Don't be so sure about that. We are at the point where many, many novices have PCs (and thus Windows licenses) already. I suspect that a lot of people would buy a "blank" PC and copy their hard drive over to save a couple hundred bucks, using the inevitable techie brother-in-law to deal with the inevitable driver crap.
If ya want only speed, and a hell of a long programming time, go C or C++.
Well, this is kinda true and kinda not true. C++ has a steep learning curve, steeper then any other language I know of. For those who've reached the top of that curve, rapid development is possible. But it can take years to get there. In contrast, something like VB allows you to develop rapidly almost immediately. The difference is that C++ demands that you learn a hell of a lot just to be productive.
The other reason to use C or C++ over VB is that sometimes you just need more control over things then VB provides. Try to manipulate blocks of binary data, and suddenly VB isn't quite so easy.
Anyway, a valid poll wouldn't be comparing all languages. The real intereting question is not "C++ vs. VB" but "VB vs. Tcl". One of the problems we have right now is that C++ is more dominant then it should be in places were it frankly isn't the right choice. The reason for this, I think, is this attitude that there is a "best" language. There was a time when it was nearly impossible, in the non-Unix world, to justify using anything but C to management, regardless of the project. Fortunately, things seem to be changing. But it would be a real shame if we just replaced C++ with Java for all of our projects. Java is no more the solution for everything than C++ was.
This is so compiler dependent as to really be meaningless, especially since both have their own library DLLs.
Anyway, I can tell you are running VC++ 6.0, as I got the same results. However, simply selecting "Multithreaded DLL", essentially telling C++ to use the C library DLL instead of statically linking to it, brings the executable size down to 16kb. I suspect that VB simply doesn't give you this choice.
But again, this is really all meaningless as it is all compiler dependent. I remember a time when most compilers could produce real, useful executables under 16kb. Does this mean that vendors now suck? Well, not in and of itself, because being able to produce small executables means just so much less today.
This is kinda off the subject, but I've been wondering for a while how well ODBC is received in non-Microsoft arenas. I'm currently primarily a Windows developer (hopefully not forever!) and, of course, all the Microsoft propaganda claims ODBC is a well-supported industry standard. Is it? Do people who don't give a squat about Microsoft databases use it?
The thing doesn't appear to use graffiti. It appears to use special software to translate taps in the graffiti area into characters. You'd need the device because no one could tap accurately enough on a keyboard overlay in that small an area.
Anyway, I'll be first in line, once I've seen through early adopters that it doesn't suck.
Some news site somewhere talked about this. There are a number of other fun things to try. You can also try other things like:
"Best Operating System"
This gives you the "Linux home page" as the top match.
Oddly enough, if you type "Best Operating System in the World", you get Microsoft.com, followed by the "Linux Home Page", a FreeBSD link and a Debian link.
All this is just a consequence of the way the system works. Interested parties should check out this article in Scientific American.
I suppose it is only a matter of time before site authors start trying to influence all this.
Barnes And Nobles is no saint in the frivolous lawsuit department, either. A couple years ago, they sued Amazon.com for not charging sales tax.
Hopefully as little will come of this patent case as came of that.
What I find most sad about this whole thing is that to me, as a potential customer, the "1-Click ordering" is one of the least interesting features of their site. It is like a brick-and-morter store acting as if their cash register were the most crucial part of their business.
4. For those without formal CS degrees, the MCSE is the only other computer certification they can get. The exam is considered rigorous there and the last time I did hiring there, more than half the applicants were MCSE certified.
For the record: The "MCSE" is a techie certificate and doesn't require any programming knowledge. The equivalent developer certificate is the "MCSD", which requires you to know the Windows API and either VC++ or VB.
Indian programmers are a lot further than one step ahead of the chinese. Many of them are working for US companies and have been for nearly a decade. I've known people who worked with indian programmers working out of India. In fact, as far as "foreign programmer" threats (which I think is a load of hooey, BTW), India is really at the top of the list. There are a lot of smart, computer literate people there who will work for cheap.
