There's a real good reason to create viruses: To force software makers to patch their software. A bugs generally has a much longer time frame to be fixed. Patching for a virus or worm tends to happen instantly.
Bush and Bush's son (not so smart) had great success running for office.
We could really use a *good* business man in office. Understanding things like budget, profit, economics, are kind of important. I actually think Bill and his wife would do a decent job. It's not like he needs any more money and that makes him hard to bribe.
I don't steal music and I don't steal movies. I still buy CDs, but immediately place them in my computer and never touch them again. I also buy from the iTunes store. ALL of the music in my library was purchased by me and me alone. I don't have receipts for all of it, but I own it.
The idea that I should be taxed because someone MIGHT steal products with a device is offensive. In that case, why not tax electrical sockets? Everyone knows that everyone that uses electricity steals movies and music. And what else would someone need a computer at home for? That should be taxed too.
I hope these companies are punished. They do not represent the interest of the artists, consumers, or society at large. They are thugs.
Many. Users up to that point were using Mac iPods and buying 3rd party software just to make them work. The Windows upgrade was a highly requested model. AFAIK, no one requested the Zune.
A "20 year-old IBM XT" used what? 30Lbs of steel? If we all wanted our gadgets to weight as much as a tank, then I'm sure they'd be as durable. IBM, to my knowledge, has never made sleek & sexy equipment. No... they specialize in big and large industrial machinery that is built to take a beating. That means big, metal, and heavy.
As far as cell phones go, there are several "work" phones available that feature thick plastic and rubberized shock absorbers. Some even offer water resistance. I've seen a few keyboards made for industrial shop work that are chemically inert (really important in my line of work as a coder) and resistant to spills.
I think that general consumer products are definitely more fragile, but only because we all don't need chemically inert surfaces or shock absorption to last a twelve foot drop. As long as you don't throw your gadgets, sit on them, or toss them in the toilet they can last a really long time.
While Oracle has more flaws it certainly is a much more complex product, so it stands to reason. Besides, Oracle vs. SQL Server is not a fair comparison at all. SQL Server is quite bare.
The "flaws" I've experienced with SQL Server either made my server crash or corrupted my databases to all hell. I've never had an Oracle server (or any other vendor's product) corrupt my tables, thank you very much. I think MS brought this "feature" over from their Jet / Access engine.
If you compare the severity of these flaws, not their category, I think you'll find that SQL Server has many more *unrecoverable* flaws. That's been my experience with every version since 7.0.
Yes yes, you're correct. Open API's sure do predate the web. What I was referring to was a dot-com openly distributing its own APIs... for something *useful*. Beenz had its own API, after all, but it wasn't exactly for the "greater good."
This isn't evil, it's a requirement of Google's data suppliers. They signed contracts with providers to give map & satellite data of the globe away for free. How satellite imaging providers agreed to this is beyond me. Getting photos like Google Earth uses can be quite expensive (the whole launching satellites thing). In any case, Google pulled it off. They're probably paying some good penny to do it too.
I don't get the objection here. Google gives this stuff away including an API. Open API's were unheard of until Google came around. Somehow, the providers agreed to that as well. That's not enough? They should also become a conduit for everyone that wants to use Google's licensed data as they please?
This is why I don't write open source software anymore. The expectations of the community often far outweighs what they're entitled to.
What about Gtk? There's glademm for the C++ crowd and regular glade for C coders. The API is really nice, or perhaps, it simply suits my liking. In any case, Gimp uses it (duh) and runs rather well. Oh yeah, WxWidgets is nice too.
Public school really didn't teach me a damn thing and I'm not exaggerating. It was a place that would watch me while my mother worked so she could eat out & buy shoes for herself. As a baby sitter, it was fine. As an educator, to say it was lacking is an understatement.
During my sophomore year in high school, we actually took an entire day to learn how to read an analog clock. I didn't require school instruction to figure out how to read a clock... and... I had it mastered by age five. Every class was like that. Always scratching the surface of a topic over and over again... never actually teaching anything. So much of school is about trivial things like not talking to your classmates, being silent, and sitting still. I don't find it a very effective nor social environment.
I'm one of the few that realized if I want to learn, I'm going to have to do it myself... outside of school. As a taxpayer, I'm furious that we are forced to pay for something so broken. The states are literally lobotomizing our youth by wasting their most precious learning years. You don't need school or teachers to learn. You need an interest and a way to get answers. Period.
"Scientists had said earlier that it was not unusual to see icebergs so far from the Antarctic coastal region, where they had broken off the ice shelf - but that they were expected to melt as they drifted toward New Zealand."
