>> SF is a step up from Sci-Fi. SF is about deep concepts, extrapolations of the impact of scientific advancements and explorations of the alternatives.
Wow I wish there was a TV channel like that. What the hell has Ghostbusting and vampire drama got to do with SciFi anyway?
>> SyFy is an abomination that will try to pass off occult fiction, comic book adaptations, pro wrestling, and who knows what reality shows, as science fiction....errr so basically what the SciFi channel already is then?
Yeah what IS that about anyway? Just because most teenage texters can't spell, why inflict it on the rest of the world? If you want to shorten SCI-FI even further, Whats wrong with the existing (and shorter than SyFy) convention of using "SF" anyway?
>> Wouldn't it be lovely to have a nice, clean installation of Microsoft's Office 2007 Suite to run on your Ubuntu Linux Distribution?
Umm nope. I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy. The words nice, Clean, and Microsoft just don't belong in the same sentence. And why sully a nice, clean Linux installation by letting anything from Microsoft come into contact with it? I'll stick with OpenOffice thanks.
>> she put a large variety of herbs on it, slept with a crystal next to it, and watched the necrotizing eat away at her for four months
My fear has been that since humanity, especially the US, is making everything even slightly potentially dangerous illegal, natural evolution no longer stands a chance. Its nice to see that mankind is finding its own ways of improving the gene pool.
What can you expect from a country who more than half of the population thinks that someone who says 'nukular' is well-informed enogh to to be put in charge of the big red button and to run the country for 2 terms?
That sounds like a horribly messy kludge. Whats wrong with just using braces to scope stuff? Thats the "proper" way to do it, at least in C++.
>> which is enforceable at compile time
There are scenarios where that's not true, so therefore its not able to be enforced by the compiler.
Consider the scenario where you have the call to end the scope of an object a condition of an 'if' statement that tests something only determinable at runtime.
Stroustrup's "C++ Programming Language" book introduces a concept called "resource acquisition is initialisation" that was eye-opening enough to me that it forever changed the way I think about code, and also seems relevant to your point.
The basic idea is that an object is always meant to represent something tangible. As an example, consider the design of file object that abstracts file I/O operations. As a developer, I've come across this one several times, it is normal that such objects have open and close methods, however that makes the design of the object in contradiction with Stroustrup's concept because open/close provided as methods rather than only called in the constructor/destructor means the object may be in existence yet be in a state where it is not associated with an open file. You basically have to grok that having a file object around that doesn't directly map to an open file just adds overhead to the system and is basically bad OO design in that in some sense that object is meaningless.
Apply the same concept to a reference and you have your answer. If a reference is pointing at nothing, then what is its purpose? The only thing a NULL reference is good for is when the software design ascribes a special meaning to the value NULL. Instead of just meaning address location 0, it gets subverted to mean "variable unassigned" or the "tail node of list" or somesuch. Ascribing multiple meanings to a variable value (especially pointers/references that are only ever meant to hold memory addresses) is one example of bad programming practice known as programming by side-effect which most people agree should be avoided.
Another point is that in most OO lanugages, references have an extra benefit of being more strongly typed than pointers, menaing that reference is guaranteed to only ever be pointing at an instantiated object of its specific type. That guarantee also gets broken when a reference can be NULL.
I can't imagine Ballmer sending an email like that, or even caring enough to directly test usability. Ballmer has a salesman mentality, he doens't care about the product itself, just the amount of sales. He probably can't even see any connection between usability and sales.
I dont think its any coincidence that the usability of Microsoft products, whic hwas never good, is noticably worse since Gate's departure. Vista is waay worse than XP for usability, and that from early accounts Windows 7 is even worse again.
The writing is clearly on the wall for Microsoft under Ballmer.
Well I'm glad he's finally said it, at least so that the next time Microsoft lock something down we can throw their own words back at them. Sadly I don't think Microsoft are honestly aware of the benefits of openness though. In fact Windows 7 has losts of extra DRM that even Vista doens't have.
>> easily accessible,.. just the 13 Philips screws.. and the three tri-wing security screws
16 screws is not easily accessible", especially when 3 of them need a specialised tool which is hard to find and most people don't have.
