Anyway, It was sort of an aside that VS.NET doesn't scroll text very well. My machine is a dual 1800+ MP, and I don't really care WHAT the problem is. I should never, ever have problems scrolling TEXT. Fork the intellisense crap onto a seperate thread or something, but let me scroll the text!
I've actually had the memory swapped out on the machine a couple of times.
What leads me to believe that it's the OS is that while my coworkers don't have identical problems, everyone has problems. Crashes, odd behaviour, slowly degrading performance...all of it. The degrading performance also seems something of a giveaway. (I can't restore performance by shutting all my apps down and starting them up, either. Once performance has degraded sufficiently, only a reboot seems to clear it up. Again, I'm tentatively pointing a finger at VS.NET. That stupid thing gives me no end of trouble. That's why I do all of my editing in emacs and compile on the command line.)
And, since I use a G5 at home with an odd trackball, yeah, I only play at work.:)
Let me preface everything by saying I used to be a UNIX administrator.
Now, I work for a company with sysadmins, and they do a good job of taking care of my machine. We make sure it's patched, that we've got the latest drivers, and that the hardware is all running well.
I have no bizarre third party applications running, besides the usual things that should have nothing to to with stability. I use Emacs, Opera, VS.NET, iTunes and PuTTY throughout the day.
Some days, I have no problems. Other days, the problems just stack up. I occasionally have the machine lock up on shut down. I used to have the machine crash 2 or 3 times a week, but I stopped playing Diablo II so much. For whatever reason, XP REALLY doesn't like me playing Diablo II. Blaming things on Diablo II won't work, though - XP should be more than robust enough to handle something like that.
A while back, it would have been more likely that I would have agreed with you. I was running a shell and desktop replacement, but I've switched back to the ordinary base shell now. Nothing I run should be an issue.
As for Linux, I only had it crash a couple of times. Once, when I was playing around with experimental drivers, and a couple times when I was playing with beta kernels. I also had the windowing system crash a few times, but another networked machine always found the box up and running. (I also had some lockups related to heat when my Celeron 300A was starting to go.)
Considering the amount of work I do, I don't really find there to be much excuse for XP dying on me. I think I'm most willing to blame it on VS.NET which is incredibly unstable on its own, crashing and coredumping and giving me internal compiler errors several times a week. I wouldn't be suprised if it were running wild and occasionally kicking the system out from underneath me.
Like I said, as a home system, XP worked GREAT for me. I was running Dual-Head on an ATI, playing lots of games, etc. As a development system, it's been brutal. I have pretty standard high-end hardware (getting older, so not quite as high-end now, but still, a Ti4400 is not exactly bottom of the barrel) and I run standard XBox dev tools. Most of my colleagues have similar problems, though perhaps a little less often than I do.
I'm not really trying to rag on XP particularily much, merely trying to point out that from a stability point of view, I don't think it holds a candle to any UNIX that I've ever worked with. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX, AIX, Linux, OS X and even HP-UX (ick, BTW) seem to be more solid.
As a developer under windows, I can definitely say that XP is pretty pathetic in terms of stability. If the machine doesn't crash on me at least once every two weeks, I've witnessed a miracle. Alas, the miracle is empty, since the system slowly bogs itself down as time goes on, and I end up having to reboot anyway.
To be sure, they've done WONDERS with the stability. When I was using XP as my home operating system, it wasn't too bad. The problem that I've found with XP is that as load ramps up, it's ability to stay stable and usable trends downward increasingly quickly.
Oh, and its dual-processor support is pretty pathetic. The load balancing seems incredibly naive. (And, this may not be an OS problem, but I find that I have problems scrolling text in VS.NET in a timely fashion. Not all the time, but sometimes it'll just stall when trying to do something that I consider a simplistic task.)
It's exactly for that reason that my sig reads the way it does. Temporary moderators have no business having negative mod points. Either mod something up or contribute. Full time moderators should be the only ones wielding the dreaded '-1 Off Topic' or worse, '-1 Overrated', which is a catch-all for things (or posters!) that the moderator doesn't like.
No, I don't expect developers to magically read my mind and get something done. Like I said, I've found a couple of mail clients that seem good enough for me, and I'm waiting for someone to do something great and show me what I've been missing. I don't like the Outlook feel, and that's all I should need to say. I've voted with my choice in mail clients - namely by using and supporting Opera, Mail.app and Mutt. At some point, a developer may notice that some people are discontent with the current layout of email clients, or will have the same views as me and make something better. On that day, I'll certainly be there to back them up.
