Here's one I expect to come up. Viruses that hack the DRM bits on common media files. Some turn them on, to annoy people with legit homemade files, some turn them off, to annoy media companies. I'd imagine both will seem funny enough to some hackers to produce several.
Some of these are doable and I wish someone would do them. I would but I think it's futile to try and introduce a new OS at this point without some major support.
- work seamlessly (open, edit, save, convert format) with all my current documents
This should be doable. Why isn't it being done? Is it really so hard to standardize a format for tasks that have been mostly unchanged for a decade, like word processing and spreadsheets?
- feature well-designed apps for recording and editing video and audio
This should be done. Apple is leading the way here and nobody else is even looking in their direction let alone following. Windows is having API problems because DirectShow is unsuited for certain tasks (I hear video editing is a major problem with it), and the only alternative is Video for Windows, which is so obsolete the last book still in print was written in 1994. On linux, the problem seems to be more of getting all the hardware out there to work with things. There needs to be a bigger push towards a standard multimedia api that's more integrated to the system.
- come with an actually useful, contextually flexible help system -- man pages *and* For Dummies -style tutorials, and a searchable index linking to sections of both
This should also be doable but isn't being done. Part of the probem is feature creep sabotages this. Developers want to ship on time and they don't care about "trivial" things like documentation, and the documentation has to keep pace with all the new features. If people wrote decent documentation with their apps this might be doable, but the thinking here seems to be "If you can't figure out you need to fetch app2.3.2.1.beta-omicron.build4173.tar.gz and update your kernel to 2.2.1.3.alpha9, and then make -f -q -g97 -i23 -^& on your own you're a worthless n00b who needs to RTFM and nobody will help you cause it's obvious."
- never need the help system, since it's so intuitive
This is REALLY unlikely unless you keep the interface perfectly standard for a long long time. It's doable in the long term though, it's done for simple interfaces all the time, like games.
- run on sunlight (or moonlight)
Doable for low power systems. VIA Eden systems use what, 4W?
- feature perfect voice recognition and synthesis
Unlikely to be perfect, and I never saw what the big deal was about voice recognition. I'm much happier with a keyboard and mouse. Maybe for handheld systems.
- autodetect, configure, and if necessary, create new drivers on the fly for all my current and future peripherals
Umm no, it's unlikely this would be possible given there's no way of knowing what kind of devices there will be in the future. =)
- know what *I* want when I click a certain spot on a window.
I hear thought interfaces are making progress but this one's a long long way off.:P
When the winning software basicly scores 6/10 and beats out a competitor scoring 5/10, what does this say about the suitability of current software for what users want to use it for?
Yes I know it's fun to watch linux vs windows and cheer from the sidelines etc, but how about this bigger picture?
Maybe it's just me but software seems to be doing less and less of what we as users want and more and more of what marketing departments want. Useless features, obsolete features that are never pruned, tons of time and money spent dealing with ways to push advertising or find more ways to milk the consumer... Whatever happened to looking for ways to make doing everyday tasks easier and faster? Open source projects don't seem to be entirely immune to it either. I see lots of development in trying to keep feature parity or adding new things to invent new buzzwords for, but I haven't seen anything moving towards ease of using for some time now. All apps are now using "skinable" interfaces that make using them inconsistent with each other. Some apps have such complex configurations they're harder to learn to use than the average OS. I think that's a problem.
So what were the almost 4000 points that weren't awarded based on?
Yeah like this is ever going to fly. At least not in the US, assuming it even gets a chance to be done over here in the first place.
Cause I mean, why give people decent connection speeds when you can rape small businesses out the ass with 1980s telecom pricing plans? A T-1 has to be $1000/month FOREVER, so nobody can have that kinda upstream for less.
Oh and since AT&T will force a 19.2k upstream cap, and the greedy and desperate wireless companies will disallow normal TCP connections unless you pay for their "wireless adapter kit!" i.e. we unlock TCP on your phone from a laptop for $100-200 or whatever we think we can assrape you for, it'll be pretty much useless.
Sometimes I think we'll have random 802.11 boxes covering the entire country before any kind of unlimited wireless internet even gets concieved at any price.
To be honest the idea of Big Brother watching everything we say and do doesn't scare me as much as Big Uncle wanting a cut of everything we buy and use. I mean survellance can miss a 300,000lb jet going 500mph the wrong way down the hudson corridor for an hour, but if you're one second out of those free night and weekend minutes you're nailed!
I have AIM on my Nokia 3390 (I think it's a 3390) through T-mobile. I think you get 50 incoming messages free with most of the plans, an upgrade to 500 is $3/month, which I have. Considering that's about 16 messages/day average, I'm unlikely to go over it. I actually rarely use it cause when I'm home I'm usually at the computer with trillian running anyway.
Typing on it's a little annoying at first, but I can manage it ok now. It's nice to have when I need to get ahold of someone and I know they're probably on AIM, or when I'm just sitting somewhere bored.
