I am a die hard Mac user and I have been since 1993. I should mention that I'm a professional software engineer. I've been writing C/C++ for the Mac and for Windows professionally since 1995. (I learned C in the 80s on my Atari 800 using Deep Blue C.) About 3 months ago, I got a PC laptop and decided to install RedHat 8 on it. Then, I went online to try to find an 802.11b card that would work with the laptop.
This was the beginning of the nightmare.
I finally found a site that showed a Netgear card and said that it had Linux drivers on the installation CD, but that it didn't say so on the box. Well, OK. So, I bought the card, brought it home. No drivers. Then, I went back to the site and downloaded some drivers that were supposed to work with it. Well, it wasn't actually a driver but instead was the source for a driver. OK, I'm fairly comfortable with GCC. (I've been using Project Builder on MacOS X for a while now.) So, I go to compile this driver. It is unable to find some header file. I guess the header is supposed to come with the linux distro.
I don't have time for this shit.
I go back to OS X. I'm happy. I have some experience with Unix and Linux, but using these systems is never fun for me. I want to spend my time writing applications, not goofing around trying to configure the computer. Writing software is hard enough without that shit.
At least in OS X, I can "ease" myself into using command line tools. For everyday things I don't *have* to use the command line. Sure, I use tools like "top" and "sample" and "gdb", but I've been able to ease my way into it.
I ended up installing XP on the laptop. I'd much rather use Linux, but I need 802.11b support.
>>Way to reveal your ignorance. Let's blanketly blame an entire state (of millions of people) for the actions of a few stupid people
When I lived in Texas, the stupid annoying jerks outnumbered the OK people about 20 to 1.
>>Most of the coutry lies west of New York and east of Hollywood. Your ignorance of this part of the country does not make those parts inferior.
Actually, it doesn't when you look at population. The people in the middle are inferior. I grew up in the midwest and I can testify that the stupid ignorant jerks outnumber the OK people about 20 to 1.
I live in Seattle by way of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas.
Interviewer: "Tell me about your last position at SCO, Mr. Jones."
Jones: "They were trying to sue Linux out of existance, remember? Well, I got the idea that it would be cool to fight back from the inside by infiltrating the company and then working to destroy it. It worked. After I was there just three weeks, SCO tanked!"
Interviewer: "And what makes you think you'd be a good fit here at Microsoft?"
>>"What you think of spam"??? Why am I reminded of a >>B-movie alien who announces to a startled earthling: >>"We have been monitoring your so-called 'television' >> transmissions for ten of your Earth years"?
When I started really thinking about "what is spam?", turns out there are some iffy cases where it is not entirely clear if a message is spam. The concept of "unwanted email" is somewhat subjective at a certain level. My system prevents unsolicited commercial mass distributed email. Maybe I should have said "What people commonly think of as spam" instead.
I have a system that would completely eliminate spam. It would not be based on filtering, would not cause any false positives, and would prevent 99% of what you think of as spam.
It would also have other benefits.
Problem? I couldn't get venture capital funding to build it. I've still got a business partner who is looking for money. If we get money, I'll build it. Unfortunately no one wants to put money into something that would compete with Microsoft's system. (They are working on a stupid, fatally flawed system that is tied only to HotMail.)
I'm a senior developer also. I agree with everything that you and the parent post are saying about the level of difficulty in doing a zero defect project of this scale.
I have seen a zero defect project done. (Although I wasn't actually on that project. It was some software for a heart pump.) It took a *lot* of time and the amount of code involved was nowhere near the F22 project talked about here.
If I had to guess, to get zero defects on 2 *million* lines of code on a jet fighter? 10 years?
As a developer, this is why I hate IT departments. They are very often stupid, irrational people who follow "policy" insteading of *thinking*.
Fact is, the only time I need their "help" is when they have something locked up and I don't have the password or the access rights, or know the IP address of the proxy server, etc.
I just had a run in with some dolt who first accused me of using a personal laptop on the company network (its a company laptop) and who then tells me that I can't have the laptop on the network at all because it is not allowed.
Why? Its a Macintosh PowerBook running OS 10.2.
My job here: write software for the Macintosh. Yet, I'm not supposed to have a Mac on the network. (It has to be on the network to get to the source repository at the bare minimum.)
(My solution was to lie to her and tell her it wasn't attached to the network and I was "doing tests" with the Mac. She left me alone.)
Why was this dolt at my desk? Some glitch in their system caused my Windows machine to be removed from the domain and I didn't have the admin password to re-add it.
I've dealt with lots of IT people - some are better than others. Generally in small companies you get people who are okay. They will at least think and respond realistically to a situation. In larger companies, I've mostly dealt with power tripping dolts.
I would really prefer these folks keep their shit working and leave the responsibility of keeping my machine running correctly to me.
What's the point of designing a better programming language when I have to use C++ anyway if I want to work.
Dylan and Objective-C are examples of really good languages not widely used for commercial development, unless you are a Mac programmer doing cocoa with Obj-C. (I have recently been lucky enough to be writing code using Objective-C++ for a living!)
C++ is not the best language in the world, but its not terrible and I've been able to consistantly find work doing C and C++.