My laptop PC just has a slider that drops the battery out. Now THATS easily accessible. Why can't Apple do that? Simple... they want to make money by making the average joe have to take their computer to a dealer so they can get massively overcharged.
The title of this article is misleading. The offer is only open to people who buy computers with Vista on in the next few months. What about the rest of us who have already been stuck with the piece of sh1t that is Vista?
Just because you think this isn't a worthwhile project doesn't mean others don't. I actually like seeing stuff like this being done instead of propping up some bank-managers million pound bonus.
Why are they even considering this? Isn't this obviously unconstitutional as it means individual Iowans votes can't actually count for anything, effectively removing any meaning, value or even purpose of them voting at all.
Because they don't make it as clear that it only supports upto 720p as that it is HD compatable. There are plenty of 1080i broadcasts (at least in my neighborhood) and Blu-Ray is 1080p. Its not like those resolutions aren't used. I'd be pissed if I bought something claiming HD compatability yet it couldn't do some HD channels properly. The thing is, many people have already bought stuff like a 30" tv, and because it has a sticker on it saying "HD-compatable" they reasonably expect to be able to watch all HD tv in full glory. The problem is that manufacturers feel free to label stuff with a native resolution less than 1920x1080 as "HD compatable" just because you get some sort of picture at all from a 1080i signal, regardless of the fact that there's no way the TV can display the picture at full definition. Which is what HD is all about after all. It seems the only thing that is keeping the TV companies out of a class-action suit for bad advertising is that most people don't actually know their TV isn't actually giving them a full HD picture, because many consumers aren't clued-in enough to check for native resolution and just think that because the tv has a sticker and the picture is incrementally better than their old analog TV that it probably is full HD.
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>> SF is a step up from Sci-Fi. SF is about deep concepts, extrapolations of the impact of scientific advancements and explorations of the alternatives.
Wow I wish there was a TV channel like that. What the hell has Ghostbusting and vampire drama got to do with SciFi anyway?
>> SyFy is an abomination that will try to pass off occult fiction, comic book adaptations, pro wrestling, and who knows what reality shows, as science fiction. ...errr so basically what the SciFi channel already is then?
Yeah what IS that about anyway?
Just because most teenage texters can't spell, why inflict it on the rest of the world? If you want to shorten SCI-FI even further, Whats wrong with the existing (and shorter than SyFy) convention of using "SF" anyway?
>> Wouldn't it be lovely to have a nice, clean installation of Microsoft's Office 2007 Suite to run on your Ubuntu Linux Distribution?
Umm nope. I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy. The words nice, Clean, and Microsoft just don't belong in the same sentence. And why sully a nice, clean Linux installation by letting anything from Microsoft come into contact with it? I'll stick with OpenOffice thanks.
>> For the record, we do not believe that the new iPod headphones with in-line remote use DRM that affects audio playback in any way.'"
It would be more reassuring if they left out the "we beleive" and "that affects audio playback" parts of that sentence.
>> she put a large variety of herbs on it, slept with a crystal next to it, and watched the necrotizing eat away at her for four months
My fear has been that since humanity, especially the US, is making everything even slightly potentially dangerous illegal, natural evolution no longer stands a chance. Its nice to see that mankind is finding its own ways of improving the gene pool.
Thats like saying some Hiroshimans are now resistant to atomic weapons.
What can you expect from a country who more than half of the population thinks that someone who says 'nukular' is well-informed enogh to to be put in charge of the big red button and to run the country for 2 terms?
remind me again why I should buy a product that doesn't do what _I_ want???
Haskell/Java/VB etc are like plastic scissors.
C and C++ are like a scalpel.
Plastic scissors are great for kids, but there's a good reason that surgeons use scalpels.
So now when terrorists look at a map they can more easily identify potential targets because they are blurry.
That sounds like a horribly messy kludge.
Whats wrong with just using braces to scope stuff? Thats the "proper" way to do it, at least in C++.
>> which is enforceable at compile time
There are scenarios where that's not true, so therefore its not able to be enforced by the compiler.
Consider the scenario where you have the call to end the scope of an object a condition of an 'if' statement that tests something only determinable at runtime.
The ancient Babylonians, Mayans and Hindus all independently invented/discovered the concept of 0. Seriously.
Stroustrup's "C++ Programming Language" book introduces a concept called "resource acquisition is initialisation" that was eye-opening enough to me that it forever changed the way I think about code, and also seems relevant to your point.