(Once they move here, they stop being cheap, which is why the "foreign programmer" boogie-man isn't much to worry about.)
Ever tried to put together a simple process, under Win32, to listen on a socket for connections, for some simple processing? This is a ten minute job in *NIX. Win32 forces you to use a convoluted event-driven architecture that absolutely makes no sense, and is a royal pain in the ass.
Yes, I've done this, and you are completely correct. Every one of the Windows API functions has 10+ parameters, with poor documentation. They also tend to give you little indication of what's wrong when they fail. Then, of course, Microsoft provides "easier" wrapper class for these things, which tend to (a) restrict you into doing things a very particular way and (b) be even more cryptic in error conditions.
And that's nothing compared to their database technologies. About ten years ago, I did some database work using embedded SQL under OS/2 and found it not particularly hard to deal with. Today, I'm trying to deal with the "new, improved" Microsoft database technology ("OLE-DB") and finding it incredibly hard to deal do anything. It took me a week to figure out how to insert a goddamn record.
(It doesn't help that Microsoft has this tendency to supply cryptic documentation and provide lots of 10,000 line examples of doing reall fancy stuff using everything but the kitchen sink, and none of what would really be useful, which is a set of thirty line examples showing how to do the basics.)
Cloned wooly mammoths would probably not be released into the wild right away, but kept in zoos, or penned up on research farms for study
Lately there's been a fair amount of evidence that the more intelligent of the mammals have something akin to "culture". That is, much of what they do is learned behavior. Mammoths had large brains and, like elephants, are likely to have been relatively intelligent. It is not at all outlandish to think that some of what the behaviors that mammoth's needed to survive was learned from prior generations. We certainly see that with some animals that we try to save today. Animals raised in captivity often have little idea how to survive in the wild. The question is, how would we teach an animal these skills if we have no living examples of how they act in the wild? My suspicion is that if we did manage to clone these things, they'd be doomed to captivity. We wouldn't be able to equipe them to survive in the wild.
And, of course, they went extinct, so obviously they weren't originally equiped to deal with "the wild". Though my suspicion is that the element of "the wild" they couldn't adapt to was the eskimo.
One of the fascinating things about the effect of human beings on evolution is that they have essentially made large size a negative survival trait. Wolves are nearly extinct in the US, while coyotes have expanded their range dramatically. Both Australia and North America saw massive die-offs of their largest mammals in fairly recent history.
I suppose a lot depends on how far down the thing was buried. If it was buried far down enough to be relatively free from UV radiation... The freezing ought to have stopped most chemical reactions.
BTW: This is not the first time they've dug up one of these. The Russians dug one up a couple of decades in Siberia. It must have been in pretty good shape, too, because being less then scientifically minded, they ate it. (Wish I could find a reference to this. This is all from my faulty memory.)
If I buy a $2,000 PC, and spend 50 hours/month playing Quake, and 2 hours/month writing opinionated rants on my webpage, couldn't I argue that the value of the "donation" is only $80?
Also, if your diatribes are not posted on sites that you are physically hosting, wouldn't your donation be what the ISP charges?
If I were this guy, I'd argue that since the site did many things besides the political ads, the amount of the "Donation" should be prorated using the amount of server space used for the ads. It is insane to work any other way. Otherwise, you have paradoxical situations wherein if I were to host two sites, one for each of two elections, I'd be "donating" twice as much money as I actually spent.
Hell, by this theory, Geocities has made one hell of a campaign donation!
Ignore them. In this case, why did you spend the money to get the patent?
Precisely so you can ignore them!
Anyway, anybody have a good idea how much it costs merely to file? There are, what, 10,000 or so open source coders. If each one spent a couple hundred bucks to patent just one...
You wouldn't necessarily have to sue anyone else. Instead, the patent would merely be a defense against someone else suing you. It would also be evidence if they sued a third party.
