Re:As usual, PC people ignore Apple
on
Legacy-Free PCs
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· Score: 1
Except that "PC" here means "IBM PC/XT/AT compatible x86 box".
I know and it's irrelevant to my point. My point is that he compared the shown PC motherboard to a landmark event analagous to Bell's first phone call and that he was wrong in doing so.
It would be like highlighting Toyota's first engine as a landmark event ignoring Henry Ford even if there are more Toyotas on the road today than Fords.
If only they'd make a car unit
on
Amp Pack for iPod
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The only places I listen to music are my home and my car. I wish Apple would partner with somebody to make an in-dash unit into which you'd insert an iPod (almost like inserting a casette). The iPod would then be controlled via a panel on the in-dash unit and would receive power from the car's power system.
Yes, I am aware of those things that allow you to broadcast iPod output on an FM frerquency, but (1) they're awkward and bring back bad memories of CD/cassette adapters with wires all over the place, and (2) they don't work very well from most accounts I've read.
As usual, PC people ignore Apple
on
Legacy-Free PCs
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That rough-looking circuit board is actually the forebear of all PCs ever made, an artifact as important as, say, Bell's first telephone or Edison's light bulb or the Wrights' Flyer.
Except that said circuit board was not the first computer circuit board in a personal computer. Apple introduced the Apple I in 1976. That circuit board would be analagous to Bell's first telephone call, etc.
I was winning the election in Florida, ballots were being counted on a PC, and then it was, like, beep beep beep beep, and then, like, half of the ballots voting for me were gone. And I was, like, huh? It devoured my ballots. They were really good ballots. And then I had to get them counted again, and I had to get it done fast before the Supreme Court stopped me, and they weren't as good. It's kind of... a bummer.
Windows on the other hand, like it or not, is a catalyst of profitable software firms. Where would Adobe, Veritas, heck even Electronic Arts be without MS?
They'd be exactly where they are now, but writing software for some other OS (e.g., Mac OS X).
But who can say that without Windows, these company would be just as successful today?
To those companies, Windows is just the API they have to write to. Windows does nothing to market their product muchless make it better.
... but one thing [Microsoft] got right from the beginning was how to drive the market to complement their invention.
Funny, but Apple has been doing this for years. If they didn't, they wouldn't exist now.
Since you bought up Adobe, they've always been very Mac-friendly. It was Apple that enabled Adobe to make lots of money licensing PostScript interpreters in every Apple LaserWriter sold that started desktop publishing. And now Mac OS X incorporates PDF into the core of the OS.
There are two kinds of "life extension": appending years to one's life in which case you'd feel and look really old, i.e., at 160, you'd feel 160; or uniformly extending life so that if you lived to be 160 (roughly double), at 80 you'd have the physical body of a current 40 year old, i.e., aging as a whole would be uniformly slowed down. I'd want the latter only.
On the other hand she is 80+ years old and has given a DNR (do not recussitate) order
Yes, but if her life were doubled, then she'd physically only be what we currently describe as a 40 year old. If that were the case, I doubt she would have given a DNR.
She says herself that she has lived long enough. It's not that she doesn't enjoy life, not is it that she is so diminished that she can no long contribute. It's just she's come to that point in her life where she realizes the world is moving faster then her and there are natural limits (her words not mine.)
Perhaps that's her rationalization and/or what she tells you because, deep down, she might feel like a "burden" to unappreciative and impatient grandchildren.
I've got a grandmother who uses a little e-mail but no matter how many times I explain it to her and show it to her she never really understands it, she just memorizes the mechanics.
In my observation, there are (at least) two classes of people: those who learn strictly by memorizing steps and those who see patterns, figure things out, and then "get it." The latter class are the "intelligent" people. That being the case, it's got nothing to do with age.
That aside, living in the modern world (despite what many here on/. might think) does not require the use of e-mail, the 'net, computers, fax machines, cell phones, or lots of other techie things.
