Try Firebird. The only website I visit that it can't deal with is microsoft.com
If you're talking about MSDN, I find that when I visit it using Mozilla or Safari I often get the navigation frame showing ASP errors, or just some totally inappropriate content. Ergo, it's the site that can't cope with the browsers, not the other way around.
For example, go to the article Handling and Avoiding Web Page Errors Part 1: The Basics. On Safari, Mozilla and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 for OS X, the navigation frame contains the complete www.microsoft.com frameset. Oh, and IE gave a script error.
The problem is definitely at their end. As the article I just cited says, "The key to dealing with browser differences is never assume anything will 'just work' cross-browser." Time to read your own library, Microsoft.
I think the point he was making was that big customers can show MS that they are assessing technologies such as Star Office and Java Desktop, and immediately be offered huge discounts. That must have at least some effect on MS's bottom line.
And I'm not sure why you were modded "Troll" for making some reasonable points... oh, hang on, this is/.
a british high speed train that leaned into curves
It was pretty much doomed after the first real-world journey, when it induced vomiting in the assorted dignitaries and members of the press who had been invited along.
I remember some years ago reading an article about the potential hazard to careless pedestrians of virtually silent electric vehicles, the obvious solution being to put a loudspeaker on them and play a suitable sound. One suggestion was the sound of horses' hooves.
I don't have the patience to write more of this crap
You need Forth - possibly the only language where you make up the language as you go along.
Example of the Forth definition for the "make everything explode because the time or energy has run out" routine in a game I wrote years ago:
: kill_everything ( - )
player explodes
mine explodes
thing_at_top explodes
thing_at_side explodes
bubble bursts;
FWIW, "bursts" was a convenience word used to make it read better. Its definition was:
: bursts (thing_to_burst - )
explodes ;
(The bits in brackets are stack diagram comments. The argument "thing_to_burst" is actually the address of the data structure representing the animated entity,)
By judicious use of the English language in choosing your names, you could write what people thought was pseudocode, and it compiled and ran:-)
a language is a scripting language if its runtime reads source code directly, an interpreted language if its runtime reads bytecode (like Java), and a compiled language if it generates native code
Hmm... JavaScript is a scripting language which is compiled into bytecode (both Netscape/Mozilla and Microsoft implementations do this). JScript.NET is compiled into CLR bytecode which is then JIT compiled into native code. In principle, any JavaScript implementation could do this (although I don't think Mozilla does, yet). So is it a scripting language, an interpreted language, or a compiled language?
Not flaming, just thought it was something to brood on...
Unless you really need to use every cycle, you're better off writing in a high level language and then recoding the critical portions (as identified through thorough profiling) in assembly language. (I speak as one who needed to use every cycle when I was a games programmer in the 80s. I've often thought of doing an all-assembly, no OS required app today, just to see how ludicrously fast it would run.)
How do you optimize assember?
You gain extensive experience with the procesor and platform to which you are writing, and you work bloody hard. It also depends on whether you are optimising for space or speed. For example: writing a game for the Amiga, I was told by the customer that it had to run on machines with half a meg of RAM (the entry-level machine). I once spent a whole day seeking a way to save 12 bytes; the first part of the solution involved recoding a routine using a different algorithm. The rewrite saved me 8 of my 12 bytes, and executed in the same number of clock cycles (that was a crucial constraint). I then got the other four bytes by using the interrupt vector for an interrupt I'd disabled. As I was writing to the silicon (not even using any ROM routines), I could get away with this. I wonder what kind of warnings a modern C++ compiler would throw up for this kind of behaviour;-)
Assembly language is fun, but life can be too short. I had to spend so much time fitting the above-mentioned game into half a meg that, by the time it came to market, 1Mb was the standard required by all games anyway.
Assembler loses all higher level abstractions... In assembler I have nothing
If you design your code well you have plenty. Even when you inline code to save the overhead of call/return, you will be aware of the functional purpose of those 50 instructions considered as a single entity. The same discipline required to write well-constructed code is needed for assembler. It's similar to using an old version of BASIC, with only GOTO and GOSUB for transferring control; although it allows the sloppy thinker to produce spaghetti code, a good coder will adhere to the same abstractions as they would use in a higher level language.
I'll stop rambling about the past and go and write myself a Forth system now:-)
(P.S. p-code was extremely cool. When I first got acquainted with Java, it was the first thing I thought of. Plus ca change, plus ca ne change pas...)
This bit of the FAQ will give you an idea of how it works - see the subsection Today: Most Anyone onwards.
One point worthy of note is that people who read all day, every day are very unlikely to be selected. I've noticed that I often get mod points when I've been too busy to do more than glance at the occasional story. When I'm out of work, I almost never get mod points. Too much free time... let's reload...
Of course, sneakers. I knew there was an American name for them, I just couldn't remember it:-)
And I had to stand on the COLD floor in my socks for about 15 minutes
My sister and her husband were coming back from South America recently and had to change planes somewhere in the US. One of their group was an elderly gentleman who'd suffered a mild heart attack while on holiday; the doctors had given him the all clear for the flight home, but cautioned him against overexerting himself.
