Yeah, it's kind of funny: we finally get sufficient broadband adoption to make applets viable, and they're usurped by an HTTP kludge. Maybe applets will be The Once and Future Slender Client.
What about a policy whereby you could burn a copy annually? When you first download the movie, you can burn a copy, but only one. Then, after a year has passed, you can burn another one. The DVD you burn would have the "don't-reburn" bit set, so you couldn't copy it, but once a year you would have the ability to burn a new copy. This would permit people to replace copies that had been destroyed, but not crank them out wholesale. Re-copy permissions wouldn't accumulate; once you have the ability to re-burn, you have it until you make that copy, then you have to wait for another year. If it's true that the lifetime of home-burned DVDs is really only about five years, then people are going to want to have the ability to re-burn their favorite movies, just to replace the ones that "wear out".
Depends. Say you use a web client for your e-mail, and keep all the messages on the ISP's server. Would you expect that you would still be able to access your messages if you switch ISPs? I think you're balancing that against the possibility of calling up any show broadcast (say) within the last month without having to explicitly record it. As long as there is the capability to record whatever you order (even if it's still hosted on a server somewhere), it's OK (IMHO).
you have this firmly held belief that the rest of the world owes you something?
No, his point is that he's not being paid for this, so people should stop treating him like an employee. Part of the freedom of writing FOSS code is that you don't have to bend over backwards to accomodate people, because they aren't paying customers. If somebody thinks some software I wrote should have some feature, or should work in a certain way, and whines because it doesn't, I can tell them to take a hike, because I provide the software at my whim and convenience. If I'm a good, conscientious developer, then I'll listen and add their request to the "future directions" list, but I certainly don't have a mandate to do so.
To paraphrase Al Capone, "You can get better support with polite e-mail and a $100 check than with polite e-mail alone".
our company's development department would collectively curl up in the fetal position and cry (as would the support personel) if the software had to be reworked for a different operating system.
So if you had a 16-bit Win3 app, you wouldn't rework it for Win95? Are you still using DDE for your IPC? If you can't (or won't) stay in step with the latest technologies, then you're doomed to irrelevance.
Personally, I spent a couple of hours writing a Perl script to translate 16-bit VB4 to 32-bit VB5 code for a few (non-trivial*) apps, so I can't say I feel your pain. Sure, it's probably a lot different if you're writing in C++ with MFC, but good developers know how to abstract away the OS to make these situations less painful.
* Well, as non-trivial as VB apps can be, anyway. Stuff that large clients had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for...
At the last job I had where we did comperable work, we had three developers, one web designer (shared among other projects), and two content providers. We cranked out a web app with forty-some forms, linked to two databases (MySQL and Oracle), serving some 2500 users. A hundred thousand lines or so of PHP, whipped up from scratch in just over two months. It seriously sucked to be on the project, but it was a pretty successful rollout.
Are FPGAs fast now? That was always the problem before: you could create a custom processor, but it wouldn't run faster than 15MHz. If your FPGA can't keep up with the data stream, then what's the point? You'd probably be better off trying to hand-roll some custom microcode for one of your commodity processors. It's not as flexible as a PGA, but it'll be faster, and may be more appropriate for certain classes of problems.
Probably because the drivers already exist, it's just a matter of tweaking them to get them to work in the Mac environment. I'm not sure what all that entails, but it may be as simple as adding an "emulation" or indirection layer to compensate for the lack of a BIOS.
Yep, that's what we do at home. We've got some 5500 books, and they're broken down into Fiction and Non-Fiction. Fiction has two walls, and is all alphabetized by author. Non-fiction has one wall, and is categorized by subject. Throw down a rug, plant the futon in the middle, and leave a wake-up call for Spring...
WARNING: if you move, personally pack the library, or you will spend far more weekends than you would like alphabetizing books (and buying bookcases).
I really wanted to like PMD, but unfortunately it only finds problems in code that's there, not the code that isn't. That sounds kind of obvious, but consider this: you have a situation where you allocate some resource, and you need to free it within the same routine (a commonly-accepted Good Programming Practice). PMD can't tell you if you forget to make the call to free the resource. It would be nice if it had some way to specify what must be there, as well as what must not.
I guess I'm just grumpy because I really liked what PMD did, and I was crushed that I couldn't recommend it as a standard part of our code review kit.
It breaks down the capascin (sp?) oils that cause the burning. My roommate in college turned me on to this after walking in to the bathroom and finding me passed out in the tub with my ass under the cold water spigot*...
* Helpful hint: on your first visit to a new restaurant, when they ask you how spicy you want your $FOOD, don't use the phrase "hurt me".
Does NO ONE remember Ollie North and the White House PROFS system?
Is it (or something like it) still being used? Seems to me I heard something about a flurry of e-mail deletion happening around the time Valerie Plame was outed, most of it being done by (or from the acct of) VP Cheney.
ISTR the previous adminstration being hoist on this particular petard (TravelGate, anyone?), I wouldn't be surprised if this administration had learned from that mistake...