If I were your grandmother, I wouldn't want to stop living just because I couldn't understand how e-mail works. There's so much more to life. If she could live another 100 years, she could see the world, enjoy more good meals, and see the birth of her great-great-great grandchildren.
How myopic of you to think that just because she can't "get" e-mail she'd want to stop living.
My Big Company also does VPN. Even if I could get e-mail via the web, I'd still have to use VPN to access other things (like our source-code machines for Perforce commands).
Back to e-mail, all I want is the ability to forward my mail to an address of my choosing (at least so I can do better filtering and sorting with Procmail). If I have that (which I do), I couldn't care less what e-mail servers they run.
I want all my mail in one place (in my mail spool on my home mail server) so I can check all my mail just by hitting Tab. I don't want to have to log in to some lame web client several times a day just to read mail.
In addition to establishing the national do-not-call registry, the amended TSR [has other] changes including... requiring telemarketers to transmit Caller ID information.
I currently have the Privacy Manager service from Pacific Bell (SBC). Callers whose Caller-ID information is not received are given a recording telling them the called number does not accept calls without Caller-ID and gives them the option to record their name at which point the callee is called by the system and the caller's name is announced giving the callee the option to accept the call.
Anyway, since telemarketers currently do not transmit Caller-ID information, I get no telemarketing calls. None. Zip. Nada.
Once telemarketers start transmitting Caller-ID information, Privacy Manager will be much less useful. But, if the national do-not-call list actually works, it will make up for it. Let's hope.
But it's not just another body part since it's where the essense of the individual resides. A "brain transplant" is really a "whole body transplant" since the person is tied to the brain, i.e., the brain (and the person) gets a new body, not the body gets a new brain.
To have a real "brain transplant" would require that one's memories, neural patterns, etc, be transferred to the new brain. However, since the way a person is is tied to the way neurons are physically connected, transfer would be impossible snce the entire new brain would have to be "rewired." It would probably be easier to "grow" a new brain cloning the original structure. Even so, this is many years off.
There are 5000 developers on the Windows team generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. It's an enormous task, the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this.
It's not the biggest nor the only project like it. Next time you pick up your phone, think of the 5ESS Switch developed by AT&T Bell Labs (now Lucent) to handle phone calls. The development is done in Naperville, Illinois. In its heyday, they also had roughly 5000 developers and more Amdahl mainframes compiling code than you can shake a stick at.
Then your post was in response to something I did not write. Nowhere did I mention anything about a scientific experiment.
You didn't have to since reapeatability and predictability are requirements for scientific experiments. When you design a new software application, you tend to use standard components, but you combine them in totally new ways. Hence "repeatability" is not in play.
Think like that and you will never be a software engineer.
I have been one for over a decade amd am doing quite well, thanks.
Every bridge, building and program is assembled from components with common structures.
No argument, but that's irrelevant to my post. My only issue was with the comparison to a scientific experiment that demands exact reproducibility: not just common components: exact to every last detail. Hence, the analogy is a poor one.
Software enineering is designing a software system. It need not only be the "big picture," but can also be the design of concrete things like classes, APIs, file layout, protocols used, etc.
Contrast this with programming which is the mere coding of a design.
The term developer was coined (IMHO) by programmers who didn't like being referred to as programmers because it has an implied "lowly" in front of it or comes off as generally nerdy.
Going back to the rest of the original question:
... a program that works under precise, known conditions?
It would be a minor miracle to know conditions precisely. What you do know are expected conditions and you want the software to work under them. But there are an infinite number of unknown conditions. What you would like to happen is that the software either flag the conditions as inappropriate and refuse to act or fail gracefully.
Software engineering is about being able to perform software development with repeatable and predictable results.
No it isn't since you never repeat writing the same software no more than an architect or engineer builds more than one of the exact same building, bridge, or whatever. Software applications aren't experiments to be repeated.
How long before someone brings a laptop loaded with an IRC server on it?... you can talk about who's sitting next to you (and how bad they smell) or about that cute girl that's 5 rows up.