My brother-in-law carried the guy's bags for him while they were transferring - until a US Customs officer bawled him out for it, and insisted that the sick man carry his own luggage across the airport, doctor's note notwithstanding.
About a month ago, my brother's family flew to Florida from the UK, and my young niece's beloved teddy bear (travelling as hand baggage - she can't bear to be parted from it) had to go through the X ray machine at a US airport. The security officer in charge joked "How do you want it - medium rare, or done to a crisp?" She gave him a very hard stare...
IIRC, its dialect of BASIC included the keywords FAST and SLOW. If you were doing something computationally intensive that didn't need to show any visual feedback, you would use the FAST command to disable the video. Just have to remember to use SLOW before displaying results or prompting the user for input:-)
It had, of course, been ripped off some 4 years before the advent of the PCW 8256. I wonder, was it the last mass market computer with a Z80 (not counting its sibling, the 9512.)
although it wasn't technically a computer per se... their PCW was top notch compared to the other stand alone word processing beasts
It was merely marketed as a word processor, and most people never got beyond the manual for the (good, for the day) LocoScript WP package. But it most definitely was a computer rather than a dedicated WP machine, whatever the adverts said. I know, I programmed it in machine code using DDT:-)
It had a Z80 processor, 256 or 512K of RAM (paged, as the Z80 can only address 64K directly), and its operating system was CP/M+ from Digital Research. The look and feel of CP/M was later ripped off by a company that specialised in writing BASIC interpreters; I believe they are are still going, although I don't hear many good reports of their products.
The National Space Science Centre, Leicester, UK hosts the Lander Operations Control Centre (LOCC). The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK hosts the Lander Operations Planning Centre (LOPC). And Darmstadt, Germany is the location of the Mars Express Mission Control, which handles the spacecraft which was carrying Beagle 2 until a few days ago, and which will be used (along with NASA's Mars Odyssey) to communicate with the lander.
I've never visited the NSSC, although I only live about 2 miles away from it. (It looks like a giant condom.) Sounds like Christmas would be a good time to get over there.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're talking about MSDN, I find that when I visit it using Mozilla or Safari I often get the navigation frame showing ASP errors, or just some totally inappropriate content. Ergo, it's the site that can't cope with the browsers, not the other way around.
For example, go to the article Handling and Avoiding Web Page Errors Part 1: The Basics. On Safari, Mozilla and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 for OS X, the navigation frame contains the complete www.microsoft.com frameset. Oh, and IE gave a script error.
The problem is definitely at their end. As the article I just cited says, "The key to dealing with browser differences is never assume anything will 'just work' cross-browser." Time to read your own library, Microsoft.
What I find most interesting is that the morticians keep digging them up to check.
I know what you mean. It's obvious they're not teens, so why call them that?
And why say "amateur" when they mean "ugly"?
I think the point he was making was that big customers can show MS that they are assessing technologies such as Star Office and Java Desktop, and immediately be offered huge discounts. That must have at least some effect on MS's bottom line.
And I'm not sure why you were modded "Troll" for making some reasonable points... oh, hang on, this is /.
It was pretty much doomed after the first real-world journey, when it induced vomiting in the assorted dignitaries and members of the press who had been invited along.
Another great British idea which died (at least as far as Britain is concerned) was the world's first magnetically levitating high-speed train, developed by Eric Laithwaite. I remember seeing his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1974 (I think I'm too young to remember the 1966 ones). It's a real shame that this man's genius was spurned in his own country, while other nations have exploited his ideas with conspicuous success.
FYI, this year's Christmas Lectures are being broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK this week, starting tomorrow (Sunday).
I remember some years ago reading an article about the potential hazard to careless pedestrians of virtually silent electric vehicles, the obvious solution being to put a loudspeaker on them and play a suitable sound. One suggestion was the sound of horses' hooves.
You need Forth - possibly the only language where you make up the language as you go along.
Example of the Forth definition for the "make everything explode because the time or energy has run out" routine in a game I wrote years ago:
: kill_everything ( - )FWIW, "bursts" was a convenience word used to make it read better. Its definition was:
: bursts (thing_to_burst - )(The bits in brackets are stack diagram comments. The argument "thing_to_burst" is actually the address of the data structure representing the animated entity,)
By judicious use of the English language in choosing your names, you could write what people thought was pseudocode, and it compiled and ran :-)
Hmm... JavaScript is a scripting language which is compiled into bytecode (both Netscape/Mozilla and Microsoft implementations do this). JScript.NET is compiled into CLR bytecode which is then JIT compiled into native code. In principle, any JavaScript implementation could do this (although I don't think Mozilla does, yet). So is it a scripting language, an interpreted language, or a compiled language?
Not flaming, just thought it was something to brood on...
Unless you really need to use every cycle, you're better off writing in a high level language and then recoding the critical portions (as identified through thorough profiling) in assembly language. (I speak as one who needed to use every cycle when I was a games programmer in the 80s. I've often thought of doing an all-assembly, no OS required app today, just to see how ludicrously fast it would run.)
