Actually, I was shocked at how little ram Mozilla uses. When minimized, Mozilla uses a megabyte of ram. One megabyte. Why so little? Mozilla tends to pick up the odd memory leak even in current versions all the time, but when you minimize it, it does this thing where it internally restarts itself (guessing, since in drops down to a meg of ram, then loads up to 6 megs with ~15 websites loaded). IE never does anything like this.
On Linux, Mozilla doesn't do this because the Window managers don't have any standard hinting for min/max/restore (good in some ways [the WM should manage stateful window positions/size], bad in others [apps can't hook it when they need to]). Since I only use Mozilla on Windows at work, this was a completely shocking behaviour to me, when I'd typically restart the browser every 3 or so weeks at home (+ get a new nightly).
If you were living in Canada, that'd be over $55,000.
To put this in perspective, you can live a decent life in a nice house that you are paying off for $18,000 a year (yes, that includes internet access, food, utilities, etc).
Even after taxes you still have 10-15 grand to just piss away! I know that some US centres are very expensive to live in (NYC, Boston), but is everywhere in the US so damned expensive that you can't live on less than an appreciable fraction of a million dollars?
I don't do much (any) C++, and it shows:) We do use Boost where I currently am doing my 9-5, but my interaction with it has been minimal (set it up so I can build the C++ sections of the project on my workstation).
If people were going too fast for conditions, that it's speed related?
You could mark it as an ID-10-T error as well, I suppose, but that approach makes sense. Excessive speed in the wrong situation greatly increases the probability of an acident leading to fatalities.
The book may start out well, but it begins to lose steam the further in you go. By the time you reach the Xbox and Gamecube, you're reading verbatim Microsoft and Nintendo launch material, while looking at screen shots of launch titles. In short, they never actually looked at the Xbox or Gamecube -- they just copied the promotional materials on the way to press. Reprehensible.
You can see this shoddyness reflected in other sections, such as where they mention iD software without mentioning Commander Keen, their original flagship game.
As for the Katz review, don't worry, Tim, we all know that 99% of/.ers filter him anyway;)
I was discussing the way the original author seemed to be suffering from a case of, "C++ is the very best ever, and only Real Programmers use it -- and they use in exclusively." He acknowledge it did sound a bit like that, and rather gracefully apologized (do read the thread, it is a good one).
As for being mindful of the metal, I agree more with that if we are talking about a true embedded environment (or even just a lean environment, like a PalmIII). The iPaqs they have out ship with 3 times the horse power of my original DX4-100 486. I see no reason why those machines can't take advantage of J2ME and other great portable environments (there is even J2ME for PalmOS, but it's fairly slow).
I don't think I'll see Java for PIC work any time soon:)
I'm all for using the best tool for the job, but in most cases a higher level language is a better tool because I reduce the amount of time I (the programmer) must work with some aspects of the code which the machine can do for me.
I'm not sure about the "no mission critical" critical, though.
Here's what I can think of off the top of my head. It's probably not complete, so I hope other people feel free to add to this list:
One of the fellows I work with calls properties "syntactic sugar," but when dealing with classes, using properties in C# and managed C++ is great. If you've used Java at all, you know how much you use get/set functions. These make the notation for the common case (one arg set, void get) that much easier.
Similarly, C# allows indexing into data structures based on a string (similar a PHP feature) where you have data = classinsntance["stringIndex"]).
C# and Java all have a complete object hierachy. This guarantees certain methods are always available to every object, such as toString() and other basics which aid debugging.
Java has (IMO) slightly better exception handling support than the other languages because you must either catch a specific possible exception, or declare it to be thrown. This allows compile time checking of your exception handling path, something not possible in C++ and C# (MS decided that it didn't scale well for large projects, nuts to that:)).
And, of course, C# and Java are garbage collected (this is probably the most important one). It lets you get more out of OO when you don't try to think about the machine resources. You need a connection somewhere? Instantiate a connection class. Don't need it? Let it go out of scope. Need another one? Instantiate it. No create a class instance, then reuse it over and over again. It makes the design of the class simpler because you can throw any "I can't connect" exceptions in one place (the constructor), and otherwise assume you have a valid connection elsewehere (this assumes, that your network connections don't go away, but I've simplified this a bit to get the design point across).