You could chat on IRC using an existing ground-based IRC server (if it doesn't require identd). You don't need your own to do this.
Come on, he wrote a cheap, simple OS that was easy for the masses to use
No: he bought DOS from some guy (in Arizona?) for $50K and turned around and licensed it to IBM. He then ripped off MacOS for Windows (not that MacOS wasn't ripped off from Xerox).
Gates is a good businessman ("good" in the sense of making money, not in the sense of "good business") and has lots of chutzpah, but he's no innovator. He's not even a good programmer.
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It would be like highlighting Toyota's first engine as a landmark event ignoring Henry Ford even if there are more Toyotas on the road today than Fords.
In the mean-time, I bought one of these.
Yes, I am aware of those things that allow you to broadcast iPod output on an FM frerquency, but (1) they're awkward and bring back bad memories of CD/cassette adapters with wires all over the place, and (2) they don't work very well from most accounts I've read.
I was winning the election in Florida, ballots were being counted on a PC, and then it was, like, beep beep beep beep, and then, like, half of the ballots voting for me were gone. And I was, like, huh? It devoured my ballots. They were really good ballots. And then I had to get them counted again, and I had to get it done fast before the Supreme Court stopped me, and they weren't as good. It's kind of ... a bummer.
Since you bought up Adobe, they've always been very Mac-friendly. It was Apple that enabled Adobe to make lots of money licensing PostScript interpreters in every Apple LaserWriter sold that started desktop publishing. And now Mac OS X incorporates PDF into the core of the OS.
That aside, living in the modern world (despite what many here on /. might think) does not require the use of e-mail, the 'net, computers, fax machines, cell phones, or lots of other techie things.
If I were your grandmother, I wouldn't want to stop living just because I couldn't understand how e-mail works. There's so much more to life. If she could live another 100 years, she could see the world, enjoy more good meals, and see the birth of her great-great-great grandchildren.
How myopic of you to think that just because she can't "get" e-mail she'd want to stop living.
Back to e-mail, all I want is the ability to forward my mail to an address of my choosing (at least so I can do better filtering and sorting with Procmail). If I have that (which I do), I couldn't care less what e-mail servers they run.
I want all my mail in one place (in my mail spool on my home mail server) so I can check all my mail just by hitting Tab. I don't want to have to log in to some lame web client several times a day just to read mail.
Anyway, since telemarketers currently do not transmit Caller-ID information, I get no telemarketing calls. None. Zip. Nada.
Once telemarketers start transmitting Caller-ID information, Privacy Manager will be much less useful. But, if the national do-not-call list actually works, it will make up for it. Let's hope.
To have a real "brain transplant" would require that one's memories, neural patterns, etc, be transferred to the new brain. However, since the way a person is is tied to the way neurons are physically connected, transfer would be impossible snce the entire new brain would have to be "rewired." It would probably be easier to "grow" a new brain cloning the original structure. Even so, this is many years off.
8 years? I've had my Casio watch (not the Databank model) for about 15 years and it's still going strong.
I was actually getting my graduate degree in Urbana, Illinois, in 1992. It was kind of fun to be there at the time. :-)
The term developer was coined (IMHO) by programmers who didn't like being referred to as programmers because it has an implied "lowly" in front of it or comes off as generally nerdy.
Going back to the rest of the original question:
It would be a minor miracle to know conditions precisely. What you do know are expected conditions and you want the software to work under them. But there are an infinite number of unknown conditions. What you would like to happen is that the software either flag the conditions as inappropriate and refuse to act or fail gracefully.... inventor of the computer mouse, shared-screen teleconferencing, hypermedia, groupware, and lots of other stuff.
Gates is a good businessman ("good" in the sense of making money, not in the sense of "good business") and has lots of chutzpah, but he's no innovator. He's not even a good programmer.
Except C# and Visual basic gave nothing new to the world of computer science. Both languages are merely ho-hum tweaks to existing languages.