The only problem I have with it is I can't seem to get it to pull my entire buddy list down off AIM, even when I tell it to. So I often have to manually add people to keep it in sync with the list on my computer. Once they're added it's fine though, so it's a minor annoyance.
It's the environment. As soon as I saw the doors the ships have to fly into, I started going "Wait, they've been down here HOW long?" Zion just has too many resources to have been there only 100 years with a small population. How did they build a gigantic fortress-city, and dozens of antigrav ships, in 100 years? Ok they didn't have to invent the tech, they scrounged parts from the surface. Even so, the amount of carved rock, and then stuff on the engineering level... It's too much for that small a population to have built in that time. Not while they were working up from "16 women and 7 men" as the architect describes.
So, either the machines pre-rebuild Zion (or pre-build if it's a different location each time), or it's fake. The different location thing bugs me because while yeah there's alot of tunnels, they fly around the damn tunnels all the time. It's too likely one of the ships would have stumbled onto it by now if there were ruins of multiple cities underground.
Also Smith's copying himself into other people seems to be a hint, unless this turns into The 13th Floor again.
An interesting thing is who knows and who doesn't know. I don't think any of the humans know, except Neo who now suspects. The Architect obviously knows, and probably the Oracle and the other guy who constantly refers to "Your predecessors." (gee subtle hint there?) I think the Agents in general DON'T know, except Smith, who's figured it out.
I know he's incompetent. He's also department chair and runs a class that's impossible to pass without cheating (Write me a full virtual machine for the output of my toy language compiler, and debugger, and modify my compiler to make debug code and add several new language features like support for floats and void functions, by yourself. Nevermind you've never seen JAVA before, it's exactly like C++!) Everyone I talked to that had passed the class said they'd either cheated by working in groups or failed it and then taken it again and cheated by working in groups. Being both antisocial and somewhat morally old-fashioned, I didn't cheat. I wound up dropping out of that school. If I go back it won't be there.
I believe the texts used in the class were http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130 471771/qid=1052982045/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/002-693275 1-0830466?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201 612739/qid=1052982076/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-693275 1-0830466?v=glance&s=books.
For compiler we were expected to use either VisualCafe or IBM's Eclipse project. (Oh you haven't used an IDE before because all previous classes forced you to used gcc in a telnet session on our SunOS server? Well you'll figure it out, it's not like it's completely new and unfamilliar.)
Well first off, I've never heard of STL until it was mentioned here and I started looking it up. It wasn't covered or even mentioned in my education at all. I have no idea what typedef is, I'll look a that up later.
I did however look up vector, and tried using it. I ran into problems.
How do you do a 2D double dynamic array?
vectorarray = new (std::vector )[count]; obviously does not work.
vectorarray = new *(std::vector)[count]; doesn't work either so I can't get pointers to vectors so I can have a bunch of vectors later.
vectorvector = std::vector ; also no go.
Also, any idea if it works with memcopy? If not I don't know if I wanna throw a couple hundred megs into them and try copying it around.
What I really want to do is this: Reverse part of the sort later.
That's right. I need to sort an array, do a bunch of stuff with the sorted array, and then be able to unsort some of the array values later. So far the only way I can think of doing that is tracking the original index value of each element during the sort, and then afterwards for the ones I want look that up so I can put it back where it was.
I have no idea how map would work for this. Any examples?
Oh and this is very memory sensitive. One byte per element is a huge memory bloat for this app. I have to free the original arrays after I cast them to a 2 int struct (1 value 1 index) or it uses too much ram. If I could do it without having to make the structs, i.e. just making the index arrays, I wouldn't need to free hundreds of megs and only to allocate it again after this process ends.
See my bitching about Java for why I think using "vector" interchangeably with "array" is stupid.
Array to me implies simple, no memory overhead storage that doesn't do random insert/delete. I have no idea what vector's properties are along those lines, and it's not obvious from the description. When someone talks to me about vectors I think of arrows with multiple numbers describing lengths in different dimensions. I don't see how the analogy translates over well at all.
It's probably a combination of bad naming choice and holes in my education that led to this particular thing not being covered well or not at all.
Ok begin flaming me but I love what I've seen of C# so far. I'm not a very experienced programmer, but I was forced through C, C++, MIPS assembly, shellscripts, and Java in college. Since then I've done C# and PHP on my own. So far I like C# the best.
Why? C is an ancient ugly mess that needs to adapt or die. I'd hate to do more than a 200 line program in it because I'd get lost without objects. "Oh but you can use objects in C by doing blah blah struct blah blah kludge etc." No thanks, it took me years to figure out what the big deal with objects was and how to use them without overusing them, and I'm never going back now for anything serious.
C++ has objects you say, but they always feel like it's grafted on to C. Granted it works, and it's still reasonably portable, which is C's main advantage these days, but some things are still just ugly. How about an array who's size you don't know until runtime? Welcome back to pointers 101. Sure you can use new and delete instead of malloc and it looks nicer, but alot of things just don't have really elegant solutions, and the standard libraries are too sparse for what modern apps do with modern languages.
