Re:I code C# for a living
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 1
You are 100% correct. There are many C functions that return a string by returning the string length (or a negative return code) and by putting the string into a preallocated buffer passed in as an "out" paramter.
From my understanding, the out keyword in.NET is primarily to ease the use of these functions.
Re:I code C# for a living
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Out parameters are kind of neccesary if you have ref parameters. They are basically ref parameters that MUST return a value and because C# requires all variables be initalized, if you have ref, you must have out and you must force all ref params to be initalized before being passed in.
Out parameters are mainly for use with API calls that return strings and such in reference paramters.
As far as I know, nowhere does the base class library use out paramters (I am sure there is somewhere, but it is probably obscure or related to native interop).
It gets significantly more bloated and less usable with each version. I have stopped upgrading it and only continue to use it because coupled with Dead AIM it is bareable and neccessary as everyone I know uses AIM for IMs. I understand GAIM or Trillian will also connect with AIM, but my point is that AOL is butchering what was once a simple and elequent program.
I don't know about world hunger, but apparently Linux can do your laundry:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4638886/
Note that Linux can actually only inform you when your laundy is done or when there is availability for you yo do your own laundry. Also note that I have no evidence that CMUs system is Linux based.
If you take good care of your computer, an 8% failure rate is extremely unlikely. I have had an XP Home machine for over 2 years without ever needing to be reinstalled/formatted/system-restored/whatever-ed. Besides when my defective CPU fan stopped spinning, I've only ever had a two or three crashes severe enough to call failures. On a dosen or so occasions I have had to end and restart explorer.exe from the task manager, but usually because I screwed with something I shouldn't have. My new XP Pro laptop hasn't so much as hiccupped yet. That said, I have seen XP systems that crash 25 times ever hour... usually because of spyware:-(
I think that with the security fixes of SP2 and Longhorns move towards Unix-like limited user environments, spyware (and this high failure rate) should be almost completely dissapaited. A little basic computer education for the masses would probably help as well.
"Browse by name" or whatever it is called has existed for nearly 3 months in the google toolbar...
Also, this has been a basic feature of IE for as long as I can remember. If I type something into my address bar it shows an auto complete option:
Search for: "Text you entered"
That option uses your default search engine which is easily configurable to Google (and in fact automatically done for you if you click yes to a prompt during the Google Toolbar installation).
I understand FireFox is cool and all, but don't bash IE for lacking a feature (or just getting a feature) that is has always had in a slightly different form. The only difference here is that the newest version of the Google toolbar grants you a choice "I am going to run a search, I noticed you have selected to search using Google; Usually, are you feeling lucky?"
In the short time I have had WMP 10, I have found twice as many bugs as my entire time with WMP 9, but the interface layout is greatly improved and the new FREE MSN radio is great! Even though the free radio quality isn't that good, it's good enough for play on my crappy office speakers. I love it.
I'm no lawer, but I don't think what MS is doing is illegal (or even immoral) and I am sure MS had their lawyers check this out. This is no different than calling a game a falling block game a "Tetris clone".
BTW: I've used the WMP library for over 2 years and have really enjoyed it.
MS SBS 2003 provides this through a "Previous Versions" addition to all XP computers on the domain. It is very poorly implemented and only affects files on the server, but has proved itself useful many times.
I am definitly in favor of version control everywhere. Undo is arguably the best time saving feature ever, let's make an ULTRA-UNDO.
The guy who thought up gift cards/certificates was an evil genious. At what point does someone as a business person say "maybe people are willing to exchange their real money for store credit so that they have a non-cash gift to give?" I can't imagin thinking "I want my money to be acceptable at less places for the sake of forcing a friend or family member to buy something they don't want or need".
I'm a fan of capitalism, so I don't want them to ban gift cards, but I really hate them. Damn you, you evil genious!
The regular old stand alone version isn't much faster to draw, it is just less likely to hang when drawing. It gives the illusion of being fast by at least responding while drawing.
This was faster? Wow... that's pretty crazy, considering that it takes my office computer 10 FREAKING SECONDS TO DRAW THE 2ND PAGE OF ANY PDF DOCUMENT! I hate PDFs so much, they are a pain to read and the Adobe Acrobat Reader cokes even on the fastest of computers.
Clearly I need to get a Postscript Co-processor for my office box.
Personally I have always found Apple's interfaces limiting. They put the most common options right out in front (as they should), but seem to totally forget the more advanced options. And the lack of an (accessable) context menu is also very weird to me.
