I don't know why some people are complaining about this software, its the best MS has come out with yet. Intellisense in any version takes a big hit on performance, the bottom line is, would you build a house with a hammer or a shoe. I can't understand why anybody would develop software for a living with an underpowered system! Complaints about VS underperforming can easily be resoled by simply upgrading to an Athlon64 or Opteron system.
I've noticed only a few minor usability issues, but these are things that have plagued every release of a VS product, little gaffs which may be annoying, but are infrequent and do not interrupt productivity.
Overall, the environment is much more streamlined, even menu items seemed to be intuitively placed within easy reach for quick access. They finally implemented region support within C++ files, so you can micro manage large classes by separating chunks of related code into sections that can be hidden, and finally outlining preserves its state when you save and reload the file.
When it comes to intellisense, NO OTHER development tool comes close to the speed that VS does. Sure, your CPU usage might spike to 100% for the first few minutes after openning up a project, but a list of class methods and members always pops up instantly when you type a . or -> and text completion is fast. When I was playing around with XCode, I though that it didn't have ANY intellisense like functionality until one day I just happen to notice it took about 10 - 20 seconds for XCODE to show a list of object methods or offer a suggestion for word completion.
The Team collaboration is the buzz word of the day for MS. It is their major focus to get people to upgrade to VS2005. I honestly can't see us using it. Its a small office and we are a pretty tight development team. At most, the Community menu item that appears allows you to bitch to MS about software bugs and feature requests.
But why anybody wouldn't upgrade to 2005 is beyond me. VS2002 was clearly a beta and VS2003 was its patch, but VS2005 is altogether a markedly improved and mature product, finally integrating tight ANSI and ISO C++ standards along with at least recognizing insecure standard library calls and dramatically improved STL support with better debugging support of STL objects. Within the first week, we found numerous minor bugs that could cause the odd random crash in our software simply by compiling the software with VS2005. We also came across multithreading issues due to better optimization of the compiled code allowing for faster program execution that caused race conditions or deadlocks. Something VS2002 or VS6 wasn't making us aware of.
In any regards, if you develop Windows software for a living, not using VS is a detrement. Sure there may be other decent tools if you develop cross platform apps, but using a 3rd party development suite to develop Windows tools only shows your not serious about Windows software development. We are already looking at XAML and Windows Presentation Layer development because we can get the latest beta tools directly from the horses mouth, other development systems are only guessing what XAML will actually become and making a half assed attempt at offering a retail package before Vista is released.
Finally, MS integrated embedded device development in the IDE that allows you to emulate the device virtually, complete with a skin to look like a phone or PDA screen. They have had these tools in some external install, but integration in the IDE is key to getting more and better software written for mobile platforms. I may even get a PocketPC to start learning how to develop for the mobile platform.
Say what you will about MS, Windows, an their other software, but they actually know how to write a decent development platform.
I mean, lots of people need multi step procedures and seek approval inbetween each step, so developing UI goes from paper to prototype to working model finally to release.
This is mostly why many software/web products take months or years to develop.
Best way to prototype? Dive right in and code up working UI.
After developing UI for software for the last 10 years, I can safetly say that I can work up a working "prototype" just as quickly as I can do the release version. I have written my own Windows based GUI controls which make it easier and quicker to implement then your basic Win32 or MFC ones. This way, I can actually start working on the release software while getting feedback from people directly using the UI.
Whether its software or web design, UI really needs to be experienced and interacted with in order to determine is efficiency or practicality. Drawing up static images of a website or application is all nice, but its a waste of time. What do you do while waiting for management to approve your pretty pictures. Sure things might look all nice, but when they finally get the release product, they may not understand why some control doesn't do what the picture suggested it would do.
It takes me anywhere from a few hours to a few days to get a functional UI up and running and while management is playing around with it and deciding what they like and don't like, I am continuing to develop the UI further, all in an effort to get to the release product quickly. In this way, by the time management decides what it is they finally want, its already done.
In any regard, I find it best to work up prototypes in the development environment you would use to create the final product, that is, just start working on the final product right from the start. Using any kind of thrid party tools or procedures is just a good way to waste time and money.
Yes they did, and if Intel ONLY made Xeon processors, then Apple may be quick to regret their decision. But Intel makes other products, and their Pentium M line of processors which have much better power/performance ratio is what will eventually make it into the Apple Macs.
So, be a little more open minded.
Asside from that, this is a big blow against Intel especially after having realized they can't keep releasing power hungry and underwelming processors anymore. Coming out with a CPU that consumes more power idling then most home desktops PSU can provide is greatly discouraging for the Xeon lineup. I can't imaging anyone wanting these processors, in either a server or workstation environment, these kind of stats are uncalled for.
Face it, even having a strong fan base, gamers will NOT make up most of the market going to see a movie.
Look at Serenity and its loyal fanbase. While the movie was made as a thank you by Joss Whedon for the support his fan's game him for Firefly, the movie barely did 30 million at the box office. The movie was unapoligectially made for the fans of Firefly, and having spoken to a few non-browncoats, few could follow the movie or even enjoy it because they didn't have any Firefly background (there loss of course). As a fan, I loved it, but obviously there was only about 3 million of us that was interested in seeing the movie.
So, trying to make a movie appeal to gamers is the reason why a movie will fail as it will only appeal to a small segment of the viewing public.
The real reason why video game movies suck is because they are generally produced and written by the ADD riddled MTV generation "it" crowd of Hollywood, putting more emphasis on flash and action and no skilled story telling at all, having skipped that lesson back in art school. Yes, basing a movie on the vapid basis of a game really doesn't offer great material for the general movie going public.
Most games have a good backstory, that is, a story that explains why you are suddenly playing the game and why things are trying to kill you and you have to kill them first. After that back story, the game play plot is usually so devoid of content it isn't funny. It's because your adrenaline is pumping and heart pounding and nerves strained to the max that you derive any fun out of the game. But without those stimuli, if you were just to listen to the music soundtrack and the dialogue you would realize how very little story content is found in the game and just how badly it sucks.
People making video game movies try to duplicate that effect, produce a movie that will get your adreniline pumping and heart pounding, so that by the time your jacked up on sugar and caffiene and blown away by the special effects and explosions, you might overlook how there is about 10 minutes of actual dialogue and story stretched painfully into a loud obnoxious 90 minute movie. You will end up appleaing to a small number of customers and end up with low box office receipts.
So I think they have it all wrong. The success of a video game movie ISN'T to duplicate the gaming experience, that is where they have been failing all along. Get a good story, some decent actors, and balance action and energy with something that can fill in 90 minutes of cinema and that will appeal to a more general audience.