Java... everything you hate about C++ fixed the wrong way! Yay we have big useful libraries now... but they're constantly changing, bitching that what you just used is now "depreciated", doing things you're not allowed to do etc. No I do not want to use something called "vector" to replace a linked list, give me a freaking "linked list" object! Even if it's just a renamed vector at least it doesn't confuse people into thinking I'm going to have calculus and matrices popping out in the next few lines. This may have been the fault of my instructor but he loved crap like this. "Don't use the Stack class, use vector to make your own stack!" Oh and just because I don't want to do something with pointers if I can help it doesn't mean I don't EVER want to use pointers, I'd like to code without a babysitter please. If I screw up at least it's me to blame. Everything must be a class! Umm yeah that's great when I just want a struct with an int and a float so I don't have to write half a dozen methods to implement a "proper" class with private data and constructor and operators and copy... Put up with all this and you're rewarded with 10x slower performance and maybe cross-platform execution on alternate tuesdays when it's raining and the moon is waxing.
PHP seems nice, though I haven't really written much of anything in it yet. Some things kinda weird me out like how nothing cares if your variable is an int, float, string, etc. It's kinda nifty but extremely unsettling at the same time. At least it's easy to spot variables since they all start with $. I really don't have much else to say about it yet.
By now everyone's waiting for why I like C#. I like it because it fixes the things I hate about C++ and Java and just seems to make everything work smooth. Want to use pointers? Sure, just put it in an unsafe section for the over paranoid. Want to use objects? It's easy. Want to do threading? We've got this easy to use library for it. How about resize an array? No problem. Arrays remember their own sizes. They can even sort themselves. They can even sort themselves and another array at the same time based on the values in the first array (someone PLEASE show me how to do this with qsort() in C++ elegantly). Networking? Got it. Performance? Eh, about 20% hit from C++ on my machine, less if you use ngen to precompile it. Still too bad? Ok, put your critical sections in C++, C, or even ASM libraries and link them seamlessly. GUI apps? Tons of easy to use stuff there, though it's mostly windows specific. The downside is you don't get the portability of other languages... yet.
Dunno if you can turn it on and off. I know I can ignore mine. I saw some report on TV about it like 2 weeks ago and they were talking about this woman who says she sees letters and numbers as different colors and I was like "Umm so? Doesn't everybody?" I thought it was just normal. It doesn't always help for memorizing number strings because then you've gotta memorize the colors instead, and often they're close or you have two with the same color, which is no help.
Words having tastes is fun though. Different authors have different flavors, like say David Weber, who's kinda like a hard candy vs Neil Stephenson who's more like cream or cheese with different bits of strong flavors mixed in vs S.M. Stirling who's kinda more like a meat flavor. And yes co-authored books do blend.:P
Sadly I don't think I have much luck with the sound-color association, but I do get sound-tactile sometimes.
Depends. You've never seen captions that don't exactly match the speech? I have all the time. Not just live broadcasts where they're making typos or the voice recognition is going insane, though that's fun to watch too. =)
Besides, like that's WORSE than the actual dub itself? Half the problem is the dub actors either don't take the role seriously or overdo it because they're crap. That goes away in plain text.:P
I mean where's the real problem here? You can't seriously tell me that modern games are still being written head to toe in hand coded assembly. I refuse to belive it, because then I'll never have the career in games I want cause I could never deal with a 100k line assembly program.
Basicly today, most games are in C++ (like doom3) or C (like quake3) and then after it's up and running, someone goes in and tweaks specific functions with ASM code where it'll do the most good. There's no point in doing a hand optimized MMX version of a function that renders the mouse pointer in your stage select screen. However, doing it for your poly culling function that runs a million times a second is probably a good idea.
So, why can't you do this with C#? No reason, C# can call existing compiled DLLs and libs with arbitrary code in them. It doesn't matter if the function in the DLL was made with C, C++, ASM, Delphi, or whatever. So, the game gets made, then you take the parts that really need that extra ASM optimization and put them in lower level code in DLLs you link to. The plus side is your C# code could always detect the CPU type for you and then link to DIFFERENT DLLs with different optimizations.
Where exactly is the problem?
I'd think people would be treating this like the holy grail it could potentially be. Think of the bigger picture. Ok now you have games that are in CLR code. What happens when someone gets a working CLR VM on linux? Do you need to recompile that code to play the same game on it? How bout a CLR VM on the Mac? Think MS might do it themselves? I dunno, what would they save in development costs by only having to make ONE version of office and IE and being able to sell all their existing PC apps to Mac users?
Seriously. TV has these two interesting features, CLOSED CAPTIONS and SECONDARY AUDIO PROGRAMMING.
Why the hell can't they show anime with the original japanese soundtrack on the SAP channel? Then I could just set my TV to SAP and turn on the english closed caption channel. Instant subtitles for anyone who can't stand the horrible dubbing.