The basic idea is that an object is always meant to represent something tangible. As an example, consider the design of file object that abstracts file I/O operations. As a developer, I've come across this one several times, it is normal that such objects have open and close methods, however that makes the design of the object in contradiction with Stroustrup's concept because open/close provided as methods rather than only called in the constructor/destructor means the object may be in existence yet be in a state where it is not associated with an open file. You basically have to grok that having a file object around that doesn't directly map to an open file just adds overhead to the system and is basically bad OO design in that in some sense that object is meaningless.
Apply the same concept to a reference and you have your answer. If a reference is pointing at nothing, then what is its purpose? The only thing a NULL reference is good for is when the software design ascribes a special meaning to the value NULL. Instead of just meaning address location 0, it gets subverted to mean "variable unassigned" or the "tail node of list" or somesuch. Ascribing multiple meanings to a variable value (especially pointers/references that are only ever meant to hold memory addresses) is one example of bad programming practice known as programming by side-effect which most people agree should be avoided.
Another point is that in most OO lanugages, references have an extra benefit of being more strongly typed than pointers, menaing that reference is guaranteed to only ever be pointing at an instantiated object of its specific type. That guarantee also gets broken when a reference can be NULL.
just go ahead and put vista on it.
I tihnk you're crazy but its a free world.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/16/2259257
I can't imagine Ballmer sending an email like that, or even caring enough to directly test usability. Ballmer has a salesman mentality, he doens't care about the product itself, just the amount of sales. He probably can't even see any connection between usability and sales.
I dont think its any coincidence that the usability of Microsoft products, whic hwas never good, is noticably worse since Gate's departure. Vista is waay worse than XP for usability, and that from early accounts Windows 7 is even worse again.
The writing is clearly on the wall for Microsoft under Ballmer.
Well I'm glad he's finally said it, at least so that the next time Microsoft lock something down we can throw their own words back at them.
Sadly I don't think Microsoft are honestly aware of the benefits of openness though. In fact Windows 7 has losts of extra DRM that even Vista doens't have.
>> easily accessible, .. just the 13 Philips screws .. and the three tri-wing security screws
16 screws is not easily accessible", especially when 3 of them need a specialised tool which is hard to find and most people don't have.
My laptop PC just has a slider that drops the battery out. Now THATS easily accessible. Why can't Apple do that? Simple... they want to make money by making the average joe have to take their computer to a dealer so they can get massively overcharged.
Well said.
by people coming in for tech. support.
Perhaps thats what their store will be, not selling product but support services.
It seems to be a regional thing as to whether a black cat crossing your path is good or bad luck.
Where I'm from in the UK (Dorset coast) its considered very good luck.
The title of this article is misleading.
The offer is only open to people who buy computers with Vista on in the next few months.
What about the rest of us who have already been stuck with the piece of sh1t that is Vista?
Just because you think this isn't a worthwhile project doesn't mean others don't.
I actually like seeing stuff like this being done instead of propping up some bank-managers million pound bonus.
Why are they even considering this? Isn't this obviously unconstitutional as it means individual Iowans votes can't actually count for anything, effectively removing any meaning, value or even purpose of them voting at all.
Because they don't make it as clear that it only supports upto 720p as that it is HD compatable.
There are plenty of 1080i broadcasts (at least in my neighborhood) and Blu-Ray is 1080p. Its not like those resolutions aren't used.
I'd be pissed if I bought something claiming HD compatability yet it couldn't do some HD channels properly.
The thing is, many people have already bought stuff like a 30" tv, and because it has a sticker on it saying "HD-compatable" they reasonably expect to be able to watch all HD tv in full glory.
The problem is that manufacturers feel free to label stuff with a native resolution less than 1920x1080 as "HD compatable" just because you get some sort of picture at all from a 1080i signal, regardless of the fact that there's no way the TV can display the picture at full definition. Which is what HD is all about after all.
It seems the only thing that is keeping the TV companies out of a class-action suit for bad advertising is that most people don't actually know their TV isn't actually giving them a full HD picture, because many consumers aren't clued-in enough to check for native resolution and just think that because the tv has a sticker and the picture is incrementally better than their old analog TV that it probably is full HD.