I'm with you Doc Ruby, garbage collection is great. Yeah, I understand memory allocation/deallocation too, and know the techniques C++ gives you to minimize resource leaks. But the fact is, for the cost/benefit, garbage collection is great.
But you are arguing with the entrenched opinion that garbage collection is for wimps. Just look at the responses to your posts in this thread. Some people are so anti-garbage collection it is astounding. They'll either argue GC has horrible performance characteristics or the relying on GC means you are a weak programmer. Or, they happen to be working on embedded code and can't pay the GC cost. Whatever man, I say there are too many other things to occupy my mind with that memory bookkeeping. I'll do it if I have to, but GC is great.
The whole Grand Challenge was created because of unhappiness at DARPA with the rate of progress in mobile robotics. DARPA has been pouring robotics money into CMU and Stanford for thirty years, without getting much back. The head of DARPA, Dr. Tony Tether, decided that it was time to do something about that. It worked.
Seriously? That is like the coolest thing I've heard, a government agency using economics and incentives to get some results. Nice!
7 pounds isn't that heavy, but since the XBOX has an internal hard drive, toting it around to your buddies' house probably isn't a good idea. Sooner or later you'll drop it or shock the drive and bye bye XBOX.
building a successful online music store isn't easy
I agree, but I wonder how bad Microsoft would jump at the chance to pick up any record companies that walk from Apple. I'm sure Microsoft would be willing to pour money into building an online music store to push WMA format music. Hell, they already sink all kinds of money into lots of other ventures.
Of course, this would piss off Microsoft's partners who run music stores, but we're talking about Microsoft, they'd screw business partners in a heartbeat if it advances their own interests.
I had no idea they were still doing manual builds.
The article is wrong, they don't do "manual" builds. At least, not when I was there... but I doubt they changed in the few years since I left.
Before Win2000, the build was one giant tree. This sucked, as stuff would change elsewhere in the system and break you, and about the only way to find out was when the build came out. Yes, you could also spend all your time updating, merging, buildling, and testing, but nobody did - you couldn't make any progress on your stuff otherwise.
After Win2000, they split the build into multiple "virtual build labs". One was for the shell team, one was for networking, etc. Your build lab would contain the "latest reasonably working" version of every other team, and the latest and greatest from yours. The main build aggregated from the virtual builds. When your lab was ready and acheived a point where it felt it could send bits to other teams, it would "reverse integrate" and send off your tree to the main build, and then the other virtual builds would get it. It was considered extremely poor form to reverse integrate horrible bugs that would break other VBL's.;)
This was a ton better. You were only affected by your own lab, and could rely on the rest of the system being reasonable enough to work while your area underwent daily builds.
Not every bug is important enough to fix. Some don't cause any execution errors.
For example, I filed some bugs on Win2000, of this nature:
The XYZ wizard is confusing, do it like this (explanation contained)
Bitmap Y isn't displaying properly and we just see the default icon for app Y.
Of course, I found many memory/resource leaks that weren't fixed as well... so yeah, some of those were real. That's what Win2000 SP1 was for, to fix the critical ones.;)
Basically anything that went into RAID was a "bug" even if it was cosmetic or otherwise not actually an execution error.
Amen. All I got out of the WSJ article is that maybe what happened is the Windows group started enforcing all the compiler flags at their disposal. As in: rejecting code that produces any warnings. Or, using their prefast tool, or switching to their secure CRT implementation, etc.
I need to find some solid info to justify not using SourceSafe
That should be easy, SourceSafe just can't handle large numbers of developers or files.
Microsoft doesn't even use SourceSafe. I'm pretty sure the VS guys did a study and found the vast majority of SourceSafe users were people like admins or secretaries who were backing up docs and spreadsheets on their department server.
When I started at Microsoft, they use SLM (source library manager) which convenient was pronounced SLIME. This thing was horrible: it used file locking, wrote little temp files to "lock" directories, used your volume label as part of your checkout, etc.