If people would wake up and realize most anime fans hate dubs maybe I'd consider getting this channel or watching the crap that's on now.
I mean who cares if you've got fiber if they're just going to throttle you to death like they do now? At home in NY I'm lucky, I can get 1m up 10m down (real world) cable. Out at school in SF, lucky is getting better than 144k/144k IDSL for $99/month. You might get 128/1.5 of which you see about 90/400. It's not that they can't deliver the bandwidth, you can pay ridiculous amounts for "business class" DSL which uses the same line and same modem from the same providers, just without speed locking. Why do we need a faster medium when they won't even let the existing medium run at full potential?
I went. It was small and dissapointing. I got to see opterons, and PyDDR. That was about the only upside.
The entire rest of the show is basicly "Look at our rackmount servers!" "No come look at OUR rackmount servers!" "Look at this software we have for counting your rackmount servers!" YAWN.
I remember swimming at the YMCA my mother taught at. Obviously I didn't know what the hell that was at the time. I remember the room though, and being dunked undewater, which I hated cause the chlorine burns your eyes and all.
Not too many other early memories. I remember riding in the old car my parents had, watching TV with my mother when I was 2, learning to read at 2.5 (I insisted they teach me), accidentally eating a piece of chalk cause I got it confused with the cracker in my other hand around then (distraction is bad).
It's mostly bits and pieces up till about 5 or so then it gets more stable.
I saw one of these driving around a table at ConQuest this past fall. I searched and found the original Bitchar-Gs, so I found a RC place nearby that carried them and bought one. It's fun, you don't need to find a parking lot to drive it in or carry a suitcase full of batteries, chargers, parts, tools, etc like my old 1/10th RC cars.
They make great indoor toys if you have tile floors but they don't work on rugs or outside very well.
Ok so the P3 one isn't $10,000. But it's not 1996 anymore. Is this really that impressive given things like VIA EPIA and the Tiquit and Jumptech machines?
Did a quick search, it's already returning multiple hits.
Right now it looks like there's a 1CD divx version and a 2CD divx version. This is on a major filesharing app, so I'm betting IRC and FTPs are way ahead of this and it's already everywhere.
It's sad really. I refuse to ruin a potentially good movie by seeing a poor quality copy first. I'm definately ignoring these and waiting to see it in theaters, like I did with episode 2 (and was glad I did).
"All you need to make a good sounding mp3 are a sound source and a recording device with decent A/D quality. The only way they can stop us from doing that is to make it impossible to listen to the music in the first place."
Exactly. I remember doing this way back in the ancient days of 1997, when cd ripping software was rare. Ok the files aren't great by modern standards but they're still enjoyable listening.
If I recall, there was talk of "Inaudible watermarking that can be preserved even when a file is re-recorded through analog inputs."
Now wait a minute. Either A: The watermarking is inaudible, and thus won't show up in the analog signal, or B: the watermark shows up in the signal and is by definition audible.
Yes threshold of hearing subtle cues whatever, I don't buy it. It's been shown that A is impossible and consumers won't stand for B. Even if you somehow got consumers to stand for distortion in the name of protection, then what?
Encoders that have a watermark database for every song known? No. Ok watermark database online the encoder has to connect to? Eh... maybe... but who runs and maintains it? How is it funded?
Also, what happens when I build my own encoder?
We make the players only play "certified" files.
I fake the certification.
We use encryption, the players can tell.
I write my own player.
We restrict the running of software to "authorized" software through hardware checking. (see Palladium)
Didn't we just have this discussion about "certified" encoded content? I fake the authorization with emulation/modification/custom hardware (BIOS).
We check your hardware online.
I fake the check.
We encrypt the keys.
I sniff the keys and either use someone else's or reverse engineer the algorithm from the HUGE amount of them going around the net. Meanwhile your support is drowned in calls of "Why won't this run? My business needs this old DOS app to function! No we can't upgrade, it's custom!"
Even if you really COULD get every PC hardware manufacturer to lock down the systems (like they did against overclocking? HA!) the real enthusiast community won't stand for it. They'll build custom hardware. Nevermind it's slower and has bugs, as long as you can DO WHAT YOU WANT with it.
If the entire situation is hopeless, how do you stop rampant piracy? (I refuse to call anything that does not deprive the original owner of the item "theft") How about making the content cheap enough and flexible enough that people can't be bothered with the work of ripping the files in the first place? If you could download songs for a quarter and find any song you wanted there, why would people bother spending hours ripping cds and scouring file sharing utils to get a decent quality complete copy of it?
But no, of course that doesn't make sense. It's not like it's proven economic wisdom to SUPPLY what your market DEMANDS is it? Of course not, how could that ever work.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's one I expect to come up. Viruses that hack the DRM bits on common media files. Some turn them on, to annoy people with legit homemade files, some turn them off, to annoy media companies. I'd imagine both will seem funny enough to some hackers to produce several.
It's not so bad, I mean you kill a gram here, kill a gram there...
