Windows 1.0?! In 1984 PCs didn't have sound cards and wave-files weren't invented. Media Player and RIFF wave-files were introduced in Multimedia for Windows, an optional add-on for Windows 3.0 which was bundled into Windows from version 3.1 onwards.
"...and finally, I'd like to say that reading totally sucks ass! Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read; it seemed exciting and magical; but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I'm never reading again!"
Do you get the same fuel efficiency from Tesco's petrol as from other brands? I have seen it claimed that the quality of supermarket petrol tends to be lower (sufficiently lower to outweigh the price difference) but I don't know what the reality is.
I read that some of the cloned computers had expansion connectors with 2.5 mm (rather than 0.1") spacing betwen contacts, and on a wide connector this could result in mechanical incompatibility.
While playing it shows a red triangle above the tracks and a vertical red line through all the tracks at the playing position. When you pause the line goes away but the triangle stays.
You can't make a backup copy that way. It is impossible to write CSS keys on the kind of recordable DVD available to the general public, so you would have to use DeCSS to play the backup!
The centre of gravity has to be in geostationary orbit, right? So shouldn't they start from a point in geostationary orbit and build in both directions at once?
There is in Europe; it's called DVB. The STBs include slots which you put your subscription card into to do the decryption. This could be integrated into TVs, though currently few TVs can do digital decoding.
I suppose it's true that satire is redundant, then. I can't see how you could possibly maintain those comments or how another developer could take them in.
In embedded space we neither have time time nor resources to do this, yet we do. The biggest cost is finding and fixing the software bugs because of it. It's not a file format issue, it's a communication issue, Serial, Network, etc.
It's exactly the same kind of issue.
I massively hurts not being able to alloc a block of mem and just dump it over the wire- one side wil write big endian out, and the other will read it in as little endian.
Why don't you write and use a library for this? It's not that difficult to do and if most platforms you deal with have the same byte order and alignment conventions then you can optimise for that case. Perhaps you could have the library juggle the bytes in-place and, if sending, optionally juggle them back before returning. The juggling would be a no-op on most platforms.
Until you work with these problems first hand you won't appreciate how dumbit is that everone but x86 does big endian.
But it isn't "everyone but x86". There's a pretty even split.
Ah, I remember PPC being able to do both too now that you mention it. So IA64 supports it, but does x68-64?
x86-64, being an extension of x86, supports little-endian only.
Re:Automated testing is overrated
on
Debugging
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· Score: 1
If it takes more time to write automated test than to execute the test case 5 or 6 times - fuck the automation.
Maybe we're talking at cross-purposes here. I don't see how it can take that long to write a test case, but then my main experience is with unit tests rather than systems tests. If you're talking about testing systems with complicated UIs here then I see that that may be difficult to automate. Nevertheless there are tools that can help with this.
Again the main problem with it is that it will test the code that's already "good" without going to unexplored code paths.
I don't think that's a problem; it frees up the human beings to work on better coverage.
Automation suite passes, so there are no more bugs, right? WRONG!
No amount of testing can prove the absence of bugs. So this attitude is always wrong.
I'm not saying automation is useless. There are certain tests that are nearly impossible to do without automation, I'm just saying that most of the time cost outweighs the benefits.
To me the cost seems pretty minor. They let you catch bugs earlier and make it easier to identify the source.
MIPS and PPC support both byte orders, as does IA64. Alpha is either little-endian or else supports both byte orders; I forget which. Besides which, byte order is only one of the problems you'll run into if you treat memory dumps as a file format (think about word length, alignment and floating-point formats). Try implementing an architecture-neutral file format instead.
Yes, when you give a product a name based on the number of bits it processes at once you should double the number in its successor even if the number of bits hasn't changed. For example Soundblaster 16 (for 16-bit samples), then Soundblaster 32 (for the number of FM channels it has) and then Soundblaster 64 (for the number of channels the software supports). So Intel should have said Itanium 2 implemented the IA-128 architecture, leaving them free to use the number 64 for the Pentium V or whatever it is.
Add to those consequences additional training and debugging costs.
Re:Race Conditions?
on
Debugging
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The people who gave us Java are way too fond of threads, actually. (Want non-blocking sockets? Sorry, you'll have to add one thread per socket.) Most programmers still don't understand how and why to do synchronisation because they don't understand how weak modern memory models are (and have to be if processors are to continue accelerating). So while threads should not be banned they should also not be used without careful consideration of the consequences (more complex code and possibly reduced performance due to synchronisation) and the alternatives (multiple processes, asynchronous I/O, maybe no concurrency at all).
