I was taught DOS when I was in elementary school. When I graduated and got a job, what use did I have for my knowledge in DOS?
It was a good foundation for your progression along all the other OSes you learned in between. Unless, of course, you didn't you touch a computer between elementary and graduation?
When I was little I learned BASIC. I'll probably never use it again but it wasn't worthless experience.
what they want is a VBish thing for the old Win32 API without the.NET layer, and they are willing to learn a new language to get it
Why? What's wrong with the.NET layer? It's a VB-like environment. OK, VB.NET gets strong typing but that (IMO) is a good thing. Doesn't Delphi have that too?.NET works on everything but Win95 and the general acceptance level is rising.
Remember that moving to Delphi also has the "buy a new tool" hurdle. If you want non-.NET, non-VB RAD for Win32 your best bet is VC++/MFC, and chances are VB coders will already own VC++ with visual studio.
No, I'm not kidding. I'm one of the few that learned to use MFC rather than prejudging it:-p
'tis but a few paragraphs long and summarised thus:
- it's not open source - it's picky about its hardware - Linux compatibility limited to i686 RHEL3 compatibility - good docs, pay-for support, bundled stuff - it's proprietry, stick to Linux
Passport and My-Whatever- talk about having a centralized server that would keep your personal data (and spread them around when needed).
No, Passport is first and foremost a central authentication mechanism. Yes, it *can* pass around a limited amount of personal data, but if you clear the checkboxes in your profile it *won't*.
The personal data transfer is not the main goal of this project, but is possible and specified
So the Liberty Project does exactly the same as Passport?
The NSA designed SHA. We don't know if they've got a backdoor in it and we'll have to trust them on that. But there are good reasons why everyone should be signing with a genuinely secure hash. So perhaps we can trust them.
Microsoft's passport is free to join. They make money by charging the sites who want to use passport as authentication. They use it themselves internally and it's made microsoft.com a much friendlier place. They've got the muscle and presence to make this work. Maybe they'll start abusing the data but as soon as they do they'll scare people away and cut off their own revenue stream. So perhaps we can trust them.
So why should we pay you, and why should we trust you?
"Hack" the RCS files? mv(1) hardly qualifies as hacking.
There's more to it than that. If you have two development branches and you mv(1) the,v file then you've renamed the file on *both* branches, and that's usually not what you want to do.
The hack is to copy the,v file to the new name and then edit the branch/tag/liveness state in the files so the rename only happened on the tags and branches where you wanted it to but so you've still got as much history as possible.
People with different ways of thinking might come up with solutions that are so orthogonal to the way you solve problems that it's almost impossible for you to evaluate those solutions
Yeah, but 1) if you're hiring technical you should talk technical and, more importantly, 2) if they aren't capable of communicating their orthogonal solution to you then they're going to be no good working in a team anyway.
This is ridiculous. I can believe Joel works this way himself but marking down anyone who doesn't conform to his own thought processes and abilities is stupid.
Some signs of a good programmer: good programmers have a habit of writing their { and then skipping down to the bottom of the page and writing their }s right away, then filling in the blank later.
Uh, no. Why? Can't you work it all out from the indent level?
If they name their loop index CurrentPagePositionLoopCounter it is sure sign that they have not written a lot of code in their life.
Or that they type really fast. Sometimes when you start nesting loops, especially with C++ iterators flying around, you need verbose names.
Occasionally, you will see a C programmer write something like if (0==strlen(x)), putting the constant on the left hand side of the == . This is a really good sign.
This is silly like the guy above says. And that's a dumb example anyway: strlen() can never be an lvalue.
For example, if you ask them to reverse a linked list, good candidates will always make a little drawing on the side and draw all the pointers and where they go. They have to. It is humanly impossible to write code to reverse a linked list without drawing little boxes with arrows between them.
No, it isn't. A bit of experience or a few smarts and reversing a linked list is pretty trivial, even without pretty pictures.
It's really sad when we're getting to the point where you do one bad thing, and you're marked for life, regardless about having "paid your debt" to society.
Isn't there a statute-of-limitations on this stuff? I thought after five or ten years you didn't need to tell employers about your old convictions, length of time depending on the crime, except for a few special cases e.g. applying to a law enforcement agency.
