I'm the guy who submitted the story, and I'll be happy to answer your question. Apple did something that most people aren't aware of. They actively solicited, on their web site, write-in testimonials about switching from Windows to Mac OS X for almost a year before running the first "Switchers" ad. Also, Apple paid for the Switchers airfare and accommodations when they shot their TV spots, but they themselves received no money at all.
Finally, the TV spots are just a small part of the Switchers campaign. Check out apple.com/switch/stories sometime. You'll find dozens of emailed testimonials from real people identified only by their initials.
The answer to your question is yes. I believe the people featured in Apple's Switchers campaign are real. While I concede that it's possible that the whole thing campaign a big hoax, I think it would have been a lot harder for Apple to fabricate it than it would have been to simply find a couple dozen people who were willing to talk about their Macs on camera. The preponderance of evidence points to the conclusion that Apple is just letting people tell their own stories, while the preponderance of evidence is that Microsoft, in this case, isn't.
So to answer your last question: Apple is more honest.
16-bit scans of 4X5 inch film at 2400 dpi are over 2GB in size.
No, they're not. Where did you get your numbers?
A 4x5" transparency scanned at 2,400 ppi would result in a raster image of 12,000 by 9,600 pixels. That's 115.2 million pixels. At three bytes per pixel (8 bits each for R, G, B) that results in a file that's about 330 MB. (115.2 million times 3 = 345.6 million, divided by 1024*1024 = 329.6)
Using two bytes per color per pixel-- or a total of six bytes per pixel-- that comes to 659.2 MB, or exactly twice as much as the 8-bit version. Which makes sense, because 16 bits per color pixel is twice-- not four times-- 8 bits per color pixel.
To test this, I created a 4x5", 2,400 ppi file in Photoshop, at 16 bits per channel, and saved it as a TIFF. The result? A file on disk of exactly 659.1 MB on my desktop. That's uncompressed, of course. I had no problem at all doing this-- in the background, no less-- on my dual gigahertz G4 with 1 GB of RAM.
How in the holy heck did you get from about 660 MB to over 2 GB? You're math is very, very wrong.
Heh. Okay, I guess you got me on that one. Slashdot is costing me a fortune!;-)
The difference, of course, is that I like writing on Slashdot, at least most of the time. I don't like fighting with a PC, or changing my oil, or things like that. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
You on the other hand claim that you would be making $250 to $500 if you were doing something other than tinker with your PC, or that you are losing that much by tinkering rather than doing something else. On a weekend no less.
The RIAA needs to get realistic and so do you.
Sorry, dude. If you figure a 2,000-hour work year, I make an average of $250 an hour. (No, I don't work a 2,000-hour year. But that's how you do the math.) I know that's way up there, above average in extremis, but those are the facts, and I won't make excuses for them. So my time during the week is worth precisely $250 an hour to me.
I personally value my weekends more than my weekdays, so I-- as I said-- arbitrarily set the value at $500 per hour. I will happily pay $500 so I can spend an extra hour with my family, with whom I spend too little time as it is.
Arguing with me about how I account for my time isn't really going to win you any points in the persuasiveness category. And you can kiss "Miss Congeniality" goodbye.
SWT suffers from exactly the same flaws that doom Swing. It's ugly, and user interfaces created with it are unpleasant to use. It looks like exactly what it is: a user interface designed and built by a UNIX user with no particular concern for the overall user experience.
No, thanks. I'll stick with Aqua. That way I can use a computer without feeling like I want to claw my eyes out at the end of the day.
Now they're going to be replaced with video editors and 3D modelers. Having 3 or 4 gigs of RAM would allow them to be productive on cheaper and cheaper machines.
One of the best, and possibly most expensive, video effects systems in the world is called "Inferno." It's sold by a company called Discreet Logic, out of Montreal. An Inferno runs on an SGI Onyx2 or Onyx 3000 computer-- one of the ones with like 12 processors that stands 7 feet high and sounds like a hurricane. An Inferno costs around $750,000.
With an Inferno, you can do visual effects for film at 2K resolution (2048x1556, usually at 36 bits per pixel) in real time. There's no tool out there that's better.
An Inferno has, at most, 2.5 GB of RAM. Many systems run just fine with 1.5 GB of RAM. (Don't ask me why, but the vendor recommends either 1.5 or 2.5 GB, not 2.0 or 3.0. That's just the way it is.)