See, they're not melting as fast as expected. Fear the coming ice age!
ALL branches of mathematics are relevant to computer science. Sure, you can get by without going as far as you possibly can, but you'll probably end up wasting a lot of effort. I've witnessed many engineers over-architect simple solutions simply because they haven't been exposed to enough math... even for problems with KNOWN solutions. Math is a critical foundation for all logical thought. If you're studying for CS and thinking about cutting back on math, then you might want to reconsider your career.
One point the anti-warming crowd brings up is the former belief in a pending ice age. I remember my grandparents talking about it. That's no small mistake. The Earth is either heating up because of greenhouse gases or it's cooling off and heading toward an ice covered existence. That's some flip-flop.
Climatologists have painted pictures of Armageddon every time the temperature fluctuates up OR down. The reactions of the community have been nothing short of reactionary and extreme. We're not talking about a simple warming trend or cycle, which we know to happen, but the collapse of all life itself? Oh no!
Do I think pollutants are good? Of course not. I'm glad that there are steps being taken to reduce pollution. But I'm not quite ready to believe that this trend won't reverse, just like the ice age believed to be around the corner during the 50's & 60's. That reversed so well that now we think we'll be cooked out of existence.
We don't know anything, not even the "experts." There is no consensus, at least not among the people that matter. We can't predict hurricanes, storms, or even guess at tomorrow's weather. Yet, I'm supposed to trust, that we CAN predict climate & weather over a longer period of time. That last prediction? Oh, just forget about that.
And really... where's the science in statistics? We should be able to calculate what warming effect CO2 has based on its distribution in the atmosphere, without correlating concentrations to 450,000 year old datasets. We have the ability to accurately model at least some of these equations. This just doesn't seem like science to me. They could be correlating two disconnected sets of data as they've done before. I think they need to try harder.
The idea that everyone's Internet traffic is private information is absurd. Remember, the Internet (formally arpanet) is a GOVERNMENT network developed by DARPA (a defense agency). It's their network design and still uses some of their backbone. Let 'em see how you use it. They're looking whether you like it or not.
You know, the CIA isn't always the bad guy. They provide funding, research, useful information, good spy movie plots, LSD, magic mushrooms, etc. What other government agency funds the distribution and research of hallucinogens? I'm not bagging on them. I consider that kind of curiosity progressive.
Offering specific examples is a pain without pasting code up here. I can't paste source that's not my own. I would ordinarily write repro code, but I don't have a VC8 compiler in front of me at this very moment.
I've searched for a few of the issues I can remember were problems during a recent porting effort. Luckily, others have had similar (albeit, not identical) experiences. These are far from all of the issues I've had. It's just a very small sampling.
The most frustrating thing is the internal compiler errors that get spit out. Sometimes you get a descriptive warning and other times you simply get a compiler crash. You do know what file causes the problem, but it's time intensive to isolate for large files.
As far as deviation from standards... I consider some of these bugs to be deviation from C++ because they prevent working C++ code from compiling. I wish I could have found better examples. Working around the limitations for template specialization was a big one for me. Some of these bugs will be fixed in SP1 and others in the next paid upgrade.
I had a great number of problems using our custom STL allocators when exporting within DLLs. The code compiles, but it crashes instantly. We couldn't resolve it, so we dropped the custom allocator. MOST of the problems I've had in 2005 can be solved by rewriting the code. There's a few gotcha's that require refactoring. I've read the docs on expected breakage for conformance many times. They just don't address every case.
Yes, I do have a really good idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not quoting the spec sheets, I actively use both compilers with exceptionally large codebases. I have quite a bit of experience creating portable code between GCC and VC8 and Intel's compiler.
I'm not talking about vendor specific extensions, of which there are many. I'm talking about actual deviations from the C++ standard. Microsoft has made big strides, and this is the closest they've come so far to a truely standard C++ compiler, but VC8 still comes up a little short. If you want to experience a headache... try exporting a CString in a DLL or declaring your own STL allocator. Hell, just try to compile any complex template in VC8.
As far as the MS SQL driver not working... ntwdblib.dll is deprecated and ancient. It lacks "high-end" SQL Server features like Unicode. It's buggy and always has been. I've used it with VC++ and PHP. It just happens to be what PHP uses natively (even with PDO). If you deploy on Linux, FreeTDS does a MUCH better job... it doesn't leak memory nor does it cause access violations. It would be great if PDO used say... the COM or ADO adapter for MS SQL Server. I've even seen PHP's native mssql_query() function return the source code for the script. Not exactly a "solid" driver.
