Gah, I have to begrudgingly disagree with this statement. C++, although getting you "closer" to the metal is by no means an assembler equivalent. It has high level language constructs like looping and branching for which there are no real equivalents at the machine level...and no, a JMP LNG is no more a looping construct than it is the fallthrough on a conditional jump.
C++ also has a reasonble library of code that can help abstract OS issues to aid portability e.g. streams, etc.
I find it kind of funny that all the Java programmers hang crap on the C++ for having to free their resources, but the Java crowd have to do the same thing, only without a destructor. Nowadays, in our shop anyway, non-memory related resources are far more common and need to be disposed of in a timely manner e.g. database connections.
Ironic, now the language has moved to the point that it deals adequately well with the problems of the 80/90s we find ourselves with a new set of related problems that it doesn't handle very well at all.
Any language that can't be reasonablly coded without the use of a profiler that checks for memory leaks.
The power of C++ comes at a cost, and that cost is that you must program carefully and responsibly. I agree with your sentiment, you must run a profiler (Bounds Checker or the new fancy DevPartner) on your code to be sure it is all tickity boo, but once you have done that you have a fast, lean, well tuned piece of code. Well, you can have if your programming skills are up to it. It's a dangerous language for the many hobbyist programmers who fill professional positions in companies, but is quite safe in the hands of an expert.
I write code that has to perform, and has to do that 24/7/365 without errors, and for me C++ is the only reasonable and sane solution.
Any language that does array checking by giving you an run time error pointing to Georgia.
Well tested code will not have an amatuer mistake like this in it.
Any language that makes you walk hunched over, with one hand behind your back, and your shoes on the wrong feet so your programs don't blow up.
This is just so not true. C++ is a fully fledged language which requires discipline to write quality code in, but offers the most flexible and full solution to hardcore coding problems. We may need to jump through a few hoops for string handling on the MS platforms (MS, you really did drop the ball on Win32 string/unicode handling...fucking awful...really) but really that is my only major complaint with the language.
C++ requires a much deeper knowledge of the quirks of the language, of the storage scheme before you can get any program to compile.
A simple hello world is no harder in C++ than in VB, etc.
It is said that it takes maybe 18 months of programming before a C++ programmer is any good.
Yep, it can take this long and longer, but it's well worth the effort.
I suspect the pride in the language is more pride in the programmer's archane knowledge of how to get the language to do anything.
Seriously dude, C++ is just not that hard a langauge to learn. Give it a go some time, it's good stuff. What I found hard was learning, and then constantly adding to the list of Win32 API calls. MS does not rest on it's laurels when it comes to creating new APIs.
Programming is not hard, it can be complex, but a language like C++ can make it hard, especially large complex projects.
Put too many inexperienced programmers onto a C++ project and you have a recipe for disaster...more so than if you did that on a Java/C#/VB project, but I still don't think it's that bad. Ok, the ATL stuff is abysmal, and strings are awful, but those are mainly Windows issues. C++ under Unix is still a beautiful thing to behold.
And give me Java's automatic garbage collection any day (Smalltalks for that matter). That alone saves millions of dollars in programmers time right there. Just think if you didn't have to worry about all those problems. Your code would be orders of magnitude "safer".
I can't say I'm a fan of a "method" of garbage collection that forces a dispose/finalise/etc pattern onto the programmers. It's a step forward from malloc/free, but not far. Good C++ programmers always match their mallocs with their frees, and write both at the same time to avoid the possibility of forgetting one.
All in all I feel the sheer power and control that one gains from C++ more than makes up for it's difficulty...and yes, we C++ programmers are proud, but that's because the goods ones have reason to be proud:-)
*sniff* I really miss those old destructors in c++, they were the shitznik. This new model of garbage collection "when I damn well please" will never catch on;->
Consume the Net
on
MIT Roofnet
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· Score: 2, Informative
Something like this has been going on in London for absulutely ages. Check out the link Consume The Net
Firstly, any fool can see how disastrously flawed any implementation of such a device would inevitably be. It simply wouldn't work. The London congestion charging system is a far less complex set-up, operating on a far smaller number of people, and they can't keep on top of the number of fines it's producing, so they're allocating them by lottery based on all the recorded transgressions. How could a system which records everything which everybody does be manageable if they can't make this work?Two words...more servers. An automated system would just need some more horsepower to push it along, and with all the revenue they raise that everyone is whining about they could easily fund a few more machines. Besides, the London Congestion zone is monitored through cameras and people are in charge of trying to make out the plates. They have some automation, but not enough. RFID on the car would take that problem away.