I think you're overestimating the real need for RAM. Having more would be all well and good, but in the real world it's just not necessary for those kinds of tasks.
You have it a bit backwards. The more accurate way of saying it is this: if you contribute to CVS or other competitors, you aren't eligible for the free license for BitKeeper. You can either buy BitKeeper, or not use it at all.
Here's the relevant part of the license:
(c) Notwithstanding any other terms in this License, this License is not
available to You if You and/or your employer develop, produce, sell,
and/or resell a product which contains substantially similar capabili-
ties of the BitKeeper Software, or, in the reasonable opinion of Bit-
Mover, competes with the BitKeeper Software.
EULAs that dictate terms of use of software (as opposed to EULAs that only address distribution), and companies that support those kind of EULAs, and a very dangerous thing.
Why? Isn't that basically what the GPL does when it's applied to library code? The GPL says-- obviously paraphrasing-- that GPL-licensed software cannot be compiled with software that is not GPL-licensed. If you want to use, say, Readline in your program, then your program must be licensed under the GPL. If I wanted my program to remain closed-source, or if I wanted to release it under a more liberal license like the BSD license, I'd be shit-out-of-luck. That severely restricts the way in which I can use Readline. Did you get that? It limits the way I can use, not just distribute, Readline. In that example, and similar ones, the GPL dictates the terms of use of the software in a very specific and overt way.
Let's take another example, a hypothetical one this time. Let's say I wrote some serious mathematical library software, and released it for general use. And let's say that the license I wrote included a clause that said the government of the People's Republic of China may not use my software for the purposes of decrypting communications. Would my license be, as you put it, "a very dangerous thing?" (Ignore for a moment that my example is silly; I'm making a point, not a suggestion.)
The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer....
Except, no. When you enter into a license agreement with a licensor, the terms of the agreement are set in stone at the time that you and the licensor enter in to the agreement. It's not okay for one or the other party to make arbitrary changes to the license agreement after the fact.
Agreements governing a service are different; this is probably what you're thinking of. If you enter into a service agreement with a provider, sometimes that provider reserves the right to change the terms of service, with proper notification, whenever he likes. This makes sense because a service is an ongoing engagement, and it is unreasonable for a provider to be bound permanently by a set of terms when neither party can predict what circumstances might arise during the term of the agreement.
But software license agreements can't just be arbitrarily changed by either party.
Sheesh... let him expound upon his point, and if you don't like it, ignore it.
But that's not what RMS does. If he doesn't like what you do, or say, or even believe, he'll boycott you, post unpleasant remarks about your opinions or actions to various news groups, and hoist a page on gnu.org entitled "Why So-n-So Is Bad, Wrong, and Evil."
When RMS stops refusing to speak at Linux user groups-- as opposed to "GNU/Linux" user groups-- I'll stop making comments about his public writings.
How productive are you once you have tons of time and data invested in a tool that your right to use is at the whim of the company that makes it?
Ummm... huh? You said, "your right to use [the software] is at the whim of the company that makes it." Unless I'm totally misunderstanding you, you're wrong.
License agreements in general-- and the BitKeeper license in particular-- usually include very specific severance clauses. The license will usually say something like, "The user can sever this license at any time, providing he deletes all copies of this software." And there's often something in there about enforceability, saying that, "If any part of this license is deemed unenforceable, the license will be reformed to make it enforceable." Sometimes there's an "if you sue us, this license terminates" clause, but that's fairly rare.
I have never seen a clause in a license agreement that grants the licensor the blanket right to terminate the license. The end user can sever the license at any time by ceasing the use of the software and deleting all copies, but the licensor can't terminate the license at, as you say it, his whim. It doesn't work like that.
In other words, if you're currently using BitKeeper in accordance with the terms of the relevant license, then you're fine. Unless you violate the license terms, or unless one of the very narrow severance clauses in the license comes into effect, you'll be able to continue using the software forever and ever. This is true even if BitMover changes the license at some point in the future. The changed license will apply only to new licensees, not retroactively to all licensees.
Yes, but the converse of this is that you don't have to "tinker, change, or modify anything," either. BitMover, like other vendors of closed-source software, offer their customers an implicit agreement. BitMover delivers to its customers software that does such-and-such, in exchange for some money. (In this case, they're not even requiring the money.) In return, the customer gets the benefit of not having to create the software in question from scratch, and of not having to do any work at all to maintain it.