When my wife and I first started dating, she wouldn't believe why I kept a bottle of Windex next to the toilet.
"No, seriously -- why do you keep that there?"
My daughter learned quite early that when Mommy says something is spicy, it means it has cinnamon in it. When Daddy says something is spicy, it means it can be used to strip paint.
Re:Where is our Pixar/Disney Sequal?
on
The Story of Tron
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· Score: 2, Funny
As long as there's a scene where somebody slashes a giant talking paperclip with a lightsaber, I'm there!
Will it cost less than the iPod itself? I mean, yeah it's cumbersome dragging out the laptop and stuffing CDs in it, but I already have it. I'm not going to shell out US$200+ for yet another device to clutter up a desk drawer during the 98% of its life that I'm not using it...
Uh, kinda. I wrote a set of DOM classes in PHP about four-five years back. They were handy at the time, because my goofball team leader decided midway through the project to process all the HTML as XHTML, but didn't bother to actually tell us this. So then we had to go through all our stuff and rewrite it to be conforming. The DOM classes worked, but they were more cumbersome to use, and took more time to generate the page. I haven't used the PHP5 DOM classes, presumably they're (much) better than the stuff I hacked together. I'd still question the amount of memory they use, though: you've got to construct the entire page in memory, even if it's mostly static and all you're doing is putting the current time and date in the header.
Re:A local Dell spokesman has effectively denied r
on
Dell to Buy Alienware?
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· Score: 1
Well, it's already tomorrow in Oz, so obviously they've got newer info...
Actually, this is exactly the way I think it should be done. So much of the stuff you learn isn't explained well, and must be "taken on faith" (why is the range of values in a short from -2^16..2^16-1? And why 16 bits?). Then, when you learn assembler, it becomes obvious why certain data structures and algorithms work well. If you take a reasonable assembly language (I haven't used PDP-8, but PDP-11 is nice and regular), then after a one semester course students should be able to pick up just about any high-level language (and will probably be relieved to do so!).
I look at it as the way the industry evolved, so it's the way programmers should evolve too. It may not be the best way, but it'll give students the best perspective on why things are the way they are. Maybe from there they can figure out how to make them better.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's kind of funny: we finally get sufficient broadband adoption to make applets viable, and they're usurped by an HTTP kludge. Maybe applets will be The Once and Future Slender Client.
What about a policy whereby you could burn a copy annually? When you first download the movie, you can burn a copy, but only one. Then, after a year has passed, you can burn another one. The DVD you burn would have the "don't-reburn" bit set, so you couldn't copy it, but once a year you would have the ability to burn a new copy. This would permit people to replace copies that had been destroyed, but not crank them out wholesale. Re-copy permissions wouldn't accumulate; once you have the ability to re-burn, you have it until you make that copy, then you have to wait for another year. If it's true that the lifetime of home-burned DVDs is really only about five years, then people are going to want to have the ability to re-burn their favorite movies, just to replace the ones that "wear out".
Automatic Bolts: Secure against nuts with garage door openers
Actually, I imagine they'd use a wrench for that...
And serfs are unpeasant...
I saw William Gates say, "OS/2 is the future".
Yeah, but what about his grandson, Willaim Gates III? You know, the one who runs Microsoft?
Depends. Say you use a web client for your e-mail, and keep all the messages on the ISP's server. Would you expect that you would still be able to access your messages if you switch ISPs? I think you're balancing that against the possibility of calling up any show broadcast (say) within the last month without having to explicitly record it. As long as there is the capability to record whatever you order (even if it's still hosted on a server somewhere), it's OK (IMHO).
you have this firmly held belief that the rest of the world owes you something?
No, his point is that he's not being paid for this, so people should stop treating him like an employee. Part of the freedom of writing FOSS code is that you don't have to bend over backwards to accomodate people, because they aren't paying customers. If somebody thinks some software I wrote should have some feature, or should work in a certain way, and whines because it doesn't, I can tell them to take a hike, because I provide the software at my whim and convenience. If I'm a good, conscientious developer, then I'll listen and add their request to the "future directions" list, but I certainly don't have a mandate to do so.
To paraphrase Al Capone, "You can get better support with polite e-mail and a $100 check than with polite e-mail alone".
Just avoid the thong...
our company's development department would collectively curl up in the fetal position and cry (as would the support personel) if the software had to be reworked for a different operating system.
So if you had a 16-bit Win3 app, you wouldn't rework it for Win95? Are you still using DDE for your IPC? If you can't (or won't) stay in step with the latest technologies, then you're doomed to irrelevance.
Personally, I spent a couple of hours writing a Perl script to translate 16-bit VB4 to 32-bit VB5 code for a few (non-trivial*) apps, so I can't say I feel your pain. Sure, it's probably a lot different if you're writing in C++ with MFC, but good developers know how to abstract away the OS to make these situations less painful.
* Well, as non-trivial as VB apps can be, anyway. Stuff that large clients had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for...