I'm just voicing an opinion. I think it's kind of lousy that everything looks like Outlook. I don't need to figure a solution out for someone else to implement. I'm not part of the solution, but I'm not part of the problem, either, regardless of what that cliche says.
I don't think that's fair or true at all. People report bugs to OSS projects all the time. Do you submit that if they find a bug, they should go out and fix it? That's a useless waste of resources. Making the authors aware of problems with their software is something that they almost certainly desire. Nobody wants to make a lousy application.
My wants are their project because that's what this game is about. They make something, I tell them that there's a bug, or a user interface problem, and they move to fix it. I don't have time to fix all the bugs and UI problems that I come across. Would you suggest that the developers of mail applications drop everything that they're doing when they find a bug in their editor? That's moronic.
No, not quite. My main Inbox is IMAP, and I can have several 'Inboxes' that it will update from different servers.
However, on my mail server, I also have procmail filtering mail into various IMAP folders. Mail.app won't automatically check THOSE folders, for some reason. I can do a full synchronisation of ALL IMAP folders on a server, but I've got dozens of folders, and some of them see very little activity. Even worse, I can't use the 'Get Mail' button to update just the current mailbox - it updates the Inbox only.
I've fiddled with the settngs all over the place, and I've never found a way to get it to do what I want. Oh, well. I'll complain to Apple, and maybe it'll make it into a future release.
Because, to some extent, that's what they're supposed to be doing. I like Opera's view well enough, as well as Mutt's. The Open Source community is supposed to be a hotbed of new ideas and superior products, and once again we're reduced to ripping off the UI of a company that is routinely criticised for its UI. At least rip off something GOOD.
You're telling me that the people that brought me the Enlightenment WM, Sawfish, FVWM and virtual desktops can't come up with something even a little bit different that's still functional? No, I don't buy it.
Maybe I SHOULD come up with a new email interface, but I've found a couple that I like, and I'll stick with them until someone else comes up with something better. I've got my own projects to work on.
I think we'd need to see the design of this car first to answer some of your questions. I own a 2003 Saturn Ion, and the battery is actually in the trunk, near the recessed spare tyre. They did it to balance the car's mass more evenly. I can still jump the car from under the hood, though. There's a post that can boost the electrical system, and the steel frame of the car is suitable for grounding. There's no reason that this Volvo can't have something similar in the trunk. From a user interface perspective, this is probably even better than direct battery-to-battery jumps, which people seem to rarely get right on the first try.
Cars have become sufficiently complex that I'm sure most people have no idea what's going on under the hood anyway. The only way that Volvo can make this work is by making sure that their mechanics are trustworthy and competent. I'm already at the mercy of car mechanics, contractors, TV repair shops, etc. This isn't that big of a step.
1) Opera DOES have a non-audio mail notification. I have sound turned off, and when mail comes in, I get a little box in the bottom left hand corner of the screen that says how many messages have arrived. I'm still using Opera 7.23.
2) Outlook XPs version of 'threading' is kind of crappy, in my opinion.
3) Why do all the open source email clients look exactly like Outlook? I've never particularily liked that view of email. Can't anyone think of anything better?
4) I use mutt, Mail.app (OSX) and Opera as my main mail clients. Mutt is still the most feature-rich mail client that I've ever used, inability to display HTML and images inline notwithstanding (and most of the time, I like it better that way.) Mail.app under OSX is quite nice too, though I don't like the way that it won't check IMAP servers automatically when it checks your main Inbox. I always have to syncronize my folders. Also, it should display the number of new messages that you have in total in all of your folders (excluding the spam folder) if you want it to.
5) I haven't used Outlook 2003 yet, but Outlook XP is excessively annoying. It doesn't do anything the standard way, as near as I can tell. Threading, quoting, replying - it's all terrible. I hate the fact that text email isn't default.
You obviously didn't pay any attention to my last post. I DO have a job. I WORK as a programmer. I'm also well aware enough of my abilities to realize that I'm more than just a programmer. If it came to it, I could make a very good living NOT programming, but still working with computers in some computing science related field.
Email me. My email address is right there. Your argument is the one that lacks any substance. All you've managed to say is that 'Computing Science is the same as Programming', which doesn't become any more true any more times you say it to me.