And, while I know that C++ has now a standard string class, Java and C# have both had one from the beginning, discouraging programmers from starting with character arrays and wrapping them in their own (incorrect) string class.
The richness of the Java and C# object classes (not the specific Sun or Microsoft name spaces, the general ones) are enough to make any programmer happy.
Java also will optionally enforce IEEE 754 on double/float operations, allowing you to have complex math code which works the same regardless of the quirks of the FPU on the local CPU.
You consider an adult language one that (potentially) requires that programmers be mindful of things. This may be an "adult" language, but overall I'm more motivated to work within a language like C# or Java, for the same reason I'd work in C++ or Scheme over C (or C over assembler): higher level constructs take away my micromanaging of bits of the machine, allowing me to focus more on the structure of the problem I'm modelling and working with.
Yes, it's great that pointers put hair on your chest, and that C++ is where Real Men get their rocks off, but don't write off other languages for this reason. It's like writting off French or Japanese because, "English is good enough."
Misconfigured webservers. Formail.pl, things run using suexec, and other problems are the #1 way to get into a system using a webserver. Chunked encoding and OpenSSL are just core problems, the fact is that most people don't know how to configure it at all.
Obviously there is a large enough portion to support spammers, otherwise I'd not be getting so many requests for formail.pl in my logs (always set to email from some aol.com email address, most recently f2@aol.com, and sending to another fake address, most recently phishtank@yahoo.com, with a subject of my server name and a body of "w00t").
It's one thing to restrict the sales of bullets and guns to infants, but mod chips aren't exactly something which is a danger to society. What are they used for? Modifications to behaviour of a device.
Unless there was a market force demanding it, they wouldn't sell well enough that people would keep buying them. See also region free DVD players. They're just as popular now as ever, because people want the freedom in their products.
And that doesn't take into account the fact that once I buy something, it's mine. I own it, I do with it as I please. If I want to rip the top off my Xbox, shit in it, and then grow a plant out of that moist, fertile soil -- that's my business. Microsoft has as much business stopping the sales of mod chips as they do teaching mothers how to breastfeed.
"Of course, they make some money on the iPod itself, but not compared to selling computers."
The margins on the iPod are likely much higher than the ones on the PC because you can get away with higher margins at lower prices. A lot of people see a candy bar for a dollar and will pay for it, even if the candy bar takes 5 or 10 cents to make. That's a 100-200% markup. Most retail stores need a 50% markup over costs of merchandise to cover expenses of staff and make a nice profit as well (after all, if you're not turning a profit, you are going out of business soon).
The iPod has some plastic, a few chips, software, and a laptop HD. Total cost to Apple is probably 40 to 60% of the price of the device at the store because of their volume purchasing power. The store takes in maybe 10% of the price, the rest is divided between Apple and the company that ships things to stores.
Ever notice how the 10gb and 20gb models are only a little bit apart (compared to the 5gb and 10gb models)? That's because they could probably sell the 20gb model for very close to the price (if not the same price as) the 10gb model and still make a profit similar to that of the 5gb model. The extra cost to them of making it a 20gb drive instead of a 10gb drive is small enough that they want to make it look more attractive to buy the 20gb version, because they make ~99% of the price difference between it and the 10gb model straight into their pockets. That's why FastFood places will "supersize" meals as well -- an extra 5-10 cents of cola and fries to gain an extra 60 cents of money is a very smart thing to do if you want more in your margins.
What about computers? Computers aren't as simple, and the parts cost more overall. Most places have very, very slim margins and rely on economies of scale to give them a healthy profit margin. That is how Dell is so succesful(their margin is larger because you pay it all to them, with no $$ going to the stores or other middlemen). That's why VA systems got out of the computer hardware business --- teeny, tiny margins, even on server hardware. That's why Compaq and HP merged (slimmer margins mean more must be shipped). That is also why white-box computers flourish (speciality shops charge more, but give more in terms of selection and control). Electronics Boutique charges more than Wal-mart on games, but they have a much wider selection, and they will buy back used games (as well as sell used goods).