I'm surprised he still had to tell you about a seven-year-old Juvenile crime.
However, there *is* a *right* way out. And that includes telling people what they know as quickly and effectively as they can.
Disagree... but so do you (?)
Too much information too early can be a bad thing.
Precisely. But isn't this too much too early?
They need to pull the plug on the compromised systems, yes, but they don't need to tell everyone why they did it. They need to verify that no malicious changed have been made, backdoors inserted into release code, etc. But if they do this publicly they make it a race against black-hats to find the backdoor. They didn't have to do this.
If they're going to tell the world they were hacked, they should say "Don't trust any Debian install you downloaded since we were hacked at X:YZ time." They haven't done that.
I wrote originally to point out your perception of the GPL was off. There's no obligation to give back bug fixes. Library code is not exempt from the full GPL and that's the intention.
Let everyone add their own little bit to a project? I think that's a bad idea, but that's just my philosophy. Fix bugs? I think the biggest hurdle open source has to becoming well accepted is because it lacks formal QA. But that's just my opinion too.
So yes, it is propaganda.
Isn't it all? Would you call Stallman's closed-source-is-bad stuff propaganda? I can't see why you shouldn't. This is another point of view.
I'm not going to push the analogies bit. I'm not baling because I can't argue (e.g. there's no immune system against the GPL, consider an antiobiotic-resistant viruses? you could compare GPL code amongst other source as a Code Red infected windows machine on or off an unpatched network - mix them and it spreads). But I don't care about that - if the analogy doesn't work for you, fine.
Because the GPL insists that you contribute any fixes you come up with,
Oh no it doesn't. I can download GCC or the Linux kernel, fix bugs and keep the fixes to myself. I have no obligation to give them to *anyone* unless I give them a binary copy of my kernel.
Any single ocurrence makes only the slightest difference, but they accumulate, and enhance one another.
In an ideal world, yeah, but fixing something often breaks something else or uncovers another bug.
And the more cruft that keeps getting added the harder something becomes to maintain.
As for this being "viral"... that's just propaganda.
Well, no, that's how it works. If you use GPL code or a GPL library you're obliged to make the whole program GPL. Which has some analogy to a virus, although pro-GPL people would pick a kinder name.
OK, but you're saying "Apache 1.2.3 is probably secure because it's been out there for some time". That's pretty vague.
I think the guy's proposing "Apache 1.2.3 has passed a thorough security audit by a reputable group". That'll weigh heavier with PHBs.
So we need a reputable group that's willing to audit and publish for free. OSS either needs to raise money to pay people to do this or to organise their own group and get it a good reputation. I think he's suggesting that the latter.
Luckily, Starscape was enough fun to stop us commiting mass suicide after playing TR. Even Lara's big melons can't save her now, what's the world coming to?
Which Tomb Raider was that? I haven't been impressed in the past but the new PS2 one looks better.
It is good to see a direct verifiable example of Open Source development with a higher standard of Quality Assurance than the corporate developers.
More likely there's no commerical demand for linux drivers so the corporate developers are told not to invest time in them. Open Source developers choose where to invest their time - corporates are told where.
A psychological standard of quality on the part of the devs leads to a physical and coding standard of quality a cut above the rest.
Huh? You're saying "think quality makes quality" or something?
Slashdot Mirror
I was taught DOS when I was in elementary school. When I graduated and got a job, what use did I have for my knowledge in DOS?
It was a good foundation for your progression along all the other OSes you learned in between. Unless, of course, you didn't you touch a computer between elementary and graduation?
When I was little I learned BASIC. I'll probably never use it again but it wasn't worthless experience.
Why can't they make a console that matches the rest of my AV gear?
Don't worry - they keep releasing "limited edition" re-colours of the current one. They're bound to do one in black sooner or later.
they realised their original Xbox model was too bulky
No, it really wasn't. The original large Xbox controller fits my hands very comfortably and most guys I know prefer it.
I'm surprised they've ditched the white and black buttons though.
what they want is a VBish thing for the old Win32 API without the .NET layer, and they are willing to learn a new language to get it
.NET layer? It's a VB-like environment. OK, VB.NET gets strong typing but that (IMO) is a good thing. Doesn't Delphi have that too? .NET works on everything but Win95 and the general acceptance level is rising.