And I wasn't bitching about the system, merely telling people that programming isn't the be-all and end-all of computing science. It's just a skill. The person bitching about the system is the originator of the whole thread.
Seriously, mail me. We'll talk about my job and my qualifications for saying these things.
I'm not a real programmer, eh? I 'belittle' programming? You really DID get kicked out of a CS program, didn't you?
Why don't you mail me at the email address that you see, and we'll talk. You can take the part of my email address after the '@' sign and add a www. to the front. Visit, and see the kinds of things that I work on.
A computing scientist is a programmer only in the same way a physicist is a mathematician.
No, that's not true. Like most people here on/., you have a skewed sense of what people know about computers. I KNOW a Psychology professor that taught himself how to program in Visual Basic and C. He's not great at it, but he can program somewhat mathematical code that deals with neural networks. He doesn't need to know how a computer works, merely how to tell the computer what he wants. I'm sure he doesn't care about the real difference between a char and a byte and an int, or even if there IS a difference most of the time.
Programming IS essential to computing science, but it's just a tool. Math is essential to computing science, too, but that's just a tool. I don't call myself a mathematician despite being well trained in calculus, algebra, discrete mathematics and graph theory. They're just a means to an end.
A programmer is not a computing scientist. A computing scientist is, however, usually a programmer.
It's true, there's a lot missing about software engineering in a computing science degree, but that's something that most people learn pretty quickly once they get a job in the real world.
Pure theory computing scientists are no more of a problem than pure theory physicists or pure theory mathematicians. It's useful to us to know these things. Quicksort was probably derived on paper before it was written.
I've probably been unclear before, so I'll try to clear it up here: computing scientists can't exist without work on pen and paper as well as the computer. A computing scientist that is merely a programmer is a waste, and a useless computing scientist. Knowing that quicksort is fast is something that anyone can learn. Knowing WHY it's fast is somewhat more complex. Understanding why its computational complexity is the best you can get is something that we get trained in. It's what makes us more knowledgable and flexible than people that take an introductory programming course. A computing scientist is SO MUCH MORE than a programmer. I did a lot of work programming to get my degree, yes, but I spent an equal amount of time in class taking notes on the science of what I was doing. A trained lab technician can perform complicated work in a biology lab, but it takes someone with a biology degree to understand the why, what and how of what's going on in that lab.
You're clearly something of a troll, but I'll answer anyway.
First of all, you're wrong. There are a lot of programmers out there that understand very little about how computers or algorithms work. Most amateur programmers understand only that they can tell the computer to do things and the computer will do them. They understand nothing of computational complexity, how the compiler works, or how the computer does anything that it does.
There was no class in my Computing Science degree that didn't include some programming except ONE high level graph theory course. Compilers, Operating Systems, Object Oriented Languages, Non-Procedural Programming Languages, Introductory Algorithmics and Logic - all of them had a programming component. You're not much of a computing scientist if you can't understand how to implement quicksort. Quicksort on paper is completely meaningless. Its only value lies in the knowledge of its implementation and usage.
Did you get kicked out of a Computing Science program somewhere? Feeling a bit left out?
I own all of them. I read and love them all. Book 4 was a bit disjointed, but I think it showed good development for both Deunan and Bri. The closing scene of book 4 with Deunan in a lace eyepatch planning some time with Bri was a nice look into their private lives. I wish he'd do more, though. I think he ended the series right as it was getting really good.
I'm worried now, though. If he does start writing it again, will it suffer from the same random complexity that GitS does? Will he focus on his blended CG & pencil style that I think looks far cheaper than his raw pencil art? Probably. Even if he just tied everything up in a quick 2 part series I'd be a little happier.
Frankly, that's a bit like a Physicist terming himself a mathematician just because 95% of his job is dealing in mathematics. You're a programmer because that's what it takes to be a computing scientist. Take away the programming, and you would still be capable of actually doing something meaningful in computing. Similarily, a physicist with no ability to do math (pretend that that could happen) would probably be able to conceptualize physics thought experiments that would be meaningful to physics.
You may self identify as someone that's merely a programmer, hacker and software engineer, but you're really more than that. There's nothing wrong with 'merely' being a programmer, but it's an incorrect moniker to saddle yourself with.
Appleseed, in my opinion, was always a better story than Ghost in the Shell. GitS was pretty superficial, jumped around a lot, and now suffers from a massive incomprehensibility complex, not unlike one of his other manga, Orion.
Frankly, I also enjoyed his art more before he started doing this blend of CG and penciling.