If they had taken time to put thought in their product, Apple would have beaten them to market.
I saw their stupid ad (the sound was down on the TV because I was on the phone). What a joke! Sure, the Mac may have 3% of the whole computer market, but what percentage of computer users will actually buy digital music from a service like this?
When ITMS comes has been for Window for a while, I'll bet that 20% of its customers will still be Mac users. People who are more into technology for personal use are more likely to buy a Mac. The reason so many PCs get sold is that some pencil neck accountant makes the decision on buying computers that he won't have to use.
Same reason that rental car agencies never have Saabs.
The first computer I ever used was a Gould computer. My mom wrote a grant for her school to get it. She got it at the end of the school year so she had it at home all summer to learn how to use. I got to program on it.
Then, we got an Atari 400 and a cassette drive. That was something. That summer I just stayed home and learned to program in BASIC out of books. The next year, I learned Forth and then C. Later we got an Atari 800XL and a disk drive. That first Atari 400 was awesome. Within the next couple of years, all the boys I hung out with had computers. I was the one who was the best programmer in our little group.
I switched from Atari to the Mac in 1993.
Here I am over twenty years later coding in C++ and answering people's programming questions on a regular basis. Some things never change.
>>choice of killing the patient OR killing the disease. They can't keep both.
But in this case, the patent is totally evil, so its good either way. Frankly, I'd rather see Intertrust really stick it to 'em so bad that it puts them in serious trouble and other OS vendors (Apple) back off on DRM.
Apple, aside from the mild restrictions in ITMS, has always been opposed to DRM.
I returned something to Fry's recently and had no problem.
I've also asked questions at Fry's and gotten reasonable answers. (Q:Where is the XXX? A:Aisle YYY.)
I just noticed they are building on in Seattle. I'm so happy!
I've been working in Portland for a while. (I actually live in Seattle.) People told me that I should go to Powell's. I did. I was not impressed. It is not a bad bookstore, but I have seen better.
The Library Limited in St. Louis is about the same size and is nicer.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a die hard Mac user and I have been since 1993. I should mention that I'm a professional software engineer. I've been writing C/C++ for the Mac and for Windows professionally since 1995. (I learned C in the 80s on my Atari 800 using Deep Blue C.) About 3 months ago, I got a PC laptop and decided to install RedHat 8 on it. Then, I went online to try to find an 802.11b card that would work with the laptop.
This was the beginning of the nightmare.
I finally found a site that showed a Netgear card and said that it had Linux drivers on the installation CD, but that it didn't say so on the box. Well, OK. So, I bought the card, brought it home. No drivers. Then, I went back to the site and downloaded some drivers that were supposed to work with it. Well, it wasn't actually a driver but instead was the source for a driver. OK, I'm fairly comfortable with GCC. (I've been using Project Builder on MacOS X for a while now.) So, I go to compile this driver. It is unable to find some header file. I guess the header is supposed to come with the linux distro.
I don't have time for this shit.
I go back to OS X. I'm happy. I have some experience with Unix and Linux, but using these systems is never fun for me. I want to spend my time writing applications, not goofing around trying to configure the computer. Writing software is hard enough without that shit.
At least in OS X, I can "ease" myself into using command line tools. For everyday things I don't *have* to use the command line. Sure, I use tools like "top" and "sample" and "gdb", but I've been able to ease my way into it.
I ended up installing XP on the laptop. I'd much rather use Linux, but I need 802.11b support.
OK, I get the fog, but is the image being created with a projector? If so, what kind? Is it just a standard front projector? How bright?
(I'm currently working for InFocus, so I've become more conscious of projectors lately and their nuances.)
>>Way to reveal your ignorance. Let's blanketly blame an entire state (of millions of people) for the actions of a few stupid people When I lived in Texas, the stupid annoying jerks outnumbered the OK people about 20 to 1. >>Most of the coutry lies west of New York and east of Hollywood. Your ignorance of this part of the country does not make those parts inferior. Actually, it doesn't when you look at population. The people in the middle are inferior. I grew up in the midwest and I can testify that the stupid ignorant jerks outnumber the OK people about 20 to 1. I live in Seattle by way of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas.
>>That being said, I think I'll stay far away from Texas. It's like looking back in time 100 years.
I moved away from Texas in 1999. I won't even change planes there now.
Interviewer: "Tell me about your last position at SCO, Mr. Jones."
Jones: "They were trying to sue Linux out of existance, remember? Well, I got the idea that it would be cool to fight back from the inside by infiltrating the company and then working to destroy it. It worked. After I was there just three weeks, SCO tanked!"
Interviewer: "And what makes you think you'd be a good fit here at Microsoft?"
>>"What you think of spam"??? Why am I reminded of a
>>B-movie alien who announces to a startled earthling:
>>"We have been monitoring your so-called 'television'
>> transmissions for ten of your Earth years"?
When I started really thinking about "what is spam?", turns out there are some iffy cases where it is not entirely clear if a message is spam. The concept of "unwanted email" is somewhat subjective at a certain level. My system prevents unsolicited commercial mass distributed email. Maybe I should have said "What people commonly think of as spam" instead.