Some of these are doable and I wish someone would do them. I would but I think it's futile to try and introduce a new OS at this point without some major support.
:P
- work seamlessly (open, edit, save, convert format) with all my current documents
This should be doable. Why isn't it being done? Is it really so hard to standardize a format for tasks that have been mostly unchanged for a decade, like word processing and spreadsheets?
- feature well-designed apps for recording and editing video and audio
This should be done. Apple is leading the way here and nobody else is even looking in their direction let alone following. Windows is having API problems because DirectShow is unsuited for certain tasks (I hear video editing is a major problem with it), and the only alternative is Video for Windows, which is so obsolete the last book still in print was written in 1994. On linux, the problem seems to be more of getting all the hardware out there to work with things. There needs to be a bigger push towards a standard multimedia api that's more integrated to the system.
- come with an actually useful, contextually flexible help system -- man pages *and* For Dummies -style tutorials, and a searchable index linking to sections of both
This should also be doable but isn't being done. Part of the probem is feature creep sabotages this. Developers want to ship on time and they don't care about "trivial" things like documentation, and the documentation has to keep pace with all the new features. If people wrote decent documentation with their apps this might be doable, but the thinking here seems to be "If you can't figure out you need to fetch app2.3.2.1.beta-omicron.build4173.tar.gz and update your kernel to 2.2.1.3.alpha9, and then make -f -q -g97 -i23 -^& on your own you're a worthless n00b who needs to RTFM and nobody will help you cause it's obvious."
- never need the help system, since it's so intuitive
This is REALLY unlikely unless you keep the interface perfectly standard for a long long time. It's doable in the long term though, it's done for simple interfaces all the time, like games.
- run on sunlight (or moonlight)
Doable for low power systems. VIA Eden systems use what, 4W?
- feature perfect voice recognition and synthesis
Unlikely to be perfect, and I never saw what the big deal was about voice recognition. I'm much happier with a keyboard and mouse. Maybe for handheld systems.
- autodetect, configure, and if necessary, create new drivers on the fly for all my current and future peripherals
Umm no, it's unlikely this would be possible given there's no way of knowing what kind of devices there will be in the future. =)
- know what *I* want when I click a certain spot on a window.
I hear thought interfaces are making progress but this one's a long long way off.
When the winning software basicly scores 6/10 and beats out a competitor scoring 5/10, what does this say about the suitability of current software for what users want to use it for?
Yes I know it's fun to watch linux vs windows and cheer from the sidelines etc, but how about this bigger picture?
Maybe it's just me but software seems to be doing less and less of what we as users want and more and more of what marketing departments want. Useless features, obsolete features that are never pruned, tons of time and money spent dealing with ways to push advertising or find more ways to milk the consumer... Whatever happened to looking for ways to make doing everyday tasks easier and faster? Open source projects don't seem to be entirely immune to it either. I see lots of development in trying to keep feature parity or adding new things to invent new buzzwords for, but I haven't seen anything moving towards ease of using for some time now. All apps are now using "skinable" interfaces that make using them inconsistent with each other. Some apps have such complex configurations they're harder to learn to use than the average OS. I think that's a problem.
So what were the almost 4000 points that weren't awarded based on?
Yeah like this is ever going to fly. At least not in the US, assuming it even gets a chance to be done over here in the first place.
Cause I mean, why give people decent connection speeds when you can rape small businesses out the ass with 1980s telecom pricing plans? A T-1 has to be $1000/month FOREVER, so nobody can have that kinda upstream for less.
Oh and since AT&T will force a 19.2k upstream cap, and the greedy and desperate wireless companies will disallow normal TCP connections unless you pay for their "wireless adapter kit!" i.e. we unlock TCP on your phone from a laptop for $100-200 or whatever we think we can assrape you for, it'll be pretty much useless.
Sometimes I think we'll have random 802.11 boxes covering the entire country before any kind of unlimited wireless internet even gets concieved at any price.
To be honest the idea of Big Brother watching everything we say and do doesn't scare me as much as Big Uncle wanting a cut of everything we buy and use. I mean survellance can miss a 300,000lb jet going 500mph the wrong way down the hudson corridor for an hour, but if you're one second out of those free night and weekend minutes you're nailed!
I have AIM on my Nokia 3390 (I think it's a 3390) through T-mobile. I think you get 50 incoming messages free with most of the plans, an upgrade to 500 is $3/month, which I have. Considering that's about 16 messages/day average, I'm unlikely to go over it. I actually rarely use it cause when I'm home I'm usually at the computer with trillian running anyway.
Typing on it's a little annoying at first, but I can manage it ok now. It's nice to have when I need to get ahold of someone and I know they're probably on AIM, or when I'm just sitting somewhere bored.
The only problem I have with it is I can't seem to get it to pull my entire buddy list down off AIM, even when I tell it to. So I often have to manually add people to keep it in sync with the list on my computer. Once they're added it's fine though, so it's a minor annoyance.
