I agree. The GP was asking for a killer feature, however, and stated that (s)he was an amateur. I figured "faster and easier" was more exciting than "encapsulation and abstraction":)
You're right that C++ isn't a snail compared to C. I was thinking of interpreted languages when I wrote that. I disagree with you that different paradigms don't fit the "different tools for different jobs" attitude, but I suspect we're arguing semantics here. Regardless, it is likely you know more than I, so I will concede the point.
That's exactly what the author was doing. I've since returned to OO stuff (programming is a hobby, not a profession), and enjoy it much more than my initial impressions. And yes, some of Apple's sample programs do a very good job of demonstrating the ways that OO programming (and Apple's frameworks, natch) can make some tasks a breeze.
The big draw to OO is that it (ostensibly) makes it easier and/or faster to write applications. This doesn't mean that you can make programs with an OO language that you couldn't with an imperative or structured language, only that certain tasks may be easier to implement.
That said, OO isn't always the best option. OO languages are typically a lot more complex and produce slower executables than plain C, so there is a trade-off that can be important in certain situations. As with anything, pick the best tool for the job.
For myself, when I first learned programming (via some books), I learned C before moving to C++. I absolutely hated C++ and didn't see the point of OO programming, due in large part because of the way the book presented it. At the start, the author had you write a C program, and throughout the course of the book, you would change it into a C++ program full of OO goodness. The final C++ program wound up having 50% more lines of code for the exact same functionality, and that was the point where I gave up on it. It was a pretty bad first impression.
How is Bing Maps better than Google Maps? They look almost identical, except that Bing has lower information density (meaning I have to scroll more to see all my directions, which is annoying).
I agree it would be detrimental to everyone involved (save for Apple). However, the hardware vendors have done some pretty boneheaded things in the past (just look at HP), and there's always a chance that one of the larger ones might look at someone like Amazon and say, "Me, too!" That they're terrible at developing software is less of an issue now than it used to be, because they have the open source Android platform to work off of.
I should say that I don't think it's a likely scenario, but that it's a possibility if Google were to force the issue too much. In an ideal world, all Android handsets would receive updates to the highest version they can run at decent performance.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google is worried about such a stance increasing fragmentation. They don't want to annoy hardware vendors enough that they go the Kindle Fire route and break away from Google completely. I think they'd be especially wary of upsetting Samsung, who (last I read, which was months ago) accounted for more than half of Android sales.
Well, does he want to rule the word, or the Word? The second one gives him a lot of power, while the first is dependent on which word he wants to rule.
The problem I have with kibibyte, mebibyte, etc. is threefold:
1. They sound ridiculous 2. They take longer/are more complicated to type if you have to keep repeating them (2.5. In certain fonts, the i is hard to see) 3. The average person has no idea what you're talking about
#1 is admittedly not a big deal. #2 on its own is also something that, on its own, is silly to complain about as the added complexity isn't too onerous for sparse usage and you can copy+paste if you're having to type them a lot. #3, though, is the issue, as I'm not sure we will ever get the lay person to understand (or care about) the distinction between MB and MiB. We lost the hacker/cracker battle, and now we want to throw ourselves into another one that people will see as even less consequential?
I like the idea of having a designation between 2^10 and 10^3, but we aren't going to win this one. Since everyone is used to MB, KB, etc., why not cede it and make the old prefixes mean 1024 and the new ones mean 1000 in the context of computer storage and transmission rates?
It would have also helped them if they had made their mobile platform open source such as android is, especially since most of the os is *BSD based.
Helped them in what regard? Apple's iPhone rakes in significantly more money for them than does Samsung's entire mobile division, and Samsung is the biggest Android manufacturer. Making iOS open source and (presumably) licensing it out to other manufacturers would probably hurt Apple's sales, not help them.
Not only that, but you can't change the default browser on iOS (which, as an iOS user, sucks, though I'd rather change the default mail client). At least iOS 6 brings tab syncing with Mountain Lion.
Nice reply. I don't have a Cisco router at home, but I do have one where I work that may be affected by this (small independently-owned business, so no fancy stuff for us). I think the problem people are going to have with point f is that Cisco's upper management has proven themselves untrustworthy. For myself, I wouldn't be horribly bothered if it were "just" a matter of having it be an automatic (non-opt in) update, but the browsing history aspect is the clincher. Like many here, I am going to stop recommending Cisco- or Linksys-branded products unless Cisco quickly backpedals and apologizes for this.
