It's pretty much a total rewrite. The old VB code isn't really object-oriented, and the new code will (should!) be.
The new environment and development tools are vastly superior to VB 6, though. Totally worth the effort if your developers are reasonably good OO designers.
If they're not, then VB6 is a good place to stay until they are.
We just ported our large server-based application from CLR 1.1 to 2.0.
The key problem we encountered was performance. A few things performed dramatically more slowly in 2.0 than they did in 1.1. In particular, we had some VB.Net code that was doing some things with late binding that were about 100 times slower than they were in 1.1. We had to track that down using a profiler and rewrite that section to use normal binding instead of late binding.
The second thing that was slower was some aspects of the XML parser, in particular InferXMLSchema.
The key suggestion I make to you is to do performance testing. Put your application under load and baseline the performance under 1.1, then compare with the same load test under 2.0. Use a profiler to track down the differences if they are major. In our case, the performance difference was major enough that we needed to rewrite certain small parts of the code. Afterwards the performance between 1.1 and 2.0 was about the same.
But this is key: do the performance testing! The difference can be huge.
The upgrade is totally worth doing, though, especially if you're doing socket communications and leaking memory.
I made a cleric named Freya, and set about playing. A group found me immediately and pressed me to join, and they started loading me up with gold and equipment...
For the most part, the world has moved on since 1973 or whenever this was, and female characters aren't so rare anymore. Although female characters do receive preferential treatment some still today, it's more rare and primarily from naive noobs.
I'd be ok with this, as long as I had the choice not to use an ISP that pulled this kind of baloney. The problem is that often consumers don't have any choice in who can provide their broadband.
For a long time I completely loathed cable companies, because the only choice consumers had was to have cable or not to have TV at all. This enabled cable companies to treat their customers like trash and laugh at the consumers. The advent of satellite TV dramatically changed how cable companies treat their customers, and I've been getting much better customer service from cable companies in recent years.
There's no way I'd use an ISP that artificially reduced access time for some sites while giving preferential treatment to others. But as long as there is a choice of ISP's I don't see this as a problem. But that lack of choice that consumers have in many situations is the primary reason for government regulation of utilities.
I hope that new technologies like Wi-Max will come to fruition fast enough to provide most consumers with the choices they need to have good service.
What is the strategic importance of an HR manager to a company like Google? I'm not dissing HR managers, I just don't really understand how they fit into the picture, and what one can do for a company.
its better to look up its definition in the source so I can see the comments on the inputs.
Perhaps you should actually try intellisense before you talk out your ass. Intellisense does show you the comments associated with the method you're calling, as well as the return type, and the comments associated with each of the individual parameters. As you move through the parameters, intellisense updates the tooltop to show you the comments associated with each input parameter separately.
People can blast Visual Studio all day, but I'd be willing to bet that almost none of them have actually used Visual Studio on a non-trivial project.
I think a single person, with a small set of built characters could farm perhaps $1k-$2k/month...
Keep in mind a single person can supervise 6 or 10 or more sets of characters simultaneously, since each set only needs attention periodically. I wrote software for running missions in Star Wars Galaxies and sold it to a gold farming company. That software ran almost totally unattended, only needing attention every 3 hours or so when buffs wore off, or when armor or weapons broke. They ran the software with one person monitoring every dozen characters.
For them, the limitation wasn't manpower, the limitation was in marketing their service, assigning the resources to the servers where demand was greatest, and so on.
problems so deep with the theme that they interfere with functionality. For example, window title bars consume too way much real estate
I use the default theme on my machine at work. Real estate is the least of my worries. I'm using three monitors each at 1280 resolution, so my desktop is 3840 x 1024. I hadn't really noticed a problem with real estate.
If you're having trouble with real estate on your machine, perhaps you should consider taking your machine out of 640 x 480.
Wouldn't huge stability issues, outages, and login queues two months after release construe a disastrous clusterfuck launch?
No, not really. There have been problems, but they aren't as severe as what we've seen in some other game launches such as Asheron's Call or Star Wars Galaxies. The game itself is so good and so popular that it's magnified the problems.
No, it wasn't intended to be a joke, and I don't think it's funny either. I was pointing out that dropping out of the rat race isn't an option for everyone. The ancestor post suggested that the only reason to allow yourself to be exploited by the man and work lots of hours is greed and inability to adjust to a new lifestyle. I was pointing out that it's not always like that.