Why is it that news articles like this explain that a technically feasible and potentially beneficial technology is avilable today, but then we must wait decades before its availble to the masses?
I mean, hydrogen fuel cells, burns cleanly and long known as a good alternative to petroleum powered cars. Natural gas burns cleaner then other fuel sources, this system will heat your home, produce electricity (thus aleviating strain on North America's energy crisis) and produces hydrogen for your car so you don't need a retail hydrogen supply infrastructure. Great!
So why isn't it on the market now? Because car makers are dragging their feet implementing alternative fuels from pressure by the petroleum industry. I.E. the trillionaire tycoons don't want to see you burning anything but gas for the next century. Governments are too scared of the oil industry to do anything about it (plus, governments get taxes from the infrastructure of selling gas). Move to a system where people suddenly provide their own fuel and bypass petroleum, well, it won't happen in our lifetime.
Oh sure, Honda will claim it a prototype and there are still issues to work out. Governments will claim they need to study safety concerns. It will be a decade before we hear about this again, and it will pretty much be the same story. Company X will release a great, environmentally alternative to gas, but it still isn't ready for primetime.
What I don't get is why Honda feels compelled to demonstrate this technology when they don't have any real plans of rolling out. Sure, there are specialty markets that will buy into it, Californians that have no choice but to reduce smog emmisions so they can breath without getting emphasima, so they are forced to implement alternative fuels. But any real full scale rollout won't happen. I guess Honda just wants people to think they are looking out for their best interests by creating something that could save the environment and keep your wallets full. They just hope that if you buy into that BS, your next few car purchases will be gas burning, oil guzzling Hondas!
If I was looking to buy a new iPod, then great, a video mode which I doubt I will use often (can't watch too many videos jogging or driving down the road with my iPod plugged in), but the new iPod does offer a lot in terms of price/features for new buyers. Its 1/2 the price of my 3 year old 3G iPod with more features.
But, I own a 3G iPod, and when you start to compare what you get with a 3G with a 5G, you realize that Apple hasn't really brought much to the table in terms of convinceing old users to upgrade.
color screen: nice, but doesn't add anything to the experience
photo playback: nice again, using it as a photo library to take on the road, but how many times are we in a position of just needing to show off our life's photos on the spur of the moment. Not many.
thinner, naturally: new electronics will always be thinner, lighter, cheaper, I am not going to upgrade just to lose a little weight or pinch a few millimeters.
video playback: a novelty, I firmly agree that watching video on small screens is for short bursts only, perhaps video podcasts is the only thing I am missing, but I don't watch MTV because I can't stand vapid and meaningless music videos and I own a PVR and DVD recorder, so all my TV videos are free.
Ultimately, I bought an iPod because I wanted to have my whole music library on my person, so I could listen to any music I wanted in a very capable and stylish device. All the bells and whistles added afterwards are all nice, but superfluous.
Video capabilities in the new iPod isn't earth shattering. Its a color iPod playing a slideshow at 24fps sync'd to a music track, really. I mean, I am sure 4G iPods could playback video with a firmware update.
Anyways, I think most of the hissyfits come from the millions of iPod users and fans asking Apple to give them a real reason to upgrade, other then design revisions and firmware tweaks. Give me a touch screen LCD the size of the whole iPod, PVR capabilities, game support and 50 hour battery life, I.E. stun me. Instead, Apple will trickle out minor innovations every 6 months and expect the world to put it on a pedestal every time.
Last time I checked, web browers were not even taking advantage of 32bit architecure. I don't see a lot of high performance 64 bit web browsers out there.
Anyways, the question is moot as there are few HOME desktop based 64bit only solutions out there, really. None actually. All have a 32bit support mode. Why cater to a small market of 64 bit only powerhouse enterprise servers, people using these systems are not interested in browsing websites, just serving them to millions.
If 64bit web servers were unable to serve Flash content, I am sure Macromedia would get on the ball, but I don't think the computer world is for lack of a 64 bit Flash plug-in to feed those power hunger high performance 64 bit web browsers nobody is using.
It's not the compiler programmers have to worry about.
Sure, a compiler could in essense sort out a file written in a dozen different programming languages, but imagine a team of developers all with different programming backgrounds trying to figure out what each coded? Software design would cease to work.
Software language is like spoken language in general, we all need a set of syntax and grammar rules so we can simply understand each other and effectively communicate. If you write a book using a random assortment of languages, is anybody going to read it? Talk to someone in 4 different languages and are you going to have an understandable conversation.
Also, in reality, a compiler CAN'T actually be designed to parse and compile a file written in a variety of languages. Symbols and characters mean differnt things in different languages. How do you know when a code statement is complete? C uses the ; character, other languages rely on a linefeed or some other delimiting character. Some languages impose restrictions on how you place tabs in code even. How is a compiler going to know your intending a line to be written in Java while the next is in Pascal, then the next in C. How will a Java object be referenced by a C pointer or a FORTRAN formula or interact with other languages in the same program. Compilers need a rigid set of rules in order to parse code properly, and the syntax is important in order to ensure there are no errors while writing code or generating the machine language.
There are really no specialized languages these days. Fortran may have been used for math/science based projects, COBOL for business, but most people could easily link a library of C functions that offer enhanced math capabilities even though C wasn't specialized for math. A good generalized language allows you to write the specialized code using it without limitations.
Finally, I don't want to have to learn a dozen different languages to get the job done. I speciallize in C++ because I find it an effective way to develop the applications I am commissioned to write. While I can easily adapt to other languages or scripts for specific purposes, I don't want to have to learn FORTRAN simply to write some math formulas into my app. And I would shudder the day LISP makes a comeback in any way shape or form. Learning one language is easier then a dozen, and keeping specialized means your more effective and adept in using that one language. Its the old "Jack of all trades, master of none" addage, specialize or get left behind.
Lastely, we could use single characters to represent those "klunky" two character symbols. But why? What is the beef with writing != for inequality. Would using single characters make the language easier to write or understand? Your assuming that all people can easily recognize a single character symbol as meaningful. Looking at the APL programming language, I couldn't understand half the characters and I have been programming for 12 years. Again, as someone mentioned, if your a software developer != and such are easily understandable and I don't think we need to rewrite software tools and keyboards to make a few people happy, yes, even if Apple released a GUI OS so many years ago (what that has to do with anything, I don't know)
Yeah but, CD quality isn't great to begin with. You take recorded material, throw out anything humans can't hear then compress it to make a CD, then you compress the crap out of it and reduce the dynamic range even more to make an MP3.
I would personally like to start seeing higher sample rate audio files that are ACTUALLY better then CD quality, by storing more dynamic range (we can't here it, but we can feel the lows and highs beyond our audible range). Why not send us the data recorded by the high-end digital music studios rather then corrupting the music into CD quality to begin with?