I hope this anime lives up to the manga. That's tough, but I already recognized parts of the story in the trailer, and it certainly looks pretty. I also hope that they get some decent voice acting for Deunan and Briareos. I have an idea of what their voices should be like in my head, and if Deunan ends up with a bimbo-y voice, and Briareos has a whiny bishonen voice, I'll be pretty sad.
The most use that my iPod gets is playing a 48 minute playlist that I use for cycling. It's the same songs every time. There's a 45 second track at the beginning to give me time to get up on my bike, a 1 minute song near the end by NoFX to keep my RPMs high in my final sprint, and the song 'Sci-Fi Wasabi' by Cibbo Matto at the end for me to cool down with. I ride 3 - 5 times a week. It's important for me to listen to the same music every time.
That said, whenever I'm not cycling, I've got my playlist on random (actually, I've got a playlist of my least played songs rated 3 - 5 that's on random). I've got an iTrip, so I listen to it on the weekends when I drive around doing errands.
But anyway, there's lots of reasons to listen to a limited playlist.
Not at all. I'm a computing scientist first, and a programmer second. Despite the fact that my current job is programming games, I still consider myself a computing scientist. A physicist that ends up doing something practical is a physicist ever after.
I don't think your analogy about physicists and engineers is particularily accurate, either. A computing science degree is about the theory and mathematics of computing, but we're grounded in the practicality and engineering of programming. Even pure theorists actually write code now and then.
I disagree that there's not somewhere else to go to learn to be a programmer. There are numerous technical colleges that can produce fine programmers that can do a good job. They don't necessarily understand computational complexity, graph theory, or what an NP-Complete problem is, but I don't really think that it's a big deal that they don't. Most days, they'll be able to program just about as effectively as me. It's true that companies tend to look less favorably on such qualifications, though.
Despite your claim to being a software engineer, you're still a computing scientist. You've just decided to specialize in one of the many areas of computing. I consider myself a graph theorist and human interfaces specialist. I happen to be a good programmer, but that's just something extra on the side. Your skill lies in the analysis and design of systems. Programming is a little more relevant to you than it is to me, but it's still just a side skill. Assuming that you could never write another line of code in your life, you could still be an excellent software engineer.
Lastly, I don't really care what other people call it. I'm a Computing Scientist, like my father was before me. We both went to the University of Alberta, and went through their Computing Science program. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/:)
We actually had that at my University a couple years into my degree. The introductory courses taught about hex, assembly and all sorts of other things. If you come in as a blank slate, there's nothing wrong with assembly at all. It's slow, but you understand the how and why of all computer languages after that.
Ugh, Java is a terrible language to teach in. It's far more than is required. Because it's taught at a straight procedural programming language at the beginning to avoid confusing students, they pick up all sorts of bad habits and use the language very poorly once they get out of that class. It takes a while to retrain them to use Java properly and in the Object Oriented fashion for which it was intended.
Pascal and Modula-2 are excellent teaching languages. Assembly, to an extent, is also an excellent teaching language. Getting students familiar with the computer early on usually pays off in the end. C is a bit obtuse as a teaching language, but it's what we used to do all our work in after our second year. Java is a wonderful language to teach OO classes with - far better than C++.
I should clarify that in my compilers class, we didn't study lex and yacc. They were tools that we had to use to help us write our compiler. In the other classes, we DID study prolog, lisp, java and smalltalk at the language level.
I partly agree. I used to TA introductory courses to Computing Science, and the first thing I told my students is that if they wanted to be programmers, they should go to a different institution. We were in the business of making computing scientists.
That said, the first year courses are all introductions to programming and programming concepts. You then take one more course in pure programming in your second year along with your logic and algorithmics classes. After that, you're expected to be able to pick up languages as you go. Classes in non-procedural programming (Lisp, Prolog), Object Oriented Languages (Java, Smalltalk), and Compilers (lex, yacc) all expect you to do a considerable amount of programming to cement certain concepts in your head. Even the algorithmics courses expected you to be able to come up with an algorithm and implement it.
So, Computing Science is NOT the same as Computer Programming, you're right. However, the pure study of algorithmics and protocols and language without any practical element is nearly useless at the undergraduate level. Only as you get higher level degrees does it become truly possible to leave the computer behind and do all of your work on paper.
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Ah, that makes sense. How annoying.