For Win2000, they threw that away and bought Perforce's code, and modified it a little bit. It was branded "Source Depot", and was about 100 times better.
But back to your question, SourceSafe just doesn't scale. Try using it with 200 developers and a couple thousand files. It'll die.
ChkDsk.exe (Check Disk) supplied with Windows XP Professional has a log file parameter... However, according to Microsoft technical support, Chkdsk does not actually produce a log.
Just a bit of info, I think you misunderstand what the "logfile" is on NTFS. It isn't a file produced for you to view in the windows directory. Instead, it is an on-disk area NTFS uses for metadata transactions.
Next time you run chkdsk, view the output and see a line like this:
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
THAT's the logfile size you are changing. And yes, Microsoft technical support is also correct, it doesn't produce a log. With/L you are changing the size of an on-disk scratch area.
I did a simple UI for a project I worked on. It was typical, had about 6 pages. I wrote a spec, mocked it up, put it through usability testing - it passed - and started to fill in the logic.
Two months go by, no complaints, no comment. The wizard is basically done and I've tested the heck out it.
Then, with three weeks to go, my lead comes in and says the UI is horrible and it all needs to be reorganized. He forces in a huge reorganization: move questions around (i.e. redo basically all the wizard pages), add new parameters to a tableview, which means new info to get/set, and so forth. Because of the number of changes, UI feedback isn't considered (i.e. new buttons, and no notification info was saved on button clicks).
I make the changes, and the QA teams hates it. They point out see, I click this button (half a dozen times) and nothing happens. I show them they actually just saved 6 files.
Later, I get railed on by the manager about the wizard. I damn near lose it, saying that for months nobody said a word, the wizard passed usability and followed the spec. Then, with 3 weeks to go it gets almost totally redesigned, QA hates it. How exactly am I to blame?
So yeah, people don't know what they want. You can give them a spec, run usability on it, but that won't stop some bonehead from tossing it aside at the last minute.
I agree... except I don't think replying en masse, or visiting the advertised web sites en masse and burning up their servers, is vigilatism.
All these spammers are essentially sending out invitations to get more information. The fact they can only handle a 0.01% response rate isn't our problem. They send out a billion invitations and if a billion show up requesting info and they can't handle the load... too damn bad.
This is the problem... instead of time zones that generally follow longitutde, we need time zones that also account for latitude. Now your time will vary by longitutde and latitude... because that is SO MUCH easier than having the lazy boneheads of the world get up earlier, get to work earlier and leave work earlier to enjoy afternoon sunshine.
If the winter days are short, that means the summer days are long. ENJOY IT or move the hell to the equator where the days are about the same length year round.
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.
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The Death of Folders?
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What is XYZ? It can't be a folder right?
I just meant XYZ to be a generic destination: another computer, backup media, trash can, have it turned to DVD, whatever. I don't see why it couldn't be a folder!
Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.
on
The Death of Folders?
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It seems to me the computing "paradigm" (to beat the word to death) in the future will involve doing things by "labels" or operating on "metadata". Files won't sit in the same directory to be related. Which is really good because that way a file doesn't have to sit in multiple folders to be related to data. Yes, I know about soft links but do you think the general population is going to find those easy to use?
How do I move or copy something that is now relevant together with the other files?
With the next gen move/copy function, you'll basically do "move the files with the following label/metadata to XYZ".
Another thing, is with no folders, how do you share a folder?
The next gen sharing function will let you share folders based on labels/metadata. The instead of sharing a folder named "pics" and having to carefully select what does into that folder, you just share files with the label "pics 2004 family reunion".
web is still put into "folders" by different websites
Yes, but your example is a little too specific. Sure, for shipping physical items you might need to know where the merchant is. But we're talking about organizing the data on your own computer or home network.
So, are libraries doing it all wrong too?
