Well, think The Matrix....what do you do with 10 old Pentium II 233 machines? Throw them into a cheap cluster and have them download EVERYTHING from Usenet!
So in 100 years when computing time is too valuable, you thaw out a bunch of geeks. Since they don't know anything about the new technology, you put them to work factoring the nth digit of PI rather than waste your valuable quantum computing cycles.
Yeah, just make sure you calibrate it right before you sit down on the couch in your underwear with a beer to watch football. Scratching at the wrong cal might be a bit uncomfortable.
As for unrelated bugs, this can be an issue. If all one wants to do is a fourier transform, or a singular-value decomposition, or something similar, on some data, it's clearly ridiculous to have to learn the C++ STL, or similar libraries in other languages, to just mess with some matricies. FORTRAN, for all its problems, Will Just Work as long as you're doing something simple.
But that problem falls into the realm of selecting the right tool for the job rather than trying to paint C++ as too difficult to use just for that reason.
NAG, which you can buy, does translate the code into C. (I believe someone already replied and mentioned this fact.) I had to deal with its inability to transform strings from some Fortran code in a project I was involved with in college just because of this translation. That ill-informed comment was not neccessary.
FORTRAN, for all its problems, Will Just Work as long as you're doing something simple
Oh, well, there we go. The defacto standard in what we should all learn next is Fortran because it Will Just Work (well, unless you are doing something thats NOT simple). I can't really recall the last time I did something simple....oh, wait.....here is the last simple program I wrote:
int main (int argc, char** argv) { printf ("Hello, World!\n"); return 0;}
Yeah, it was hard to compile an all, but I got it to work finally.
On the other hand, if you're just doing some small stuff and you don't want to deal with more complicated languages, the best bet is probably to use Matlab/IDL/Maple/Mathematica and not worry about computer programming at all. Even if you're planning on doing big calculations at this point, prototyping your algorithm and methods in these interpreted special-purpose tools can be a very good way to get your code up and running.
Did you not read the parent post? The poster specifically mentions some reasons why some of these packages don't work for what he is trying to do. It must be the karma.
I believe that the GNU and at least a few commercial fortran compilers translate the code to C before it compiles. Kind of hard to outperform C when it is C.
I suggest reading coding standards books on C/C++ so that you avoid these "unrelated" bugs by design. I can only assume unrelated means things like compiler/dev environment/linking/syntax/semantics problems. Programming was never meant to be easy, no matter what language you use. You can gain enough experience in a language to not have to deal with the type of issues that the poster was talking about.
I agree this is more of a vendor specific problem. The messages he is talking about handling can be overridden or ignored. Many developers use a wizard-generated framework to start their projects, which is probably where the example program fits into his exploit. Also, his assertion that it is unfixable is a bit premature given that the author has likely not seen the source code. Looks like someone trying to get their name out there as some sort of "security expert".
Maybe he doesn't know this, but DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) uses this same method for inter-process communication. Its not used much anymore since it is rather slow, but some apps still do it for backwards compatibility. As with any communication mechanism, you have to check for buffer-overrun exploits as well as a multitude of other exploit areas.
Hey, the only aroma I need is the smell you get when you first unpack a new piece of hardware. Its like the mature version of the smell you knew when you were a kid running through the aisles of Toys R Us. Ever notice that its easy to skip lunch when you are in a room full of just-opened-and-unpacked computer boxes?
Hey, a whole new business in the line of diet drugs! Damn, I better find a good patent attorney....
and most of them, I challenge, are as deep as a rain puddle
And as thick as a mud puddle.
Actually, the artists do the least amount of work of the whole process. I wouldn't exactly call sitting around in a green room watching TV, ordering all the sushi you can eat, and chain smoking joints work. This is what the majority of their time in the studio is. They sing into the mic for a bit, and then sit around while the producer and engineer mix it together. Then you can go into the whole marketing and distribution effort if you want. Point is, the artist doesn't exactly starve.
Too bad the laws don't care about the Software Code of Chivalry (tm): Thou shalt not steal open source software and pretend its your own.