So really, Creative is saying they can make JPEG look better then a BMP, but BMP still doesn't store all the information and was in the original image as CD's miss data from the original recording.
As a programmer, my task is to create a software product, idealy without bugs.
I can easily create simple, small, concise and streamlined software quickly without any bugs. The problem is, except for skilled computer users, the average person would not like the software I write.
So, I have to dumb down the software and make it idiot proof. I have to start second guesing the needs of the end user (because no two people expect the software to do the same things), start ensuring they don't enter data out of range (i.e. second guess the data they enter), and all the time guide them down a path that won't let them shoot themselves in the foot because they started using the software without reading the manual or even the readme file.
Making software idiot proof increases its complexity 100-fold, even more. Take this example:
Goal: To write a simple program that ask the user to enter a value from 0 to 100.
Error proof version: dialog with edit box and a text box "Enter a value from 0 to 100".
First user complaint, they can enter a value of "abc" instead of a numeric value from 0 to 100 like they were asked. Add logic to accept only numeric values.
Second complaint, user can enter 101 or -45 or 2.34. Add logic to ensure values are between 0 to 100 like they were asked and change text to imply integer values.
Third complaint, user finds typing the numbers in the edit box too complicated or repetitive, add UI and logic to support an up/down button or even add buttons with numbers on them.
Fourth complaint, user wants to quickly enter values previously entered, so add a history drop down button that stores previous entered values and the supporting logic to store, retrieve and select those values.
Fifth complaint, add a help button to explain that values can include the values 0 and 100 and any integer value between and a link to a website for support groups to let users complaing and b*tch about what they like and don't like about this dialog.
Now, make this dialog work in ALL languages in ALL versions of operating systems. Make the control accessible for the visually and hearing impaired (add voice control and audio feedback and make a high contrast large font version). Make sure some hacker can't corrput the program by entereing invalid data potentially causing a buffer overrun and thus create a security hole.
Finally beta test the software for a year and scratch your head over all the situations you couldn't predict in a million years over how users find ways to turn this simple task into the most complicated routine.
Yeah, software developers can make software error free, but then, BBC journalists would have to go back to using quills and ink because they wouldn't understand how to use feature rich, powerful, easy to use and robust software filled with redundant logic so that the end users CAN simpy use the software, even if it crashes or does something unexpected once in a while.
Steve Jobs still believes video mobile devices aren't practicle, so I doubt Apple is intending the release of a full-scale multimedia device.
But video playback on current color versions of the iPod is trivial, really. I am sure a firmware update could make it happen on any color/photo related product. All you need is a slideshow that shows 24fps and sync that to a music track, hardly a stretch for the color iPods.
If anything, Apple will release an iPod that can play back DRM video content ONLY. That is, it can play videos from the ITMS but that is it, anyone believing Apple will come out with a device that will allow playback of ripped DVD's in a variety of formats like DIVX or MPEG is dreaming.
This would make the Video iPod quite literally a Video iPod, playing music videos. If Apple wanted an iPod to playback movies, they would call it the Movie iPod.
Also, releasing a video iPod would trump the iPod Nano, a move that wouldn't be bright for Apple considering the lackluster sales and questions of quality in this new device. I would think Apple would want to ensure that buzz about the Nano keeps up, especially going into the holiday season. I am sure that updating the iPod model lines to make all iPods sleeker and smaller is in the works, banking on research they used to make the Nano, but any "Spectacular" new iPod features would simply end buzz surrounding the Nano, not even a month after its release and sales would make it a truely failed product release.
Anyways, speculating on what Apple will do can give you a headache, I for one don't count on anything Apple says or does until the product is available for sale on their website, a practice I wish more people would take to heart rather then endless rumors and speculation.
Given the difficulty to hijack a plane and crash it into a building, now give the general populace the ability to easily buy a "skycar" (from a department store no less). No building or person will be safe from disgruntled postal workers and angry muslim extremists.
The only way 3D traffic will work is if its 100% automated. You can only "fly" your car to work along automated systems where you have no control over the direction or speed of the flying vehicle, you simply sit back, enter a destination, and let the skycar take you to your destination.
No matter how much training people get with skycar's, it will become a disaster to allow Joe Bob Sixpack keys to a skycar that he can drive with unlimited freedom. People can't even drive to work without getting into an accident, let alone those ignorant slobs that drive drunk leaving a path of distruction and death in their wake. Training doesn't make you responsible, it just gives you access to a greater weapon.
I for one will be fearful of the day that people start driving Skycar's without any automation in place.
How about unification? ONE linux distro to rule them all! Then Bill Gates will have to find a volcanoe to toss it into if he ever hopes Windows to compete against Linux again.
As long as there are 20+ different distributions of Linux and multiple agencies claiming they are defining Linux standards, Linux will never compete outright against Windows.
I mean, fine, Mozilla may be able to quickly patch a sever security hole, but the fact remains that the severe security hole exists, AND as we have found among MS users, a patch does not necessarily make the platform secure, especially with the general apathy users have towards PC security and applying patches.
This is splitting hairs, Mozilla is on the defence and trying to diffuse this will bomb before it gets out of hand, by saing "Yeah, we have greater security flaws, but we can fix them faster". Don't cry about it, simply admit that your going through growing pains and will work hard to fix these issues as quickly as possible and prevent them in the future. Admit to your mistakes.
I don't believe that FireFox is less of a product then IE. Remember that IE has had a LONG history of security flaws, by now MS should have made IE bullet-proof, instead you still get a number of big security holes in IE, even if it is less then FireFox. The bottom line is, given the same amount of time for FireFox to mature, FireFox will be bulit-proof while IE still has major security issues 5 years from now.
I mean, this argument sounds like describing pictures of naked children as "art" not the low-life child porn that it is.
It is one thing to call a game artful or creative because of its ability to inspire and entertain. By being able to refine a person's ability to think and react quickly while even potentially being educational, we shouldn't overlook the benefits gaming can have on us.
But, its another when a game is simply smut, throwing in as much gratuitous crime, violence and sex to give it a cheap thrill factor and make some quick sales. Blowing the heads of whores is NOT ART!
I agree that the government tends to lump all this together, where one game could be hurtful to the growth and moral development of a child, they condemn countless other games to the same fate simply by remaining ignorant of the potential games have for creative thinking and development.
But I think just as wrong as it is to quickly condemn all games as the government is doing is to put all games up on a pedistal and claim they are a powerful medium and full of cultural and artistic merit, all games are incapable of harm.