Secondly, it infringes on such fundamental principles of jurisprudence as the presumption of innocence. When you're being watched all the time, you are by implication a suspected criminal, and the government has decided that you can't be trusted to go about your business in a responsible manner, and so has had to take your right to do so off you. Who wants to live in such a society?Do you even live in London? I can't walk hardly anywhere without being under the gaze of a slant mounted camera. They are everywhere over here, watching the streets and people. Amazlingly, only the criminals have anything to worry about from this technology. I actually feel safer in a camera area than outside (like in Brixton). Records could be held for a short period and destroyed if there was no indication they should be kept. Believe me, big brother is not interested in where you park your car, unless it's in a no-parking area.
Thirdly, are these offences really that bad?. Convicted murderers eventually get let out of jail and are allowed to go about their business free of surveillance, because they're deemed to have paid their debt to society and so can go on with their lives to the best of their ability. Meanwhile, In this case, ordinary people are denied the basic human right to go about your business without let or hindrance before they've ever done anything wrong. If you can't see the problem with that, and your views are in any way representative of those of the general public, then stop the world 'cos I'm getting off.The offenses are not too bad right until some kid gets killed because a car was doing 65 in a 50 zone (happened to my 2.5 yr old newphew). That's only 15 KM/H over the limit, a speed a which many people travel, and which if the guy had kept to the limit would have almost certainly meant he survived instead. He's dead now and I saw his bruised and broken corpse lying in the open coffin at his parents place - something I don't need to see again. It's worth repeating, 15km/h!
As for going about your business free of surveilance, you don't currently do it, particularly not on the internet so I don't see what you're on about. Cameras in the streets, offices, lobbies and shops monitor everything. Your supermarket records all your purchases either against your credit card details or your "rewards card". Banks monitor all your transactions (and film you). Why baulk at something that may actually beenfit you one day when your life is already some amazingly well monitored.
Since when is it considered safe to bust through a red light? Last time I checked the road rules stated that you are to brake and come to a halt at a yellow light, unless it is not realistically achievable. Most people seem to see them as a challenge to get through the lights before they hit the red, rather than braking as they should. This is all done in the name of "saving some time".
By speed trap towns I assume you are referring to towns that lie on a major highway where the highway passes through the township. Now, I don't think anyone can argue that going 100KM/H through the main drag of a town is a "safe" activity. People live in those towns and have to cross those roads. It's tough you have to hit your brakes and slow down for others convenience and safety, but necessary. I've done the trip from Brisbane to Bundaberg a number of times and it passes through towns like that. I've never begrudge the townsfolk a chance to safely cross their main street without some dickhead hurttling through at 140KM/H just because that's how fast his Audi can go.
As a pedestrian (I don't own a car, why would I need one living in London?) I think it's a great idea. Let's face it, the outrage is coming from the assholes who think it's their *right* to break the rules that are set out for all our safety and convenience. These are the retards who run up the bus lanes, park in handicap spots, double park, speed and generally inconvenience other drivers.
With the police freed from having to book and deal with this minor stuff they can move more officers onto protecting and investigating more dangerous crimes. Why should the cops have to spend their days trying to bust these people? They know they are breaking the road code, they know there are fines, and now they want to whine about losing that ability. No sympathy from me.
The privacy nut in me wonders about infriging uses of the technology, but with proper legislation that should be kept well under control. Think about it: a hit and run occurs in a back street at 11PM, check the records to see which cars were there at the time and question the suspects. Check the database to see where those cars are now and make sure they're not heading for the airport.
There is the potential to abuse this system, but it also has the potential to streamline the administration of these motoring infractions. As long as they build a little tolerence into the system it will not be draconian.
Appart from the handle they used to place on the front to start the car and the fact they now go anywhere up to 6 times as fast. Indicators are also fitted now. So, apart from that, no real changes.
I think they mean getting ignored by Linus when he submits patches to him. Linus is world famous for ignoring patches multiple times and never replying to emails.
That's because it's the safest approach...unless of course you are running tripwire and can track the changes to your system. Besides, you can simply quarantine off your data, re-install your standard base, then drop the data back in onto a machine that now has a known build of software. Of course, this wouldn't be particularly safe when data and code are mixed together, like in files from a certain word processor we all know and hate (MS Word).
I actually rebuilt my server the other day onto a new machine, not because of a worm, but because I got a second hand dual proc 750mzhz server (with RAID 5!) for nothing. It was pretty east to install the base system, RedHat 9, run up2date, then copy the important files from/etc into place. Back up and running in no time. Try doing that with the registry.
Since only IBM was privvy to that code they can only take action against IBM. They cannot take action against other programmers who have used/seen code that was released by IBM into the kernel. This is pure FUD you are spreading. Until SCO show some acutal code that *they* wrote they will remain the laughing stock of the community.
Won't this be a tad difficult until SCO actually reveal what code has been compromised? Aren't you effectively saying we should re-write the entire kernel from scratch?