No, but libraries and books existed before computers. Plus, they are physical objects.
OK, but can you see where maybe that isn't an option for lots of families, due to cost?
blatantly loaded in favor of the console if all you're looking at is price.
Um... this is the EXACT point, the economics of consoles will drive their continued success in the future. Sure they require a TV, but be serious, that is already present anyway.
How often are you walking through a park, or sitting in a coffee shop, and see someone pull a console and TV out of their backpack for a few minutes of gaming?
I see all sorts of people gaming on console portables (Nintendo DS's and PSP's at least) let me think... well infinitely times as often as PC/Mac gaming on the go, because I've never seen someone whip out a 8 lb notebook for a few minutes of gaming.
If you are going for portability or for your kid, there is no way you are going to buy a notebook. Let them take it to school, on the bus, treat it like a kid would? No chance.
You can stake out the snob PC gaming high-ground and imagine the console world doesn't exist, and that might be fine and true for you, but given the console's simplicity and price, they are compelling for more people than gaming PC's are.
Valid points, but do you seriously believe the AVERAGE or MAJORITY of console users have that many problems with their units? Above and beyond the time/hassle they would otherwise spending futzing with windows update, graphics drivers, install hassles, virus/spyware, and all the other headaches that come with PC ownership?
Yeah, the mouse is a better HID for FPS'es... if that is all you play then sure, you probably won't get much out of consoles.
I'm a former PC gaming snob that has partially converted to consoles. I game on both, and have come to appreciate the many advantages of consoles.
You can rant all you want, but the fact is, for the whole system, consoles are cheaper, and that simple economic fact will drive their continued popularity. What are you going to buy your kid for gaming - a $1000+ notebook, or a PS2/XBOX? In the future, will it be easier for consoles to absorb PC functionality, or for PC's to get easier and cheaper?
True, BUT what might happen is these "rational CEO's" will start making PC games look more and more like console games. This is the danger of what might happen in the future.
For example, you've certainly heard of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, top selling PC games. Well, these both debuted on consoles first. So that's the risk, the PC market drying up and just becoming ports, except for the occasional FPS and RTS game.
It is easy to agree with this sentiment (I do too), but impossible to enforce in practice. There is no way to test that somebody won't be an idiot in the future. Right now, a 10 minute driver's test basically attempts to predict how good a driver you will be for the rest of your life. Sadly, only in cases of gross incompetence or law-breaking will a license be revoked. And in these cases, the damage is already done.
>What I couldn't handle was all the constant re-configuring of all the little/etc files.
I had this exact issue - if I let my Gentoo system go for a few weeks without an update, I'd have 50+ files to merge. Yes, I know about etc-update, but diffing each file from a set of 50+ is super tedious. Do Gentoo users seriously manually decide whether or not to accept the change to the myriad of files, like font colors or serivce shutdown scripts? I got to where I'd just take everything, being careful to not change/etc/fstab since I wanted to keep booting.;) I'd merge each update to fstab by hand, but got really sick of doing it when every time it was like some RCS version header that was changing. There had to be a better way.
I gave up and went to Ubuntu. Maybe I'll try Gentoo again, I did like it, in spite of a few minor things.
Anyway, there might be more changes in the future, I'm sure they will want some $$$ for anti-virus and spyware protection. Even though it seems like a conflict of interest for them to charge money for that.
I see what we REALLY need! Instead of having time zones based loosely on longitude, we need time zones based on latitude as well. Then, all the people who gripe that the sun rises at XYZ am during the summer will be happy. Because obviously, they wouldn't possibly move between the tropics and STFU.
In all seriousness, as much as I hate daylight time I hate hearing about the sun rising too early based on your latitude. Frickin' move if it sucks, why burden everybody with your obscure desire to have the sun "rise" at some arbitrary definition of "late enough".
EXACTLY. If C#/.NET kicks so much butt, then why hasn't Microsoft cranked out C#/.NET version of Exchange, SQL, Office, IE, etc. ???