In other words, suppose I have an application that uses the middle mouse button. Now suppose Microsoft patents the middle mouse button use. Then, they see my program, and sue. Aren't I better off if I have a patent? Sure, it costs money to defend myself, but I'd have to without the patent.
A more likely situation would be for Microsoft to sue Corel for their middle mouse button application. In that case, couldn't I merely tell Corel about my patent and let them worry about the rest. It would cost money, but then, they'd have to spend it to defend themselves anyway. This would merely boost their odds.
(Admitedly I know next to nothing about this subject. Consider this brainstorming.)
Perhaps it would make sense for those who worry about overreaching software patents to simply start patenting everything they can. I suspect that there is much open source software that could be patented if someone made the effort. So instead of worrying about whether or not people should have the right to patent what you've done, merely patent it yourself and then give everyone the right to copy your invention.
Patent Perl. Patent ELF. Patent RPM. Patent the use of the middle mouse button. Hell, patent Slashdot. If your patent is rejected, great! That means no one else can patent something so obvious. If it isn't, well, that's great too. It means that we can all use it without worrying about some corporate sleazebag doing it first.
(And who knows, slashdotting the patent office may get things changed.)
Hey, it wasn't meant to be an insult. I love her books.
Actually, now that I think of it, one of her lesser known books, Falling Free, has a great engineer character, something that is surprising lacking in most SF.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be so sure about that. We are at the point where many, many novices have PCs (and thus Windows licenses) already. I suspect that a lot of people would buy a "blank" PC and copy their hard drive over to save a couple hundred bucks, using the inevitable techie brother-in-law to deal with the inevitable driver crap.
If ya want only speed, and a hell of a long programming time, go C or C++.
Well, this is kinda true and kinda not true. C++ has a steep learning curve, steeper then any other language I know of. For those who've reached the top of that curve, rapid development is possible. But it can take years to get there. In contrast, something like VB allows you to develop rapidly almost immediately. The difference is that C++ demands that you learn a hell of a lot just to be productive.
The other reason to use C or C++ over VB is that sometimes you just need more control over things then VB provides. Try to manipulate blocks of binary data, and suddenly VB isn't quite so easy.
Anyway, a valid poll wouldn't be comparing all languages. The real intereting question is not "C++ vs. VB" but "VB vs. Tcl". One of the problems we have right now is that C++ is more dominant then it should be in places were it frankly isn't the right choice. The reason for this, I think, is this attitude that there is a "best" language. There was a time when it was nearly impossible, in the non-Unix world, to justify using anything but C to management, regardless of the project. Fortunately, things seem to be changing. But it would be a real shame if we just replaced C++ with Java for all of our projects. Java is no more the solution for everything than C++ was.
This is so compiler dependent as to really be meaningless, especially since both have their own library DLLs.
Anyway, I can tell you are running VC++ 6.0, as I got the same results. However, simply selecting "Multithreaded DLL", essentially telling C++ to use the C library DLL instead of statically linking to it, brings the executable size down to 16kb. I suspect that VB simply doesn't give you this choice.
But again, this is really all meaningless as it is all compiler dependent. I remember a time when most compilers could produce real, useful executables under 16kb. Does this mean that vendors now suck? Well, not in and of itself, because being able to produce small executables means just so much less today.
Uhhh... Isn't that like saying that wheels are obsolete because we have cars now?
As far as I understand it, ADO calls OLE-DB which calls ODBC. (Or can, at least.)
I always try to do at least five impossible things before breakfast.
This is kinda off the subject, but I've been wondering for a while how well ODBC is received in non-Microsoft arenas. I'm currently primarily a Windows developer (hopefully not forever!) and, of course, all the Microsoft propaganda claims ODBC is a well-supported industry standard. Is it? Do people who don't give a squat about Microsoft databases use it?