It's the environment. As soon as I saw the doors the ships have to fly into, I started going "Wait, they've been down here HOW long?" Zion just has too many resources to have been there only 100 years with a small population. How did they build a gigantic fortress-city, and dozens of antigrav ships, in 100 years? Ok they didn't have to invent the tech, they scrounged parts from the surface. Even so, the amount of carved rock, and then stuff on the engineering level... It's too much for that small a population to have built in that time. Not while they were working up from "16 women and 7 men" as the architect describes.
So, either the machines pre-rebuild Zion (or pre-build if it's a different location each time), or it's fake. The different location thing bugs me because while yeah there's alot of tunnels, they fly around the damn tunnels all the time. It's too likely one of the ships would have stumbled onto it by now if there were ruins of multiple cities underground.
Also Smith's copying himself into other people seems to be a hint, unless this turns into The 13th Floor again.
An interesting thing is who knows and who doesn't know. I don't think any of the humans know, except Neo who now suspects. The Architect obviously knows, and probably the Oracle and the other guy who constantly refers to "Your predecessors." (gee subtle hint there?) I think the Agents in general DON'T know, except Smith, who's figured it out.
I know he's incompetent. He's also department chair and runs a class that's impossible to pass without cheating (Write me a full virtual machine for the output of my toy language compiler, and debugger, and modify my compiler to make debug code and add several new language features like support for floats and void functions, by yourself. Nevermind you've never seen JAVA before, it's exactly like C++!) Everyone I talked to that had passed the class said they'd either cheated by working in groups or failed it and then taken it again and cheated by working in groups. Being both antisocial and somewhat morally old-fashioned, I didn't cheat. I wound up dropping out of that school. If I go back it won't be there.
0 471771/qid=1052982045/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/002-693275 1-0830466?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201 612739/qid=1052982076/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-693275 1-0830466?v=glance&s=books .
I believe the texts used in the class were http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013
For compiler we were expected to use either VisualCafe or IBM's Eclipse project. (Oh you haven't used an IDE before because all previous classes forced you to used gcc in a telnet session on our SunOS server? Well you'll figure it out, it's not like it's completely new and unfamilliar.)
Been reading up on it through books.
std::vector > 2Dvector; eventually was the working answer.
It turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, just too slow for what I was doing and a pain to copy with.
I've been looking up alot of the other things in the STL and some look useful but the syntax is still bugging me.
Well first off, I've never heard of STL until it was mentioned here and I started looking it up. It wasn't covered or even mentioned in my education at all. I have no idea what typedef is, I'll look a that up later.
I did however look up vector, and tried using it. I ran into problems.
How do you do a 2D double dynamic array?
vectorarray = new (std::vector )[count]; obviously does not work.
vectorarray = new *(std::vector)[count]; doesn't work either so I can't get pointers to vectors so I can have a bunch of vectors later.
vectorvector = std::vector ; also no go.
Also, any idea if it works with memcopy? If not I don't know if I wanna throw a couple hundred megs into them and try copying it around.
What I really want to do is this: Reverse part of the sort later.
That's right. I need to sort an array, do a bunch of stuff with the sorted array, and then be able to unsort some of the array values later. So far the only way I can think of doing that is tracking the original index value of each element during the sort, and then afterwards for the ones I want look that up so I can put it back where it was.
I have no idea how map would work for this. Any examples?
Oh and this is very memory sensitive. One byte per element is a huge memory bloat for this app. I have to free the original arrays after I cast them to a 2 int struct (1 value 1 index) or it uses too much ram. If I could do it without having to make the structs, i.e. just making the index arrays, I wouldn't need to free hundreds of megs and only to allocate it again after this process ends.
See my bitching about Java for why I think using "vector" interchangeably with "array" is stupid.
Array to me implies simple, no memory overhead storage that doesn't do random insert/delete. I have no idea what vector's properties are along those lines, and it's not obvious from the description. When someone talks to me about vectors I think of arrows with multiple numbers describing lengths in different dimensions. I don't see how the analogy translates over well at all.
It's probably a combination of bad naming choice and holes in my education that led to this particular thing not being covered well or not at all.
Ok begin flaming me but I love what I've seen of C# so far. I'm not a very experienced programmer, but I was forced through C, C++, MIPS assembly, shellscripts, and Java in college. Since then I've done C# and PHP on my own. So far I like C# the best.
Why? C is an ancient ugly mess that needs to adapt or die. I'd hate to do more than a 200 line program in it because I'd get lost without objects. "Oh but you can use objects in C by doing blah blah struct blah blah kludge etc." No thanks, it took me years to figure out what the big deal with objects was and how to use them without overusing them, and I'm never going back now for anything serious.
C++ has objects you say, but they always feel like it's grafted on to C. Granted it works, and it's still reasonably portable, which is C's main advantage these days, but some things are still just ugly. How about an array who's size you don't know until runtime? Welcome back to pointers 101. Sure you can use new and delete instead of malloc and it looks nicer, but alot of things just don't have really elegant solutions, and the standard libraries are too sparse for what modern apps do with modern languages.