If you are an early adopter, you'll just wind up helping Microsoft debug. Where's the advantage for you? They should prove it is a serious platform by releasing serious products built with it.
This isn't like 15 years ago when they released Windows and cut off Lotus 1-2-3 by getting their first with Excel. There's too much intertia behind Win32 for it to vanish.
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I'm with you Doc Ruby, garbage collection is great. Yeah, I understand memory allocation/deallocation too, and know the techniques C++ gives you to minimize resource leaks. But the fact is, for the cost/benefit, garbage collection is great.
But you are arguing with the entrenched opinion that garbage collection is for wimps. Just look at the responses to your posts in this thread. Some people are so anti-garbage collection it is astounding. They'll either argue GC has horrible performance characteristics or the relying on GC means you are a weak programmer. Or, they happen to be working on embedded code and can't pay the GC cost. Whatever man, I say there are too many other things to occupy my mind with that memory bookkeeping. I'll do it if I have to, but GC is great.
Seriously? That is like the coolest thing I've heard, a government agency using economics and incentives to get some results. Nice!
7 pounds isn't that heavy, but since the XBOX has an internal hard drive, toting it around to your buddies' house probably isn't a good idea. Sooner or later you'll drop it or shock the drive and bye bye XBOX.
I agree, but I wonder how bad Microsoft would jump at the chance to pick up any record companies that walk from Apple. I'm sure Microsoft would be willing to pour money into building an online music store to push WMA format music. Hell, they already sink all kinds of money into lots of other ventures.
Of course, this would piss off Microsoft's partners who run music stores, but we're talking about Microsoft, they'd screw business partners in a heartbeat if it advances their own interests.
The more I read about the stuff TiVo users are subjected to (possible forced deletion of shows, and now this), the happier I am with my ReplayTV. ;)
The article is wrong, they don't do "manual" builds. At least, not when I was there... but I doubt they changed in the few years since I left.
Before Win2000, the build was one giant tree. This sucked, as stuff would change elsewhere in the system and break you, and about the only way to find out was when the build came out. Yes, you could also spend all your time updating, merging, buildling, and testing, but nobody did - you couldn't make any progress on your stuff otherwise.
After Win2000, they split the build into multiple "virtual build labs". One was for the shell team, one was for networking, etc. Your build lab would contain the "latest reasonably working" version of every other team, and the latest and greatest from yours. The main build aggregated from the virtual builds. When your lab was ready and acheived a point where it felt it could send bits to other teams, it would "reverse integrate" and send off your tree to the main build, and then the other virtual builds would get it. It was considered extremely poor form to reverse integrate horrible bugs that would break other VBL's. ;)
This was a ton better. You were only affected by your own lab, and could rely on the rest of the system being reasonable enough to work while your area underwent daily builds.
For example, I filed some bugs on Win2000, of this nature:
Of course, I found many memory/resource leaks that weren't fixed as well... so yeah, some of those were real. That's what Win2000 SP1 was for, to fix the critical ones.
Basically anything that went into RAID was a "bug" even if it was cosmetic or otherwise not actually an execution error.
Not exactly a "rewrite".
That should be easy, SourceSafe just can't handle large numbers of developers or files.
Microsoft doesn't even use SourceSafe. I'm pretty sure the VS guys did a study and found the vast majority of SourceSafe users were people like admins or secretaries who were backing up docs and spreadsheets on their department server.
When I started at Microsoft, they use SLM (source library manager) which convenient was pronounced SLIME. This thing was horrible: it used file locking, wrote little temp files to "lock" directories, used your volume label as part of your checkout, etc.
For Win2000, they threw that away and bought Perforce's code, and modified it a little bit. It was branded "Source Depot", and was about 100 times better.
But back to your question, SourceSafe just doesn't scale. Try using it with 200 developers and a couple thousand files. It'll die.
