AC has it right on the money. First, acquiring company is giving us access to a large base of installed clients interested in our application. Furthermore, to answer the parent, we (the quints) do receive a cut of the revenue we bring in from new installations of our software,as such we are not sacrificing all of our sales (and profit) to the mother company. Lastly, the scenario of being fired on day one is trumped since we all have employment contracts of various minimum durations.
Apple has a great speech recognition and speech rendering engine built into OS X along with a full complement of features for disabled people. My father with severe macular degeneration can use my iBook reasonably well with these features and some applescripts built using these commands. I've added little scripts to Safari and Mail.app to help him out, but the Speakable Items features on their own are quite complete.
I just whipped up a script to read a selected bit of this article in Safari, save it to an AIFF file then use iTunes to convert that AIFF file to an mp3. Listen to the result here.
These guys are the best source for firewire enclosures I know of. While they don't have exactly what you describe, this enclosure is quite nice...and on sale. I would buy one, but for some reason it doesn't work with Macs.
Lotus ScreenCam is something you should check out. Also, Microsoft Camcorder is a blatant rip-off of Lotus ScreenCam and came free with Office 97, but I don't recall it capturing audio.
Both of these apps are old enough that they may even run under Wine reliably.
Visiting the Vasa remains one of my favorite things to do in one of the greatest cities in the world. And you'd better check it out soon, it's found to be deteriorating quickly.
Speaking of deterioration, now is the time to visit Venice. Venice is sinking and is not to be missed! It truly is a marvel of ingenuity and beauty.
Not that I'm against them, they're better than other eco-groups which do nothing but spout speculative doom-and-gloom prophecies. At least these guys are scientists, not activists.
What's the presumption here? Is it that to be "better" one has to have some overt economic merit to The Cor? What's wrong with our society funding research just for the sake of knowledge? Do you think environmental scientists are some sort of professional welfare recipients? This sentiment is assinine enough to be fodder for The Simpsons:
From The Simpsons: Bart The Fink (1996):
"It doesn't matter how you live or what you did. As long as you're on TV, people will respect you."
"Respect? Pah! What good is respect without the moolah to back it up? Everywhere I go I see teachers driving Ferraris! Research scientists drinking champagne!" Bart Simpson and Krusty the Clown
Ayn Rand was right, science is ruined by public funding. Scientific pursuit and public opinion make poor partners.
but isn't the biggest thing against single-sign-on the fact that there's a single point of failure? why would open source change that?
In a word: No.
For one, this doesn't need to be implemented as a single point, physically. By your faulty assertion, DNS can be considered a "single point of failure" , and while DNS is decidedly vulernable, the internet somehow manages to have worked well for a while now.;)
If it were me, I'd look at the architecture of DNS and copy the strengths of its distributed design. Then again, DNS is borne of scientists aiming for an open internet, not corporations looking to lock it down.
They are losing buisiness because they are treating their customers like shit.
It's difficult to argue with such common sense. However, while I can cite dozens of companies that excel due to their excellent regard for customers, I can't recall any significant company that has genuinely lost business due to its poor treatment of customers. Corporate leaders know monopolies or otherwise gargantuan enterprises are largely immune to even the most scathing customer opinion.
You could always take a step back in time and use 10base-2. Yeah, coaxial cable sucks and you're limited to 10 Mbps. Also, I have no idea if any embedded ethernet controllers support BNC connectors, but this would allow to you take one device out of the power consumption equation.
"Our industry is maturing and we need to be more legally careful and rigorous.
This confuses me. I have never had to agree to a license to use the fruits of much more mature industries. For instance, has anyone ever made you read a license after purchasing a new car, or crossing a bridge, or entering a building, or...
We apologise. The remainder of this thought has been interrupted by the cacophony of a million laywers simultaneously drooling.
