Yeah, sure. Last time I checked, there was no operator overloading in Fortran either. Nevertheless, it is still the preferred language for mathematicians (among others).
Operator overloading, while in some occasions quite handy, must be used with great care. Unfortunatelly, for quite a lot of programmers out there, it seems to be misused as a yet another way to obfuscate a program into oblivion! If you ever get to analyse the code written by a BOOZFH (Bastard Operator Overloading Zealot From Hell), you'll know what I'm talking about.
This is a generalisation, which is not always true. In fact, it's not true in a lot of cases!
If you're writing your software as a small module expected to run on a single machine, without noticeable memory constraints, you're right. However, if your software lives in an embedded environment (mostly with very limited ammounts of memory and CPU power), and has to implement some extreme requirements with respect to performance, system availability, and/or safety, it pretty fast becomes *very* complex indeed.
I'm working for a company producing highly redundant, networked voice switches for air traffic management. Believe me, such systems are rather complex these days.
Plan9 (30 syscalls) can stil run *binaries* compiled in 1994.
Boy, I actually remember the times with green/black terminals very well. I was working on them. I neven complained about green, I was complaining about DARK green.
Sorry, but what kind of idiot puts up a web page with such colors (dark green on black) and then complains about his customer and/or boss stupidity??? Your page is unreadable on my monitor.
> Virus writers prey on the stupid. Harsh, but absolutely true.
You are forgetting that some people just don't have the time or the required specific know-how to make a computer virus-proof. I'd know how to make my W2K installation (which I boot some 9-10 times a year) reasonably virus/worm proof, and if I'd still have huge amounts of time on my hands, I'd probably also do it. Being married, having a child and a consuming job, I just decided to cut my internet access from within W2K instead. That's an option many don't have.
> But if someone knows the basics (do not run anything that doesn't
> come from a verified reputable source), then the person(s) can't even touch
> your computer.
That would be nice, but is unfortunately not true. There are enough worms that can spread over the net without any help from the user. Here a short story of what happened to me a few days ago.
I have a dual-boot system (Linux on the main partition, W2K for occasional use, in case somebody sends me a document I can't open with OOo, or for playing a game not yet available for Linux). Just a few days ago, I booted my fresh install of W2K (MoBo change forced me to re-install W2K; Linux just booted as usual). After some 5 minutes, the computer became extremely unresponsive. svchost.exe was consuming nearly 100% of the CPU. A quick check revealed that I got infected with one of RPC/DCOM worms. No big deal, I thought. After I downloaded and executed a removal tool (it took a *long* time to run), I rebooted the system and turned my internet access back on. Some 3 minutes after I did so, the worm was on my machine AGAIN. Without me having the slightest of chances to do something against that.
Now, I know there is a patch for the security hole "my" worm used, I know I could have bought and installed a firewall or an anti-virus package. For me, given how rarely I use Windows, it's not worth the trouble. I just decided to cut my W2K's connection to the Internet.
Hehe... while reading user comments, I also heard it on the local news here in Austria: "The phenomena is taking place some [insert insane number of light years] away, meaning that our Sun is outside of the danger zone".
Nothing against screwing around and breaking things at your own home computer, risking your own data bases. That's how I started, too. Betting your company's money on such approach is something completely different, though.
Nobody would come to an idea to let the neighbours' kid perform an appendicitis surgery only because he seems to be so tallented with knifes.:-)
I have yet to see a company that bets its' business solely on an Access data base hacked in an accountants' spare time. However, I *have* already seen enough cases where a company pulled exactly that stunt for handling very important data. Nothing that would drive the company out of business in case of a failure, but that could cost some serious money and bad reputation.
For the most people, a data base is a data base - regardless of whether it was clicked-together by a co-workers kid nephew, or if it was designed and implemented by a professional.
I'm sure there are a whole lot of good CS students who'd be very happy to design and implement a decent (not perfect, but decent) data base application for much less than (tens of) thousands. I know I was very happy to get such jobs while I was at the university. Most of the data bases I built back than are still in use.
What do you mean by "only 600mb"? 600mb of source is VERY much. Linux kernel is about 50mb uncompressed, IIRC, and it includes a huge pile of drivers and support for multiple platforms. I'm pretty sure the complete windows kernel would fit *very* easily in much much less than 600mb. I don't buy that 40gb claim for a second! 600mb is, for sure, not all, but I'd bet it's far more than the mere 15%.