So keep in mind that the iPod is a very smart move for Apple, not just a Mac accessory designed to push their computers. Just because something costs more, doesn't mean they're making more.
The Xbox is Microsoft's stab at making lots and lots of money in the console industry.
You don't think they're noticing the decline in the PC software sales arena? Console hardware makers get to write themselves blank cheques all the time because of the 3rd-party developers wanting to get a licence + SDK for their platform (most of the time). Look at Nintendo: they make more money than all of Hollywood put together. Look at Sony: their foray into the console industry has given them buckets of cash, so much that they could use US 20$ bills as kindlying around logs of 100$ US bills to heat their mansions, and still have lots of money left over to buy another senator!
Maybe I'm not seeing this DRM angle, or maybe I'm just noticing the much simpler, more reasonable explanation for Microsoft wanting to get into the console industry.
"Now, if Nintendo announced they are going to shift away from younger gamers and target the 18+ crowd, I'm sure that would get posted here as well."
Just because I'm over the age of 18, doesn't mean I suddenly stop enjoying the games I used to enjoy. Fun is fun, regardless of age. Have you even tried Animal Crossing yet? Super Monkey Ball?
Plus, I'm more than tickled about the Resident Evil remixes for the Gamecube (more than enough to keep my hair on end for a looong time), as well as the fantastic Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requim. But maybe you skipped those because you were too busy getting NFL $YEAR or NBA $YEAR for the Xbox.
They (Nintendo) are targetting people who want to have fun, not just the usual beer-swilling football/hockey/soccer/$sports over 18 game players. As Martha might say, that's a Good Thing (TM).
The DNS was out when I posted it... I run the DNS servers for K5, so I was rather alarmed to find out about this. It's fixed now because I went and talked with some telco people about the situation.
But that's not really on the topic of this conversation:)
A long, long time ago, in the State of Washington, a certain company that produces a lot of software needed a TCP/IP stack. Seeing many smaller companies producing TCP/IP stacks, they decided to buy one.
But when they bought the company out and started examining the code, they found that it was a Regents of Berkeley code. Since they did not want to advertise the BSD operating system, they instead went ahead and wrote a new stack using the knowledge of the old, BSD-based stack as a starting point. They also ported some BSD-derived utilities, which do include the copyright string, to the new Winsock TCP/IP stack.
But Microsoft never, ever shipped with a non-MS TCP/IP stack. They wrote their own code for Win95 and WinNT because they needed it, and they did not want to advertise the competition.
Check out this page for more information on this subject.
As long as you act like terrorists will strike at any time, the terrorists have won. Once burned, twice shy.
The simple thing is to not let terrorism get you down. Don't let people hijack planes, and be aware of what's going on. If people act suspicios, treat them with suspicion. But don't compromise the basic rights. People who sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither.
"Shows that people said were too violent for kids. Were kids in the 80's as violent as ones now? "
No, they were more violent. The incidence of violent crime has been steadily dropping for 20 years.
However, the reporting and awareness of violent crime has increased. Think what it would've been like if Kennedy were shot today. CNN would cover it for weeks, we'd still be hearing Dallas citizens telling us about it a year later on national TV. Media is the bigger problem, overstimulating this violence-counter response in a vicious cycle.
Well, not compared to what people will pay today. Do you really need to spend 400-500$ USD on a GeForce 4 or Radeon 9700 Pro? But people do, just like they bought a V2 SLI config back in 1998.
You might not buy it, but someone does, otherwise they'd not be selling at that price point. Although I'd rather spend the 200$ USD on a good set of console games:)
You can always stop reading this site, or setup your own site which has to pay for its own bandwidth costs.
I mean, really, if they're wanting to give money away, who are you to question it? That's right, no one, because it's not your site, and you don't have to pay to run it. Thanks, YHL, HAND.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sure it uses RAM,"
Actually, I was shocked at how little ram Mozilla uses. When minimized, Mozilla uses a megabyte of ram. One megabyte. Why so little? Mozilla tends to pick up the odd memory leak even in current versions all the time, but when you minimize it, it does this thing where it internally restarts itself (guessing, since in drops down to a meg of ram, then loads up to 6 megs with ~15 websites loaded). IE never does anything like this.