Octave is primarily used as a plotting tool, no? If for you the answer is yes, than by all means check out Scigraphica. Scigraphica reminds me a great deal of the wonderful plotting packages like Stanford Graphics that I once used as a budding scientist. It claims to be aiming for the functionality of Microcal Origin. I can't speak for its spreadsheet capabilities, but its plotting capabilities have impressed me more than any other GPL equivalent.
I just read this and nodded my head a lot. Your point about frameworks is excellent -- it brought up memories of A.C.E. and made me shudder. MFC might be no worse than the other do-too-much-frameworks. FLTK anyone?
Having worked at one of the world's largest OCR/Forms processing vendors, take it from me: don't do this.
OCR forms processing does:
waste money and time
create unnecessary pain
require high-quality and expensive printed forms
require high-quality and expensive scanning equipment
introduce more human error
OCR forms processing does NOT:
"save a lot of data entry"
do anything automatically (unless your forms are all checkboxes)
save money or time
That said, if you have a lot of questions to be answered, a well designed form using as little handwritten responses as possible (all checkboxes are best), may be viable.
Frankly, most of the large projects I worked on could have gotten the task done easier and cheaper writing an app to run on low-end Palms given to each interviewee. Seriously.
If you would like more concrete advice or contacts with people in the industry, email me.
I've played with BXXP/BEEP, and it is quite cool. Truly amazing P2P applications should be sprouting from its vines. However, the application that should be it's shining glory doesn't use it: Jabber. There must be someone out there in the jabber community that can expound on this.
Hanging my head in shame, I'm one of those "still inventing his own application layer protocols". ASN.1 and RPC were also supposed to save me from doing this. Lately, I've found I've been implementing my own protocols using the concept of netstrings to suit my admittedly low-level needs better. Sadly, as XML and its derivatives mushroom in complexity, I find them less appealing.
I think that this is a troll, although I can't tell for sure. Seems a little misinformed, at least.
I will admit it's been a while since I've used MFC. However, my experience predates Windows by a fair amount, so my appraisal of MFC isn't based so much on an ignorance of the windows API but on knowledge of many GUI api's in general. Having used Iris, OpenStep and others before Win32, I can look at the MFC code generated by the wizards (and by myself) and conclude it's garbage. I've created comparable apps, in other frameworks, and MFC has for me always been the most painful to use. Borland OWL comes in a close second. Motif gets third.
If you want to do fancy stuff, then you have to know what events to handle, what the creation sequences are, and occasionally there are subtle interactions between MFC and the API.
The subtleties you have worked hard to understand and work within don't exist in other, more perspicuously designed GUI frameworks. I would rather have something behave the right way the first time than in some peculiar way to be vaguely deduced/read about. I understand your affinity for MFC: once you've gone through the pain and considerable expense in time of learning it, it's hard to believe there's something else out there that's much simpler to use and equally, if not more, powerful.
If he already knows MFC, then porting to wxWindows is quite trivial.
Finally, porting fromanything to anything is by definition more work that simply writing that one thing once. If you mean for your code to run on multiple platforms, start from scratch coding using tools intended to work on multiple platforms. If you want to write windows apps, use.NET, cuz' MFC is dead don't ya' know.
I have not used QT, so it may also be easy, but QT has licensing issues if you want to distribute a commercial application, whereas wxWindows does not.
This is a valid point. I made the assumption that hardly anyone with this cursory a knowledge in GUI programming on windows would be creating yet another chess program for commercial purposes.
Do the benefits of supposed cross-platformness outweigh the drawbacks of having to learn a new system...
This is a question you can only answer yourself. It's always more work to take more than one platform into consideration, and wxWindows is no panacea in this regard. Only bother with cross platform coding if you really indend for the code to be run across platforms. That said, wxWindows is nicer to use than MFC, although for a Windows-based chess program, I doubt you'll be able to avoid MFC entirely. MFC just does more than wxWindows.
...and not having all the (incredibly wonderful) automatic code generation features Visual C++ provides for MFC programs?