It's generally only a few fonts and abit of paragraph layout that gets messed up in these conversions...if even that. If the exact layout of your business doc is critical (then it's probably just marketing garbage anyway) use PDF. Otherwise, surely it's the actual information in the doc, rather than the exact paragraph spacing and kerning that is important.
How arogant of you to assume that the Chinese developers couldn't build a tool that is better for them than the MS team. They live in China, know the people of China and their desires better, read/write and use Chinese keyboards constantly and have a far better understanding of their localised needs.
Why is it that people cry out "protectionist" and anti-competitive at the first sign of some actual competetion. Yes that's right, for there to be competition there must be at *least* two companies and two products, not one. If anything, it is your attitude that is anti-competitive.
I have a flock of killer butterflies on that side of the moon who assure me there are no little green men. What, you don't believe I have the killer butterflies? Prove it!
For those who aren't in region two...that episode contains a cut scene where one amazonian says to another "Me have love that dear not speak it's name". A nice homage to Oscar Wilde.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it because all the Unix gurus are too busy writing Windows viruses and laughing their asses off about how easy it is?
C++ also has a reasonble library of code that can help abstract OS issues to aid portability e.g. streams, etc.
Bahahaha, well that's my paradigm shift for today. Time to go leverage some synergies now.
Ironic, now the language has moved to the point that it deals adequately well with the problems of the 80/90s we find ourselves with a new set of related problems that it doesn't handle very well at all.
The power of C++ comes at a cost, and that cost is that you must program carefully and responsibly. I agree with your sentiment, you must run a profiler (Bounds Checker or the new fancy DevPartner) on your code to be sure it is all tickity boo, but once you have done that you have a fast, lean, well tuned piece of code. Well, you can have if your programming skills are up to it. It's a dangerous language for the many hobbyist programmers who fill professional positions in companies, but is quite safe in the hands of an expert.
I write code that has to perform, and has to do that 24/7/365 without errors, and for me C++ is the only reasonable and sane solution.
Any language that does array checking by giving you an run time error pointing to Georgia.
Well tested code will not have an amatuer mistake like this in it.
Any language that makes you walk hunched over, with one hand behind your back, and your shoes on the wrong feet so your programs don't blow up.
This is just so not true. C++ is a fully fledged language which requires discipline to write quality code in, but offers the most flexible and full solution to hardcore coding problems. We may need to jump through a few hoops for string handling on the MS platforms (MS, you really did drop the ball on Win32 string/unicode handling...fucking awful...really) but really that is my only major complaint with the language.
C++ requires a much deeper knowledge of the quirks of the language, of the storage scheme before you can get any program to compile.
A simple hello world is no harder in C++ than in VB, etc.
It is said that it takes maybe 18 months of programming before a C++ programmer is any good.
Yep, it can take this long and longer, but it's well worth the effort.
I suspect the pride in the language is more pride in the programmer's archane knowledge of how to get the language to do anything.
Seriously dude, C++ is just not that hard a langauge to learn. Give it a go some time, it's good stuff. What I found hard was learning, and then constantly adding to the list of Win32 API calls. MS does not rest on it's laurels when it comes to creating new APIs.
Programming is not hard, it can be complex, but a language like C++ can make it hard, especially large complex projects.
Put too many inexperienced programmers onto a C++ project and you have a recipe for disaster...more so than if you did that on a Java/C#/VB project, but I still don't think it's that bad. Ok, the ATL stuff is abysmal, and strings are awful, but those are mainly Windows issues. C++ under Unix is still a beautiful thing to behold.
And give me Java's automatic garbage collection any day (Smalltalks for that matter). That alone saves millions of dollars in programmers time right there. Just think if you didn't have to worry about all those problems. Your code would be orders of magnitude "safer".
I can't say I'm a fan of a "method" of garbage collection that forces a dispose/finalise/etc pattern onto the programmers. It's a step forward from malloc/free, but not far. Good C++ programmers always match their mallocs with their frees, and write both at the same time to avoid the possibility of forgetting one.
All in all I feel the sheer power and control that one gains from C++ more than makes up for it's difficulty...and yes, we C++ programmers are proud, but that's because the goods ones have reason to be proud :-)
*sniff* I really miss those old destructors in c++, they were the shitznik. This new model of garbage collection "when I damn well please" will never catch on ;->
Something like this has been going on in London for absulutely ages. Check out the link Consume The Net
2000 shouldn't fall out of support until 2005, and XP should be around 2007, so there's plenty of time to ditch the trash and move to Open Source.
Secondly, it infringes on such fundamental principles of jurisprudence as the presumption of innocence. When you're being watched all the time, you are by implication a suspected criminal, and the government has decided that you can't be trusted to go about your business in a responsible manner, and so has had to take your right to do so off you. Who wants to live in such a society?Do you even live in London? I can't walk hardly anywhere without being under the gaze of a slant mounted camera. They are everywhere over here, watching the streets and people. Amazlingly, only the criminals have anything to worry about from this technology. I actually feel safer in a camera area than outside (like in Brixton). Records could be held for a short period and destroyed if there was no indication they should be kept. Believe me, big brother is not interested in where you park your car, unless it's in a no-parking area.