This isn't good news for any party. Is this the beginning of a "special" PHP version for Windows? It's not as far fetched as it sounds.
C++ in Visual Studio is not exactly standards compliant. It's definitely Microsoft specific, as is their: HTML, CSS, XML, Java, TCP/IP stack, HTTP negotiation, LDAP, kerberos, DNS, DHCP, etc., etc. Every "standard" and language they adopt gets altered, even when completely unnecessary.
What on earth will they do to PHP? Assimilate it into.NET?
What PHP really needs is a MS SQL driver that doesn't leak memory and cause access violations. Microsoft hasn't supported their C library in years. PHP doesn't need any "help" from Microsoft, IMHO.
I happened to work at a company who's primary mission was to liberate the Chinese from their firewall. I believe the motivation was to encourage promote democracy through free speech. It was backed by some pretty influential agencies. Our products worked using a special blend of encryption and peer-to-peer redirection to provide anonymous Internet access.
Using our software: every site in China works as expected. Without our software: all censored sites are blocked.
To say the great firewall doesn't exist is an outright lie.
They'd let people install it on anything they want... just make it "illegal" to do so. It's not like Windows' market share was achieved only with legal licensed copies.
On Windows, it seems to be performing better than the last version. I'm going to install this on my Mac tonight to see if it's as fast as Safari. Firefox has always been a tad poky on the PowerPC.
I remember when the first iPod rumors were surfacing. Analysts from all over were condemning the decision before the announcement. After two years, the same analysts predicted crashing sales and the eventual sale of Apple for pennies on the dollar.
Five years later and with positive growth sales, the iPod still commands the lead in the market. And yet, analysts still can't stop predicting the demise of the iPod, Apple, and everything they do. The only thing they've been right about recently was the switch to Intel chips.
God, I hate analysts. If their business advice is so great, why don't they go into business for themselves? Those who cannot do, simply complain.
"Analysts" have been "analyzing" for YEARS about how Apple hardware sales are going to decline. Well... it's two decades later and they're still doing alright.
Slashdot Mirror
As devil's advocate:
There's a real good reason to create viruses: To force software makers to patch their software. A bugs generally has a much longer time frame to be fixed. Patching for a virus or worm tends to happen instantly.
Bush and Bush's son (not so smart) had great success running for office.
We could really use a *good* business man in office. Understanding things like budget, profit, economics, are kind of important. I actually think Bill and his wife would do a decent job. It's not like he needs any more money and that makes him hard to bribe.
I don't steal music and I don't steal movies. I still buy CDs, but immediately place them in my computer and never touch them again. I also buy from the iTunes store. ALL of the music in my library was purchased by me and me alone. I don't have receipts for all of it, but I own it.
The idea that I should be taxed because someone MIGHT steal products with a device is offensive. In that case, why not tax electrical sockets? Everyone knows that everyone that uses electricity steals movies and music. And what else would someone need a computer at home for? That should be taxed too.
I hope these companies are punished. They do not represent the interest of the artists, consumers, or society at large. They are thugs.
Many. Users up to that point were using Mac iPods and buying 3rd party software just to make them work. The Windows upgrade was a highly requested model. AFAIK, no one requested the Zune.
A "20 year-old IBM XT" used what? 30Lbs of steel? If we all wanted our gadgets to weight as much as a tank, then I'm sure they'd be as durable. IBM, to my knowledge, has never made sleek & sexy equipment. No... they specialize in big and large industrial machinery that is built to take a beating. That means big, metal, and heavy.
As far as cell phones go, there are several "work" phones available that feature thick plastic and rubberized shock absorbers. Some even offer water resistance. I've seen a few keyboards made for industrial shop work that are chemically inert (really important in my line of work as a coder) and resistant to spills.
I think that general consumer products are definitely more fragile, but only because we all don't need chemically inert surfaces or shock absorption to last a twelve foot drop. As long as you don't throw your gadgets, sit on them, or toss them in the toilet they can last a really long time.
While Oracle has more flaws it certainly is a much more complex product, so it stands to reason. Besides, Oracle vs. SQL Server is not a fair comparison at all. SQL Server is quite bare.
The "flaws" I've experienced with SQL Server either made my server crash or corrupted my databases to all hell. I've never had an Oracle server (or any other vendor's product) corrupt my tables, thank you very much. I think MS brought this "feature" over from their Jet / Access engine.
If you compare the severity of these flaws, not their category, I think you'll find that SQL Server has many more *unrecoverable* flaws. That's been my experience with every version since 7.0.