Its probably just a couple of high-school kids that are a little too bored for their own good. This type of crap has been happening for a long time. I remember complaints such as this getting posted to bulletin board systems in years past. There is always some idiot out there that thinks they can get away with this stuff.
Its lack of popularity is probably due to a phenomenon called "market share" where the first ones that get noticed in the market generally enjoy a dominate position with little effort. Too bad too many CS students get caught up in the "I can make a difference" funk of open source software and spend their most creative and energetic time of their careers hacking something that has only a slim chance of really becoming a big deal. Had they gotten a job, weather it be in an open source type company or even making commercial software, some people might understand this.
It might also have something to do with the fact that SAP itself is pretty much known as a big deal to install. This might be the reason why their clients are mostly Fortune 1000 - it costs a lot to install the software after you buy it.
Isn't the purpose of extreme programming to have your two already-motivated developers motivate each other not to slack off? Wouldn't work too well when both aren't that motivated.
My personal opinion is that you might as well just get one competent guy on the project instead of trying to form an XP team. You get the project done with the same lack of documentation and design for half the price. I think people who work well in an XP enviroment are the natural coders that that he was talking about. I'm all for skipping formal design, but only when the person is one of those natural coder types. They know enough to look at the big picture and make good decisions to take advantage of reusability and scalability. Most of the Steady Eddie types need to work it out on paper to be able to see their design flaws before they code themselves into a corner. None of this still solves the problem where your natural coder quits and leaves you no design docs to give to the Steady Eddies that need to pick up the pieces and continue on.
90% of the guys who describe themselves as kick-ass coders can't properly solve the simplest problems that involve just a little bit of thinking.
Oh, a believer in the "solve-a-riddle-get-a-job" mindset. Microsoft hires that way. Everyone complains about their software problems. Maybe this is the cause.
I knew a lot of people in college that could solve these proof type problems pretty easy. They couldn't code worth shit. I know a lot of people that work now and can solve these types of problems. Their code tends to focus on solving one specific problem at the expense of leaving the larger scale part of the problem unanswered. Sounds like making a webserver that serves web pages, but really sucks in terms of security.
Often their code is not reusable in any fashion, and they have a hard time understanding something that is engineered to be reusable and scalable. And when they design a UI, using it is like....solving a proof!
Now, true, I don't know to what depth your questions go. Perhaps they are simpler than what I've encountered. (I did answer the question, anyway. Still didn't take the job.) I'd rather not work somewhere where everyone is trying to wear their brain on their sleeve to make sure everyone knows who is the dominant geek. I've been well paid and have not had to work in that kind of environment for a while. When I did work in that environment, I just couldn't take the hostility everyone turned on me when they realized they were outclassed. (Not that I consider myself a genius either.....everyone knows people that just don't "get it" and I had the unfortunate opportunity to have to work with some of those types.)
I used to have a $2300/mo mortgage and made > $100k a year. Then I moved out of California, took a pay cut, and got to cut my house payment by $700. There are also no state taxes where I am now. There are a lot of opportunities out there, you just have to make some sacrifices.
Thats like the really crass computer consultant I ran into that did Clipper stuff for a telemarketing company back in the early '90s. I just happened to be a young 20-something that was setting up accounting packages for small businesses, then I had the pleasure of dealing with this guy. He started talking about having 30 years experience and all that. Considering that the first RDBMS came out in 1976, it appeared he was just dreaming about databases for about 10 years prior to any actual work.
And I'm pretty sure Clipper wasn't around for 30 years either.
I have too eaten a Krispy Kreme donut. My point was that they taste just like any other donut when they are cold. Now, a hot Krispy Kreme is hard to turn down, but one thats at room temperature is nothing special.
Can't help but wonder if the present generation of "faster, better, cheaper" probes will ever live this long though
I think someone in my CS department described Linux as "faster, better, cheaper once.....hopefully you weren't built that way and you'll last a long time.
Yeah, I think my friends used to label floppies with pr0n on them as "educational material" when we were kids. Not that their mom or dad ever looked into their collection or anything, or might have even been able to tell what the pictures where. (Ever see a digitized picture on a Commodore 64?)