Unfortunately, there is a stronger and more vocal group of people out there that are infuriated (and have reason to be) about games like GTA with their hidden sex videos then those people that will get upset if the government imposes greater censorship and ratings on games, even imposing laws making selling games to minors illegal like cigarettes or liquor. Rather then getting upset over it, make sure the games you produce have artistic, creative and cultural merit, don't make a sequel to a game about running down thugs in cars and beating up cops and hiding explicit sex scenes in the content and calling this art!
They are not inventive enough to develop new names? Also, why use personal names anyways. Why not simply call them Hurricane 2005_21 or 2005_145. Is this really a problem?
And who decided on 21 reserved names? Why not 30 or 50?
Why is this news?
I mean, honestly, they don't seem interested in distributing music, just denying people access to it.
They have taken ANY modern form of music distribution and ignored any possiblity of adapting to a new industry of music NOT distributed in a physical state like tapes or disks.
What I don't understand is why musicians don't just dump the RIAA period. There is no legal reason for the RIAA to exist and I really doubt they are a comittee acting in the best interests of the muscians, just suits looking out for their own bottom line.
We have reached a point in time when ANYONE can set up a decent digital recording studio, I think musicians should simply start going independent, record and distribute their own stuff and bypass the whole corporate music world.
You don't need to distribute music on CD any more, and even if you do, CD mass production is cheap and affordable, a few thousand to master a glass disk and produce copies. But you can still offer better quality digital files online (straight from the recording studio, unmolested by "CD Quality") and sell them like any other eCommerce product. Sure, your going to get those that simply rip you off and distribute the file for free, but if your a band that makes good music, you will develop a following of fans that will want to pay you to ensure you continue to make good music. How many independent artists out their are far better then the cookie cutter bands and fluff singers that the corporate world dumps on us. Who in their right mind would (or should) pay for another Britney spears disaster? Also, with a large fan base you will get them coming out to concerts and performances which cannot be pirated, you have to pay to watch them live.
I think that the "artists" that support the RIAA are just in it for the money, happy to whore themselves to the music industry to make a quick buck. Any self respecting musician should start looking into indepenent labels and not care about music piracy. They would be happy to make enough money to earn a decent living ( more decent then I can earn ) and not worry about potentially losing millions through piracy, any artist that does is a corporate kiss ass sell out!
Even if this is true, you should be more concerned about the employees that take your credit card at stores and hotels rather then the hotel key. While not common, and definetly not a "smart" crime to commit, a friend of mine fell victim to a simple case of a store employee taking his credit card information, address and other personal information then ordering a bunch of stuff online. The guy was caught quickly, but it took a few months before the credit card company reversed the charges.
Someone should never have your credit card longer then it takes to swipe it into an electronic device and hand it back. I REFUSE to buy anything on credit card if they use the old carbon paper impression machines. I also try not to get into a situation where I have to recite my credit card information over the phone (like hotel reservations). They honestly don't need to know your credit number until you arrive to pay for the room, if they do, use a different hotel chain. But I am still dismayed that many electronic cash systems print your full credit card number on receipts or list them on screen that any morally ambiguous staff can easily see. If they have access to your address or personal information, it is easy for them to go on most online sites and order stuff on your expense.
Anyways, this does sound like one of them office "I thought you should know" warnings, like urban myths, about how someone somewhere do things that should be obvious not to do, or warn against things that most people don't understand about in the first place.
Innovation is obviously lacking at Nasa
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NASA's New Shuttle
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I guess unwilling for radical new designs, Nasa is opting to go back to more trial tested designs in an effort to increase safety in their missions.
The only problem is, I don't see how something that simply falls out of the sky and drops into the ocean as being safer then a shuttle glider configuration. I guess the shuttle pretty much drops out of the sky as well, and has greater surface area which could become damaged, as we have learned.
What I don't get is that the payload section doesn't seem as well conceived on the "new" shuttle and they seem to be focusing mostly on a Moon landing. Is this configuration ideal for general orbital work? The Shuttle has proven to be very versitle once in space, I don't see a capsule offering the same maneuverability and adaptability as a Shuttle with the robotic arm and large payload section.
I think Nasa is on the brink of ruin if this is what they can come up with after 40+ years of innovation. Going back to an old design might improve safety at the cost of being robust and versitile. This is not a step forward. If Nasa's greatest goal is to go the moon after 13 years of preperation (after they have already been there once), one has to start questioning the usefullness of Nasa.
I think ultimatly that while Japan, China, Russia, and possibly Canada (talking about it) having launch capabilites, Nasa will become redundant as enterprises will opt for a more forward thinking and fruitfull space programs. Also, when "amateurs" can build space craft, Nasa's role in space is quickly becoming deprecated if there is an emerging privatization of space.
Agreed, open source is a wasteland of creative application design. While the concepts are unique and innovative, usually most get wrapped up in lousy, generic and sterile environments with major usibility issues. Mostly this is because they try and make it work on ALL platforms rather then focusing on one platform.
I am a software developer, but I do have an eye for creativity. I wrote my own library of classes to allow me to create more expressive and innovative interfaces for applications. I can easily duplicate UI found in iTunes or Picassa with it in a few hours. One of the things I struggle with using Microsofts Visual Studio is application design and how rigid (or rediculous) MS made UI design. Dialog and control design for VS has been anything but easy or enjoyable.
I have been very excited about Windows Vista if only for their new presentation layer and XAML support which does effectively separate GUI front ends with backend code. It will allow companies to more easily separate the GUI and pass it off to their art or marketing department while keeping most of the backend developers excluded from the UI design, which in many cases is ideal.
But it will also allow for a more streamlined design environment for those developers that have bridged the gap between GUI design and code design. Those developers who can use Photoshop or any other vector/pixel based graphics editor will be able to create more expresive GUI and with MS supporting more Flash like feature in GUI (like animation with "storyboard" support), I think applications on Windows will become very interesting in the near future.
I don't think MS wants to eliminate the graphics designer position in software development, they have effectively separated the two aspects of application design allowing for designers and developers to do both their jobs well without having to coordinate or synchronize production, which can hold up application progress.
MS seems to be catering to all, those companies with separate design and coding departments, and those with only a few developers doing everything. This should be a welcomed change in the Windows software development market.
If you need a 500 page manual to use it, especially a text editor. If you can't type and save text without a manual, then what good is the software?
Will scientists every learn from Hollywood?
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The New Face Lift
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think some of these guys should take some time off and watch some movies, then they would realize that building Skynet, virtual reality, and face transplants almost never end happily, just usually in bad sequels!
I am finding P2P 2B more annoying then anything. I recently looked to download a video of a popular science fiction show based on a remake of a science fiction show that no channel in Canada is running yet. Expecting there to be a slew of people out there doing this, I figured I could get this video in a few minutes or at least a few hours, especially with my 6MB internet service.