Anyway, It was sort of an aside that VS.NET doesn't scroll text very well. My machine is a dual 1800+ MP, and I don't really care WHAT the problem is. I should never, ever have problems scrolling TEXT. Fork the intellisense crap onto a seperate thread or something, but let me scroll the text!
I've actually had the memory swapped out on the machine a couple of times.
:)
What leads me to believe that it's the OS is that while my coworkers don't have identical problems, everyone has problems. Crashes, odd behaviour, slowly degrading performance...all of it. The degrading performance also seems something of a giveaway. (I can't restore performance by shutting all my apps down and starting them up, either. Once performance has degraded sufficiently, only a reboot seems to clear it up. Again, I'm tentatively pointing a finger at VS.NET. That stupid thing gives me no end of trouble. That's why I do all of my editing in emacs and compile on the command line.)
And, since I use a G5 at home with an odd trackball, yeah, I only play at work.
Let me preface everything by saying I used to be a UNIX administrator.
Now, I work for a company with sysadmins, and they do a good job of taking care of my machine. We make sure it's patched, that we've got the latest drivers, and that the hardware is all running well.
I have no bizarre third party applications running, besides the usual things that should have nothing to to with stability. I use Emacs, Opera, VS.NET, iTunes and PuTTY throughout the day.
Some days, I have no problems. Other days, the problems just stack up. I occasionally have the machine lock up on shut down. I used to have the machine crash 2 or 3 times a week, but I stopped playing Diablo II so much. For whatever reason, XP REALLY doesn't like me playing Diablo II. Blaming things on Diablo II won't work, though - XP should be more than robust enough to handle something like that.
A while back, it would have been more likely that I would have agreed with you. I was running a shell and desktop replacement, but I've switched back to the ordinary base shell now. Nothing I run should be an issue.
As for Linux, I only had it crash a couple of times. Once, when I was playing around with experimental drivers, and a couple times when I was playing with beta kernels. I also had the windowing system crash a few times, but another networked machine always found the box up and running. (I also had some lockups related to heat when my Celeron 300A was starting to go.)
Considering the amount of work I do, I don't really find there to be much excuse for XP dying on me. I think I'm most willing to blame it on VS.NET which is incredibly unstable on its own, crashing and coredumping and giving me internal compiler errors several times a week. I wouldn't be suprised if it were running wild and occasionally kicking the system out from underneath me.
Like I said, as a home system, XP worked GREAT for me. I was running Dual-Head on an ATI, playing lots of games, etc. As a development system, it's been brutal. I have pretty standard high-end hardware (getting older, so not quite as high-end now, but still, a Ti4400 is not exactly bottom of the barrel) and I run standard XBox dev tools. Most of my colleagues have similar problems, though perhaps a little less often than I do.
I'm not really trying to rag on XP particularily much, merely trying to point out that from a stability point of view, I don't think it holds a candle to any UNIX that I've ever worked with. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX, AIX, Linux, OS X and even HP-UX (ick, BTW) seem to be more solid.
As a developer under windows, I can definitely say that XP is pretty pathetic in terms of stability. If the machine doesn't crash on me at least once every two weeks, I've witnessed a miracle. Alas, the miracle is empty, since the system slowly bogs itself down as time goes on, and I end up having to reboot anyway.
To be sure, they've done WONDERS with the stability. When I was using XP as my home operating system, it wasn't too bad. The problem that I've found with XP is that as load ramps up, it's ability to stay stable and usable trends downward increasingly quickly.
Oh, and its dual-processor support is pretty pathetic. The load balancing seems incredibly naive. (And, this may not be an OS problem, but I find that I have problems scrolling text in VS.NET in a timely fashion. Not all the time, but sometimes it'll just stall when trying to do something that I consider a simplistic task.)
It's exactly for that reason that my sig reads the way it does. Temporary moderators have no business having negative mod points. Either mod something up or contribute. Full time moderators should be the only ones wielding the dreaded '-1 Off Topic' or worse, '-1 Overrated', which is a catch-all for things (or posters!) that the moderator doesn't like.
I have this set, but it's never updated a single non-inbox mailbox for me. The help on the subject is also totally useless. :P
I see where you're coming from.
No, I don't expect developers to magically read my mind and get something done. Like I said, I've found a couple of mail clients that seem good enough for me, and I'm waiting for someone to do something great and show me what I've been missing. I don't like the Outlook feel, and that's all I should need to say. I've voted with my choice in mail clients - namely by using and supporting Opera, Mail.app and Mutt. At some point, a developer may notice that some people are discontent with the current layout of email clients, or will have the same views as me and make something better. On that day, I'll certainly be there to back them up.