They will probably notice this bandwidth black-hole around the CS department the first day. Everyone will be running UT and Q3 servers on the department workstations.
If your parents don't like your music, then tough, deal with it. Have you ever thought that they might actually BE SMARTER THAN YOU!?
Oh, you mean like the time they locked out the porn satellite with a keypad code when I was 13? I hacked it, and they never knew.
Although I doubt they cared that much I was watching it, only that they knew it was their job to prevent me from watching it. Personally, I'm going to let my daughter sit with me and watch R rated movies as she grows up. Then maybe she'll have a chance of turning into a realistic human being rather than what these religious institutions produce.
The great thing is that geeks are taking over. Eventually all these old people will die and take their stupid ideas of control with them. Geeks will make the world work more like a piece of engineering where the solution works while pleasing everyone involved. No more of these lame government systems where you just have to have a skin color other than white to benefit. No more passing laws that only get passed when everyone's payola source's needs are met too.
You're joking.. right? In what way is IE the only browser that will support that?
I think you missed the whole point. Sure there are other ways of doing things, but you have to juggle your definition of "User-friendly" with the amount of mouse clicks required for your target audience to complete their task. Obviously coupling client-side script with server-side logic makes it easier than implementing it all on the server side. (And there are tons of arguments for an against these methods too.)
And, no, I haven't been hiding under a rock in regards to Java applets. If someone wanted to tackle the task of trying to make a user-friendly, elegant presentation that was cross platform, they might evaluate Java as one option. What, because you don't use it no one is supposed to? Come on, Java was touted as the run-anywhere solution at one point, it just never made it. I have a hard time blaming Microsoft for it totally since the VMs in the browsers never made it to the level needed for it to really run-anywhere easily. Sun then tried to make up for this using a "plug-in" with some success, but it still fell pretty short.
Put simply, what can I do in IE that I can't do in any other browser?
Wasn't this whole subject about web pages that didn't work anywhere except for inside IE? There is obviously something you can't do in other browsers that can be done in IE. (But since you asked, try embedding an ActiveX control in anything but IE. "So what?" you might say....well, this is probably part of the complaint that things don't work anywhere but in IE.)
Because if it's designed by people who don't work for a large company more concerned with their bottom line than a useful evolution of the web, they must be a bunch of pontificating, innefectual, ivory-tower eggheads, right?
Your hatred for Microsoft is clouding your better judgement. Look back at what has happened with standards bodies in the past. They are largly bureaucratic organizations that take so long to argue about the set of standards that the thing they were standardizing is almost useless by the time they are finished. Take a look at how long it took to define ANSI C and even get a proposed standard for C++. Look at what ICANN has done as a standards body. This is a good thing?
I think you need to look up the definition on "inneffectual." You imply that Microsoft is a bunch of lazy people sitting on something, preventing it from going forward. This is certainly not the case, like it or not. It is laughable to think that you would consider what can be done with IE as a useless evolution of the web.
Do you want to be the one to explain to your boss why the company site doesn't work on his wife's computer?
Me: It doesn't work because the browser she is using only supports the capabilities set forth by some standards comittee. You know, a bunch of people sitting around a round table, arguing about some base set of features the web should have.
Boss: How do we get it to work?
Me: Well, since you wanted the site to be navigable in ways that would make it user-friendly and have it look good, IE was pretty much the only browser that could support that. Sure, we could have waited until all the Java virtual machines worked the same way on all browswers and made one big Java applet, but they have a better chance of creating the web standard that supports a lot of the UI features we use before that happens.
Boss: So when they create the standard, it will work?
Me: Probably not since some people think "standards" must mean feature-poor so that it is easy to implement incrementally, and doesn't make one browser totally out of date by favoring another. So everyone complains that Microsoft has historically stolen and extended instead of innovating like they say they do. Now, as it turns out, IE is actually innovative because of its rich set of features, making web applications easier to make. Now they are complaining that it is too innovative. If you can't compete, complain I guess.
Boss: What about Flash?