Yes yes, you're correct. Open API's sure do predate the web. What I was referring to was a dot-com openly distributing its own APIs... for something *useful*. Beenz had its own API, after all, but it wasn't exactly for the "greater good."
This isn't evil, it's a requirement of Google's data suppliers. They signed contracts with providers to give map & satellite data of the globe away for free. How satellite imaging providers agreed to this is beyond me. Getting photos like Google Earth uses can be quite expensive (the whole launching satellites thing). In any case, Google pulled it off. They're probably paying some good penny to do it too.
I don't get the objection here. Google gives this stuff away including an API. Open API's were unheard of until Google came around. Somehow, the providers agreed to that as well. That's not enough? They should also become a conduit for everyone that wants to use Google's licensed data as they please?
This is why I don't write open source software anymore. The expectations of the community often far outweighs what they're entitled to.
What about Gtk? There's glademm for the C++ crowd and regular glade for C coders. The API is really nice, or perhaps, it simply suits my liking. In any case, Gimp uses it (duh) and runs rather well. Oh yeah, WxWidgets is nice too.
Public school really didn't teach me a damn thing and I'm not exaggerating. It was a place that would watch me while my mother worked so she could eat out & buy shoes for herself. As a baby sitter, it was fine. As an educator, to say it was lacking is an understatement.
During my sophomore year in high school, we actually took an entire day to learn how to read an analog clock. I didn't require school instruction to figure out how to read a clock... and... I had it mastered by age five. Every class was like that. Always scratching the surface of a topic over and over again... never actually teaching anything. So much of school is about trivial things like not talking to your classmates, being silent, and sitting still. I don't find it a very effective nor social environment.
I'm one of the few that realized if I want to learn, I'm going to have to do it myself... outside of school. As a taxpayer, I'm furious that we are forced to pay for something so broken. The states are literally lobotomizing our youth by wasting their most precious learning years. You don't need school or teachers to learn. You need an interest and a way to get answers. Period.
"Scientists had said earlier that it was not unusual to see icebergs so far from the Antarctic coastal region, where they had broken off the ice shelf - but that they were expected to melt as they drifted toward New Zealand."
See, they're not melting as fast as expected. Fear the coming ice age!ALL branches of mathematics are relevant to computer science. Sure, you can get by without going as far as you possibly can, but you'll probably end up wasting a lot of effort. I've witnessed many engineers over-architect simple solutions simply because they haven't been exposed to enough math... even for problems with KNOWN solutions. Math is a critical foundation for all logical thought. If you're studying for CS and thinking about cutting back on math, then you might want to reconsider your career.
Gopher came about 1991-ish. Respect.
One point the anti-warming crowd brings up is the former belief in a pending ice age. I remember my grandparents talking about it. That's no small mistake. The Earth is either heating up because of greenhouse gases or it's cooling off and heading toward an ice covered existence. That's some flip-flop.
Climatologists have painted pictures of Armageddon every time the temperature fluctuates up OR down. The reactions of the community have been nothing short of reactionary and extreme. We're not talking about a simple warming trend or cycle, which we know to happen, but the collapse of all life itself? Oh no!
Do I think pollutants are good? Of course not. I'm glad that there are steps being taken to reduce pollution. But I'm not quite ready to believe that this trend won't reverse, just like the ice age believed to be around the corner during the 50's & 60's. That reversed so well that now we think we'll be cooked out of existence.
We don't know anything, not even the "experts." There is no consensus, at least not among the people that matter. We can't predict hurricanes, storms, or even guess at tomorrow's weather. Yet, I'm supposed to trust, that we CAN predict climate & weather over a longer period of time. That last prediction? Oh, just forget about that.
And really... where's the science in statistics? We should be able to calculate what warming effect CO2 has based on its distribution in the atmosphere, without correlating concentrations to 450,000 year old datasets. We have the ability to accurately model at least some of these equations. This just doesn't seem like science to me. They could be correlating two disconnected sets of data as they've done before. I think they need to try harder.
The idea that everyone's Internet traffic is private information is absurd. Remember, the Internet (formally arpanet) is a GOVERNMENT network developed by DARPA (a defense agency). It's their network design and still uses some of their backbone. Let 'em see how you use it. They're looking whether you like it or not.
You know, the CIA isn't always the bad guy. They provide funding, research, useful information, good spy movie plots, LSD, magic mushrooms, etc. What other government agency funds the distribution and research of hallucinogens? I'm not bagging on them. I consider that kind of curiosity progressive.