What followed was just days of dissapointment and a bad taste left in my mouth concerning P2P.
First, using Limewire there was barely enough unsers that had this file to register it as even possible to download. In the few hours I left that app active, I downloaded about 10 mb of 300mb. Limewire is an example of why JAVA should never be used for a desktop application. The Java based UI of Limewire simply drives CPU usage to 100% and slows down anything else running on your computer.
Scrapped Limewire and tried eDonkey, eDonkey could only see about 30% of the completed file, I downloaded that in a few hours, but when your entire network of people have all downloaded the same 30%, you're waiting for that 1 person to connect long enough for the full file. A day later an nobody connected with the full file, so I scrapped eDonkey.
I thought I would try BitTorrent. The creator of BitTorrent's application is pure crap, period. A fine example of HOW NOT TO WRITE an application! I tried a few others like Bit Tornado and BitLord, both not very polished applications, and for the most part despite the Torrent I found supposedly being seeded by over 2000 users (according to TorrentSpy), I couldn't download any file faster then 10kbps and connect to more then 10 seeders regardless of which settings I used (like unlimited or super-seeder mode).
In ALL cases, when I provided a few files for uploading (to share the wealth), my uploading bandwidth was ALWAYS maxed out while my downloads were always a trickle. With Bit Torrent, I was uploading up to 10 times more then I was getting.
The bottom line is, P2P is still filled with mostly leachers looking to suck any file off your hard drive but either disconnect when they have what they want, or simply don't share files/bandwidth. Even the supposedly advanced P2P like eDonkey or Bit Torrent still favour leachers.
That, and the fact you can't do a search without gobs of porn being force fed to you your search list because someone wrote some script or bot to stuff porn into any keyword search pretty much turned me off P2P software. Torrents are a bit better because you have to find the torrent first before downloading, but Limewire and eDonkey simply cater to pornography.
Sorry, I will continue to buy my music and video and unfortunately wait for Canadian Television to show me that series I want to see. I can't be bothered to waste my time with P2P and sift through the crap the immature brats post on it.
Gee, I thought Firefox was just the best of Mozilla, without all the extraneous crap? Why would you insist on continuing to use an older, out-of-date legacy software (whether it is called seamonkey or mozilla) when Firefox took the best out of that generation, streamlined it and made it into a browser people actually want?
If there is one downside to open source software is that legacy software will far outlive its popularity and usefullness simply because some people can't let go or want to learn something new. Instead of wasting efforts on old deprecated software, contribute your skills to making Firefox (or any new generation software) better or more feature rich to make it more attractive to upgrade old software users.
Well, Bell pretty much OWNS DSL broadband anyways, while Rogers owns Cable broadband. Any 3rd party DSL provider must sign over their first born to Bell before they can offer "competitive" DSL service. Anyone using iStop DSL service is all too aware of how much control Bell has over DSL service, as Bell has shut down that ISP several times because iStop was negligent in handing over enough money to appease Bell.
Besides, the CRTC won't allow Joe Schmoe internet company to setup a wireless broadband service anyways, only Bell and Rogers have enough money to pay off the government agency to allow them quick and monopolistic control of another broadband avenue allowing them to gouge customers. The CRTC has been Roger's and Bell's b*tch for a long time.
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But VS is still the best development tool around.
I don't know why some people are complaining about this software, its the best MS has come out with yet. Intellisense in any version takes a big hit on performance, the bottom line is, would you build a house with a hammer or a shoe. I can't understand why anybody would develop software for a living with an underpowered system! Complaints about VS underperforming can easily be resoled by simply upgrading to an Athlon64 or Opteron system.
I've noticed only a few minor usability issues, but these are things that have plagued every release of a VS product, little gaffs which may be annoying, but are infrequent and do not interrupt productivity.
Overall, the environment is much more streamlined, even menu items seemed to be intuitively placed within easy reach for quick access. They finally implemented region support within C++ files, so you can micro manage large classes by separating chunks of related code into sections that can be hidden, and finally outlining preserves its state when you save and reload the file.
When it comes to intellisense, NO OTHER development tool comes close to the speed that VS does. Sure, your CPU usage might spike to 100% for the first few minutes after openning up a project, but a list of class methods and members always pops up instantly when you type a . or -> and text completion is fast. When I was playing around with XCode, I though that it didn't have ANY intellisense like functionality until one day I just happen to notice it took about 10 - 20 seconds for XCODE to show a list of object methods or offer a suggestion for word completion.
The Team collaboration is the buzz word of the day for MS. It is their major focus to get people to upgrade to VS2005. I honestly can't see us using it. Its a small office and we are a pretty tight development team. At most, the Community menu item that appears allows you to bitch to MS about software bugs and feature requests.
But why anybody wouldn't upgrade to 2005 is beyond me. VS2002 was clearly a beta and VS2003 was its patch, but VS2005 is altogether a markedly improved and mature product, finally integrating tight ANSI and ISO C++ standards along with at least recognizing insecure standard library calls and dramatically improved STL support with better debugging support of STL objects. Within the first week, we found numerous minor bugs that could cause the odd random crash in our software simply by compiling the software with VS2005. We also came across multithreading issues due to better optimization of the compiled code allowing for faster program execution that caused race conditions or deadlocks. Something VS2002 or VS6 wasn't making us aware of.
In any regards, if you develop Windows software for a living, not using VS is a detrement. Sure there may be other decent tools if you develop cross platform apps, but using a 3rd party development suite to develop Windows tools only shows your not serious about Windows software development. We are already looking at XAML and Windows Presentation Layer development because we can get the latest beta tools directly from the horses mouth, other development systems are only guessing what XAML will actually become and making a half assed attempt at offering a retail package before Vista is released.
Finally, MS integrated embedded device development in the IDE that allows you to emulate the device virtually, complete with a skin to look like a phone or PDA screen. They have had these tools in some external install, but integration in the IDE is key to getting more and better software written for mobile platforms. I may even get a PocketPC to start learning how to develop for the mobile platform.
Say what you will about MS, Windows, an their other software, but they actually know how to write a decent development platform.
I mean, lots of people need multi step procedures and seek approval inbetween each step, so developing UI goes from paper to prototype to working model finally to release.
This is mostly why many software/web products take months or years to develop.
Best way to prototype? Dive right in and code up working UI.
After developing UI for software for the last 10 years, I can safetly say that I can work up a working "prototype" just as quickly as I can do the release version. I have written my own Windows based GUI controls which make it easier and quicker to implement then your basic Win32 or MFC ones. This way, I can actually start working on the release software while getting feedback from people directly using the UI.