At the last job I had where we did comperable work, we had three developers, one web designer (shared among other projects), and two content providers. We cranked out a web app with forty-some forms, linked to two databases (MySQL and Oracle), serving some 2500 users. A hundred thousand lines or so of PHP, whipped up from scratch in just over two months. It seriously sucked to be on the project, but it was a pretty successful rollout.
Are FPGAs fast now? That was always the problem before: you could create a custom processor, but it wouldn't run faster than 15MHz. If your FPGA can't keep up with the data stream, then what's the point? You'd probably be better off trying to hand-roll some custom microcode for one of your commodity processors. It's not as flexible as a PGA, but it'll be faster, and may be more appropriate for certain classes of problems.
Probably because the drivers already exist, it's just a matter of tweaking them to get them to work in the Mac environment. I'm not sure what all that entails, but it may be as simple as adding an "emulation" or indirection layer to compensate for the lack of a BIOS.
Yep, that's what we do at home. We've got some 5500 books, and they're broken down into Fiction and Non-Fiction. Fiction has two walls, and is all alphabetized by author. Non-fiction has one wall, and is categorized by subject. Throw down a rug, plant the futon in the middle, and leave a wake-up call for Spring...
WARNING: if you move, personally pack the library, or you will spend far more weekends than you would like alphabetizing books (and buying bookcases).
I really wanted to like PMD, but unfortunately it only finds problems in code that's there, not the code that isn't. That sounds kind of obvious, but consider this: you have a situation where you allocate some resource, and you need to free it within the same routine (a commonly-accepted Good Programming Practice). PMD can't tell you if you forget to make the call to free the resource. It would be nice if it had some way to specify what must be there, as well as what must not.
I guess I'm just grumpy because I really liked what PMD did, and I was crushed that I couldn't recommend it as a standard part of our code review kit.
I'd rather have a porsche, but if I could seamlessly degrade my porsche to a camry's performance to get the extra mileage, on occasion I would.
Or, you just pick the right Porsche and get decent fuel economy[1] and serious performance too!
[1] Speaking as someone who drives a Civic Hybrid on a regular basis.
provide a place for developers to ... post content
And if said content is a schema for some undocumented bit of a MS file format, hello DMCA!
It breaks down the capascin (sp?) oils that cause the burning. My roommate in college turned me on to this after walking in to the bathroom and finding me passed out in the tub with my ass under the cold water spigot*...
* Helpful hint: on your first visit to a new restaurant, when they ask you how spicy you want your $FOOD, don't use the phrase "hurt me".
Does NO ONE remember Ollie North and the White House PROFS system?
Is it (or something like it) still being used? Seems to me I heard something about a flurry of e-mail deletion happening around the time Valerie Plame was outed, most of it being done by (or from the acct of) VP Cheney.
ISTR the previous adminstration being hoist on this particular petard (TravelGate, anyone?), I wouldn't be surprised if this administration had learned from that mistake...
When my wife and I first started dating, she wouldn't believe why I kept a bottle of Windex next to the toilet.
"No, seriously -- why do you keep that there?"
My daughter learned quite early that when Mommy says something is spicy, it means it has cinnamon in it. When Daddy says something is spicy, it means it can be used to strip paint.
As long as there's a scene where somebody slashes a giant talking paperclip with a lightsaber, I'm there!
Will it cost less than the iPod itself? I mean, yeah it's cumbersome dragging out the laptop and stuffing CDs in it, but I already have it. I'm not going to shell out US$200+ for yet another device to clutter up a desk drawer during the 98% of its life that I'm not using it...
Uh, kinda. I wrote a set of DOM classes in PHP about four-five years back. They were handy at the time, because my goofball team leader decided midway through the project to process all the HTML as XHTML, but didn't bother to actually tell us this. So then we had to go through all our stuff and rewrite it to be conforming. The DOM classes worked, but they were more cumbersome to use, and took more time to generate the page. I haven't used the PHP5 DOM classes, presumably they're (much) better than the stuff I hacked together. I'd still question the amount of memory they use, though: you've got to construct the entire page in memory, even if it's mostly static and all you're doing is putting the current time and date in the header.
Well, it's already tomorrow in Oz, so obviously they've got newer info...
No more silly separation of persistent file space and non-persistent memory space!
Oh, you mean like the System/38's had since, oh, the late 70's?
Honestly, why don't you kids come up with something NEW?
Actually, this is exactly the way I think it should be done. So much of the stuff you learn isn't explained well, and must be "taken on faith" (why is the range of values in a short from -2^16..2^16-1? And why 16 bits?). Then, when you learn assembler, it becomes obvious why certain data structures and algorithms work well. If you take a reasonable assembly language (I haven't used PDP-8, but PDP-11 is nice and regular), then after a one semester course students should be able to pick up just about any high-level language (and will probably be relieved to do so!).
I look at it as the way the industry evolved, so it's the way programmers should evolve too. It may not be the best way, but it'll give students the best perspective on why things are the way they are. Maybe from there they can figure out how to make them better.