If you read carefully, I said that you would increment a counter and mark a voter as having voted. Two seperate actions instead of a single action of associating a voter with a vote cast and then later aggregating those votes.
Ok so you present a login where the user enters a voter registration number. You show a list of canidates. You double click. Type "yes" to confirm. Increment a number in the database and set that voters "HasVoted" property to true.
After a 10th grader finishes that project, have a real coder step in for 15 minutes, throw in a little encryption and all you've got to do is run this bad boy on a palm pilot locked in a box and chained to a desk. When the votings done, ship the locked up palm pilot off to some goverment facility where the data will be merged into a master database.
Wheres the challenege? I feel like I could make THE BEST VOTING SYSTEM EVER in one weekend and make it rich off government contracts...
Human readability is overrated. Microsoft Word documents are far from human readable without a viewer, but no one has complained about that. Documents are "human readable" if there is a good viewer that readers have access to.
"Squirting a complex X3D file at a device will only take a fraction of a second with _todays_ speeds"
I highly doubt anyone plans to leave the 3d data in the X3D format within a 3d engine or when sending it to the graphics card. All of the data will be loaded into tightly packed and optimized buffers stored in video memory. Remember, real time 3d applications are concerned with fractions of seconds.
I agree! XML is overused just because it seems cool. A binary format is far superior for storing lots the shear number of verticies in todays 3d scenes. I skimmed through the X3D samples, and while primatives are as simple as tags, actual gemometry is rediculous! Storing a single component/attribute of a vertex (with as many as 4 components and 10+ attributes) is about 12 bytes to a binary format's 4 bytes (for a standard float). I see X3D has some compression mechenisms, but I can't imagin how those are of any use if they are text based. They would need to stay in the xml document and therefore must use CData feilds which still makes the format bloated even with a specialized compression algo for verticies.
If done tastefully, in game advertisements could make the game world more realistic.
Spiderman 2 could have benifited from real advertisements in times square. Sports games already do this, but there are a lot of game company related ads (which benifit the games developer, and could be considered targeted ads). FarCry would have been tough to advertise in realistic, but I would have liked coke or pepsi soda machines in some of the structures. Etc.. etc..
Office and SharePoint 2003 have begun this move. It is not turning into a web service as the summary suggests, but instead utilizing web services for collaboration.
The company I work for has been using SharePoint for Issue tracking in our software applications for nearly a year. It was way easier to setup and use than bugzilla and several other free alternatives. And the issue tracker is a very secondary feature of SharePoint!
It allows the creation of document libraries that can associate arbitrary metadata with documents. When you save a document from an Office application is can actually be saved directly to the SharePoint document library (you can browse to the web page in the save as dialog and it shows a little html based page right in the mini-explorer and you can save there like a normal file). After clicking save, if the document library has been extended with metadata (by any non-tech-savvy user) you are prompted to enter that data.
You can also create document workspaces which are document libraries that have an associated message board, contacts list, task list and other odds and ends. All of that information appears in a sidebar in any office application which lets you instant message, email, or assign a task to a contact related to the document you are working on. Documents in any type of document library allow for versioning and check-in/out functionality.
InfoPath is probably the coolest Office application when it comes to collaboration. If you fill out an InfoPath form, the xml output can be funneled into a SharePoint document library which can calculate statistics from the documents and sort/organize them for you.
Its only the first version of the Office System that uses this functionality, and we all know it takes Microsoft 3 tries to get anything just right. Luckily, the system works well on the first try, I can't wait for the third attempt!
If your computer's exhaust or keyboard smell or whatever is enough to make you sick... get a bubble or kill yourself.
It is pretty tough to advoid non-allergy safe computers, I mean they are eveywhere. Not to mention everything else in our atmosphere that will make you sick.
Seems to me that most applications wouldn't need 40Gb/sec of bandwidth. Although more bandwidth is always better:-)
Maybe upon establishing a connection the optical transmitter and the destination switch/router could agree on a wavelength range and then mechanically adjust something in the switch to use a prisim to guide light of that wavelength into the correct outbound light optical fiber.
Would that be possible? Or is it possible that I have a major missunderstanding about fiber optics and the like...
Slashdot Mirror
You are 100% correct. There are many C functions that return a string by returning the string length (or a negative return code) and by putting the string into a preallocated buffer passed in as an "out" paramter.
.NET is primarily to ease the use of these functions.