Me: Oh, it works well, is cross platform, and can deliver a feature rich user experience too. The only problem is that installing the rendering engine on each desktop comes with its own challenges created by each OS it is supposed to work on. Everyone also seems to complain about it since the mindset of Flash designers seems to be, "Because we can, we should," and you get these really nifty animated websites that are flashy, but useless for imparting the information you intended.
Boss: OK, we are uninstalling AOL when I get home and going to Earthlink. My wife can figure out how to use Eudora and Yahoo Messenger, and she'll have all she has with AOL, except for the unwanted ad bombardment and A/S/L requests.
Of course no one wants to believe Elizabeth Smart's case is nationally covered for any reason other than she is white and rich. I'm sure the fact that she is Mormon probably escaped scrutiny especially since no one wants to criticize the Mormons just like everyone is afraid of the Scientologists. At least you know where the Scientologists will attack you - the court of law. Mormons are almost the mafia in scope of their deeds and power.
I also heard almost the exact same words about the Smart vs. Patterson covered on NPR a few days ago. Almost sounds like plaugerism.
And before I start getting flamed, I was baptised a Mormon although I no longer consider myself a Mormon. A great many of my extended family members are Mormon, and they, as far as I know, are good people as I am sure many Mormons are. Some of my extended family, however, has had to deal with their underhanded tactics of lies and threats as the church attempted to control their lives.
Slashdot Mirror
So in 100 years when computing time is too valuable, you thaw out a bunch of geeks. Since they don't know anything about the new technology, you put them to work factoring the nth digit of PI rather than waste your valuable quantum computing cycles.
Ice....its not just for a cup of Jolt anymore.
Yeah, just make sure you calibrate it right before you sit down on the couch in your underwear with a beer to watch football. Scratching at the wrong cal might be a bit uncomfortable.
But that problem falls into the realm of selecting the right tool for the job rather than trying to paint C++ as too difficult to use just for that reason.
NAG, which you can buy, does translate the code into C. (I believe someone already replied and mentioned this fact.) I had to deal with its inability to transform strings from some Fortran code in a project I was involved with in college just because of this translation. That ill-informed comment was not neccessary.
FORTRAN, for all its problems, Will Just Work as long as you're doing something simple
Oh, well, there we go. The defacto standard in what we should all learn next is Fortran because it Will Just Work (well, unless you are doing something thats NOT simple). I can't really recall the last time I did something simple....oh, wait.....here is the last simple program I wrote:
int main (int argc, char** argv) {
printf ("Hello, World!\n");
return 0;}
Yeah, it was hard to compile an all, but I got it to work finally.
On the other hand, if you're just doing some small stuff and you don't want to deal with more complicated languages, the best bet is probably to use Matlab/IDL/Maple/Mathematica and not worry about computer programming at all. Even if you're planning on doing big calculations at this point, prototyping your algorithm and methods in these interpreted special-purpose tools can be a very good way to get your code up and running.
Did you not read the parent post? The poster specifically mentions some reasons why some of these packages don't work for what he is trying to do. It must be the karma.
I suggest reading coding standards books on C/C++ so that you avoid these "unrelated" bugs by design. I can only assume unrelated means things like compiler/dev environment/linking/syntax/semantics problems. Programming was never meant to be easy, no matter what language you use. You can gain enough experience in a language to not have to deal with the type of issues that the poster was talking about.
Maybe he doesn't know this, but DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) uses this same method for inter-process communication. Its not used much anymore since it is rather slow, but some apps still do it for backwards compatibility. As with any communication mechanism, you have to check for buffer-overrun exploits as well as a multitude of other exploit areas.
Hey, a whole new business in the line of diet drugs! Damn, I better find a good patent attorney....
And as thick as a mud puddle.
Actually, the artists do the least amount of work of the whole process. I wouldn't exactly call sitting around in a green room watching TV, ordering all the sushi you can eat, and chain smoking joints work. This is what the majority of their time in the studio is. They sing into the mic for a bit, and then sit around while the producer and engineer mix it together. Then you can go into the whole marketing and distribution effort if you want. Point is, the artist doesn't exactly starve.