On Linux, Mozilla doesn't do this because the Window managers don't have any standard hinting for min/max/restore (good in some ways [the WM should manage stateful window positions/size], bad in others [apps can't hook it when they need to]). Since I only use Mozilla on Windows at work, this was a completely shocking behaviour to me, when I'd typically restart the browser every 3 or so weeks at home (+ get a new nightly).
If you were living in Canada, that'd be over $55,000.
To put this in perspective, you can live a decent life in a nice house that you are paying off for $18,000 a year (yes, that includes internet access, food, utilities, etc).
Even after taxes you still have 10-15 grand to just piss away! I know that some US centres are very expensive to live in (NYC, Boston), but is everywhere in the US so damned expensive that you can't live on less than an appreciable fraction of a million dollars?
I don't do much (any) C++, and it shows :) We do use Boost where I currently am doing my 9-5, but my interaction with it has been minimal (set it up so I can build the C++ sections of the project on my workstation).
If people were going too fast for conditions, that it's speed related?
You could mark it as an ID-10-T error as well, I suppose, but that approach makes sense. Excessive speed in the wrong situation greatly increases the probability of an acident leading to fatalities.
The book may start out well, but it begins to lose steam the further in you go. By the time you reach the Xbox and Gamecube, you're reading verbatim Microsoft and Nintendo launch material, while looking at screen shots of launch titles. In short, they never actually looked at the Xbox or Gamecube -- they just copied the promotional materials on the way to press. Reprehensible.
/.ers filter him anyway ;)
You can see this shoddyness reflected in other sections, such as where they mention iD software without mentioning Commander Keen, their original flagship game.
As for the Katz review, don't worry, Tim, we all know that 99% of
I was discussing the way the original author seemed to be suffering from a case of, "C++ is the very best ever, and only Real Programmers use it -- and they use in exclusively." He acknowledge it did sound a bit like that, and rather gracefully apologized (do read the thread, it is a good one).
As for being mindful of the metal, I agree more with that if we are talking about a true embedded environment (or even just a lean environment, like a PalmIII). The iPaqs they have out ship with 3 times the horse power of my original DX4-100 486. I see no reason why those machines can't take advantage of J2ME and other great portable environments (there is even J2ME for PalmOS, but it's fairly slow).
I don't think I'll see Java for PIC work any time soon :)
I'm all for using the best tool for the job, but in most cases a higher level language is a better tool because I reduce the amount of time I (the programmer) must work with some aspects of the code which the machine can do for me.
I'm not sure about the "no mission critical" critical, though.
Here's what I can think of off the top of my head. It's probably not complete, so I hope other people feel free to add to this list:
:)).
One of the fellows I work with calls properties "syntactic sugar," but when dealing with classes, using properties in C# and managed C++ is great. If you've used Java at all, you know how much you use get/set functions. These make the notation for the common case (one arg set, void get) that much easier.
Similarly, C# allows indexing into data structures based on a string (similar a PHP feature) where you have data = classinsntance["stringIndex"]).
C# and Java all have a complete object hierachy. This guarantees certain methods are always available to every object, such as toString() and other basics which aid debugging.
Java has (IMO) slightly better exception handling support than the other languages because you must either catch a specific possible exception, or declare it to be thrown. This allows compile time checking of your exception handling path, something not possible in C++ and C# (MS decided that it didn't scale well for large projects, nuts to that
And, of course, C# and Java are garbage collected (this is probably the most important one). It lets you get more out of OO when you don't try to think about the machine resources. You need a connection somewhere? Instantiate a connection class. Don't need it? Let it go out of scope. Need another one? Instantiate it. No create a class instance, then reuse it over and over again. It makes the design of the class simpler because you can throw any "I can't connect" exceptions in one place (the constructor), and otherwise assume you have a valid connection elsewehere (this assumes, that your network connections don't go away, but I've simplified this a bit to get the design point across).
And, while I know that C++ has now a standard string class, Java and C# have both had one from the beginning, discouraging programmers from starting with character arrays and wrapping them in their own (incorrect) string class.