For most software developers the game industry is like working in the movie industry would be for most actors. I don't hear actors complaining very often about their long hours.
Also, doesn't EA typically give their employees a couple of months off after such an extravaganza?
This person's husband could quite easily get a job writing scripts for Microsoft Excel or something less taxing.
I disagree. Drop out of the system. I did. I'm never going back to a cube farm again. Ever. The only reason people feel stuck is that they have very expensive lifestyles to pay for. It's surprising how little you miss all of the shit once it's gone (new cars, cable TV, new computers, overpriced clothes, etc.)
Ah, good point. But there is a reason you're missing for why people might not drop out of the system. Alimony, and child support.
Quest sucks. They've been doing everything they can to block competition in their market. After buying up their competitors, at least SQLNavigator, now they buy the leading open source maintainer. Did you notice the price for Toad skyrocket a short time after they bought SQLNavigator?
And what have their customers gotten in return? Higher prices (a lot higher) and software bloat.
Have you ever tried to buy a copy of TOAD? The pricing is massive-- it's way more expensive than a copy of Microsoft Office, and does a lot less. They're one of the few software companies that bug me as much as RealNetworks.
I spent a lot of time playing the game, enjoyed it, and posted my thoughts in a concrete way. You merely pounded out a line of baseless drivel.
You argue I must be paid by a game company, because I enjoyed the game and posted my thoughts. I might argue that you are getting paid by an opposing game company. I'd be getting paid much more, however.
You don't have to craft the stuff yourself; you can always buy the stuff from someone else. The most successful people, though, are going to have close relations with a shipwright and have to be constantly changing their rig for different situations.
In EQ I played casters a lot, and rolled up a warrior just for the fun of tinkering with the equipment. (At the time, at least, equipment was a lot more important and there were more interesting options available to warriors.) It's fun to tinker with equipment, try different configurations, and go for the best stuff you can afford or swindle. That's not necessarily a crafting thing, and it's not necessarily a painful or boring thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It's pretty much a total rewrite. The old VB code isn't really object-oriented, and the new code will (should!) be. The new environment and development tools are vastly superior to VB 6, though. Totally worth the effort if your developers are reasonably good OO designers. If they're not, then VB6 is a good place to stay until they are.
We just ported our large server-based application from CLR 1.1 to 2.0.
The key problem we encountered was performance. A few things performed dramatically more slowly in 2.0 than they did in 1.1. In particular, we had some VB.Net code that was doing some things with late binding that were about 100 times slower than they were in 1.1. We had to track that down using a profiler and rewrite that section to use normal binding instead of late binding.
The second thing that was slower was some aspects of the XML parser, in particular InferXMLSchema.
The key suggestion I make to you is to do performance testing. Put your application under load and baseline the performance under 1.1, then compare with the same load test under 2.0. Use a profiler to track down the differences if they are major. In our case, the performance difference was major enough that we needed to rewrite certain small parts of the code. Afterwards the performance between 1.1 and 2.0 was about the same.
But this is key: do the performance testing! The difference can be huge.
The upgrade is totally worth doing, though, especially if you're doing socket communications and leaking memory.
For the most part, the world has moved on since 1973 or whenever this was, and female characters aren't so rare anymore. Although female characters do receive preferential treatment some still today, it's more rare and primarily from naive noobs.
For a long time I completely loathed cable companies, because the only choice consumers had was to have cable or not to have TV at all. This enabled cable companies to treat their customers like trash and laugh at the consumers. The advent of satellite TV dramatically changed how cable companies treat their customers, and I've been getting much better customer service from cable companies in recent years.
There's no way I'd use an ISP that artificially reduced access time for some sites while giving preferential treatment to others. But as long as there is a choice of ISP's I don't see this as a problem. But that lack of choice that consumers have in many situations is the primary reason for government regulation of utilities.
I hope that new technologies like Wi-Max will come to fruition fast enough to provide most consumers with the choices they need to have good service.
What is the strategic importance of an HR manager to a company like Google? I'm not dissing HR managers, I just don't really understand how they fit into the picture, and what one can do for a company.
its better to look up its definition in the source so I can see the comments on the inputs.
Perhaps you should actually try intellisense before you talk out your ass. Intellisense does show you the comments associated with the method you're calling, as well as the return type, and the comments associated with each of the individual parameters. As you move through the parameters, intellisense updates the tooltop to show you the comments associated with each input parameter separately. People can blast Visual Studio all day, but I'd be willing to bet that almost none of them have actually used Visual Studio on a non-trivial project.