Java... everything you hate about C++ fixed the wrong way! Yay we have big useful libraries now... but they're constantly changing, bitching that what you just used is now "depreciated", doing things you're not allowed to do etc. No I do not want to use something called "vector" to replace a linked list, give me a freaking "linked list" object! Even if it's just a renamed vector at least it doesn't confuse people into thinking I'm going to have calculus and matrices popping out in the next few lines. This may have been the fault of my instructor but he loved crap like this. "Don't use the Stack class, use vector to make your own stack!" Oh and just because I don't want to do something with pointers if I can help it doesn't mean I don't EVER want to use pointers, I'd like to code without a babysitter please. If I screw up at least it's me to blame. Everything must be a class! Umm yeah that's great when I just want a struct with an int and a float so I don't have to write half a dozen methods to implement a "proper" class with private data and constructor and operators and copy... Put up with all this and you're rewarded with 10x slower performance and maybe cross-platform execution on alternate tuesdays when it's raining and the moon is waxing.
PHP seems nice, though I haven't really written much of anything in it yet. Some things kinda weird me out like how nothing cares if your variable is an int, float, string, etc. It's kinda nifty but extremely unsettling at the same time. At least it's easy to spot variables since they all start with $. I really don't have much else to say about it yet.
By now everyone's waiting for why I like C#. I like it because it fixes the things I hate about C++ and Java and just seems to make everything work smooth. Want to use pointers? Sure, just put it in an unsafe section for the over paranoid. Want to use objects? It's easy. Want to do threading? We've got this easy to use library for it. How about resize an array? No problem. Arrays remember their own sizes. They can even sort themselves. They can even sort themselves and another array at the same time based on the values in the first array (someone PLEASE show me how to do this with qsort() in C++ elegantly). Networking? Got it. Performance? Eh, about 20% hit from C++ on my machine, less if you use ngen to precompile it. Still too bad? Ok, put your critical sections in C++, C, or even ASM libraries and link them seamlessly. GUI apps? Tons of easy to use stuff there, though it's mostly windows specific. The downside is you don't get the portability of other languages... yet.
Dunno if you can turn it on and off. I know I can ignore mine. I saw some report on TV about it like 2 weeks ago and they were talking about this woman who says she sees letters and numbers as different colors and I was like "Umm so? Doesn't everybody?" I thought it was just normal. It doesn't always help for memorizing number strings because then you've gotta memorize the colors instead, and often they're close or you have two with the same color, which is no help.
:P
Words having tastes is fun though. Different authors have different flavors, like say David Weber, who's kinda like a hard candy vs Neil Stephenson who's more like cream or cheese with different bits of strong flavors mixed in vs S.M. Stirling who's kinda more like a meat flavor. And yes co-authored books do blend.
Sadly I don't think I have much luck with the sound-color association, but I do get sound-tactile sometimes.
Depends. You've never seen captions that don't exactly match the speech? I have all the time. Not just live broadcasts where they're making typos or the voice recognition is going insane, though that's fun to watch too. =)
:P
Besides, like that's WORSE than the actual dub itself? Half the problem is the dub actors either don't take the role seriously or overdo it because they're crap. That goes away in plain text.
I mean where's the real problem here? You can't seriously tell me that modern games are still being written head to toe in hand coded assembly. I refuse to belive it, because then I'll never have the career in games I want cause I could never deal with a 100k line assembly program.
Basicly today, most games are in C++ (like doom3) or C (like quake3) and then after it's up and running, someone goes in and tweaks specific functions with ASM code where it'll do the most good. There's no point in doing a hand optimized MMX version of a function that renders the mouse pointer in your stage select screen. However, doing it for your poly culling function that runs a million times a second is probably a good idea.
So, why can't you do this with C#? No reason, C# can call existing compiled DLLs and libs with arbitrary code in them. It doesn't matter if the function in the DLL was made with C, C++, ASM, Delphi, or whatever. So, the game gets made, then you take the parts that really need that extra ASM optimization and put them in lower level code in DLLs you link to. The plus side is your C# code could always detect the CPU type for you and then link to DIFFERENT DLLs with different optimizations.
Where exactly is the problem?
I'd think people would be treating this like the holy grail it could potentially be. Think of the bigger picture. Ok now you have games that are in CLR code. What happens when someone gets a working CLR VM on linux? Do you need to recompile that code to play the same game on it? How bout a CLR VM on the Mac? Think MS might do it themselves? I dunno, what would they save in development costs by only having to make ONE version of office and IE and being able to sell all their existing PC apps to Mac users?
Seriously. TV has these two interesting features, CLOSED CAPTIONS and SECONDARY AUDIO PROGRAMMING.
Why the hell can't they show anime with the original japanese soundtrack on the SAP channel? Then I could just set my TV to SAP and turn on the english closed caption channel. Instant subtitles for anyone who can't stand the horrible dubbing.