Now for something less controversial: I'm not certain of the benefits of cloud router configuration. Generally, once I set up a router (or switch, etc.) how I want/need it, I never have to touch the configuration page again. In the rare event that I do need to access the configuration page, then the problem is usually to the degree that it takes out my Internet access as well, meaning that I would have no option to actually fix the problem if I'm forced to use Connect Cloud. Thus, it seems more of a liability than an asset, but I could easily be wrong, or be ignorant of any added features/bonuses.
Voting fraud is ridiculously easy (in California, at least): They don't even check your ID to make sure you're the person you say you are! Figuring out how to cheat the system on a wide scale is an exercise for the reader.
Isn't this assuming the attacker knows your password is 5 small + 1 cap? It's more likely that you have an unknown number of capital and lowercase letters.
The problem is that a lot of the stuff mentioned were already possible before this "technology". You can open IMDB on any phone or any tablet already. This sounds a bit more interactive, but why should I be reading about a scene instead of just watching it? There are some potential gaming applications with it, but am I supposed to juggle a controller and a tablet at the same time in order to get a "full" experience? Doesn't sound particularly fun. (Maybe they want me to use Kinect+tablet, but shouting at my TV is definitely not fun.)
Yeah, that's the important difference--though Launchpad is lame, at least it's optional. It's marginally more useful on a trackpad than a regular mouse, but I don't use it very often (only if my cursor is near where I know a certain app's icon is going to be when I do the pinch gesture to bring it up). For an example of a good launcher, look to Alfred.
I've been considering getting it for my parents based on the reasoning that my mom at least might find the tablet-style interface intuitive. Looking at it, though...probably not. I have a hard enough time getting her to understand that attaching a Word document to an email is the exact same as attaching a photograph. I don't think I could survive teaching her how to use Metro.
Metro actually is a pretty slick UI on a phone, though the information density in its current incarnation is much too low. I think Microsoft is a little too obsessed with their crusade to make all devices run the exact same copy as Windows. Apple's plan is, IMO, better--bring over iOS ideas that work well on the desktop but keep the underlying UI traditional.
Yes, it's likely a pretty stupid ban. However, there is a possibility that people would actually wind up drinking less soda if the size of the cup was smaller. Getting a refill may be free in most places, but actually getting the refill takes time (which is time not spent drinking soda), especially in restaurants where you can't get up and get it yourself.
The soda intake reduction would probably be pretty negligible, though, making this a pointless law that wastes money (like all pointless laws).
I really hope the new one isn't that good, or I will have ridiculous gadget envy, even though I got an Air seven months ago, which has been a fantastic machine.
To the submitter:
I recommend either a Thinkpad or one of Apple's models. I have exactly one complaint with the 13" Air, and that is a lack of ethernet port (too thin), but you can always get a USB one. I found a "gigabit" USB adaptor for $20, which works great (put in quotes because USB 2.0 is obviously not capable of gigabit speeds). Apple makes one, too, but it's a 10/100 device and more expensive.
Boot time is 14 seconds with full-disk encryption, and just about everything I run opens instantly. The resolution is also higher than the 13" MBPs (1440x900 vs 1280x800). I have to say, though, that my favorite part of the laptop is the trackpad. Apple's trackpads make all the others look amateurish in my eyes.
Not entirely sure why either, but it actually is pretty cool on my iPhone. It's missing a couple things, though, such as tap top to zoom to the top of the page, and I'm not sure I can live without Reader. Other than that, it's a very nice way to search on a phone, and I'm surprised to be saying that.
On the desktop, though, it's bundled as an awkward browser extension that seemed to vanish as soon as I closed the Safari tab, and the Chrome extension has a big security issue (probably all versions of the extension, but I haven't bothered to check). But the main reason it's less relevant on the desktop is that I can simply middle click search results and open them--completely--in other tabs while I'm scrolling more results.
Then there's the issue that it uses Yahoo and not Google (which should be obvious to anyone with half a brain cell). I'm sure Yahoo's results are fine once you have a feel for how the search engine works, but I've gotten used to searching on Google, and certain things just don't bring up the results I expect. For instance, "kindle touch update" in Axis didn't bring up the most relevant page of all, which is the Amazon page for Kindle Touch updates. Instead, it showed me old articles for the 5.0.3 update, which isn't very helpful.
All in all, I hope that it either sees a lot of refinement, or that Apple and Google shamelessly steal its ideas.