This is a good and sensible thing. It wouldn't bother me a bit if the hood on my car were welded shut; I have no particular proficiency for working on cars, and even though I could do so, I never do. Same with my software. I tend not to use open source software much because compiling it-- in some cases, porting it-- is work, work that I would prefer not to do. When I do use open source software, I buy or download binary distributions so I don't have to get my hands greasy under the hood. These are my preferences.
The argument that closed-source software is bad because it is closed-source is circular, tautological, and kind of boring.
Having 64-bit pointers actually has a draw back in that the amount of memory required to store a pointer is now 8 bytes instead of 4.
You're right about this, but for the wrong reason. The real impact of 64-bit addressing isn't in code size, but rather in cache performance. If your memory addresses are 64-bit ints, you can only fit half as many of them into cache as you could if they were 32-bit ints. Programs compiled for 64-bit addressing result in considerably more cache misses than their 32-bit counterparts. I've tested this myself using various toy programs on an IRIX box with 64-bit R12000 processors. On that system, you can compile to either a 32-bit ABI that uses 32-bit pointers (but that supports long long) or a 64-bit ABI that uses 64-bit pointers. Tests reveal more P- and S-cache misses when running the 64-bit binary than when running the 32-bit binary.
Or, you could run Linux, and you'd have the cheapness + performance + lack of all that you mentioned.
"Lack of all" is right. If I were running a web server or a database server or a file server or something, I'd consider Linux for it. But as a home computer? Pfeh. I prefer to run an operating system that can run programs I actually want to use, thank you very much.
Ah, Linux. Depending on your distribution, you get one or more CDs positively full of software... none of which is worth a tinker's dam.
First things first, they cost twice as much as a comperable PC.
Yes, but you only have to buy them half as often.;-)
And, incidentally, no they don't. You can find cheaper PCs, but most often a prebuilt system with the same features as the Mac-- like a widescreen LCD, or a Superdrive, or Gigabit Ethernet, whatever-- will be within 15% of the Mac's price.
Second, if the logic board or one of the other pieces of proprietary hardware breaks....
Speaking as a long-time Mac owner... doesn't happen. I have seen a couple of systems fail while under warranty, but those of course get repaired for free. If you're really worried about it, buy a five-year AppleCare plan. By the time your warranty runs out, you'll be ready to buy a new computer.
Please explain the logic behind that statement to me.
In order to fully understand the math, you have to assign a dollar value to your time. I find that about $250 an hour is a good number for me during the week; since I value my weekends more, I arbitrarily assign a value of $500 an hour to Saturdays and Sundays. Since Macs require essentially no farting around to make them work or keep them working, while PCs-- no matter what OS they run-- require considerable set-up and maintenance time, the Mac comes out as a big winner.
I want a decent and relatively cheap desktop 64-bit computer to work with....
Why? You know the only difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit processor is the memory address limit, right?
Do you really need to allocate more than 2 GB of RAM to a single process on your desktop?
Forgive me if I'm being pedantic, but it's frustrating to me that most people don't know what "64-bit" means, and that of those who do, most of them don't understand that a 64-bit processor will be slower than an otherwise equivalent 32-bit processor. To understand this, think cache lines.
It sounds like you're not hearing what I'm saying. This isn't an issue of one tool or another being necessary to teach the class. It's about the students using the tools that the teacher is most comfortable with, or that he prefers. The classroom is not typically a place for expressing one's own preferences. It's a place for learning; once one has learned all there is to learn, one can leave the classroom and use whatever tools one wants.
Let us not forget our main point here. You said that a teacher who required students to use one specific compiler was-- well, I don't remember, exactly, but you said some nasty things. My contention is that it's the teacher's prerogative to require students to do it his way, and that his choice to do so says nothing bad about his qualifications.
Yes, they most definitely are. But for programmers with less experience-- say, the 5-year programmer instead of the 10-year programmer-- features like multiple inheritance or overloading can cause more problems that they solve. A complex class hierarchy with templated classes, lots of cross-inheritance, and overloading happening all over the place can be a real bitch to maintain.
I don't usually comment on this sort of thing, but how could my post have been interpreted as flamebait? That's just confusing to me. Can anybody shed some light on this? Maybe I was offensive in a way that I'm just not seeing.
Slashdot Mirror
You can choose NOT to have built-in 100BT Ethernet
You meant 1000BASE-T, right? All the PowerBooks come with built-in gigabit. It's also MDX autosensing, which is a nice perk. No more crossover cables.