:-p
Why? What's wrong with the
Remember that moving to Delphi also has the "buy a new tool" hurdle. If you want non-.NET, non-VB RAD for Win32 your best bet is VC++/MFC, and chances are VB coders will already own VC++ with visual studio.
No, I'm not kidding. I'm one of the few that learned to use MFC rather than prejudging it
'tis but a few paragraphs long and summarised thus:
- it's not open source
- it's picky about its hardware
- Linux compatibility limited to i686 RHEL3 compatibility
- good docs, pay-for support, bundled stuff
- it's proprietry, stick to Linux
I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP to talk to the University of Mars.
This'll be based on the joke that the class A IPV4 block 250.x.x.x is assigned to the University of Mars.
Originally the upper quarter of the IPV4 namespace (193+) was jokingly assigned to Mars and anyone using addresses up there known as Martians.
Kummer has already found some users keen to simply replace the Windows start key with Tux.
Oh come on. That's just petty, isn't it?
Passport and My-Whatever- talk about having a centralized server that would keep your personal data (and spread them around when needed).
No, Passport is first and foremost a central authentication mechanism. Yes, it *can* pass around a limited amount of personal data, but if you clear the checkboxes in your profile it *won't*.
The personal data transfer is not the main goal of this project, but is possible and specified
So the Liberty Project does exactly the same as Passport?
The NSA designed SHA. We don't know if they've got a backdoor in it and we'll have to trust them on that. But there are good reasons why everyone should be signing with a genuinely secure hash. So perhaps we can trust them.
Microsoft's passport is free to join. They make money by charging the sites who want to use passport as authentication. They use it themselves internally and it's made microsoft.com a much friendlier place. They've got the muscle and presence to make this work. Maybe they'll start abusing the data but as soon as they do they'll scare people away and cut off their own revenue stream. So perhaps we can trust them.
So why should we pay you, and why should we trust you?
"Hack" the RCS files? mv(1) hardly qualifies as hacking.
,v file then you've renamed the file on *both* branches, and that's usually not what you want to do.
,v file to the new name and then edit the branch/tag/liveness state in the files so the rename only happened on the tags and branches where you wanted it to but so you've still got as much history as possible.
There's more to it than that. If you have two development branches and you mv(1) the
The hack is to copy the
People with different ways of thinking might come up with solutions that are so orthogonal to the way you solve problems that it's almost impossible for you to evaluate those solutions
Yeah, but 1) if you're hiring technical you should talk technical and, more importantly, 2) if they aren't capable of communicating their orthogonal solution to you then they're going to be no good working in a team anyway.
Frankly, syntax is the least of my worries. Languages can be learned. Coding conventions can be followed.
That's true, but there'll always be times when you need instant productivity from new-hires e.g. temporary extra hand, summer intern, etc.
if ((var = CONSTANT) != 0)
Personally, I prefer to avoid conditions-with-side-effects whenever I can:
var = CONSTANT;
if (var != 0)
I think that's more readable, plus you can tinker with the if for debugging etc. without losing the assignment.
if (iIntVar = 0) { do.Something; }
one initializes the variable to zero and if that succeeds it does something
Uh... how can it not succeed? And no, it won't do.Something: zero is de-facto false.
This is ridiculous. I can believe Joel works this way himself but marking down anyone who doesn't conform to his own thought processes and abilities is stupid.
Some signs of a good programmer: good programmers have a habit of writing their { and then skipping down to the bottom of the page and writing their }s right away, then filling in the blank later.
Uh, no. Why? Can't you work it all out from the indent level?
If they name their loop index CurrentPagePositionLoopCounter it is sure sign that they have not written a lot of code in their life.
Or that they type really fast. Sometimes when you start nesting loops, especially with C++ iterators flying around, you need verbose names.
Occasionally, you will see a C programmer write something like if (0==strlen(x)), putting the constant on the left hand side of the == . This is a really good sign.
This is silly like the guy above says. And that's a dumb example anyway: strlen() can never be an lvalue.
For example, if you ask them to reverse a linked list, good candidates will always make a little drawing on the side and draw all the pointers and where they go. They have to. It is humanly impossible to write code to reverse a linked list without drawing little boxes with arrows between them.