From my understanding, the out keyword in
Out parameters are kind of neccesary if you have ref parameters. They are basically ref parameters that MUST return a value and because C# requires all variables be initalized, if you have ref, you must have out and you must force all ref params to be initalized before being passed in.
Out parameters are mainly for use with API calls that return strings and such in reference paramters.
As far as I know, nowhere does the base class library use out paramters (I am sure there is somewhere, but it is probably obscure or related to native interop).
How many "Ask Slashdot" news items can we have in a row?
Slow day in geek news?
Does anyone here actually use the official AIM?
It gets significantly more bloated and less usable with each version. I have stopped upgrading it and only continue to use it because coupled with Dead AIM it is bareable and neccessary as everyone I know uses AIM for IMs. I understand GAIM or Trillian will also connect with AIM, but my point is that AOL is butchering what was once a simple and elequent program.
I don't know about world hunger, but apparently Linux can do your laundry:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4638886/
Note that Linux can actually only inform you when your laundy is done or when there is availability for you yo do your own laundry. Also note that I have no evidence that CMUs system is Linux based.
So yea....
If you take good care of your computer, an 8% failure rate is extremely unlikely. I have had an XP Home machine for over 2 years without ever needing to be reinstalled/formatted/system-restored/whatever-ed. Besides when my defective CPU fan stopped spinning, I've only ever had a two or three crashes severe enough to call failures. On a dosen or so occasions I have had to end and restart explorer.exe from the task manager, but usually because I screwed with something I shouldn't have. My new XP Pro laptop hasn't so much as hiccupped yet. That said, I have seen XP systems that crash 25 times ever hour... usually because of spyware :-(
I think that with the security fixes of SP2 and Longhorns move towards Unix-like limited user environments, spyware (and this high failure rate) should be almost completely dissapaited. A little basic computer education for the masses would probably help as well.
"Browse by name" or whatever it is called has existed for nearly 3 months in the google toolbar...
Also, this has been a basic feature of IE for as long as I can remember. If I type something into my address bar it shows an auto complete option:
Search for: "Text you entered"
That option uses your default search engine which is easily configurable to Google (and in fact automatically done for you if you click yes to a prompt during the Google Toolbar installation).
I understand FireFox is cool and all, but don't bash IE for lacking a feature (or just getting a feature) that is has always had in a slightly different form. The only difference here is that the newest version of the Google toolbar grants you a choice "I am going to run a search, I noticed you have selected to search using Google; Usually, are you feeling lucky?"
In the short time I have had WMP 10, I have found twice as many bugs as my entire time with WMP 9, but the interface layout is greatly improved and the new FREE MSN radio is great! Even though the free radio quality isn't that good, it's good enough for play on my crappy office speakers. I love it.
I'm no lawer, but I don't think what MS is doing is illegal (or even immoral) and I am sure MS had their lawyers check this out. This is no different than calling a game a falling block game a "Tetris clone".
BTW: I've used the WMP library for over 2 years and have really enjoyed it.
MS SBS 2003 provides this through a "Previous Versions" addition to all XP computers on the domain. It is very poorly implemented and only affects files on the server, but has proved itself useful many times.
I am definitly in favor of version control everywhere. Undo is arguably the best time saving feature ever, let's make an ULTRA-UNDO.
The guy who thought up gift cards/certificates was an evil genious. At what point does someone as a business person say "maybe people are willing to exchange their real money for store credit so that they have a non-cash gift to give?" I can't imagin thinking "I want my money to be acceptable at less places for the sake of forcing a friend or family member to buy something they don't want or need".
I'm a fan of capitalism, so I don't want them to ban gift cards, but I really hate them. Damn you, you evil genious!
The regular old stand alone version isn't much faster to draw, it is just less likely to hang when drawing. It gives the illusion of being fast by at least responding while drawing.
Postscript? You mean the basis for Adobe PDFs?
This was faster? Wow... that's pretty crazy, considering that it takes my office computer 10 FREAKING SECONDS TO DRAW THE 2ND PAGE OF ANY PDF DOCUMENT! I hate PDFs so much, they are a pain to read and the Adobe Acrobat Reader cokes even on the fastest of computers.
Clearly I need to get a Postscript Co-processor for my office box.
Personally I have always found Apple's interfaces limiting. They put the most common options right out in front (as they should), but seem to totally forget the more advanced options. And the lack of an (accessable) context menu is also very weird to me.
I say we excellerate this process.
After finding people so dumb they publish their quicken data. We extract their addresses from the document and order an execution.