Its probably just a couple of high-school kids that are a little too bored for their own good. This type of crap has been happening for a long time. I remember complaints such as this getting posted to bulletin board systems in years past. There is always some idiot out there that thinks they can get away with this stuff.
It might also have something to do with the fact that SAP itself is pretty much known as a big deal to install. This might be the reason why their clients are mostly Fortune 1000 - it costs a lot to install the software after you buy it.
My personal opinion is that you might as well just get one competent guy on the project instead of trying to form an XP team. You get the project done with the same lack of documentation and design for half the price. I think people who work well in an XP enviroment are the natural coders that that he was talking about. I'm all for skipping formal design, but only when the person is one of those natural coder types. They know enough to look at the big picture and make good decisions to take advantage of reusability and scalability. Most of the Steady Eddie types need to work it out on paper to be able to see their design flaws before they code themselves into a corner. None of this still solves the problem where your natural coder quits and leaves you no design docs to give to the Steady Eddies that need to pick up the pieces and continue on.
Oh, a believer in the "solve-a-riddle-get-a-job" mindset. Microsoft hires that way. Everyone complains about their software problems. Maybe this is the cause.
I knew a lot of people in college that could solve these proof type problems pretty easy. They couldn't code worth shit. I know a lot of people that work now and can solve these types of problems. Their code tends to focus on solving one specific problem at the expense of leaving the larger scale part of the problem unanswered. Sounds like making a webserver that serves web pages, but really sucks in terms of security.
Often their code is not reusable in any fashion, and they have a hard time understanding something that is engineered to be reusable and scalable. And when they design a UI, using it is like....solving a proof!
Now, true, I don't know to what depth your questions go. Perhaps they are simpler than what I've encountered. (I did answer the question, anyway. Still didn't take the job.) I'd rather not work somewhere where everyone is trying to wear their brain on their sleeve to make sure everyone knows who is the dominant geek. I've been well paid and have not had to work in that kind of environment for a while. When I did work in that environment, I just couldn't take the hostility everyone turned on me when they realized they were outclassed. (Not that I consider myself a genius either.....everyone knows people that just don't "get it" and I had the unfortunate opportunity to have to work with some of those types.)
I used to have a $2300/mo mortgage and made > $100k a year. Then I moved out of California, took a pay cut, and got to cut my house payment by $700. There are also no state taxes where I am now. There are a lot of opportunities out there, you just have to make some sacrifices.
And I'm pretty sure Clipper wasn't around for 30 years either.
I have too eaten a Krispy Kreme donut. My point was that they taste just like any other donut when they are cold. Now, a hot Krispy Kreme is hard to turn down, but one thats at room temperature is nothing special.
Cold Krispy Kreme Donuts = Winchells Donuts = Dolly Madison Package Donuts
HEY! Krispy Kreme clone - Microwave = Winchells Donuts = Cold Krispy Kreme Donuts
Oh no....
I think someone in my CS department described Linux as "faster, better, cheaper once.....hopefully you weren't built that way and you'll last a long time.
They will probably notice this bandwidth black-hole around the CS department the first day. Everyone will be running UT and Q3 servers on the department workstations.
Or how about now when you get off the plane and have a wet spot on your crotch...."Was the toilet too busy or did your laptop leak?"
Oh, you mean like the time they locked out the porn satellite with a keypad code when I was 13? I hacked it, and they never knew.
Although I doubt they cared that much I was watching it, only that they knew it was their job to prevent me from watching it. Personally, I'm going to let my daughter sit with me and watch R rated movies as she grows up. Then maybe she'll have a chance of turning into a realistic human being rather than what these religious institutions produce.
The great thing is that geeks are taking over. Eventually all these old people will die and take their stupid ideas of control with them. Geeks will make the world work more like a piece of engineering where the solution works while pleasing everyone involved. No more of these lame government systems where you just have to have a skin color other than white to benefit. No more passing laws that only get passed when everyone's payola source's needs are met too.