No, it isn't. A bit of experience or a few smarts and reversing a linked list is pretty trivial, even without pretty pictures.
The biggest misconception is that Apache is indicative of all Open Source projects
Is that a problem? I'd say apache was one of the top-tier open source projects where it's produced something really good.
It's really sad when we're getting to the point where you do one bad thing, and you're marked for life, regardless about having "paid your debt" to society.
Isn't there a statute-of-limitations on this stuff? I thought after five or ten years you didn't need to tell employers about your old convictions, length of time depending on the crime, except for a few special cases e.g. applying to a law enforcement agency.
I'm surprised he still had to tell you about a seven-year-old Juvenile crime.
They've said you don't need to be worried about your own box. I trust that.
Oh, OK. Must have missed that. Ta.
However, there *is* a *right* way out. And that includes telling people what they know as quickly and effectively as they can.
Disagree... but so do you (?)
Too much information too early can be a bad thing.
Precisely. But isn't this too much too early?
They need to pull the plug on the compromised systems, yes, but they don't need to tell everyone why they did it. They need to verify that no malicious changed have been made, backdoors inserted into release code, etc. But if they do this publicly they make it a race against black-hats to find the backdoor. They didn't have to do this.
If they're going to tell the world they were hacked, they should say "Don't trust any Debian install you downloaded since we were hacked at X:YZ time." They haven't done that.
I wrote originally to point out your perception of the GPL was off. There's no obligation to give back bug fixes. Library code is not exempt from the full GPL and that's the intention.
Let everyone add their own little bit to a project? I think that's a bad idea, but that's just my philosophy. Fix bugs? I think the biggest hurdle open source has to becoming well accepted is because it lacks formal QA. But that's just my opinion too.
So yes, it is propaganda.
Isn't it all? Would you call Stallman's closed-source-is-bad stuff propaganda? I can't see why you shouldn't. This is another point of view.
I'm not going to push the analogies bit. I'm not baling because I can't argue (e.g. there's no immune system against the GPL, consider an antiobiotic-resistant viruses? you could compare GPL code amongst other source as a Code Red infected windows machine on or off an unpatched network - mix them and it spreads). But I don't care about that - if the analogy doesn't work for you, fine.
Because the GPL insists that you contribute any fixes you come up with,
Oh no it doesn't. I can download GCC or the Linux kernel, fix bugs and keep the fixes to myself. I have no obligation to give them to *anyone* unless I give them a binary copy of my kernel.
Any single ocurrence makes only the slightest difference, but they accumulate, and enhance one another.
In an ideal world, yeah, but fixing something often breaks something else or uncovers another bug.
And the more cruft that keeps getting added the harder something becomes to maintain.
As for this being "viral"... that's just propaganda.
Well, no, that's how it works. If you use GPL code or a GPL library you're obliged to make the whole program GPL. Which has some analogy to a virus, although pro-GPL people would pick a kinder name.
They have to send 63 death messages to 64 players.
63x64 = 4032. (You already know you died)
Yeah, but you don't know who killed you so it still sends you an "obituarary" for yourself.
The 63-not-64 - as you acknowledged on the first line (!) -is the guy with the railgun not dying.
OK, but you're saying "Apache 1.2.3 is probably secure because it's been out there for some time". That's pretty vague.
I think the guy's proposing "Apache 1.2.3 has passed a thorough security audit by a reputable group". That'll weigh heavier with PHBs.
So we need a reputable group that's willing to audit and publish for free. OSS either needs to raise money to pay people to do this or to organise their own group and get it a good reputation. I think he's suggesting that the latter.
Luckily, Starscape was enough fun to stop us commiting mass suicide after playing TR. Even Lara's big melons can't save her now, what's the world coming to?
Which Tomb Raider was that? I haven't been impressed in the past but the new PS2 one looks better.
It is good to see a direct verifiable example of Open Source development with a higher standard of Quality Assurance than the corporate developers.
More likely there's no commerical demand for linux drivers so the corporate developers are told not to invest time in them. Open Source developers choose where to invest their time - corporates are told where.
A psychological standard of quality on the part of the devs leads to a physical and coding standard of quality a cut above the rest.
Huh? You're saying "think quality makes quality" or something?