Whether its software or web design, UI really needs to be experienced and interacted with in order to determine is efficiency or practicality. Drawing up static images of a website or application is all nice, but its a waste of time. What do you do while waiting for management to approve your pretty pictures. Sure things might look all nice, but when they finally get the release product, they may not understand why some control doesn't do what the picture suggested it would do.
It takes me anywhere from a few hours to a few days to get a functional UI up and running and while management is playing around with it and deciding what they like and don't like, I am continuing to develop the UI further, all in an effort to get to the release product quickly. In this way, by the time management decides what it is they finally want, its already done.
In any regard, I find it best to work up prototypes in the development environment you would use to create the final product, that is, just start working on the final product right from the start. Using any kind of thrid party tools or procedures is just a good way to waste time and money.
Yes they did, and if Intel ONLY made Xeon processors, then Apple may be quick to regret their decision. But Intel makes other products, and their Pentium M line of processors which have much better power/performance ratio is what will eventually make it into the Apple Macs.
So, be a little more open minded.
Asside from that, this is a big blow against Intel especially after having realized they can't keep releasing power hungry and underwelming processors anymore. Coming out with a CPU that consumes more power idling then most home desktops PSU can provide is greatly discouraging for the Xeon lineup. I can't imaging anyone wanting these processors, in either a server or workstation environment, these kind of stats are uncalled for.
Face it, even having a strong fan base, gamers will NOT make up most of the market going to see a movie.
Look at Serenity and its loyal fanbase. While the movie was made as a thank you by Joss Whedon for the support his fan's game him for Firefly, the movie barely did 30 million at the box office. The movie was unapoligectially made for the fans of Firefly, and having spoken to a few non-browncoats, few could follow the movie or even enjoy it because they didn't have any Firefly background (there loss of course). As a fan, I loved it, but obviously there was only about 3 million of us that was interested in seeing the movie.
So, trying to make a movie appeal to gamers is the reason why a movie will fail as it will only appeal to a small segment of the viewing public.
The real reason why video game movies suck is because they are generally produced and written by the ADD riddled MTV generation "it" crowd of Hollywood, putting more emphasis on flash and action and no skilled story telling at all, having skipped that lesson back in art school. Yes, basing a movie on the vapid basis of a game really doesn't offer great material for the general movie going public.
Most games have a good backstory, that is, a story that explains why you are suddenly playing the game and why things are trying to kill you and you have to kill them first. After that back story, the game play plot is usually so devoid of content it isn't funny. It's because your adrenaline is pumping and heart pounding and nerves strained to the max that you derive any fun out of the game. But without those stimuli, if you were just to listen to the music soundtrack and the dialogue you would realize how very little story content is found in the game and just how badly it sucks.
People making video game movies try to duplicate that effect, produce a movie that will get your adreniline pumping and heart pounding, so that by the time your jacked up on sugar and caffiene and blown away by the special effects and explosions, you might overlook how there is about 10 minutes of actual dialogue and story stretched painfully into a loud obnoxious 90 minute movie. You will end up appleaing to a small number of customers and end up with low box office receipts.
So I think they have it all wrong. The success of a video game movie ISN'T to duplicate the gaming experience, that is where they have been failing all along. Get a good story, some decent actors, and balance action and energy with something that can fill in 90 minutes of cinema and that will appeal to a more general audience.
Why is it that news articles like this explain that a technically feasible and potentially beneficial technology is avilable today, but then we must wait decades before its availble to the masses?
I mean, hydrogen fuel cells, burns cleanly and long known as a good alternative to petroleum powered cars. Natural gas burns cleaner then other fuel sources, this system will heat your home, produce electricity (thus aleviating strain on North America's energy crisis) and produces hydrogen for your car so you don't need a retail hydrogen supply infrastructure. Great!
So why isn't it on the market now? Because car makers are dragging their feet implementing alternative fuels from pressure by the petroleum industry. I.E. the trillionaire tycoons don't want to see you burning anything but gas for the next century. Governments are too scared of the oil industry to do anything about it (plus, governments get taxes from the infrastructure of selling gas). Move to a system where people suddenly provide their own fuel and bypass petroleum, well, it won't happen in our lifetime.
Oh sure, Honda will claim it a prototype and there are still issues to work out. Governments will claim they need to study safety concerns. It will be a decade before we hear about this again, and it will pretty much be the same story. Company X will release a great, environmentally alternative to gas, but it still isn't ready for primetime.
What I don't get is why Honda feels compelled to demonstrate this technology when they don't have any real plans of rolling out. Sure, there are specialty markets that will buy into it, Californians that have no choice but to reduce smog emmisions so they can breath without getting emphasima, so they are forced to implement alternative fuels. But any real full scale rollout won't happen. I guess Honda just wants people to think they are looking out for their best interests by creating something that could save the environment and keep your wallets full. They just hope that if you buy into that BS, your next few car purchases will be gas burning, oil guzzling Hondas!
If I was looking to buy a new iPod, then great, a video mode which I doubt I will use often (can't watch too many videos jogging or driving down the road with my iPod plugged in), but the new iPod does offer a lot in terms of price/features for new buyers. Its 1/2 the price of my 3 year old 3G iPod with more features.
But, I own a 3G iPod, and when you start to compare what you get with a 3G with a 5G, you realize that Apple hasn't really brought much to the table in terms of convinceing old users to upgrade.
color screen: nice, but doesn't add anything to the experience
photo playback: nice again, using it as a photo library to take on the road, but how many times are we in a position of just needing to show off our life's photos on the spur of the moment. Not many.
thinner, naturally: new electronics will always be thinner, lighter, cheaper, I am not going to upgrade just to lose a little weight or pinch a few millimeters.
video playback: a novelty, I firmly agree that watching video on small screens is for short bursts only, perhaps video podcasts is the only thing I am missing, but I don't watch MTV because I can't stand vapid and meaningless music videos and I own a PVR and DVD recorder, so all my TV videos are free.
Ultimately, I bought an iPod because I wanted to have my whole music library on my person, so I could listen to any music I wanted in a very capable and stylish device. All the bells and whistles added afterwards are all nice, but superfluous.
Video capabilities in the new iPod isn't earth shattering. Its a color iPod playing a slideshow at 24fps sync'd to a music track, really. I mean, I am sure 4G iPods could playback video with a firmware update.
Anyways, I think most of the hissyfits come from the millions of iPod users and fans asking Apple to give them a real reason to upgrade, other then design revisions and firmware tweaks. Give me a touch screen LCD the size of the whole iPod, PVR capabilities, game support and 50 hour battery life, I.E. stun me. Instead, Apple will trickle out minor innovations every 6 months and expect the world to put it on a pedestal every time.