I prefer to view YYYYMMDD format as "the correct one" for a simple reason: it makes automated sorting a list of dates very easy (read: computationally cheap). A simple alphabetic sorting algorithm suffices, other than in case of your prefered DD MMM YYYY format.
Actually no, IIRC. 32-bit architectures brought more than enough advantages over their 16-bit predecessors to make virtually everybody want one. The price difference was rather huge, though.
Linux was born on a 32-bit processor (see the legendary Linus vs. Tannenbaum discussion, where Tannenbaum claims - among other things - that normal people are never going to be in a position to afford a 32-bit processor for a home machine)
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for 64Bit drivers for devices most commonly found in desktop machines (such as nVidia graphic cards you were talking about)
The greatest advantage of the 64Bit architecture would be on server, not on desktop. In fact, you should even expect a drop in performance for most applications when run in 64Bit.
Just live with it, you bought yourself a very good processor (when run in 32Bit mode), with 64Bit capabilities you don't actually need, or want, but can now brag about to your friends and colleagues.;-)
In the mean time, Linux is chugging along on AMD64 quite nicely. This beta version is said to expire in 360 days, meaning that - most probably - the release is not coming any time soon.
How comes Microsoft decided to let the competition get such an advantage on a chip which surely isn't going to go away, which offers a very good performance, and all that at a very affordable price?
Either they don't care at all about the advantage competition might gain (which I doubt, given their aggressive advertising against Linux and Solaris in the past few years), or they never thought AMD64 has much of a chance to survive.
The most hard to believe (although a very sexy, IMO) possibility would be that they simply weren't able to put a working version together before today, resulting in this rather huge delay.
Does anybody know anything about how Sun's plans to port Solaris on AMD64 are doing?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, sure. Last time I checked, there was no operator overloading in Fortran either. Nevertheless, it is still the preferred language for mathematicians (among others).
Operator overloading, while in some occasions quite handy, must be used with great care. Unfortunatelly, for quite a lot of programmers out there, it seems to be misused as a yet another way to obfuscate a program into oblivion! If you ever get to analyse the code written by a BOOZFH (Bastard Operator Overloading Zealot From Hell), you'll know what I'm talking about.
If you're writing your software as a small module expected to run on a single machine, without noticeable memory constraints, you're right. However, if your software lives in an embedded environment (mostly with very limited ammounts of memory and CPU power), and has to implement some extreme requirements with respect to performance, system availability, and/or safety, it pretty fast becomes *very* complex indeed.
I'm working for a company producing highly redundant, networked voice switches for air traffic management. Believe me, such systems are rather complex these days. What does that prove?
Boy, I actually remember the times with green/black terminals very well. I was working on them. I neven complained about green, I was complaining about DARK green.
Sorry, but what kind of idiot puts up a web page with such colors (dark green on black) and then complains about his customer and/or boss stupidity??? Your page is unreadable on my monitor.
> And no, I'm not an MBA.
:-)
No, but your wife obviously is. And she made you write this!!!
> (Like, oh, the kind that keep the software engineers in a firm employed.)
Or, as it recently seems, that off-shore software engineers get employed in their own countries, just so that a few bucks can be saved.
Or RPC/DCOM worms, which require no user action whatsoever.
> Virus writers prey on the stupid. Harsh, but absolutely true.
You are forgetting that some people just don't have the time or the required specific know-how to make a computer virus-proof. I'd know how to make my W2K installation (which I boot some 9-10 times a year) reasonably virus/worm proof, and if I'd still have huge amounts of time on my hands, I'd probably also do it. Being married, having a child and a consuming job, I just decided to cut my internet access from within W2K instead. That's an option many don't have.
> But if someone knows the basics (do not run anything that doesn't
> come from a verified reputable source), then the person(s) can't even touch
> your computer.
That would be nice, but is unfortunately not true. There are enough worms that can spread over the net without any help from the user. Here a short story of what happened to me a few days ago.
I have a dual-boot system (Linux on the main partition, W2K for occasional use, in case somebody sends me a document I can't open with OOo, or for playing a game not yet available for Linux). Just a few days ago, I booted my fresh install of W2K (MoBo change forced me to re-install W2K; Linux just booted as usual). After some 5 minutes, the computer became extremely unresponsive. svchost.exe was consuming nearly 100% of the CPU. A quick check revealed that I got infected with one of RPC/DCOM worms. No big deal, I thought. After I downloaded and executed a removal tool (it took a *long* time to run), I rebooted the system and turned my internet access back on. Some 3 minutes after I did so, the worm was on my machine AGAIN. Without me having the slightest of chances to do something against that.