Overruled by business partners.
I have a system that would completely eliminate spam. It would not be based on filtering, would not cause any false positives, and would prevent 99% of what you think of as spam.
It would also have other benefits.
Problem? I couldn't get venture capital funding to build it. I've still got a business partner who is looking for money. If we get money, I'll build it. Unfortunately no one wants to put money into something that would compete with Microsoft's system. (They are working on a stupid, fatally flawed system that is tied only to HotMail.)
I get all my models from GM. (General Models)
You'd be surprised how fast 90 million can go when you start racking up big legal bills for a case like this.
The 8600 didn't come with Firewire, so you're using some kind of add-on firewire card. Sounds like that's your problem.
I'm a senior developer also. I agree with everything that you and the parent post are saying about the level of difficulty in doing a zero defect project of this scale.
I have seen a zero defect project done. (Although I wasn't actually on that project. It was some software for a heart pump.) It took a *lot* of time and the amount of code involved was nowhere near the F22 project talked about here.
If I had to guess, to get zero defects on 2 *million* lines of code on a jet fighter? 10 years?
As a developer, this is why I hate IT departments. They are very often stupid, irrational people who follow "policy" insteading of *thinking*. Fact is, the only time I need their "help" is when they have something locked up and I don't have the password or the access rights, or know the IP address of the proxy server, etc. I just had a run in with some dolt who first accused me of using a personal laptop on the company network (its a company laptop) and who then tells me that I can't have the laptop on the network at all because it is not allowed. Why? Its a Macintosh PowerBook running OS 10.2. My job here: write software for the Macintosh. Yet, I'm not supposed to have a Mac on the network. (It has to be on the network to get to the source repository at the bare minimum.) (My solution was to lie to her and tell her it wasn't attached to the network and I was "doing tests" with the Mac. She left me alone.) Why was this dolt at my desk? Some glitch in their system caused my Windows machine to be removed from the domain and I didn't have the admin password to re-add it. I've dealt with lots of IT people - some are better than others. Generally in small companies you get people who are okay. They will at least think and respond realistically to a situation. In larger companies, I've mostly dealt with power tripping dolts. I would really prefer these folks keep their shit working and leave the responsibility of keeping my machine running correctly to me.
What's the point of designing a better programming language when I have to use C++ anyway if I want to work.
Dylan and Objective-C are examples of really good languages not widely used for commercial development, unless you are a Mac programmer doing cocoa with Obj-C. (I have recently been lucky enough to be writing code using Objective-C++ for a living!)
C++ is not the best language in the world, but its not terrible and I've been able to consistantly find work doing C and C++.
But aren't there books, written on paper, describing RLE? Maybe the answer is to store some books describing file formats in an inert atmosphere?
Uh, actually you can drop out at age 16 most places if you want.
If they had taken time to put thought in their product, Apple would have beaten them to market.
I saw their stupid ad (the sound was down on the TV because I was on the phone). What a joke! Sure, the Mac may have 3% of the whole computer market, but what percentage of computer users will actually buy digital music from a service like this?
When ITMS comes has been for Window for a while, I'll bet that 20% of its customers will still be Mac users. People who are more into technology for personal use are more likely to buy a Mac. The reason so many PCs get sold is that some pencil neck accountant makes the decision on buying computers that he won't have to use.
Same reason that rental car agencies never have Saabs.
Call the replacement to the Hubble Telescope the Matlock Telescope!
Why not just auction it off on eBay?
And I always ask if it still takes just the two box tops to become a Canadian citizen.
And when discussing anything to be paid in canadian money: "Damn, I guess I'll have to look under the cushions of my couch again!"
The first computer I ever used was a Gould computer. My mom wrote a grant for her school to get it. She got it at the end of the school year so she had it at home all summer to learn how to use. I got to program on it.
Then, we got an Atari 400 and a cassette drive. That was something. That summer I just stayed home and learned to program in BASIC out of books. The next year, I learned Forth and then C. Later we got an Atari 800XL and a disk drive. That first Atari 400 was awesome. Within the next couple of years, all the boys I hung out with had computers. I was the one who was the best programmer in our little group.
I switched from Atari to the Mac in 1993.
Here I am over twenty years later coding in C++ and answering people's programming questions on a regular basis. Some things never change.
Branches of the government rely on Microsoft software for security?
We're doomed. Going off to start learning to speak chineese now...
>>choice of killing the patient OR killing the disease. They can't keep both.
But in this case, the patent is totally evil, so its good either way.
Frankly, I'd rather see Intertrust really stick it to 'em so bad that it puts them in serious trouble and other OS vendors (Apple) back off on DRM.
Apple, aside from the mild restrictions in ITMS, has always been opposed to DRM.
I returned something to Fry's recently and had no problem. I've also asked questions at Fry's and gotten reasonable answers. (Q:Where is the XXX? A:Aisle YYY.) I just noticed they are building on in Seattle. I'm so happy!
I've been working in Portland for a while. (I actually live in Seattle.) People told me that I should go to Powell's. I did. I was not impressed. It is not a bad bookstore, but I have seen better.
The Library Limited in St. Louis is about the same size and is nicer.