I think you missed the whole point. Sure there are other ways of doing things, but you have to juggle your definition of "User-friendly" with the amount of mouse clicks required for your target audience to complete their task. Obviously coupling client-side script with server-side logic makes it easier than implementing it all on the server side. (And there are tons of arguments for an against these methods too.)
And, no, I haven't been hiding under a rock in regards to Java applets. If someone wanted to tackle the task of trying to make a user-friendly, elegant presentation that was cross platform, they might evaluate Java as one option. What, because you don't use it no one is supposed to? Come on, Java was touted as the run-anywhere solution at one point, it just never made it. I have a hard time blaming Microsoft for it totally since the VMs in the browsers never made it to the level needed for it to really run-anywhere easily. Sun then tried to make up for this using a "plug-in" with some success, but it still fell pretty short.
Put simply, what can I do in IE that I can't do in any other browser?
Wasn't this whole subject about web pages that didn't work anywhere except for inside IE? There is obviously something you can't do in other browsers that can be done in IE. (But since you asked, try embedding an ActiveX control in anything but IE. "So what?" you might say....well, this is probably part of the complaint that things don't work anywhere but in IE.)
Because if it's designed by people who don't work for a large company more concerned with their bottom line than a useful evolution of the web, they must be a bunch of pontificating, innefectual, ivory-tower eggheads, right?
Your hatred for Microsoft is clouding your better judgement. Look back at what has happened with standards bodies in the past. They are largly bureaucratic organizations that take so long to argue about the set of standards that the thing they were standardizing is almost useless by the time they are finished. Take a look at how long it took to define ANSI C and even get a proposed standard for C++. Look at what ICANN has done as a standards body. This is a good thing?
I think you need to look up the definition on "inneffectual." You imply that Microsoft is a bunch of lazy people sitting on something, preventing it from going forward. This is certainly not the case, like it or not. It is laughable to think that you would consider what can be done with IE as a useless evolution of the web.
I suspect I've been trolled...
This whole topic was a troll to begin with.
Me: It doesn't work because the browser she is using only supports the capabilities set forth by some standards comittee. You know, a bunch of people sitting around a round table, arguing about some base set of features the web should have.
Boss: How do we get it to work?
Me: Well, since you wanted the site to be navigable in ways that would make it user-friendly and have it look good, IE was pretty much the only browser that could support that. Sure, we could have waited until all the Java virtual machines worked the same way on all browswers and made one big Java applet, but they have a better chance of creating the web standard that supports a lot of the UI features we use before that happens.
Boss: So when they create the standard, it will work?
Me: Probably not since some people think "standards" must mean feature-poor so that it is easy to implement incrementally, and doesn't make one browser totally out of date by favoring another. So everyone complains that Microsoft has historically stolen and extended instead of innovating like they say they do. Now, as it turns out, IE is actually innovative because of its rich set of features, making web applications easier to make. Now they are complaining that it is too innovative. If you can't compete, complain I guess.
Boss: What about Flash?
Me: Oh, it works well, is cross platform, and can deliver a feature rich user experience too. The only problem is that installing the rendering engine on each desktop comes with its own challenges created by each OS it is supposed to work on. Everyone also seems to complain about it since the mindset of Flash designers seems to be, "Because we can, we should," and you get these really nifty animated websites that are flashy, but useless for imparting the information you intended.
Boss: OK, we are uninstalling AOL when I get home and going to Earthlink. My wife can figure out how to use Eudora and Yahoo Messenger, and she'll have all she has with AOL, except for the unwanted ad bombardment and A/S/L requests.
The other popular course, I hear, is: How to be a Total Loser and Still Get a Playboy Model for a Girlfriend.
I also heard almost the exact same words about the Smart vs. Patterson covered on NPR a few days ago. Almost sounds like plaugerism.
And before I start getting flamed, I was baptised a Mormon although I no longer consider myself a Mormon. A great many of my extended family members are Mormon, and they, as far as I know, are good people as I am sure many Mormons are. Some of my extended family, however, has had to deal with their underhanded tactics of lies and threats as the church attempted to control their lives.
I wonder when they'll port it to the 2600....
Doing so in the act of self-gratification probably doesn't apply.