Now, I know there is a patch for the security hole "my" worm used, I know I could have bought and installed a firewall or an anti-virus package. For me, given how rarely I use Windows, it's not worth the trouble. I just decided to cut my W2K's connection to the Internet.
Hehe... while reading user comments, I also heard it on the local news here in Austria: "The phenomena is taking place some [insert insane number of light years] away, meaning that our Sun is outside of the danger zone".
:-)
Gee, I'm feeling better now!
Nothing against screwing around and breaking things at your own home computer, risking your own data bases. That's how I started, too. Betting your company's money on such approach is something completely different, though.
:-)
Nobody would come to an idea to let the neighbours' kid perform an appendicitis surgery only because he seems to be so tallented with knifes.
I have yet to see a company that bets its' business solely on an Access data base hacked in an accountants' spare time. However, I *have* already seen enough cases where a company pulled exactly that stunt for handling very important data. Nothing that would drive the company out of business in case of a failure, but that could cost some serious money and bad reputation.
For the most people, a data base is a data base - regardless of whether it was clicked-together by a co-workers kid nephew, or if it was designed and implemented by a professional.
I'm sure there are a whole lot of good CS students who'd be very happy to design and implement a decent (not perfect, but decent) data base application for much less than (tens of) thousands. I know I was very happy to get such jobs while I was at the university. Most of the data bases I built back than are still in use.
Notice for the spelling police: yes, I know it's "flame bait", not "flaim bait".
Was that supposed to be a flaim bait? Boy, you have a lot to catch up... try, for starters, this, then work your way up.
"...if you don't know what user level and kernel level is..." sheesh, even my grandmother flaims better!
Ooops - my mistake. Thank you for correcting me on that one.
What do you mean by "only 600mb"? 600mb of source is VERY much. Linux kernel is about 50mb uncompressed, IIRC, and it includes a huge pile of drivers and support for multiple platforms. I'm pretty sure the complete windows kernel would fit *very* easily in much much less than 600mb. I don't buy that 40gb claim for a second! 600mb is, for sure, not all, but I'd bet it's far more than the mere 15%.
:-)
Either that, or the beast is really bloated.
I prefer to view YYYYMMDD format as "the correct one" for a simple reason: it makes automated sorting a list of dates very easy (read: computationally cheap). A simple alphabetic sorting algorithm suffices, other than in case of your prefered DD MMM YYYY format.
Actually no, IIRC. 32-bit architectures brought more than enough advantages over their 16-bit predecessors to make virtually everybody want one. The price difference was rather huge, though.
Linux was born on a 32-bit processor (see the legendary Linus vs. Tannenbaum discussion, where Tannenbaum claims - among other things - that normal people are never going to be in a position to afford a 32-bit processor for a home machine)
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for 64Bit drivers for devices most commonly found in desktop machines (such as nVidia graphic cards you were talking about)
;-)
The greatest advantage of the 64Bit architecture would be on server, not on desktop. In fact, you should even expect a drop in performance for most applications when run in 64Bit.
Just live with it, you bought yourself a very good processor (when run in 32Bit mode), with 64Bit capabilities you don't actually need, or want, but can now brag about to your friends and colleagues.
In the mean time, Linux is chugging along on AMD64 quite nicely. This beta version is said to expire in 360 days, meaning that - most probably - the release is not coming any time soon.
How comes Microsoft decided to let the competition get such an advantage on a chip which surely isn't going to go away, which offers a very good performance, and all that at a very affordable price?
Either they don't care at all about the advantage competition might gain (which I doubt, given their aggressive advertising against Linux and Solaris in the past few years), or they never thought AMD64 has much of a chance to survive.
The most hard to believe (although a very sexy, IMO) possibility would be that they simply weren't able to put a working version together before today, resulting in this rather huge delay.
Does anybody know anything about how Sun's plans to port Solaris on AMD64 are doing?
This story is full of it! If you are into cold war history, the link to the original text written by Mr. Weiss seems to be a much better source.
The article is a shame for NYT.