Just a bit of info, I think you misunderstand what the "logfile" is on NTFS. It isn't a file produced for you to view in the windows directory. Instead, it is an on-disk area NTFS uses for metadata transactions.
Next time you run chkdsk, view the output and see a line like this:
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
THAT's the logfile size you are changing. And yes, Microsoft technical support is also correct, it doesn't produce a log. With /L you are changing the size of an on-disk scratch area.
Probably because Google's founders went to Stanford! ;)
Amen to that.
I did a simple UI for a project I worked on. It was typical, had about 6 pages. I wrote a spec, mocked it up, put it through usability testing - it passed - and started to fill in the logic.
Two months go by, no complaints, no comment. The wizard is basically done and I've tested the heck out it.
Then, with three weeks to go, my lead comes in and says the UI is horrible and it all needs to be reorganized. He forces in a huge reorganization: move questions around (i.e. redo basically all the wizard pages), add new parameters to a tableview, which means new info to get/set, and so forth. Because of the number of changes, UI feedback isn't considered (i.e. new buttons, and no notification info was saved on button clicks).
I make the changes, and the QA teams hates it. They point out see, I click this button (half a dozen times) and nothing happens. I show them they actually just saved 6 files.
Later, I get railed on by the manager about the wizard. I damn near lose it, saying that for months nobody said a word, the wizard passed usability and followed the spec. Then, with 3 weeks to go it gets almost totally redesigned, QA hates it. How exactly am I to blame?
So yeah, people don't know what they want. You can give them a spec, run usability on it, but that won't stop some bonehead from tossing it aside at the last minute.
I agree... except I don't think replying en masse, or visiting the advertised web sites en masse and burning up their servers, is vigilatism.
All these spammers are essentially sending out invitations to get more information. The fact they can only handle a 0.01% response rate isn't our problem. They send out a billion invitations and if a billion show up requesting info and they can't handle the load... too damn bad.
This is the problem... instead of time zones that generally follow longitutde, we need time zones that also account for latitude. Now your time will vary by longitutde and latitude... because that is SO MUCH easier than having the lazy boneheads of the world get up earlier, get to work earlier and leave work earlier to enjoy afternoon sunshine.
If the winter days are short, that means the summer days are long. ENJOY IT or move the hell to the equator where the days are about the same length year round.
I just meant XYZ to be a generic destination: another computer, backup media, trash can, have it turned to DVD, whatever. I don't see why it couldn't be a folder!
How do I move or copy something that is now relevant together with the other files?
With the next gen move/copy function, you'll basically do "move the files with the following label/metadata to XYZ".
Another thing, is with no folders, how do you share a folder?
The next gen sharing function will let you share folders based on labels/metadata. The instead of sharing a folder named "pics" and having to carefully select what does into that folder, you just share files with the label "pics 2004 family reunion".
web is still put into "folders" by different websites
Yes, but your example is a little too specific. Sure, for shipping physical items you might need to know where the merchant is. But we're talking about organizing the data on your own computer or home network.
So, are libraries doing it all wrong too?
No, but libraries and books existed before computers. Plus, they are physical objects.
OK, but can you see where maybe that isn't an option for lots of families, due to cost?
blatantly loaded in favor of the console if all you're looking at is price.
Um... this is the EXACT point, the economics of consoles will drive their continued success in the future. Sure they require a TV, but be serious, that is already present anyway.
How often are you walking through a park, or sitting in a coffee shop, and see someone pull a console and TV out of their backpack for a few minutes of gaming?
I see all sorts of people gaming on console portables (Nintendo DS's and PSP's at least) let me think... well infinitely times as often as PC/Mac gaming on the go, because I've never seen someone whip out a 8 lb notebook for a few minutes of gaming. If you are going for portability or for your kid, there is no way you are going to buy a notebook. Let them take it to school, on the bus, treat it like a kid would? No chance. You can stake out the snob PC gaming high-ground and imagine the console world doesn't exist, and that might be fine and true for you, but given the console's simplicity and price, they are compelling for more people than gaming PC's are.