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Honestly, if someone finds a way to permanently disable Metro, then I'll buy Windows 8. It has some nice new features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8
I agree. The GP was asking for a killer feature, however, and stated that (s)he was an amateur. I figured "faster and easier" was more exciting than "encapsulation and abstraction" :)
You're right that C++ isn't a snail compared to C. I was thinking of interpreted languages when I wrote that. I disagree with you that different paradigms don't fit the "different tools for different jobs" attitude, but I suspect we're arguing semantics here. Regardless, it is likely you know more than I, so I will concede the point.
That's exactly what the author was doing. I've since returned to OO stuff (programming is a hobby, not a profession), and enjoy it much more than my initial impressions. And yes, some of Apple's sample programs do a very good job of demonstrating the ways that OO programming (and Apple's frameworks, natch) can make some tasks a breeze.
Here's a crazy brief explanation:
The big draw to OO is that it (ostensibly) makes it easier and/or faster to write applications. This doesn't mean that you can make programs with an OO language that you couldn't with an imperative or structured language, only that certain tasks may be easier to implement.
That said, OO isn't always the best option. OO languages are typically a lot more complex and produce slower executables than plain C, so there is a trade-off that can be important in certain situations. As with anything, pick the best tool for the job.
For myself, when I first learned programming (via some books), I learned C before moving to C++. I absolutely hated C++ and didn't see the point of OO programming, due in large part because of the way the book presented it. At the start, the author had you write a C program, and throughout the course of the book, you would change it into a C++ program full of OO goodness. The final C++ program wound up having 50% more lines of code for the exact same functionality, and that was the point where I gave up on it. It was a pretty bad first impression.
So maybe you're reading from the wrong book?
Actually...this sounds pretty awesome.
How is Bing Maps better than Google Maps? They look almost identical, except that Bing has lower information density (meaning I have to scroll more to see all my directions, which is annoying).
I agree it would be detrimental to everyone involved (save for Apple). However, the hardware vendors have done some pretty boneheaded things in the past (just look at HP), and there's always a chance that one of the larger ones might look at someone like Amazon and say, "Me, too!" That they're terrible at developing software is less of an issue now than it used to be, because they have the open source Android platform to work off of.
I should say that I don't think it's a likely scenario, but that it's a possibility if Google were to force the issue too much. In an ideal world, all Android handsets would receive updates to the highest version they can run at decent performance.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google is worried about such a stance increasing fragmentation. They don't want to annoy hardware vendors enough that they go the Kindle Fire route and break away from Google completely. I think they'd be especially wary of upsetting Samsung, who (last I read, which was months ago) accounted for more than half of Android sales.
Well, does he want to rule the word, or the Word? The second one gives him a lot of power, while the first is dependent on which word he wants to rule.
The problem I have with kibibyte, mebibyte, etc. is threefold:
1. They sound ridiculous
2. They take longer/are more complicated to type if you have to keep repeating them
(2.5. In certain fonts, the i is hard to see)
3. The average person has no idea what you're talking about
#1 is admittedly not a big deal. #2 on its own is also something that, on its own, is silly to complain about as the added complexity isn't too onerous for sparse usage and you can copy+paste if you're having to type them a lot. #3, though, is the issue, as I'm not sure we will ever get the lay person to understand (or care about) the distinction between MB and MiB. We lost the hacker/cracker battle, and now we want to throw ourselves into another one that people will see as even less consequential?
I like the idea of having a designation between 2^10 and 10^3, but we aren't going to win this one. Since everyone is used to MB, KB, etc., why not cede it and make the old prefixes mean 1024 and the new ones mean 1000 in the context of computer storage and transmission rates?
It would have also helped them if they had made their mobile platform open source such as android is, especially since most of the os is *BSD based.
Helped them in what regard? Apple's iPhone rakes in significantly more money for them than does Samsung's entire mobile division, and Samsung is the biggest Android manufacturer. Making iOS open source and (presumably) licensing it out to other manufacturers would probably hurt Apple's sales, not help them.
Not only that, but you can't change the default browser on iOS (which, as an iOS user, sucks, though I'd rather change the default mail client). At least iOS 6 brings tab syncing with Mountain Lion.
Nice reply. I don't have a Cisco router at home, but I do have one where I work that may be affected by this (small independently-owned business, so no fancy stuff for us). I think the problem people are going to have with point f is that Cisco's upper management has proven themselves untrustworthy. For myself, I wouldn't be horribly bothered if it were "just" a matter of having it be an automatic (non-opt in) update, but the browsing history aspect is the clincher. Like many here, I am going to stop recommending Cisco- or Linksys-branded products unless Cisco quickly backpedals and apologizes for this.