The richness of the Java and C# object classes (not the specific Sun or Microsoft name spaces, the general ones) are enough to make any programmer happy.
Java also will optionally enforce IEEE 754 on double/float operations, allowing you to have complex math code which works the same regardless of the quirks of the FPU on the local CPU.
---
Thanks for reading this far.
You consider an adult language one that (potentially) requires that programmers be mindful of things. This may be an "adult" language, but overall I'm more motivated to work within a language like C# or Java, for the same reason I'd work in C++ or Scheme over C (or C over assembler): higher level constructs take away my micromanaging of bits of the machine, allowing me to focus more on the structure of the problem I'm modelling and working with.
Yes, it's great that pointers put hair on your chest, and that C++ is where Real Men get their rocks off, but don't write off other languages for this reason. It's like writting off French or Japanese because, "English is good enough."
Because you think you are in Amsterdam.
Misconfigured webservers. Formail.pl, things run using suexec, and other problems are the #1 way to get into a system using a webserver. Chunked encoding and OpenSSL are just core problems, the fact is that most people don't know how to configure it at all.
Obviously there is a large enough portion to support spammers, otherwise I'd not be getting so many requests for formail.pl in my logs (always set to email from some aol.com email address, most recently f2@aol.com, and sending to another fake address, most recently phishtank@yahoo.com, with a subject of my server name and a body of "w00t").
It's one thing to restrict the sales of bullets and guns to infants, but mod chips aren't exactly something which is a danger to society. What are they used for? Modifications to behaviour of a device.
Unless there was a market force demanding it, they wouldn't sell well enough that people would keep buying them. See also region free DVD players. They're just as popular now as ever, because people want the freedom in their products.
And that doesn't take into account the fact that once I buy something, it's mine. I own it, I do with it as I please. If I want to rip the top off my Xbox, shit in it, and then grow a plant out of that moist, fertile soil -- that's my business. Microsoft has as much business stopping the sales of mod chips as they do teaching mothers how to breastfeed.
If you anywhere between the ages of 19 and 25, you're still just a damned upstart kid!
NOW GET OUTA MY DAMNED BUSHES!
--
Seriously, how old are you?
Cheers!
"Of course, they make some money on the iPod itself, but not compared to selling computers."
The margins on the iPod are likely much higher than the ones on the PC because you can get away with higher margins at lower prices. A lot of people see a candy bar for a dollar and will pay for it, even if the candy bar takes 5 or 10 cents to make. That's a 100-200% markup. Most retail stores need a 50% markup over costs of merchandise to cover expenses of staff and make a nice profit as well (after all, if you're not turning a profit, you are going out of business soon).
The iPod has some plastic, a few chips, software, and a laptop HD. Total cost to Apple is probably 40 to 60% of the price of the device at the store because of their volume purchasing power. The store takes in maybe 10% of the price, the rest is divided between Apple and the company that ships things to stores.
Ever notice how the 10gb and 20gb models are only a little bit apart (compared to the 5gb and 10gb models)? That's because they could probably sell the 20gb model for very close to the price (if not the same price as) the 10gb model and still make a profit similar to that of the 5gb model. The extra cost to them of making it a 20gb drive instead of a 10gb drive is small enough that they want to make it look more attractive to buy the 20gb version, because they make ~99% of the price difference between it and the 10gb model straight into their pockets. That's why FastFood places will "supersize" meals as well -- an extra 5-10 cents of cola and fries to gain an extra 60 cents of money is a very smart thing to do if you want more in your margins.
What about computers? Computers aren't as simple, and the parts cost more overall. Most places have very, very slim margins and rely on economies of scale to give them a healthy profit margin. That is how Dell is so succesful(their margin is larger because you pay it all to them, with no $$ going to the stores or other middlemen). That's why VA systems got out of the computer hardware business --- teeny, tiny margins, even on server hardware. That's why Compaq and HP merged (slimmer margins mean more must be shipped). That is also why white-box computers flourish (speciality shops charge more, but give more in terms of selection and control). Electronics Boutique charges more than Wal-mart on games, but they have a much wider selection, and they will buy back used games (as well as sell used goods).