If people would wake up and realize most anime fans hate dubs maybe I'd consider getting this channel or watching the crap that's on now.
I mean who cares if you've got fiber if they're just going to throttle you to death like they do now? At home in NY I'm lucky, I can get 1m up 10m down (real world) cable. Out at school in SF, lucky is getting better than 144k/144k IDSL for $99/month. You might get 128/1.5 of which you see about 90/400. It's not that they can't deliver the bandwidth, you can pay ridiculous amounts for "business class" DSL which uses the same line and same modem from the same providers, just without speed locking. Why do we need a faster medium when they won't even let the existing medium run at full potential?
*shrug* Guess I'll buy a faster XP to hold me over.
In Soviet Russia, CPUs delay YOU!
Yeah ok I'm lame for that, bite me, I'm bored.
I went. It was small and dissapointing. I got to see opterons, and PyDDR. That was about the only upside.
The entire rest of the show is basicly "Look at our rackmount servers!" "No come look at OUR rackmount servers!" "Look at this software we have for counting your rackmount servers!" YAWN.
I remember swimming at the YMCA my mother taught at. Obviously I didn't know what the hell that was at the time. I remember the room though, and being dunked undewater, which I hated cause the chlorine burns your eyes and all.
Not too many other early memories. I remember riding in the old car my parents had, watching TV with my mother when I was 2, learning to read at 2.5 (I insisted they teach me), accidentally eating a piece of chalk cause I got it confused with the cracker in my other hand around then (distraction is bad).
It's mostly bits and pieces up till about 5 or so then it gets more stable.
I saw one of these driving around a table at ConQuest this past fall. I searched and found the original Bitchar-Gs, so I found a RC place nearby that carried them and bought one. It's fun, you don't need to find a parking lot to drive it in or carry a suitcase full of batteries, chargers, parts, tools, etc like my old 1/10th RC cars.
They make great indoor toys if you have tile floors but they don't work on rugs or outside very well.
Color me unimpressed.
http://www.byte.com/art/9612/sec12/art4.htm
Ok so the P3 one isn't $10,000. But it's not 1996 anymore. Is this really that impressive given things like VIA EPIA and the Tiquit and Jumptech machines?
Did a quick search, it's already returning multiple hits.
Right now it looks like there's a 1CD divx version and a 2CD divx version. This is on a major filesharing app, so I'm betting IRC and FTPs are way ahead of this and it's already everywhere.
It's sad really. I refuse to ruin a potentially good movie by seeing a poor quality copy first. I'm definately ignoring these and waiting to see it in theaters, like I did with episode 2 (and was glad I did).
"All you need to make a good sounding mp3 are a sound source and a recording device with decent A/D quality. The only way they can stop us from doing that is to make it impossible to listen to the music in the first place."
Exactly. I remember doing this way back in the ancient days of 1997, when cd ripping software was rare. Ok the files aren't great by modern standards but they're still enjoyable listening.
If I recall, there was talk of "Inaudible watermarking that can be preserved even when a file is re-recorded through analog inputs."
Now wait a minute. Either A: The watermarking is inaudible, and thus won't show up in the analog signal, or B: the watermark shows up in the signal and is by definition audible.
Yes threshold of hearing subtle cues whatever, I don't buy it. It's been shown that A is impossible and consumers won't stand for B. Even if you somehow got consumers to stand for distortion in the name of protection, then what?
Encoders that have a watermark database for every song known? No. Ok watermark database online the encoder has to connect to? Eh... maybe... but who runs and maintains it? How is it funded?
Also, what happens when I build my own encoder?
We make the players only play "certified" files.
I fake the certification.
We use encryption, the players can tell.
I write my own player.
We restrict the running of software to "authorized" software through hardware checking. (see Palladium)
Didn't we just have this discussion about "certified" encoded content? I fake the authorization with emulation/modification/custom hardware (BIOS).
We check your hardware online.
I fake the check.
We encrypt the keys.
I sniff the keys and either use someone else's or reverse engineer the algorithm from the HUGE amount of them going around the net. Meanwhile your support is drowned in calls of "Why won't this run? My business needs this old DOS app to function! No we can't upgrade, it's custom!"
Even if you really COULD get every PC hardware manufacturer to lock down the systems (like they did against overclocking? HA!) the real enthusiast community won't stand for it. They'll build custom hardware. Nevermind it's slower and has bugs, as long as you can DO WHAT YOU WANT with it.
If the entire situation is hopeless, how do you stop rampant piracy? (I refuse to call anything that does not deprive the original owner of the item "theft") How about making the content cheap enough and flexible enough that people can't be bothered with the work of ripping the files in the first place? If you could download songs for a quarter and find any song you wanted there, why would people bother spending hours ripping cds and scouring file sharing utils to get a decent quality complete copy of it?
But no, of course that doesn't make sense. It's not like it's proven economic wisdom to SUPPLY what your market DEMANDS is it? Of course not, how could that ever work.