I'm the guy who submitted the story, and I'll be happy to answer your question. Apple did something that most people aren't aware of. They actively solicited, on their web site, write-in testimonials about switching from Windows to Mac OS X for almost a year before running the first "Switchers" ad. Also, Apple paid for the Switchers airfare and accommodations when they shot their TV spots, but they themselves received no money at all.
;-)
Finally, the TV spots are just a small part of the Switchers campaign. Check out apple.com/switch/stories sometime. You'll find dozens of emailed testimonials from real people identified only by their initials.
The answer to your question is yes. I believe the people featured in Apple's Switchers campaign are real. While I concede that it's possible that the whole thing campaign a big hoax, I think it would have been a lot harder for Apple to fabricate it than it would have been to simply find a couple dozen people who were willing to talk about their Macs on camera. The preponderance of evidence points to the conclusion that Apple is just letting people tell their own stories, while the preponderance of evidence is that Microsoft, in this case, isn't.
So to answer your last question: Apple is more honest.
Thanks for asking.
16-bit scans of 4X5 inch film at 2400 dpi are over 2GB in size.
No, they're not. Where did you get your numbers?
A 4x5" transparency scanned at 2,400 ppi would result in a raster image of 12,000 by 9,600 pixels. That's 115.2 million pixels. At three bytes per pixel (8 bits each for R, G, B) that results in a file that's about 330 MB. (115.2 million times 3 = 345.6 million, divided by 1024*1024 = 329.6)
Using two bytes per color per pixel-- or a total of six bytes per pixel-- that comes to 659.2 MB, or exactly twice as much as the 8-bit version. Which makes sense, because 16 bits per color pixel is twice-- not four times-- 8 bits per color pixel.
To test this, I created a 4x5", 2,400 ppi file in Photoshop, at 16 bits per channel, and saved it as a TIFF. The result? A file on disk of exactly 659.1 MB on my desktop. That's uncompressed, of course. I had no problem at all doing this-- in the background, no less-- on my dual gigahertz G4 with 1 GB of RAM.
How in the holy heck did you get from about 660 MB to over 2 GB? You're math is very, very wrong.
Heh. Okay, I guess you got me on that one. Slashdot is costing me a fortune! ;-)
The difference, of course, is that I like writing on Slashdot, at least most of the time. I don't like fighting with a PC, or changing my oil, or things like that. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
You on the other hand claim that you would be making $250 to $500 if you were doing something other than tinker with your PC, or that you are losing that much by tinkering rather than doing something else. On a weekend no less.
The RIAA needs to get realistic and so do you.
Sorry, dude. If you figure a 2,000-hour work year, I make an average of $250 an hour. (No, I don't work a 2,000-hour year. But that's how you do the math.) I know that's way up there, above average in extremis, but those are the facts, and I won't make excuses for them. So my time during the week is worth precisely $250 an hour to me.
I personally value my weekends more than my weekdays, so I-- as I said-- arbitrarily set the value at $500 per hour. I will happily pay $500 so I can spend an extra hour with my family, with whom I spend too little time as it is.
Arguing with me about how I account for my time isn't really going to win you any points in the persuasiveness category. And you can kiss "Miss Congeniality" goodbye.
SWT suffers from exactly the same flaws that doom Swing. It's ugly, and user interfaces created with it are unpleasant to use. It looks like exactly what it is: a user interface designed and built by a UNIX user with no particular concern for the overall user experience.
No, thanks. I'll stick with Aqua. That way I can use a computer without feeling like I want to claw my eyes out at the end of the day.
Now they're going to be replaced with video editors and 3D modelers. Having 3 or 4 gigs of RAM would allow them to be productive on cheaper and cheaper machines.
One of the best, and possibly most expensive, video effects systems in the world is called "Inferno." It's sold by a company called Discreet Logic, out of Montreal. An Inferno runs on an SGI Onyx2 or Onyx 3000 computer-- one of the ones with like 12 processors that stands 7 feet high and sounds like a hurricane. An Inferno costs around $750,000.
With an Inferno, you can do visual effects for film at 2K resolution (2048x1556, usually at 36 bits per pixel) in real time. There's no tool out there that's better.
An Inferno has, at most, 2.5 GB of RAM. Many systems run just fine with 1.5 GB of RAM. (Don't ask me why, but the vendor recommends either 1.5 or 2.5 GB, not 2.0 or 3.0. That's just the way it is.)