I'm just voicing an opinion. I think it's kind of lousy that everything looks like Outlook. I don't need to figure a solution out for someone else to implement. I'm not part of the solution, but I'm not part of the problem, either, regardless of what that cliche says.
I don't think that's fair or true at all. People report bugs to OSS projects all the time. Do you submit that if they find a bug, they should go out and fix it? That's a useless waste of resources. Making the authors aware of problems with their software is something that they almost certainly desire. Nobody wants to make a lousy application.
My wants are their project because that's what this game is about. They make something, I tell them that there's a bug, or a user interface problem, and they move to fix it. I don't have time to fix all the bugs and UI problems that I come across. Would you suggest that the developers of mail applications drop everything that they're doing when they find a bug in their editor? That's moronic.
No, not quite. My main Inbox is IMAP, and I can have several 'Inboxes' that it will update from different servers.
However, on my mail server, I also have procmail filtering mail into various IMAP folders. Mail.app won't automatically check THOSE folders, for some reason. I can do a full synchronisation of ALL IMAP folders on a server, but I've got dozens of folders, and some of them see very little activity. Even worse, I can't use the 'Get Mail' button to update just the current mailbox - it updates the Inbox only.
I've fiddled with the settngs all over the place, and I've never found a way to get it to do what I want. Oh, well. I'll complain to Apple, and maybe it'll make it into a future release.
Because, to some extent, that's what they're supposed to be doing. I like Opera's view well enough, as well as Mutt's. The Open Source community is supposed to be a hotbed of new ideas and superior products, and once again we're reduced to ripping off the UI of a company that is routinely criticised for its UI. At least rip off something GOOD.
You're telling me that the people that brought me the Enlightenment WM, Sawfish, FVWM and virtual desktops can't come up with something even a little bit different that's still functional? No, I don't buy it.
Maybe I SHOULD come up with a new email interface, but I've found a couple that I like, and I'll stick with them until someone else comes up with something better. I've got my own projects to work on.
I think we'd need to see the design of this car first to answer some of your questions. I own a 2003 Saturn Ion, and the battery is actually in the trunk, near the recessed spare tyre. They did it to balance the car's mass more evenly. I can still jump the car from under the hood, though. There's a post that can boost the electrical system, and the steel frame of the car is suitable for grounding. There's no reason that this Volvo can't have something similar in the trunk. From a user interface perspective, this is probably even better than direct battery-to-battery jumps, which people seem to rarely get right on the first try.
:)
Cars have become sufficiently complex that I'm sure most people have no idea what's going on under the hood anyway. The only way that Volvo can make this work is by making sure that their mechanics are trustworthy and competent. I'm already at the mercy of car mechanics, contractors, TV repair shops, etc. This isn't that big of a step.
And hey, if you don't want one, don't buy it.
1) Opera DOES have a non-audio mail notification. I have sound turned off, and when mail comes in, I get a little box in the bottom left hand corner of the screen that says how many messages have arrived. I'm still using Opera 7.23.
2) Outlook XPs version of 'threading' is kind of crappy, in my opinion.
3) Why do all the open source email clients look exactly like Outlook? I've never particularily liked that view of email. Can't anyone think of anything better?
4) I use mutt, Mail.app (OSX) and Opera as my main mail clients. Mutt is still the most feature-rich mail client that I've ever used, inability to display HTML and images inline notwithstanding (and most of the time, I like it better that way.) Mail.app under OSX is quite nice too, though I don't like the way that it won't check IMAP servers automatically when it checks your main Inbox. I always have to syncronize my folders. Also, it should display the number of new messages that you have in total in all of your folders (excluding the spam folder) if you want it to.
5) I haven't used Outlook 2003 yet, but Outlook XP is excessively annoying. It doesn't do anything the standard way, as near as I can tell. Threading, quoting, replying - it's all terrible. I hate the fact that text email isn't default.
You obviously didn't pay any attention to my last post. I DO have a job. I WORK as a programmer. I'm also well aware enough of my abilities to realize that I'm more than just a programmer. If it came to it, I could make a very good living NOT programming, but still working with computers in some computing science related field.
Email me. My email address is right there. Your argument is the one that lacks any substance. All you've managed to say is that 'Computing Science is the same as Programming', which doesn't become any more true any more times you say it to me.