Offering specific examples is a pain without pasting code up here. I can't paste source that's not my own. I would ordinarily write repro code, but I don't have a VC8 compiler in front of me at this very moment.
k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=101619k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=216989k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=200279 (can work around)k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=101943 (dumb example)
k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=203216k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=158446
k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=105847k /ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=91030
I've searched for a few of the issues I can remember were problems during a recent porting effort. Luckily, others have had similar (albeit, not identical) experiences. These are far from all of the issues I've had. It's just a very small sampling.
The most frustrating thing is the internal compiler errors that get spit out. Sometimes you get a descriptive warning and other times you simply get a compiler crash. You do know what file causes the problem, but it's time intensive to isolate for large files.
As far as deviation from standards... I consider some of these bugs to be deviation from C++ because they prevent working C++ code from compiling. I wish I could have found better examples. Working around the limitations for template specialization was a big one for me. Some of these bugs will be fixed in SP1 and others in the next paid upgrade.
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
Plain 'ol bugs:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
Intellisense Crashing (painfully annoying):
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbac
I had a great number of problems using our custom STL allocators when exporting within DLLs. The code compiles, but it crashes instantly. We couldn't resolve it, so we dropped the custom allocator. MOST of the problems I've had in 2005 can be solved by rewriting the code. There's a few gotcha's that require refactoring. I've read the docs on expected breakage for conformance many times. They just don't address every case.
Generics. VC8 is less compliant than VC6 in some respects.
Yes, I do have a really good idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not quoting the spec sheets, I actively use both compilers with exceptionally large codebases. I have quite a bit of experience creating portable code between GCC and VC8 and Intel's compiler.
I'm not talking about vendor specific extensions, of which there are many. I'm talking about actual deviations from the C++ standard. Microsoft has made big strides, and this is the closest they've come so far to a truely standard C++ compiler, but VC8 still comes up a little short. If you want to experience a headache... try exporting a CString in a DLL or declaring your own STL allocator. Hell, just try to compile any complex template in VC8.
As far as the MS SQL driver not working... ntwdblib.dll is deprecated and ancient. It lacks "high-end" SQL Server features like Unicode. It's buggy and always has been. I've used it with VC++ and PHP. It just happens to be what PHP uses natively (even with PDO). If you deploy on Linux, FreeTDS does a MUCH better job... it doesn't leak memory nor does it cause access violations. It would be great if PDO used say... the COM or ADO adapter for MS SQL Server. I've even seen PHP's native mssql_query() function return the source code for the script. Not exactly a "solid" driver.
This isn't good news for any party. Is this the beginning of a "special" PHP version for Windows? It's not as far fetched as it sounds.
.NET?
C++ in Visual Studio is not exactly standards compliant. It's definitely Microsoft specific, as is their: HTML, CSS, XML, Java, TCP/IP stack, HTTP negotiation, LDAP, kerberos, DNS, DHCP, etc., etc. Every "standard" and language they adopt gets altered, even when completely unnecessary.
What on earth will they do to PHP? Assimilate it into
What PHP really needs is a MS SQL driver that doesn't leak memory and cause access violations. Microsoft hasn't supported their C library in years. PHP doesn't need any "help" from Microsoft, IMHO.
I happened to work at a company who's primary mission was to liberate the Chinese from their firewall. I believe the motivation was to encourage promote democracy through free speech. It was backed by some pretty influential agencies. Our products worked using a special blend of encryption and peer-to-peer redirection to provide anonymous Internet access.
Using our software: every site in China works as expected. Without our software: all censored sites are blocked.
To say the great firewall doesn't exist is an outright lie.
They'd let people install it on anything they want... just make it "illegal" to do so. It's not like Windows' market share was achieved only with legal licensed copies.
Will Active-X ever be deprecated and removed entirely from IE?
It would be a different world if automatic download & installation of executable code was never promoted for use in a web browser.
On Windows, it seems to be performing better than the last version. I'm going to install this on my Mac tonight to see if it's as fast as Safari. Firefox has always been a tad poky on the PowerPC.
I remember when the first iPod rumors were surfacing. Analysts from all over were condemning the decision before the announcement. After two years, the same analysts predicted crashing sales and the eventual sale of Apple for pennies on the dollar.
Five years later and with positive growth sales, the iPod still commands the lead in the market. And yet, analysts still can't stop predicting the demise of the iPod, Apple, and everything they do. The only thing they've been right about recently was the switch to Intel chips.
"No one cared?" That's a pretty extreme scenerio.
God, I hate analysts. If their business advice is so great, why don't they go into business for themselves? Those who cannot do, simply complain.
"Analysts" have been "analyzing" for YEARS about how Apple hardware sales are going to decline. Well... it's two decades later and they're still doing alright.