I think you're overestimating the real need for RAM. Having more would be all well and good, but in the real world it's just not necessary for those kinds of tasks.
LOL. I'm sorry your post got moderated down. I agree with it completely. I think you hit the nail right on the head about RMS's world view. Well done.
If you care, I've listed you as a "friend."
;-)
Well said. Bravo, bravo.
;-)
Let me know when your movie is done. I'll buy a ticket.
Here's the relevant part of the license:
EULAs that dictate terms of use of software (as opposed to EULAs that only address distribution), and companies that support those kind of EULAs, and a very dangerous thing.
Why? Isn't that basically what the GPL does when it's applied to library code? The GPL says-- obviously paraphrasing-- that GPL-licensed software cannot be compiled with software that is not GPL-licensed. If you want to use, say, Readline in your program, then your program must be licensed under the GPL. If I wanted my program to remain closed-source, or if I wanted to release it under a more liberal license like the BSD license, I'd be shit-out-of-luck. That severely restricts the way in which I can use Readline. Did you get that? It limits the way I can use, not just distribute, Readline. In that example, and similar ones, the GPL dictates the terms of use of the software in a very specific and overt way.
Let's take another example, a hypothetical one this time. Let's say I wrote some serious mathematical library software, and released it for general use. And let's say that the license I wrote included a clause that said the government of the People's Republic of China may not use my software for the purposes of decrypting communications. Would my license be, as you put it, "a very dangerous thing?" (Ignore for a moment that my example is silly; I'm making a point, not a suggestion.)
I think Stallman's point is all wet.
The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer....
Except, no. When you enter into a license agreement with a licensor, the terms of the agreement are set in stone at the time that you and the licensor enter in to the agreement. It's not okay for one or the other party to make arbitrary changes to the license agreement after the fact.
Agreements governing a service are different; this is probably what you're thinking of. If you enter into a service agreement with a provider, sometimes that provider reserves the right to change the terms of service, with proper notification, whenever he likes. This makes sense because a service is an ongoing engagement, and it is unreasonable for a provider to be bound permanently by a set of terms when neither party can predict what circumstances might arise during the term of the agreement.
But software license agreements can't just be arbitrarily changed by either party.
Sheesh... let him expound upon his point, and if you don't like it, ignore it.
But that's not what RMS does. If he doesn't like what you do, or say, or even believe, he'll boycott you, post unpleasant remarks about your opinions or actions to various news groups, and hoist a page on gnu.org entitled "Why So-n-So Is Bad, Wrong, and Evil."
When RMS stops refusing to speak at Linux user groups-- as opposed to "GNU/Linux" user groups-- I'll stop making comments about his public writings.
How productive are you once you have tons of time and data invested in a tool that your right to use is at the whim of the company that makes it?
Ummm... huh? You said, "your right to use [the software] is at the whim of the company that makes it." Unless I'm totally misunderstanding you, you're wrong.
License agreements in general-- and the BitKeeper license in particular-- usually include very specific severance clauses. The license will usually say something like, "The user can sever this license at any time, providing he deletes all copies of this software." And there's often something in there about enforceability, saying that, "If any part of this license is deemed unenforceable, the license will be reformed to make it enforceable." Sometimes there's an "if you sue us, this license terminates" clause, but that's fairly rare.
I have never seen a clause in a license agreement that grants the licensor the blanket right to terminate the license. The end user can sever the license at any time by ceasing the use of the software and deleting all copies, but the licensor can't terminate the license at, as you say it, his whim. It doesn't work like that.
In other words, if you're currently using BitKeeper in accordance with the terms of the relevant license, then you're fine. Unless you violate the license terms, or unless one of the very narrow severance clauses in the license comes into effect, you'll be able to continue using the software forever and ever. This is true even if BitMover changes the license at some point in the future. The changed license will apply only to new licensees, not retroactively to all licensees.
Yes, but the converse of this is that you don't have to "tinker, change, or modify anything," either. BitMover, like other vendors of closed-source software, offer their customers an implicit agreement. BitMover delivers to its customers software that does such-and-such, in exchange for some money. (In this case, they're not even requiring the money.) In return, the customer gets the benefit of not having to create the software in question from scratch, and of not having to do any work at all to maintain it.