And I wasn't bitching about the system, merely telling people that programming isn't the be-all and end-all of computing science. It's just a skill. The person bitching about the system is the originator of the whole thread.
Seriously, mail me. We'll talk about my job and my qualifications for saying these things.
I'm not a real programmer, eh? I 'belittle' programming? You really DID get kicked out of a CS program, didn't you?
Why don't you mail me at the email address that you see, and we'll talk. You can take the part of my email address after the '@' sign and add a www. to the front. Visit, and see the kinds of things that I work on.
A computing scientist is a programmer only in the same way a physicist is a mathematician.
No, that's not true. Like most people here on /., you have a skewed sense of what people know about computers. I KNOW a Psychology professor that taught himself how to program in Visual Basic and C. He's not great at it, but he can program somewhat mathematical code that deals with neural networks. He doesn't need to know how a computer works, merely how to tell the computer what he wants. I'm sure he doesn't care about the real difference between a char and a byte and an int, or even if there IS a difference most of the time.
Programming IS essential to computing science, but it's just a tool. Math is essential to computing science, too, but that's just a tool. I don't call myself a mathematician despite being well trained in calculus, algebra, discrete mathematics and graph theory. They're just a means to an end.
A programmer is not a computing scientist. A computing scientist is, however, usually a programmer.
It's true, there's a lot missing about software engineering in a computing science degree, but that's something that most people learn pretty quickly once they get a job in the real world.
Pure theory computing scientists are no more of a problem than pure theory physicists or pure theory mathematicians. It's useful to us to know these things. Quicksort was probably derived on paper before it was written.
I've probably been unclear before, so I'll try to clear it up here: computing scientists can't exist without work on pen and paper as well as the computer. A computing scientist that is merely a programmer is a waste, and a useless computing scientist. Knowing that quicksort is fast is something that anyone can learn. Knowing WHY it's fast is somewhat more complex. Understanding why its computational complexity is the best you can get is something that we get trained in. It's what makes us more knowledgable and flexible than people that take an introductory programming course. A computing scientist is SO MUCH MORE than a programmer. I did a lot of work programming to get my degree, yes, but I spent an equal amount of time in class taking notes on the science of what I was doing. A trained lab technician can perform complicated work in a biology lab, but it takes someone with a biology degree to understand the why, what and how of what's going on in that lab.
You're clearly something of a troll, but I'll answer anyway.
First of all, you're wrong. There are a lot of programmers out there that understand very little about how computers or algorithms work. Most amateur programmers understand only that they can tell the computer to do things and the computer will do them. They understand nothing of computational complexity, how the compiler works, or how the computer does anything that it does.
There was no class in my Computing Science degree that didn't include some programming except ONE high level graph theory course. Compilers, Operating Systems, Object Oriented Languages, Non-Procedural Programming Languages, Introductory Algorithmics and Logic - all of them had a programming component. You're not much of a computing scientist if you can't understand how to implement quicksort. Quicksort on paper is completely meaningless. Its only value lies in the knowledge of its implementation and usage.
Did you get kicked out of a Computing Science program somewhere? Feeling a bit left out?
I own all of them. I read and love them all. Book 4 was a bit disjointed, but I think it showed good development for both Deunan and Bri. The closing scene of book 4 with Deunan in a lace eyepatch planning some time with Bri was a nice look into their private lives. I wish he'd do more, though. I think he ended the series right as it was getting really good.
I'm worried now, though. If he does start writing it again, will it suffer from the same random complexity that GitS does? Will he focus on his blended CG & pencil style that I think looks far cheaper than his raw pencil art? Probably. Even if he just tied everything up in a quick 2 part series I'd be a little happier.
Frankly, that's a bit like a Physicist terming himself a mathematician just because 95% of his job is dealing in mathematics. You're a programmer because that's what it takes to be a computing scientist. Take away the programming, and you would still be capable of actually doing something meaningful in computing. Similarily, a physicist with no ability to do math (pretend that that could happen) would probably be able to conceptualize physics thought experiments that would be meaningful to physics.
You may self identify as someone that's merely a programmer, hacker and software engineer, but you're really more than that. There's nothing wrong with 'merely' being a programmer, but it's an incorrect moniker to saddle yourself with.
Appleseed, in my opinion, was always a better story than Ghost in the Shell. GitS was pretty superficial, jumped around a lot, and now suffers from a massive incomprehensibility complex, not unlike one of his other manga, Orion.