This autogenerated code is so awful, I used to create it just to frighten people: "Look how many lines of code it takes for this dialog box!! Pay me more!!" MFC is the single largest reason I've given up on Windows programming permanently (Winsock is a close second). Since this is clearly a learning experience for you (right?), then go ahead, play with MFC. Nothing teaches like pain. But be warned, MFC plus Visual C++ can make you hate real C++ by warping your mind. __int32 indeed.
Or would it perhaps be better to write it in MFC since I am reasonably familiar with it then port it to wxWindows?
This is the path of greatest work and quite likely greatest learning. If you'd like to pursue the path of least pain to produce a truly cross-platform GUI app, I suggest, from experience, TrollTech's QT.
Now I've only listed a couple of places here, if you want more let me know. I think you'll notice that the big names (The Apple Store, MacMall, Etc.) aren't listed above, because I figured you could find those easily enough. If you want a list of big guys, email me. They have good deals too sometimes.
I don't see yer email address here, so I'll just say here: Yes, please give up a brain dump of all this info you consider obvious. I'm still a neophyte in this realm and can use the head start.
Meaning you take the iBook and log in as necessary to the tower (wireless natch!) to do your C++ compute intensive stuff while she gets the tower to do her JBuilder stuff.
I like this idea. Hmm, those iBooks are pretty damn cool too...
I'm morphing into such a fan of Apple luxury hardware!
Slashdot Mirror
The above AC has it right on the money. First, acquiring company is giving us access to a large base of installed clients interested in our application. Furthermore, to answer the parent, we (the quints) do receive a cut of the revenue we bring in from new installations of our software,as such we are not sacrificing all of our sales (and profit) to the mother company. Lastly, the scenario of being fired on day one is trumped since we all have employment contracts of various minimum durations.
I just whipped up a script to read a selected bit of this article in Safari, save it to an AIFF file then use iTunes to convert that AIFF file to an mp3. Listen to the result here.
Lotus ScreenCam is something you should check out. Also, Microsoft Camcorder is a blatant rip-off of Lotus ScreenCam and came free with Office 97, but I don't recall it capturing audio.
Both of these apps are old enough that they may even run under Wine reliably.
See what may be the oldest, tangible example of failure in successful engineering: the Vasa museum in Sweden.
Visiting the Vasa remains one of my favorite things to do in one of the greatest cities in the world. And you'd better check it out soon, it's found to be deteriorating quickly.
Speaking of deterioration, now is the time to visit Venice. Venice is sinking and is not to be missed! It truly is a marvel of ingenuity and beauty.
Now THAT'S a troll.
Here, have my unwanted troll points, you earned 'em.
Pretty sanctimonious words for the largest retailer of firearms in the US.
What's the presumption here? Is it that to be "better" one has to have some overt economic merit to The Cor? What's wrong with our society funding research just for the sake of knowledge? Do you think environmental scientists are some sort of professional welfare recipients? This sentiment is assinine enough to be fodder for The Simpsons:
Ayn Rand was right, science is ruined by public funding. Scientific pursuit and public opinion make poor partners.
In a word: No.
For one, this doesn't need to be implemented as a single point, physically. By your faulty assertion, DNS can be considered a "single point of failure" , and while DNS is decidedly vulernable, the internet somehow manages to have worked well for a while now. ;)
If it were me, I'd look at the architecture of DNS and copy the strengths of its distributed design. Then again, DNS is borne of scientists aiming for an open internet, not corporations looking to lock it down.
It's difficult to argue with such common sense. However, while I can cite dozens of companies that excel due to their excellent regard for customers, I can't recall any significant company that has genuinely lost business due to its poor treatment of customers. Corporate leaders know monopolies or otherwise gargantuan enterprises are largely immune to even the most scathing customer opinion.
Please, prove me wrong!
You could always take a step back in time and use 10base-2. Yeah, coaxial cable sucks and you're limited to 10 Mbps.
Also, I have no idea if any embedded ethernet controllers support BNC connectors, but this would allow to you take one device out of the power consumption equation.