Last time I checked, web browers were not even taking advantage of 32bit architecure. I don't see a lot of high performance 64 bit web browsers out there.
Anyways, the question is moot as there are few HOME desktop based 64bit only solutions out there, really. None actually. All have a 32bit support mode. Why cater to a small market of 64 bit only powerhouse enterprise servers, people using these systems are not interested in browsing websites, just serving them to millions.
If 64bit web servers were unable to serve Flash content, I am sure Macromedia would get on the ball, but I don't think the computer world is for lack of a 64 bit Flash plug-in to feed those power hunger high performance 64 bit web browsers nobody is using.
It's not the compiler programmers have to worry about.
Sure, a compiler could in essense sort out a file written in a dozen different programming languages, but imagine a team of developers all with different programming backgrounds trying to figure out what each coded? Software design would cease to work.
Software language is like spoken language in general, we all need a set of syntax and grammar rules so we can simply understand each other and effectively communicate. If you write a book using a random assortment of languages, is anybody going to read it? Talk to someone in 4 different languages and are you going to have an understandable conversation.
Also, in reality, a compiler CAN'T actually be designed to parse and compile a file written in a variety of languages. Symbols and characters mean differnt things in different languages. How do you know when a code statement is complete? C uses the ; character, other languages rely on a linefeed or some other delimiting character. Some languages impose restrictions on how you place tabs in code even. How is a compiler going to know your intending a line to be written in Java while the next is in Pascal, then the next in C. How will a Java object be referenced by a C pointer or a FORTRAN formula or interact with other languages in the same program. Compilers need a rigid set of rules in order to parse code properly, and the syntax is important in order to ensure there are no errors while writing code or generating the machine language.
There are really no specialized languages these days. Fortran may have been used for math/science based projects, COBOL for business, but most people could easily link a library of C functions that offer enhanced math capabilities even though C wasn't specialized for math. A good generalized language allows you to write the specialized code using it without limitations.
Finally, I don't want to have to learn a dozen different languages to get the job done. I speciallize in C++ because I find it an effective way to develop the applications I am commissioned to write. While I can easily adapt to other languages or scripts for specific purposes, I don't want to have to learn FORTRAN simply to write some math formulas into my app. And I would shudder the day LISP makes a comeback in any way shape or form. Learning one language is easier then a dozen, and keeping specialized means your more effective and adept in using that one language. Its the old "Jack of all trades, master of none" addage, specialize or get left behind.
Lastely, we could use single characters to represent those "klunky" two character symbols. But why? What is the beef with writing != for inequality. Would using single characters make the language easier to write or understand? Your assuming that all people can easily recognize a single character symbol as meaningful. Looking at the APL programming language, I couldn't understand half the characters and I have been programming for 12 years. Again, as someone mentioned, if your a software developer != and such are easily understandable and I don't think we need to rewrite software tools and keyboards to make a few people happy, yes, even if Apple released a GUI OS so many years ago (what that has to do with anything, I don't know)
Yeah but, CD quality isn't great to begin with. You take recorded material, throw out anything humans can't hear then compress it to make a CD, then you compress the crap out of it and reduce the dynamic range even more to make an MP3.
I would personally like to start seeing higher sample rate audio files that are ACTUALLY better then CD quality, by storing more dynamic range (we can't here it, but we can feel the lows and highs beyond our audible range). Why not send us the data recorded by the high-end digital music studios rather then corrupting the music into CD quality to begin with?
So really, Creative is saying they can make JPEG look better then a BMP, but BMP still doesn't store all the information and was in the original image as CD's miss data from the original recording.
As a programmer, my task is to create a software product, idealy without bugs.
I can easily create simple, small, concise and streamlined software quickly without any bugs. The problem is, except for skilled computer users, the average person would not like the software I write.
So, I have to dumb down the software and make it idiot proof. I have to start second guesing the needs of the end user (because no two people expect the software to do the same things), start ensuring they don't enter data out of range (i.e. second guess the data they enter), and all the time guide them down a path that won't let them shoot themselves in the foot because they started using the software without reading the manual or even the readme file.
Making software idiot proof increases its complexity 100-fold, even more. Take this example:
Goal: To write a simple program that ask the user to enter a value from 0 to 100.
Error proof version: dialog with edit box and a text box "Enter a value from 0 to 100".
First user complaint, they can enter a value of "abc" instead of a numeric value from 0 to 100 like they were asked. Add logic to accept only numeric values.
Second complaint, user can enter 101 or -45 or 2.34. Add logic to ensure values are between 0 to 100 like they were asked and change text to imply integer values.
Third complaint, user finds typing the numbers in the edit box too complicated or repetitive, add UI and logic to support an up/down button or even add buttons with numbers on them.
Fourth complaint, user wants to quickly enter values previously entered, so add a history drop down button that stores previous entered values and the supporting logic to store, retrieve and select those values.
Fifth complaint, add a help button to explain that values can include the values 0 and 100 and any integer value between and a link to a website for support groups to let users complaing and b*tch about what they like and don't like about this dialog.
Now, make this dialog work in ALL languages in ALL versions of operating systems. Make the control accessible for the visually and hearing impaired (add voice control and audio feedback and make a high contrast large font version). Make sure some hacker can't corrput the program by entereing invalid data potentially causing a buffer overrun and thus create a security hole.
Finally beta test the software for a year and scratch your head over all the situations you couldn't predict in a million years over how users find ways to turn this simple task into the most complicated routine.
Yeah, software developers can make software error free, but then, BBC journalists would have to go back to using quills and ink because they wouldn't understand how to use feature rich, powerful, easy to use and robust software filled with redundant logic so that the end users CAN simpy use the software, even if it crashes or does something unexpected once in a while.
Steve Jobs still believes video mobile devices aren't practicle, so I doubt Apple is intending the release of a full-scale multimedia device.
But video playback on current color versions of the iPod is trivial, really. I am sure a firmware update could make it happen on any color/photo related product. All you need is a slideshow that shows 24fps and sync that to a music track, hardly a stretch for the color iPods.
If anything, Apple will release an iPod that can play back DRM video content ONLY. That is, it can play videos from the ITMS but that is it, anyone believing Apple will come out with a device that will allow playback of ripped DVD's in a variety of formats like DIVX or MPEG is dreaming.
This would make the Video iPod quite literally a Video iPod, playing music videos. If Apple wanted an iPod to playback movies, they would call it the Movie iPod.
Also, releasing a video iPod would trump the iPod Nano, a move that wouldn't be bright for Apple considering the lackluster sales and questions of quality in this new device. I would think Apple would want to ensure that buzz about the Nano keeps up, especially going into the holiday season. I am sure that updating the iPod model lines to make all iPods sleeker and smaller is in the works, banking on research they used to make the Nano, but any "Spectacular" new iPod features would simply end buzz surrounding the Nano, not even a month after its release and sales would make it a truely failed product release.