Frankly, I also enjoyed his art more before he started doing this blend of CG and penciling.
I hope this anime lives up to the manga. That's tough, but I already recognized parts of the story in the trailer, and it certainly looks pretty. I also hope that they get some decent voice acting for Deunan and Briareos. I have an idea of what their voices should be like in my head, and if Deunan ends up with a bimbo-y voice, and Briareos has a whiny bishonen voice, I'll be pretty sad.
The most use that my iPod gets is playing a 48 minute playlist that I use for cycling. It's the same songs every time. There's a 45 second track at the beginning to give me time to get up on my bike, a 1 minute song near the end by NoFX to keep my RPMs high in my final sprint, and the song 'Sci-Fi Wasabi' by Cibbo Matto at the end for me to cool down with. I ride 3 - 5 times a week. It's important for me to listen to the same music every time.
That said, whenever I'm not cycling, I've got my playlist on random (actually, I've got a playlist of my least played songs rated 3 - 5 that's on random). I've got an iTrip, so I listen to it on the weekends when I drive around doing errands.
But anyway, there's lots of reasons to listen to a limited playlist.
Not at all. I'm a computing scientist first, and a programmer second. Despite the fact that my current job is programming games, I still consider myself a computing scientist. A physicist that ends up doing something practical is a physicist ever after.
:)
I don't think your analogy about physicists and engineers is particularily accurate, either. A computing science degree is about the theory and mathematics of computing, but we're grounded in the practicality and engineering of programming. Even pure theorists actually write code now and then.
I disagree that there's not somewhere else to go to learn to be a programmer. There are numerous technical colleges that can produce fine programmers that can do a good job. They don't necessarily understand computational complexity, graph theory, or what an NP-Complete problem is, but I don't really think that it's a big deal that they don't. Most days, they'll be able to program just about as effectively as me. It's true that companies tend to look less favorably on such qualifications, though.
Despite your claim to being a software engineer, you're still a computing scientist. You've just decided to specialize in one of the many areas of computing. I consider myself a graph theorist and human interfaces specialist. I happen to be a good programmer, but that's just something extra on the side. Your skill lies in the analysis and design of systems. Programming is a little more relevant to you than it is to me, but it's still just a side skill. Assuming that you could never write another line of code in your life, you could still be an excellent software engineer.
Lastly, I don't really care what other people call it. I'm a Computing Scientist, like my father was before me. We both went to the University of Alberta, and went through their Computing Science program. http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/
We actually had that at my University a couple years into my degree. The introductory courses taught about hex, assembly and all sorts of other things. If you come in as a blank slate, there's nothing wrong with assembly at all. It's slow, but you understand the how and why of all computer languages after that.
Ugh, Java is a terrible language to teach in. It's far more than is required. Because it's taught at a straight procedural programming language at the beginning to avoid confusing students, they pick up all sorts of bad habits and use the language very poorly once they get out of that class. It takes a while to retrain them to use Java properly and in the Object Oriented fashion for which it was intended.
Pascal and Modula-2 are excellent teaching languages. Assembly, to an extent, is also an excellent teaching language. Getting students familiar with the computer early on usually pays off in the end. C is a bit obtuse as a teaching language, but it's what we used to do all our work in after our second year. Java is a wonderful language to teach OO classes with - far better than C++.
I should clarify that in my compilers class, we didn't study lex and yacc. They were tools that we had to use to help us write our compiler. In the other classes, we DID study prolog, lisp, java and smalltalk at the language level.
I partly agree. I used to TA introductory courses to Computing Science, and the first thing I told my students is that if they wanted to be programmers, they should go to a different institution. We were in the business of making computing scientists.
That said, the first year courses are all introductions to programming and programming concepts. You then take one more course in pure programming in your second year along with your logic and algorithmics classes. After that, you're expected to be able to pick up languages as you go. Classes in non-procedural programming (Lisp, Prolog), Object Oriented Languages (Java, Smalltalk), and Compilers (lex, yacc) all expect you to do a considerable amount of programming to cement certain concepts in your head. Even the algorithmics courses expected you to be able to come up with an algorithm and implement it.
So, Computing Science is NOT the same as Computer Programming, you're right. However, the pure study of algorithmics and protocols and language without any practical element is nearly useless at the undergraduate level. Only as you get higher level degrees does it become truly possible to leave the computer behind and do all of your work on paper.