Starting references: here and here.
This confuses me. I have never had to agree to a license to use the fruits of much more mature industries. For instance, has anyone ever made you read a license after purchasing a new car, or crossing a bridge, or entering a building, or...
We apologise. The remainder of this thought has been interrupted by the cacophony of a million laywers simultaneously drooling.
It was a joke, son. Gladly, the moderator that modded it "+1 Funny" got it.
Once I had to debug a program written in MFC... Wait. Sorry. The memory is too painful to recall.
Excellent point. It's also another reason why I've found Parasoft's Insure++ to be superior to Purify.
I'm sincerely looking forward to checking out Valgrind. Can someone post a feature comparison of these three?
OCR forms processing does:
OCR forms processing does NOT:
- "save a lot of data entry"
- do anything automatically (unless your forms are all checkboxes)
- save money or time
That said, if you have a lot of questions to be answered, a well designed form using as little handwritten responses as possible (all checkboxes are best), may be viable.Frankly, most of the large projects I worked on could have gotten the task done easier and cheaper writing an app to run on low-end Palms given to each interviewee. Seriously.
If you would like more concrete advice or contacts with people in the industry, email me.
Hanging my head in shame, I'm one of those "still inventing his own application layer protocols". ASN.1 and RPC were also supposed to save me from doing this. Lately, I've found I've been implementing my own protocols using the concept of netstrings to suit my admittedly low-level needs better. Sadly, as XML and its derivatives mushroom in complexity, I find them less appealing.
I will admit it's been a while since I've used MFC. However, my experience predates Windows by a fair amount, so my appraisal of MFC isn't based so much on an ignorance of the windows API but on knowledge of many GUI api's in general. Having used Iris, OpenStep and others before Win32, I can look at the MFC code generated by the wizards (and by myself) and conclude it's garbage. I've created comparable apps, in other frameworks, and MFC has for me always been the most painful to use. Borland OWL comes in a close second. Motif gets third.
The subtleties you have worked hard to understand and work within don't exist in other, more perspicuously designed GUI frameworks. I would rather have something behave the right way the first time than in some peculiar way to be vaguely deduced/read about. I understand your affinity for MFC: once you've gone through the pain and considerable expense in time of learning it, it's hard to believe there's something else out there that's much simpler to use and equally, if not more, powerful.
Finally, porting fromanything to anything is by definition more work that simply writing that one thing once. If you mean for your code to run on multiple platforms, start from scratch coding using tools intended to work on multiple platforms. If you want to write windows apps, use .NET, cuz' MFC is dead don't ya' know.
This is a valid point. I made the assumption that hardly anyone with this cursory a knowledge in GUI programming on windows would be creating yet another chess program for commercial purposes.
This is a question you can only answer yourself. It's always more work to take more than one platform into consideration, and wxWindows is no panacea in this regard. Only bother with cross platform coding if you really indend for the code to be run across platforms. That said, wxWindows is nicer to use than MFC, although for a Windows-based chess program, I doubt you'll be able to avoid MFC entirely. MFC just does more than wxWindows.
This autogenerated code is so awful, I used to create it just to frighten people: "Look how many lines of code it takes for this dialog box!! Pay me more!!" MFC is the single largest reason I've given up on Windows programming permanently (Winsock is a close second). Since this is clearly a learning experience for you (right?), then go ahead, play with MFC. Nothing teaches like pain. But be warned, MFC plus Visual C++ can make you hate real C++ by warping your mind. __int32 indeed.
This is the path of greatest work and quite likely greatest learning. If you'd like to pursue the path of least pain to produce a truly cross-platform GUI app, I suggest, from experience, TrollTech's QT.I don't see yer email address here, so I'll just say here: Yes, please give up a brain dump of all this info you consider obvious. I'm still a neophyte in this realm and can use the head start.
I like this idea. Hmm, those iBooks are pretty damn cool too...
I'm morphing into such a fan of Apple luxury hardware!