Bill's interpretation of why people complain about bugs is very unique
Gates statement is kinda understandable. He wasn't talking about bugs in general, but specifically Microsoft bugs. Microsoft bugs are a bit hyped up, largely because Win3.1 and Win9x were such pieces of crap. It is a social thing.
Still is was funny to hear him say that bugs & stability are not a reason to buy a new version. Hasn't "The most stable windows ever" been advertised selling point of EVERY release of Windows or NT since win95?
Am I the only guy who gets pissed when mission critical systems are portrayed in movies as over-the-top guis that take for ever to do something.. and that the complete lack of sane interface design is used to build tension?
pieces of the universe connect together by recognizing each other's patterns
Isn't that what Component based software engineering does? e.g. MS's COM, or the 'interface' keyword in Java. Pattern recognition is easy: just call QueryInterface.
It's much more efficient to make it error-intolerant
Completely agree! In other words: check your parameters and function ret vals for validity! Not doing this is just lazy and dangerous. Perhaps a compiler could issue warnings whenever a parameter is used without a validity check first.
there's a danger that you lose the faith that used to exist in prior generations: that computing could get better at a fundamental level
Funny, on the first day of Intro CS 1004 my professor said, "There is no silver bullet. Programming is hard and always will be."
And Lanier's comments that nature is robust? no way. A divorce is an OS crash. The extiction of a species is the obsolesence of a program. A still born baby is Windows ME. The universe has bugs.
... but the server does support streaming WMA, QT, etc.
I've been working on a plugin for the server and can say the SDK is pretty good. A little loose on the docs sometimes, but releasing the source probably will help.
My plugin didn't deal directly with streaming, but when scanning the docs it looked like they expose the interfaces you would need to integrate new codecs & file formats into the client & server.
They did have some funky restrictions (as I recall):
You can't suggest to the user to change mime-type associations away from realplayer.
You can't have any auto-update software except real's update.
Anyway, I'm just talking about the SDK, I don't know how differently the Helix Comunity stuff works.
Still, iirc, the article implied every tire would have a unique id. For recall tracking, it seems you only need the id to reference the particular factory/line and day or hour of production. Then, if there are 100's or 1000's of other tires with the same id, this definately couldn't be a privacy issue. eh?
The US Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act in the wake of the Firestone/Ford Explorer debacle. The act mandates that car makers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there's a problem. This technology could be available for the 2005 model year.
It was mentioned that the chip would be designed specifically for those functions, not a general processor. So you couldn't use it to decode mpeg for instance.
But it did include random number generation which is used in many areas of computing not just security (games, simulators, whatever).
It would be amusing if MS was forced to integrate extraneous features into its OS's after getting into so much trouble for integrating IE, etc.
The bigger question, imho, is will the JVM be optional in the install? For example, when I install Win2k Server, I have to un-check the SMTP & FTP server (but at least have the option to not install them). This trivial install option should fix the problem for the MS J++ users.
And am I the only one that finds it hilarious that they are fighting so hard to control the desktop of people too lazy to change the default config (i.e. download JVM themselves)?
Gates statement is kinda understandable. He wasn't talking about bugs in general, but specifically Microsoft bugs. Microsoft bugs are a bit hyped up, largely because Win3.1 and Win9x were such pieces of crap. It is a social thing.
Still is was funny to hear him say that bugs & stability are not a reason to buy a new version. Hasn't "The most stable windows ever" been advertised selling point of EVERY release of Windows or NT since win95?
You don't use Windows NT much do you?
Redundant comment. The pr0n key was already mentioned. ;-)
Well paladium is coming soon....
<ducks>
"No honey I was just counter-programming the browser. The foward button thinks I'm gay"
Empty loops? Ha!! I'll match your empty loops and raise you one optimizing compiler!
Well, when the DVD was created it did stand for 'Video', right? The 'Versatile' was a latter name change once support for it was added to computers.
Was this the first time that a slashdot story itself was a troll? Or has this happened before?
And Lanier's comments that nature is robust? no way. A divorce is an OS crash. The extiction of a species is the obsolesence of a program. A still born baby is Windows ME. The universe has bugs.
And you *know* there ain't no way you'll sell any records without having some hot momma jiggling her jello on MTV!!
As a bonus the OR form does look more like the assembly output as well as being more readable, imo.
Oh wait, you said a modern web browser? Yeah you probably would need a PII to run Mozilla at a decent speed.
So.... Windows is controlled by a man whose name equals 666 and now Linux has been taken over by robots?
Kudos to them for not encouraging WM without getin' paid.
I've been working on a plugin for the server and can say the SDK is pretty good. A little loose on the docs sometimes, but releasing the source probably will help.
My plugin didn't deal directly with streaming, but when scanning the docs it looked like they expose the interfaces you would need to integrate new codecs & file formats into the client & server.
They did have some funky restrictions (as I recall):
- You can't suggest to the user to change mime-type associations away from realplayer.
- You can't have any auto-update software except real's update.
Anyway, I'm just talking about the SDK, I don't know how differently the Helix Comunity stuff works.Not that I really care either way.
But it did include random number generation which is used in many areas of computing not just security (games, simulators, whatever).
The bigger question, imho, is will the JVM be optional in the install? For example, when I install Win2k Server, I have to un-check the SMTP & FTP server (but at least have the option to not install them). This trivial install option should fix the problem for the MS J++ users.
And am I the only one that finds it hilarious that they are fighting so hard to control the desktop of people too lazy to change the default config (i.e. download JVM themselves)?
-The Sopranos