Now for something less controversial: I'm not certain of the benefits of cloud router configuration. Generally, once I set up a router (or switch, etc.) how I want/need it, I never have to touch the configuration page again. In the rare event that I do need to access the configuration page, then the problem is usually to the degree that it takes out my Internet access as well, meaning that I would have no option to actually fix the problem if I'm forced to use Connect Cloud. Thus, it seems more of a liability than an asset, but I could easily be wrong, or be ignorant of any added features/bonuses.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Voting fraud is ridiculously easy (in California, at least): They don't even check your ID to make sure you're the person you say you are! Figuring out how to cheat the system on a wide scale is an exercise for the reader.
The difference between Apple dropping PPC support and Microsoft dropping Lumia 900 support is that Apple made the announcement 3 years in advance.
Yeah, people will hate that $0 upgrade fee.
Isn't this assuming the attacker knows your password is 5 small + 1 cap? It's more likely that you have an unknown number of capital and lowercase letters.
Wait what? Really? I never noticed this. Maybe because I'm on a 2560x1440 screen...
The problem is that a lot of the stuff mentioned were already possible before this "technology". You can open IMDB on any phone or any tablet already. This sounds a bit more interactive, but why should I be reading about a scene instead of just watching it? There are some potential gaming applications with it, but am I supposed to juggle a controller and a tablet at the same time in order to get a "full" experience? Doesn't sound particularly fun. (Maybe they want me to use Kinect+tablet, but shouting at my TV is definitely not fun.)
Yeah, that's the important difference--though Launchpad is lame, at least it's optional. It's marginally more useful on a trackpad than a regular mouse, but I don't use it very often (only if my cursor is near where I know a certain app's icon is going to be when I do the pinch gesture to bring it up). For an example of a good launcher, look to Alfred.
I've been considering getting it for my parents based on the reasoning that my mom at least might find the tablet-style interface intuitive. Looking at it, though...probably not. I have a hard enough time getting her to understand that attaching a Word document to an email is the exact same as attaching a photograph. I don't think I could survive teaching her how to use Metro.
Metro actually is a pretty slick UI on a phone, though the information density in its current incarnation is much too low. I think Microsoft is a little too obsessed with their crusade to make all devices run the exact same copy as Windows. Apple's plan is, IMO, better--bring over iOS ideas that work well on the desktop but keep the underlying UI traditional.
They did fake it...on Mars!
Yes, it's likely a pretty stupid ban. However, there is a possibility that people would actually wind up drinking less soda if the size of the cup was smaller. Getting a refill may be free in most places, but actually getting the refill takes time (which is time not spent drinking soda), especially in restaurants where you can't get up and get it yourself.
The soda intake reduction would probably be pretty negligible, though, making this a pointless law that wastes money (like all pointless laws).
I really hope the new one isn't that good, or I will have ridiculous gadget envy, even though I got an Air seven months ago, which has been a fantastic machine.
To the submitter:
I recommend either a Thinkpad or one of Apple's models. I have exactly one complaint with the 13" Air, and that is a lack of ethernet port (too thin), but you can always get a USB one. I found a "gigabit" USB adaptor for $20, which works great (put in quotes because USB 2.0 is obviously not capable of gigabit speeds). Apple makes one, too, but it's a 10/100 device and more expensive.
Boot time is 14 seconds with full-disk encryption, and just about everything I run opens instantly. The resolution is also higher than the 13" MBPs (1440x900 vs 1280x800). I have to say, though, that my favorite part of the laptop is the trackpad. Apple's trackpads make all the others look amateurish in my eyes.
Not entirely sure why either, but it actually is pretty cool on my iPhone. It's missing a couple things, though, such as tap top to zoom to the top of the page, and I'm not sure I can live without Reader. Other than that, it's a very nice way to search on a phone, and I'm surprised to be saying that.
On the desktop, though, it's bundled as an awkward browser extension that seemed to vanish as soon as I closed the Safari tab, and the Chrome extension has a big security issue (probably all versions of the extension, but I haven't bothered to check). But the main reason it's less relevant on the desktop is that I can simply middle click search results and open them--completely--in other tabs while I'm scrolling more results.
Then there's the issue that it uses Yahoo and not Google (which should be obvious to anyone with half a brain cell). I'm sure Yahoo's results are fine once you have a feel for how the search engine works, but I've gotten used to searching on Google, and certain things just don't bring up the results I expect. For instance, "kindle touch update" in Axis didn't bring up the most relevant page of all, which is the Amazon page for Kindle Touch updates. Instead, it showed me old articles for the 5.0.3 update, which isn't very helpful.
All in all, I hope that it either sees a lot of refinement, or that Apple and Google shamelessly steal its ideas.