If you read carefully, I said that you would increment a counter and mark a voter as having voted. Two seperate actions instead of a single action of associating a voter with a vote cast and then later aggregating those votes.
Ok so you present a login where the user enters a voter registration number. You show a list of canidates. You double click. Type "yes" to confirm. Increment a number in the database and set that voters "HasVoted" property to true.
After a 10th grader finishes that project, have a real coder step in for 15 minutes, throw in a little encryption and all you've got to do is run this bad boy on a palm pilot locked in a box and chained to a desk. When the votings done, ship the locked up palm pilot off to some goverment facility where the data will be merged into a master database.
Wheres the challenege? I feel like I could make THE BEST VOTING SYSTEM EVER in one weekend and make it rich off government contracts...
aww.. me too...
/ Ja panese%20sea%20bass.jpg
Hey! at least we still got ill tempored sea bass!
http://club.pep.ne.jp/~polypterus/Link%20target
But CS:Source will be out for real by then!
Human readability is overrated. Microsoft Word documents are far from human readable without a viewer, but no one has complained about that. Documents are "human readable" if there is a good viewer that readers have access to.
"Squirting a complex X3D file at a device will only take a fraction of a second with _todays_ speeds"
I highly doubt anyone plans to leave the 3d data in the X3D format within a 3d engine or when sending it to the graphics card. All of the data will be loaded into tightly packed and optimized buffers stored in video memory. Remember, real time 3d applications are concerned with fractions of seconds.
Ah, the compression is nearly as I expected:
y Co mpression/index.html
http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Binar
I'd be interested to see someone convert one of those samples to a binary format.
I agree! XML is overused just because it seems cool. A binary format is far superior for storing lots the shear number of verticies in todays 3d scenes. I skimmed through the X3D samples, and while primatives are as simple as tags, actual gemometry is rediculous! Storing a single component/attribute of a vertex (with as many as 4 components and 10+ attributes) is about 12 bytes to a binary format's 4 bytes (for a standard float). I see X3D has some compression mechenisms, but I can't imagin how those are of any use if they are text based. They would need to stay in the xml document and therefore must use CData feilds which still makes the format bloated even with a specialized compression algo for verticies.
If done tastefully, in game advertisements could make the game world more realistic.
Spiderman 2 could have benifited from real advertisements in times square. Sports games already do this, but there are a lot of game company related ads (which benifit the games developer, and could be considered targeted ads). FarCry would have been tough to advertise in realistic, but I would have liked coke or pepsi soda machines in some of the structures. Etc.. etc..
Office and SharePoint 2003 have begun this move. It is not turning into a web service as the summary suggests, but instead utilizing web services for collaboration.
The company I work for has been using SharePoint for Issue tracking in our software applications for nearly a year. It was way easier to setup and use than bugzilla and several other free alternatives. And the issue tracker is a very secondary feature of SharePoint!
It allows the creation of document libraries that can associate arbitrary metadata with documents. When you save a document from an Office application is can actually be saved directly to the SharePoint document library (you can browse to the web page in the save as dialog and it shows a little html based page right in the mini-explorer and you can save there like a normal file). After clicking save, if the document library has been extended with metadata (by any non-tech-savvy user) you are prompted to enter that data.
You can also create document workspaces which are document libraries that have an associated message board, contacts list, task list and other odds and ends. All of that information appears in a sidebar in any office application which lets you instant message, email, or assign a task to a contact related to the document you are working on. Documents in any type of document library allow for versioning and check-in/out functionality.
InfoPath is probably the coolest Office application when it comes to collaboration. If you fill out an InfoPath form, the xml output can be funneled into a SharePoint document library which can calculate statistics from the documents and sort/organize them for you.
Its only the first version of the Office System that uses this functionality, and we all know it takes Microsoft 3 tries to get anything just right. Luckily, the system works well on the first try, I can't wait for the third attempt!
If your computer's exhaust or keyboard smell or whatever is enough to make you sick... get a bubble or kill yourself.
:-P
It is pretty tough to advoid non-allergy safe computers, I mean they are eveywhere. Not to mention everything else in our atmosphere that will make you sick.
Have I missunderstood something?
Seems to me that most applications wouldn't need 40Gb/sec of bandwidth. Although more bandwidth is always better :-)
Maybe upon establishing a connection the optical transmitter and the destination switch/router could agree on a wavelength range and then mechanically adjust something in the switch to use a prisim to guide light of that wavelength into the correct outbound light optical fiber.
Would that be possible? Or is it possible that I have a major missunderstanding about fiber optics and the like...