So keep in mind that the iPod is a very smart move for Apple, not just a Mac accessory designed to push their computers. Just because something costs more, doesn't mean they're making more.
Coming to your Gameboy Advance very soon. Slated for Christmas release in Japan, at least.
The Xbox is Microsoft's stab at making lots and lots of money in the console industry.
You don't think they're noticing the decline in the PC software sales arena? Console hardware makers get to write themselves blank cheques all the time because of the 3rd-party developers wanting to get a licence + SDK for their platform (most of the time). Look at Nintendo: they make more money than all of Hollywood put together. Look at Sony: their foray into the console industry has given them buckets of cash, so much that they could use US 20$ bills as kindlying around logs of 100$ US bills to heat their mansions, and still have lots of money left over to buy another senator!
Maybe I'm not seeing this DRM angle, or maybe I'm just noticing the much simpler, more reasonable explanation for Microsoft wanting to get into the console industry.
"Now, if Nintendo announced they are going to shift away from younger gamers and target the 18+ crowd, I'm sure that would get posted here as well."
Just because I'm over the age of 18, doesn't mean I suddenly stop enjoying the games I used to enjoy. Fun is fun, regardless of age. Have you even tried Animal Crossing yet? Super Monkey Ball?
Plus, I'm more than tickled about the Resident Evil remixes for the Gamecube (more than enough to keep my hair on end for a looong time), as well as the fantastic Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requim. But maybe you skipped those because you were too busy getting NFL $YEAR or NBA $YEAR for the Xbox.
They (Nintendo) are targetting people who want to have fun, not just the usual beer-swilling football/hockey/soccer/$sports over 18 game players. As Martha might say, that's a Good Thing (TM).
The DNS was out when I posted it... I run the DNS servers for K5, so I was rather alarmed to find out about this. It's fixed now because I went and talked with some telco people about the situation.
:)
But that's not really on the topic of this conversation
A long, long time ago, in the State of Washington, a certain company that produces a lot of software needed a TCP/IP stack. Seeing many smaller companies producing TCP/IP stacks, they decided to buy one.
But when they bought the company out and started examining the code, they found that it was a Regents of Berkeley code. Since they did not want to advertise the BSD operating system, they instead went ahead and wrote a new stack using the knowledge of the old, BSD-based stack as a starting point. They also ported some BSD-derived utilities, which do include the copyright string, to the new Winsock TCP/IP stack.
But Microsoft never, ever shipped with a non-MS TCP/IP stack. They wrote their own code for Win95 and WinNT because they needed it, and they did not want to advertise the competition.
Check out this page for more information on this subject.
As long as you act like terrorists will strike at any time, the terrorists have won. Once burned, twice shy.
The simple thing is to not let terrorism get you down. Don't let people hijack planes, and be aware of what's going on. If people act suspicios, treat them with suspicion. But don't compromise the basic rights. People who sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither.
"Shows that people said were too violent for kids. Were kids in the 80's as violent as ones now? "
No, they were more violent. The incidence of violent crime has been steadily dropping for 20 years.
However, the reporting and awareness of violent crime has increased. Think what it would've been like if Kennedy were shot today. CNN would cover it for weeks, we'd still be hearing Dallas citizens telling us about it a year later on national TV. Media is the bigger problem, overstimulating this violence-counter response in a vicious cycle.
Well, not compared to what people will pay today. Do you really need to spend 400-500$ USD on a GeForce 4 or Radeon 9700 Pro? But people do, just like they bought a V2 SLI config back in 1998.
:)
You might not buy it, but someone does, otherwise they'd not be selling at that price point. Although I'd rather spend the 200$ USD on a good set of console games
http://www.benbova.net/venus_benbova.htm
:)
Go and read about life on Venus in the book, it's a very good story
You can always stop reading this site, or setup your own site which has to pay for its own bandwidth costs.
I mean, really, if they're wanting to give money away, who are you to question it? That's right, no one, because it's not your site, and you don't have to pay to run it. Thanks, YHL, HAND.
But I've never hidden my real name. It's always just a click away :)
;)
You did change "the" to da