The thing doesn't appear to use graffiti. It appears to use special software to translate taps in the graffiti area into characters. You'd need the device because no one could tap accurately enough on a keyboard overlay in that small an area.
:)
Anyway, I'll be first in line, once I've seen through early adopters that it doesn't suck.
So, you guys go out and buy some, ok.
Change your mind in public, and the moderators dock you. Go figure...
You're right.
Some news site somewhere talked about this. There are a number of other fun things to try. You can also try other things like:
"Best Operating System"
This gives you the "Linux home page" as the top match.
Oddly enough, if you type "Best Operating System in the World", you get Microsoft.com, followed by the "Linux Home Page", a FreeBSD link and a Debian link.
All this is just a consequence of the way the system works. Interested parties should check out this article in Scientific American.
I suppose it is only a matter of time before site authors start trying to influence all this.
Barnes And Nobles is no saint in the frivolous lawsuit department, either. A couple years ago, they sued Amazon.com for not charging sales tax.
Hopefully as little will come of this patent case as came of that.
What I find most sad about this whole thing is that to me, as a potential customer, the "1-Click ordering" is one of the least interesting features of their site. It is like a brick-and-morter store acting as if their cash register were the most crucial part of their business.
Yeah, ADO seems easy until it returns DB_E_ERRORSOCCURRED without any additional information.
Hey, I agree. I'm just relating the facts.
(Though in truth, nobody who programs solely in VB will know enough of the Windows API to pass all of the certification requirements.)
Hey!
(Some of us sensitive guys swill beer, too.)
4. For those without formal CS degrees, the MCSE is the only other computer certification they can get. The exam is considered rigorous there and the last time I did hiring there, more than half the applicants were MCSE certified.
For the record: The "MCSE" is a techie certificate and doesn't require any programming knowledge. The equivalent developer certificate is the "MCSD", which requires you to know the Windows API and either VC++ or VB.
Indian programmers are a lot further than one step ahead of the chinese. Many of them are working for US companies and have been for nearly a decade. I've known people who worked with indian programmers working out of India. In fact, as far as "foreign programmer" threats (which I think is a load of hooey, BTW), India is really at the top of the list. There are a lot of smart, computer literate people there who will work for cheap.
(Once they move here, they stop being cheap, which is why the "foreign programmer" boogie-man isn't much to worry about.)
Ever tried to put together a simple process, under Win32, to listen on a socket for connections, for some simple processing? This is a ten minute job in *NIX. Win32 forces you to use a convoluted event-driven architecture that absolutely makes no sense, and is a royal pain in the ass.
Yes, I've done this, and you are completely correct. Every one of the Windows API functions has 10+ parameters, with poor documentation. They also tend to give you little indication of what's wrong when they fail. Then, of course, Microsoft provides "easier" wrapper class for these things, which tend to (a) restrict you into doing things a very particular way and (b) be even more cryptic in error conditions.
And that's nothing compared to their database technologies. About ten years ago, I did some database work using embedded SQL under OS/2 and found it not particularly hard to deal with. Today, I'm trying to deal with the "new, improved" Microsoft database technology ("OLE-DB") and finding it incredibly hard to deal do anything. It took me a week to figure out how to insert a goddamn record.
(It doesn't help that Microsoft has this tendency to supply cryptic documentation and provide lots of 10,000 line examples of doing reall fancy stuff using everything but the kitchen sink, and none of what would really be useful, which is a set of thirty line examples showing how to do the basics.)
Cloned wooly mammoths would probably not be released into the wild right away, but kept in zoos, or penned up on research farms for study
Lately there's been a fair amount of evidence that the more intelligent of the mammals have something akin to "culture". That is, much of what they do is learned behavior. Mammoths had large brains and, like elephants, are likely to have been relatively intelligent. It is not at all outlandish to think that some of what the behaviors that mammoth's needed to survive was learned from prior generations. We certainly see that with some animals that we try to save today. Animals raised in captivity often have little idea how to survive in the wild. The question is, how would we teach an animal these skills if we have no living examples of how they act in the wild? My suspicion is that if we did manage to clone these things, they'd be doomed to captivity. We wouldn't be able to equipe them to survive in the wild.