- A bunch of computers, say 30 (we wanted to make a good amount of money per day, right?)
- Network infrstructure, and a dedicated internet line
- Good software, and knowledge of how to use it (the sweatshop employees could probably get this without much trouble)
- 30 copies of the game, and 30 subscribed accounts
- Potential customers to sell to, along with the marketing infrastructure to reach them
- Characters built up appropriately, spread out across all the servers/games where we will farm
- A web site for conducting the transactions
- A strategy for avoiding detection and money laundering
It's easy to set up a small operation that won't make much money, but it's a big deal in terms of time and money to set up a big operation.I think a single person, with a small set of built characters could farm perhaps $1k-$2k/month...
Keep in mind a single person can supervise 6 or 10 or more sets of characters simultaneously, since each set only needs attention periodically. I wrote software for running missions in Star Wars Galaxies and sold it to a gold farming company. That software ran almost totally unattended, only needing attention every 3 hours or so when buffs wore off, or when armor or weapons broke. They ran the software with one person monitoring every dozen characters.
For them, the limitation wasn't manpower, the limitation was in marketing their service, assigning the resources to the servers where demand was greatest, and so on.
It's scary to rip into someone because they've committed a crime no more serious than enthusiasm.
the closest we have to those chunky communicators are even chunkier Iridium satellite phones...
Perhaps the enterprise always launched communications relay probes within a few km of the crew, and didn't tell us about it.
problems so deep with the theme that they interfere with functionality. For example, window title bars consume too way much real estate
I use the default theme on my machine at work. Real estate is the least of my worries. I'm using three monitors each at 1280 resolution, so my desktop is 3840 x 1024. I hadn't really noticed a problem with real estate.
If you're having trouble with real estate on your machine, perhaps you should consider taking your machine out of 640 x 480.
While there are surely other explanations, unexplainable hostility is an important part of the Slashdot and every large online community.
Wouldn't huge stability issues, outages, and login queues two months after release construe a disastrous clusterfuck launch? No, not really. There have been problems, but they aren't as severe as what we've seen in some other game launches such as Asheron's Call or Star Wars Galaxies. The game itself is so good and so popular that it's magnified the problems.
That already exists actually. Just as likely, this means that'll get sued out of existence!
I too have observed people getting overzealous in their EQ2 graphics settings.
I definately had more fun reading you guys than reading that brain dead interview!
I couldn't help but chuckle when I read that the combat revamp is still coming up. That's been in the making for how long?
No, it wasn't intended to be a joke, and I don't think it's funny either. I was pointing out that dropping out of the rat race isn't an option for everyone. The ancestor post suggested that the only reason to allow yourself to be exploited by the man and work lots of hours is greed and inability to adjust to a new lifestyle. I was pointing out that it's not always like that.
No kidding. How much do you want to bet his "significant other" causes more stress for him than working at his dream job?
Also, doesn't EA typically give their employees a couple of months off after such an extravaganza?
This person's husband could quite easily get a job writing scripts for Microsoft Excel or something less taxing.
I disagree. Drop out of the system. I did. I'm never going back to a cube farm again. Ever. The only reason people feel stuck is that they have very expensive lifestyles to pay for. It's surprising how little you miss all of the shit once it's gone (new cars, cable TV, new computers, overpriced clothes, etc.) Ah, good point. But there is a reason you're missing for why people might not drop out of the system. Alimony, and child support.
like umm it would be illegal to run linux with the binary nvidia driver? That's a great question. It's the same thing, right?
And what have their customers gotten in return? Higher prices (a lot higher) and software bloat.
Have you ever tried to buy a copy of TOAD? The pricing is massive-- it's way more expensive than a copy of Microsoft Office, and does a lot less. They're one of the few software companies that bug me as much as RealNetworks.
You argue I must be paid by a game company, because I enjoyed the game and posted my thoughts. I might argue that you are getting paid by an opposing game company. I'd be getting paid much more, however.
In EQ I played casters a lot, and rolled up a warrior just for the fun of tinkering with the equipment. (At the time, at least, equipment was a lot more important and there were more interesting options available to warriors.) It's fun to tinker with equipment, try different configurations, and go for the best stuff you can afford or swindle. That's not necessarily a crafting thing, and it's not necessarily a painful or boring thing.