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 1.0?! In 1984 PCs didn't have sound cards and wave-files weren't invented. Media Player and RIFF wave-files were introduced in Multimedia for Windows, an optional add-on for Windows 3.0 which was bundled into Windows from version 3.1 onwards.
"...and finally, I'd like to say that reading totally sucks ass! Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read; it seemed exciting and magical; but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I'm never reading again!"
By that logic, "Britney Spears" and names of other "celebrities" would also be blocked.
I tried this in Word XP; it doesn't work any more.
Do you get the same fuel efficiency from Tesco's petrol as from other brands? I have seen it claimed that the quality of supermarket petrol tends to be lower (sufficiently lower to outweigh the price difference) but I don't know what the reality is.
I have been meaning to see it but still haven't got around to it.
Do you really want to know what the error message in your sig means, or are you just commenting on the non-obviousness of the message?
The PC stands for paper carrier, so it means "load letter paper into the paper carrier".
Yebbut, barter lets you evade taxes (which is why tax offices may take a dim view of it).
I read that some of the cloned computers had expansion connectors with 2.5 mm (rather than 0.1") spacing betwen contacts, and on a wide connector this could result in mechanical incompatibility.
While playing it shows a red triangle above the tracks and a vertical red line through all the tracks at the playing position. When you pause the line goes away but the triangle stays.
Gigabyte motherboards now come with two BIOS chips so that there's a complete working spare if an upgrade is not completed.
You can't make a backup copy that way. It is impossible to write CSS keys on the kind of recordable DVD available to the general public, so you would have to use DeCSS to play the backup!
The centre of gravity has to be in geostationary orbit, right? So shouldn't they start from a point in geostationary orbit and build in both directions at once?
There is in Europe; it's called DVB. The STBs include slots which you put your subscription card into to do the decryption. This could be integrated into TVs, though currently few TVs can do digital decoding.
I suppose it's true that satire is redundant, then. I can't see how you could possibly maintain those comments or how another developer could take them in.
Slashdot mods fail to recognise satire. Film at 11.
(This happens to me too; maybe I should put smilies in when I'm not being serious but I like to be "dry".)
There are cases where whole-sale copying is allowed without explicit permission, such as time-shifting TV programs using a VCR.
Agreed.
In the UK it is illegal to make MP3s from your own CDs. The copyright exceptions for "fair dealing" don't cover nearly as much as the US's "fair use".
It's exactly the same kind of issue.
Why don't you write and use a library for this? It's not that difficult to do and if most platforms you deal with have the same byte order and alignment conventions then you can optimise for that case. Perhaps you could have the library juggle the bytes in-place and, if sending, optionally juggle them back before returning. The juggling would be a no-op on most platforms.
But it isn't "everyone but x86". There's a pretty even split.
x86-64, being an extension of x86, supports little-endian only.
Maybe we're talking at cross-purposes here. I don't see how it can take that long to write a test case, but then my main experience is with unit tests rather than systems tests. If you're talking about testing systems with complicated UIs here then I see that that may be difficult to automate. Nevertheless there are tools that can help with this.
I don't think that's a problem; it frees up the human beings to work on better coverage.
No amount of testing can prove the absence of bugs. So this attitude is always wrong.
To me the cost seems pretty minor. They let you catch bugs earlier and make it easier to identify the source.
Random IRC conversations wouldn't be worth the disks they were logged on. I doubt anyone bothers doing that routinely.
MIPS and PPC support both byte orders, as does IA64. Alpha is either little-endian or else supports both byte orders; I forget which. Besides which, byte order is only one of the problems you'll run into if you treat memory dumps as a file format (think about word length, alignment and floating-point formats). Try implementing an architecture-neutral file format instead.
Yes, when you give a product a name based on the number of bits it processes at once you should double the number in its successor even if the number of bits hasn't changed. For example Soundblaster 16 (for 16-bit samples), then Soundblaster 32 (for the number of FM channels it has) and then Soundblaster 64 (for the number of channels the software supports). So Intel should have said Itanium 2 implemented the IA-128 architecture, leaving them free to use the number 64 for the Pentium V or whatever it is.
Add to those consequences additional training and debugging costs.
The people who gave us Java are way too fond of threads, actually. (Want non-blocking sockets? Sorry, you'll have to add one thread per socket.) Most programmers still don't understand how and why to do synchronisation because they don't understand how weak modern memory models are (and have to be if processors are to continue accelerating). So while threads should not be banned they should also not be used without careful consideration of the consequences (more complex code and possibly reduced performance due to synchronisation) and the alternatives (multiple processes, asynchronous I/O, maybe no concurrency at all).