And, of course, they went extinct, so obviously they weren't originally equiped to deal with "the wild". Though my suspicion is that the element of "the wild" they couldn't adapt to was the eskimo.
One of the fascinating things about the effect of human beings on evolution is that they have essentially made large size a negative survival trait. Wolves are nearly extinct in the US, while coyotes have expanded their range dramatically. Both Australia and North America saw massive die-offs of their largest mammals in fairly recent history.
I suppose a lot depends on how far down the thing was buried. If it was buried far down enough to be relatively free from UV radiation... The freezing ought to have stopped most chemical reactions.
BTW: This is not the first time they've dug up one of these. The Russians dug one up a couple of decades in Siberia. It must have been in pretty good shape, too, because being less then scientifically minded, they ate it. (Wish I could find a reference to this. This is all from my faulty memory.)
I just figured he might not want to waste time dealing with SP5 if he could wait until SP6.
Nothing is more annoying then finding out about an upgrade just after you spent a ton of effort getting the last one to work.
That's what we're doing. I haven't upgraded to SP5 for exactly this reason. I'd rather wait for SP6, so that I can get all the Y2k upgrades at once.
Everyone, except entities which enforce software patents, of course.
Nah, that'd just bring the sharks out and make you look meanspirited. Instead, be like Ghandi and retain the moral high ground.
If I buy a $2,000 PC, and spend 50 hours/month playing Quake, and 2 hours/month writing opinionated rants on my webpage, couldn't I argue that the value of the "donation" is only $80?
Also, if your diatribes are not posted on sites that you are physically hosting, wouldn't your donation be what the ISP charges?
If I were this guy, I'd argue that since the site did many things besides the political ads, the amount of the "Donation" should be prorated using the amount of server space used for the ads. It is insane to work any other way. Otherwise, you have paradoxical situations wherein if I were to host two sites, one for each of two elections, I'd be "donating" twice as much money as I actually spent.
Hell, by this theory, Geocities has made one hell of a campaign donation!
Ignore them. In this case, why did you spend the money to get the patent?
Precisely so you can ignore them!
Anyway, anybody have a good idea how much it costs merely to file? There are, what, 10,000 or so open source coders. If each one spent a couple hundred bucks to patent just one...
You wouldn't necessarily have to sue anyone else. Instead, the patent would merely be a defense against someone else suing you. It would also be evidence if they sued a third party.
In other words, suppose I have an application that uses the middle mouse button. Now suppose Microsoft patents the middle mouse button use. Then, they see my program, and sue. Aren't I better off if I have a patent? Sure, it costs money to defend myself, but I'd have to without the patent.
A more likely situation would be for Microsoft to sue Corel for their middle mouse button application. In that case, couldn't I merely tell Corel about my patent and let them worry about the rest. It would cost money, but then, they'd have to spend it to defend themselves anyway. This would merely boost their odds.
(Admitedly I know next to nothing about this subject. Consider this brainstorming.)
Perhaps it would make sense for those who worry about overreaching software patents to simply start patenting everything they can. I suspect that there is much open source software that could be patented if someone made the effort. So instead of worrying about whether or not people should have the right to patent what you've done, merely patent it yourself and then give everyone the right to copy your invention.
Patent Perl. Patent ELF. Patent RPM. Patent the use of the middle mouse button. Hell, patent Slashdot. If your patent is rejected, great! That means no one else can patent something so obvious. If it isn't, well, that's great too. It means that we can all use it without worrying about some corporate sleazebag doing it first.
(And who knows, slashdotting the patent office may get things changed.)
Hey, it wasn't meant to be an insult. I love her books.
Actually, now that I think of it, one of her lesser known books, Falling Free, has a great engineer character, something that is surprising lacking in most SF.