Thirdly, are these offences really that bad?. Convicted murderers eventually get let out of jail and are allowed to go about their business free of surveillance, because they're deemed to have paid their debt to society and so can go on with their lives to the best of their ability. Meanwhile, In this case, ordinary people are denied the basic human right to go about your business without let or hindrance before they've ever done anything wrong. If you can't see the problem with that, and your views are in any way representative of those of the general public, then stop the world 'cos I'm getting off.The offenses are not too bad right until some kid gets killed because a car was doing 65 in a 50 zone (happened to my 2.5 yr old newphew). That's only 15 KM/H over the limit, a speed a which many people travel, and which if the guy had kept to the limit would have almost certainly meant he survived instead. He's dead now and I saw his bruised and broken corpse lying in the open coffin at his parents place - something I don't need to see again. It's worth repeating, 15km/h!
As for going about your business free of surveilance, you don't currently do it, particularly not on the internet so I don't see what you're on about. Cameras in the streets, offices, lobbies and shops monitor everything. Your supermarket records all your purchases either against your credit card details or your "rewards card". Banks monitor all your transactions (and film you). Why baulk at something that may actually beenfit you one day when your life is already some amazingly well monitored.
By speed trap towns I assume you are referring to towns that lie on a major highway where the highway passes through the township. Now, I don't think anyone can argue that going 100KM/H through the main drag of a town is a "safe" activity. People live in those towns and have to cross those roads. It's tough you have to hit your brakes and slow down for others convenience and safety, but necessary. I've done the trip from Brisbane to Bundaberg a number of times and it passes through towns like that. I've never begrudge the townsfolk a chance to safely cross their main street without some dickhead hurttling through at 140KM/H just because that's how fast his Audi can go.
With the police freed from having to book and deal with this minor stuff they can move more officers onto protecting and investigating more dangerous crimes. Why should the cops have to spend their days trying to bust these people? They know they are breaking the road code, they know there are fines, and now they want to whine about losing that ability. No sympathy from me.
The privacy nut in me wonders about infriging uses of the technology, but with proper legislation that should be kept well under control. Think about it: a hit and run occurs in a back street at 11PM, check the records to see which cars were there at the time and question the suspects. Check the database to see where those cars are now and make sure they're not heading for the airport.
There is the potential to abuse this system, but it also has the potential to streamline the administration of these motoring infractions. As long as they build a little tolerence into the system it will not be draconian.
Appart from the handle they used to place on the front to start the car and the fact they now go anywhere up to 6 times as fast. Indicators are also fitted now. So, apart from that, no real changes.
Damn, looks like Darl must have signed up another new account on Slashdot and hoped nobody would notice he was posting under a nom de plume.
I think they mean getting ignored by Linus when he submits patches to him. Linus is world famous for ignoring patches multiple times and never replying to emails.
The odd numbers are reserved for test/development versions.
SCO wrote all the whitespace characters in the current kernel too ;->
I actually rebuilt my server the other day onto a new machine, not because of a worm, but because I got a second hand dual proc 750mzhz server (with RAID 5!) for nothing. It was pretty east to install the base system, RedHat 9, run up2date, then copy the important files from /etc into place. Back up and running in no time. Try doing that with the registry.
Since only IBM was privvy to that code they can only take action against IBM. They cannot take action against other programmers who have used/seen code that was released by IBM into the kernel. This is pure FUD you are spreading. Until SCO show some acutal code that *they* wrote they will remain the laughing stock of the community.
Won't this be a tad difficult until SCO actually reveal what code has been compromised? Aren't you effectively saying we should re-write the entire kernel from scratch?
It's generally only a few fonts and abit of paragraph layout that gets messed up in these conversions...if even that. If the exact layout of your business doc is critical (then it's probably just marketing garbage anyway) use PDF. Otherwise, surely it's the actual information in the doc, rather than the exact paragraph spacing and kerning that is important.
Because it doesn't include thousands of features you'd never use...oh, wait a minute, maybe it does contain some Emacs code after all ;-)
Why is it that people cry out "protectionist" and anti-competitive at the first sign of some actual competetion. Yes that's right, for there to be competition there must be at *least* two companies and two products, not one. If anything, it is your attitude that is anti-competitive.
I have a flock of killer butterflies on that side of the moon who assure me there are no little green men. What, you don't believe I have the killer butterflies? Prove it!
For those who aren't in region two...that episode contains a cut scene where one amazonian says to another "Me have love that dear not speak it's name". A nice homage to Oscar Wilde.
Season 2 and 3 are already out here in the UK :-)