This is a good and sensible thing. It wouldn't bother me a bit if the hood on my car were welded shut; I have no particular proficiency for working on cars, and even though I could do so, I never do. Same with my software. I tend not to use open source software much because compiling it-- in some cases, porting it-- is work, work that I would prefer not to do. When I do use open source software, I buy or download binary distributions so I don't have to get my hands greasy under the hood. These are my preferences.
The argument that closed-source software is bad because it is closed-source is circular, tautological, and kind of boring.
Having 64-bit pointers actually has a draw back in that the amount of memory required to store a pointer is now 8 bytes instead of 4.
You're right about this, but for the wrong reason. The real impact of 64-bit addressing isn't in code size, but rather in cache performance. If your memory addresses are 64-bit ints, you can only fit half as many of them into cache as you could if they were 32-bit ints. Programs compiled for 64-bit addressing result in considerably more cache misses than their 32-bit counterparts. I've tested this myself using various toy programs on an IRIX box with 64-bit R12000 processors. On that system, you can compile to either a 32-bit ABI that uses 32-bit pointers (but that supports long long) or a 64-bit ABI that uses 64-bit pointers. Tests reveal more P- and S-cache misses when running the 64-bit binary than when running the 32-bit binary.
Or, you could run Linux, and you'd have the cheapness + performance + lack of all that you mentioned.
"Lack of all" is right. If I were running a web server or a database server or a file server or something, I'd consider Linux for it. But as a home computer? Pfeh. I prefer to run an operating system that can run programs I actually want to use, thank you very much.
Ah, Linux. Depending on your distribution, you get one or more CDs positively full of software... none of which is worth a tinker's dam.
First things first, they cost twice as much as a comperable PC.
;-)
Yes, but you only have to buy them half as often.
And, incidentally, no they don't. You can find cheaper PCs, but most often a prebuilt system with the same features as the Mac-- like a widescreen LCD, or a Superdrive, or Gigabit Ethernet, whatever-- will be within 15% of the Mac's price.
Second, if the logic board or one of the other pieces of proprietary hardware breaks....
Speaking as a long-time Mac owner... doesn't happen. I have seen a couple of systems fail while under warranty, but those of course get repaired for free. If you're really worried about it, buy a five-year AppleCare plan. By the time your warranty runs out, you'll be ready to buy a new computer.
Please explain the logic behind that statement to me.
In order to fully understand the math, you have to assign a dollar value to your time. I find that about $250 an hour is a good number for me during the week; since I value my weekends more, I arbitrarily assign a value of $500 an hour to Saturdays and Sundays. Since Macs require essentially no farting around to make them work or keep them working, while PCs-- no matter what OS they run-- require considerable set-up and maintenance time, the Mac comes out as a big winner.
I want a decent and relatively cheap desktop 64-bit computer to work with....
Why? You know the only difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit processor is the memory address limit, right?
Do you really need to allocate more than 2 GB of RAM to a single process on your desktop?
Forgive me if I'm being pedantic, but it's frustrating to me that most people don't know what "64-bit" means, and that of those who do, most of them don't understand that a 64-bit processor will be slower than an otherwise equivalent 32-bit processor. To understand this, think cache lines.
It sounds like you're not hearing what I'm saying. This isn't an issue of one tool or another being necessary to teach the class. It's about the students using the tools that the teacher is most comfortable with, or that he prefers. The classroom is not typically a place for expressing one's own preferences. It's a place for learning; once one has learned all there is to learn, one can leave the classroom and use whatever tools one wants.
Let us not forget our main point here. You said that a teacher who required students to use one specific compiler was-- well, I don't remember, exactly, but you said some nasty things. My contention is that it's the teacher's prerogative to require students to do it his way, and that his choice to do so says nothing bad about his qualifications.
See, now that's the BitGeek that I've come to know and love. ;-)
ACK! Of course, you're right. Who can forget Armin Shimmerman saying "wooly-headed liberal thinking!" Thanks for correcting me.
Yes, they most definitely are. But for programmers with less experience-- say, the 5-year programmer instead of the 10-year programmer-- features like multiple inheritance or overloading can cause more problems that they solve. A complex class hierarchy with templated classes, lots of cross-inheritance, and overloading happening all over the place can be a real bitch to maintain.
I don't usually comment on this sort of thing, but how could my post have been interpreted as flamebait? That's just confusing to me. Can anybody shed some light on this? Maybe I was offensive in a way that I'm just not seeing.