You gain extensive experience with the procesor and platform to which you are writing, and you work bloody hard. It also depends on whether you are optimising for space or speed. For example: writing a game for the Amiga, I was told by the customer that it had to run on machines with half a meg of RAM (the entry-level machine). I once spent a whole day seeking a way to save 12 bytes; the first part of the solution involved recoding a routine using a different algorithm. The rewrite saved me 8 of my 12 bytes, and executed in the same number of clock cycles (that was a crucial constraint). I then got the other four bytes by using the interrupt vector for an interrupt I'd disabled. As I was writing to the silicon (not even using any ROM routines), I could get away with this. I wonder what kind of warnings a modern C++ compiler would throw up for this kind of behaviour ;-)
Assembly language is fun, but life can be too short. I had to spend so much time fitting the above-mentioned game into half a meg that, by the time it came to market, 1Mb was the standard required by all games anyway.
If you design your code well you have plenty. Even when you inline code to save the overhead of call/return, you will be aware of the functional purpose of those 50 instructions considered as a single entity. The same discipline required to write well-constructed code is needed for assembler. It's similar to using an old version of BASIC, with only GOTO and GOSUB for transferring control; although it allows the sloppy thinker to produce spaghetti code, a good coder will adhere to the same abstractions as they would use in a higher level language.
I'll stop rambling about the past and go and write myself a Forth system now :-)
(P.S. p-code was extremely cool. When I first got acquainted with Java, it was the first thing I thought of. Plus ca change, plus ca ne change pas...)
People: please read the title of the parent post, and realise that
is a continuation of the sentence...This bit of the FAQ will give you an idea of how it works - see the subsection Today: Most Anyone onwards.
One point worthy of note is that people who read all day, every day are very unlikely to be selected. I've noticed that I often get mod points when I've been too busy to do more than glance at the occasional story. When I'm out of work, I almost never get mod points. Too much free time... let's reload...
From birds. It falls from birds.
Of course, sneakers. I knew there was an American name for them, I just couldn't remember it :-)
My sister and her husband were coming back from South America recently and had to change planes somewhere in the US. One of their group was an elderly gentleman who'd suffered a mild heart attack while on holiday; the doctors had given him the all clear for the flight home, but cautioned him against overexerting himself.
My brother-in-law carried the guy's bags for him while they were transferring - until a US Customs officer bawled him out for it, and insisted that the sick man carry his own luggage across the airport, doctor's note notwithstanding.
Damn, I wish I'd noticed and fixed that before posting. Now I look like a punster. Ah well...
When some members of my family were in the US recently, they noticed that people's shoes were checked - except those who were wearing trainers.
Someone should tell the relevant authorities that shoe bomber Richard Reid concealed his explosives in trainers.
I don't think anybody has ever previously accused Prof. Colin Pillinger of being a fashion victim...
OT, but it is the holiday season...
About a month ago, my brother's family flew to Florida from the UK, and my young niece's beloved teddy bear (travelling as hand baggage - she can't bear to be parted from it) had to go through the X ray machine at a US airport. The security officer in charge joked "How do you want it - medium rare, or done to a crisp?" She gave him a very hard stare...
(Well, it tickled me.)
IIRC, its dialect of BASIC included the keywords FAST and SLOW. If you were doing something computationally intensive that didn't need to show any visual feedback, you would use the FAST command to disable the video. Just have to remember to use SLOW before displaying results or prompting the user for input :-)
Minor correction to my post above:
It had, of course, been ripped off some 4 years before the advent of the PCW 8256. I wonder, was it the last mass market computer with a Z80 (not counting its sibling, the 9512.)
It was merely marketed as a word processor, and most people never got beyond the manual for the (good, for the day) LocoScript WP package. But it most definitely was a computer rather than a dedicated WP machine, whatever the adverts said. I know, I programmed it in machine code using DDT :-)
It had a Z80 processor, 256 or 512K of RAM (paged, as the Z80 can only address 64K directly), and its operating system was CP/M+ from Digital Research. The look and feel of CP/M was later ripped off by a company that specialised in writing BASIC interpreters; I believe they are are still going, although I don't hear many good reports of their products.
25th Dec 02:54 GMT Beagle 2 lands on Mars
There's one here.
And according to Google, there's quite a few more.
How true.
If it behaves the way most Britons behave abroad, it'll be more like Drunken Hooligan Base. Certainly no tranquility.
You are both almost right :-)
The National Space Science Centre, Leicester, UK hosts the Lander Operations Control Centre (LOCC). The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK hosts the Lander Operations Planning Centre (LOPC). And Darmstadt, Germany is the location of the Mars Express Mission Control, which handles the spacecraft which was carrying Beagle 2 until a few days ago, and which will be used (along with NASA's Mars Odyssey) to communicate with the lander.
More info from sunny Leicester. (Actually, it's raining here right now.)
I've never visited the NSSC, although I only live about 2 miles away from it. (It looks like a giant condom.) Sounds like Christmas would be a good time to get over there.