Valid points, but do you seriously believe the AVERAGE or MAJORITY of console users have that many problems with their units? Above and beyond the time/hassle they would otherwise spending futzing with windows update, graphics drivers, install hassles, virus/spyware, and all the other headaches that come with PC ownership?
Yeah, the mouse is a better HID for FPS'es... if that is all you play then sure, you probably won't get much out of consoles.
I'm a former PC gaming snob that has partially converted to consoles. I game on both, and have come to appreciate the many advantages of consoles.
You can rant all you want, but the fact is, for the whole system, consoles are cheaper, and that simple economic fact will drive their continued popularity. What are you going to buy your kid for gaming - a $1000+ notebook, or a PS2/XBOX? In the future, will it be easier for consoles to absorb PC functionality, or for PC's to get easier and cheaper?
True, BUT what might happen is these "rational CEO's" will start making PC games look more and more like console games. This is the danger of what might happen in the future.
For example, you've certainly heard of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, top selling PC games. Well, these both debuted on consoles first. So that's the risk, the PC market drying up and just becoming ports, except for the occasional FPS and RTS game.
It is easy to agree with this sentiment (I do too), but impossible to enforce in practice. There is no way to test that somebody won't be an idiot in the future. Right now, a 10 minute driver's test basically attempts to predict how good a driver you will be for the rest of your life. Sadly, only in cases of gross incompetence or law-breaking will a license be revoked. And in these cases, the damage is already done.
Um... if cars were so easy to program to drive, then why did none of the entries in the most recent DARPA Grand Challenge actually finish the course?
I think you are seriously deluded. This is a case where the error paths are infinitely more critical than the typical cases.
>What I couldn't handle was all the constant re-configuring of all the little /etc files.
/etc/fstab since I wanted to keep booting. ;) I'd merge each update to fstab by hand, but got really sick of doing it when every time it was like some RCS version header that was changing. There had to be a better way.
I had this exact issue - if I let my Gentoo system go for a few weeks without an update, I'd have 50+ files to merge. Yes, I know about etc-update, but diffing each file from a set of 50+ is super tedious. Do Gentoo users seriously manually decide whether or not to accept the change to the myriad of files, like font colors or serivce shutdown scripts? I got to where I'd just take everything, being careful to not change
I gave up and went to Ubuntu. Maybe I'll try Gentoo again, I did like it, in spite of a few minor things.
Microsoft does sell Plus Packs for XP - two of them. One regular plus pack, and one "digital media" plus pack.
a sp
Well, it looks like maybe they've combined them into one "Super" plus pack now:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/PlusHome.
Anyway, there might be more changes in the future, I'm sure they will want some $$$ for anti-virus and spyware protection. Even though it seems like a conflict of interest for them to charge money for that.
I see what we REALLY need! Instead of having time zones based loosely on longitude, we need time zones based on latitude as well. Then, all the people who gripe that the sun rises at XYZ am during the summer will be happy. Because obviously, they wouldn't possibly move between the tropics and STFU.
In all seriousness, as much as I hate daylight time I hate hearing about the sun rising too early based on your latitude. Frickin' move if it sucks, why burden everybody with your obscure desire to have the sun "rise" at some arbitrary definition of "late enough".
EXACTLY. If C#/.NET kicks so much butt, then why hasn't Microsoft cranked out C#/.NET version of Exchange, SQL, Office, IE, etc. ???
If you are an early adopter, you'll just wind up helping Microsoft debug. Where's the advantage for you? They should prove it is a serious platform by releasing serious products built with it.
This isn't like 15 years ago when they released Windows and cut off Lotus 1-2-3 by getting their first with Excel. There's too much intertia behind Win32 for it to vanish.