Anyways, speculating on what Apple will do can give you a headache, I for one don't count on anything Apple says or does until the product is available for sale on their website, a practice I wish more people would take to heart rather then endless rumors and speculation.
Given the difficulty to hijack a plane and crash it into a building, now give the general populace the ability to easily buy a "skycar" (from a department store no less). No building or person will be safe from disgruntled postal workers and angry muslim extremists.
The only way 3D traffic will work is if its 100% automated. You can only "fly" your car to work along automated systems where you have no control over the direction or speed of the flying vehicle, you simply sit back, enter a destination, and let the skycar take you to your destination.
No matter how much training people get with skycar's, it will become a disaster to allow Joe Bob Sixpack keys to a skycar that he can drive with unlimited freedom. People can't even drive to work without getting into an accident, let alone those ignorant slobs that drive drunk leaving a path of distruction and death in their wake. Training doesn't make you responsible, it just gives you access to a greater weapon.
I for one will be fearful of the day that people start driving Skycar's without any automation in place.
How about unification? ONE linux distro to rule them all! Then Bill Gates will have to find a volcanoe to toss it into if he ever hopes Windows to compete against Linux again.
As long as there are 20+ different distributions of Linux and multiple agencies claiming they are defining Linux standards, Linux will never compete outright against Windows.
I mean, fine, Mozilla may be able to quickly patch a sever security hole, but the fact remains that the severe security hole exists, AND as we have found among MS users, a patch does not necessarily make the platform secure, especially with the general apathy users have towards PC security and applying patches.
This is splitting hairs, Mozilla is on the defence and trying to diffuse this will bomb before it gets out of hand, by saing "Yeah, we have greater security flaws, but we can fix them faster". Don't cry about it, simply admit that your going through growing pains and will work hard to fix these issues as quickly as possible and prevent them in the future. Admit to your mistakes.
I don't believe that FireFox is less of a product then IE. Remember that IE has had a LONG history of security flaws, by now MS should have made IE bullet-proof, instead you still get a number of big security holes in IE, even if it is less then FireFox. The bottom line is, given the same amount of time for FireFox to mature, FireFox will be bulit-proof while IE still has major security issues 5 years from now.
I mean, this argument sounds like describing pictures of naked children as "art" not the low-life child porn that it is.
It is one thing to call a game artful or creative because of its ability to inspire and entertain. By being able to refine a person's ability to think and react quickly while even potentially being educational, we shouldn't overlook the benefits gaming can have on us.
But, its another when a game is simply smut, throwing in as much gratuitous crime, violence and sex to give it a cheap thrill factor and make some quick sales. Blowing the heads of whores is NOT ART!
I agree that the government tends to lump all this together, where one game could be hurtful to the growth and moral development of a child, they condemn countless other games to the same fate simply by remaining ignorant of the potential games have for creative thinking and development.
But I think just as wrong as it is to quickly condemn all games as the government is doing is to put all games up on a pedistal and claim they are a powerful medium and full of cultural and artistic merit, all games are incapable of harm.
Unfortunately, there is a stronger and more vocal group of people out there that are infuriated (and have reason to be) about games like GTA with their hidden sex videos then those people that will get upset if the government imposes greater censorship and ratings on games, even imposing laws making selling games to minors illegal like cigarettes or liquor. Rather then getting upset over it, make sure the games you produce have artistic, creative and cultural merit, don't make a sequel to a game about running down thugs in cars and beating up cops and hiding explicit sex scenes in the content and calling this art!
They are not inventive enough to develop new names? Also, why use personal names anyways. Why not simply call them Hurricane 2005_21 or 2005_145. Is this really a problem? And who decided on 21 reserved names? Why not 30 or 50? Why is this news?
I mean, honestly, they don't seem interested in distributing music, just denying people access to it.
They have taken ANY modern form of music distribution and ignored any possiblity of adapting to a new industry of music NOT distributed in a physical state like tapes or disks.
What I don't understand is why musicians don't just dump the RIAA period. There is no legal reason for the RIAA to exist and I really doubt they are a comittee acting in the best interests of the muscians, just suits looking out for their own bottom line.
We have reached a point in time when ANYONE can set up a decent digital recording studio, I think musicians should simply start going independent, record and distribute their own stuff and bypass the whole corporate music world.
You don't need to distribute music on CD any more, and even if you do, CD mass production is cheap and affordable, a few thousand to master a glass disk and produce copies. But you can still offer better quality digital files online (straight from the recording studio, unmolested by "CD Quality") and sell them like any other eCommerce product. Sure, your going to get those that simply rip you off and distribute the file for free, but if your a band that makes good music, you will develop a following of fans that will want to pay you to ensure you continue to make good music. How many independent artists out their are far better then the cookie cutter bands and fluff singers that the corporate world dumps on us. Who in their right mind would (or should) pay for another Britney spears disaster? Also, with a large fan base you will get them coming out to concerts and performances which cannot be pirated, you have to pay to watch them live.
I think that the "artists" that support the RIAA are just in it for the money, happy to whore themselves to the music industry to make a quick buck. Any self respecting musician should start looking into indepenent labels and not care about music piracy. They would be happy to make enough money to earn a decent living ( more decent then I can earn ) and not worry about potentially losing millions through piracy, any artist that does is a corporate kiss ass sell out!
Even if this is true, you should be more concerned about the employees that take your credit card at stores and hotels rather then the hotel key. While not common, and definetly not a "smart" crime to commit, a friend of mine fell victim to a simple case of a store employee taking his credit card information, address and other personal information then ordering a bunch of stuff online. The guy was caught quickly, but it took a few months before the credit card company reversed the charges.
Someone should never have your credit card longer then it takes to swipe it into an electronic device and hand it back. I REFUSE to buy anything on credit card if they use the old carbon paper impression machines. I also try not to get into a situation where I have to recite my credit card information over the phone (like hotel reservations). They honestly don't need to know your credit number until you arrive to pay for the room, if they do, use a different hotel chain. But I am still dismayed that many electronic cash systems print your full credit card number on receipts or list them on screen that any morally ambiguous staff can easily see. If they have access to your address or personal information, it is easy for them to go on most online sites and order stuff on your expense.
Anyways, this does sound like one of them office "I thought you should know" warnings, like urban myths, about how someone somewhere do things that should be obvious not to do, or warn against things that most people don't understand about in the first place.
I guess unwilling for radical new designs, Nasa is opting to go back to more trial tested designs in an effort to increase safety in their missions.
The only problem is, I don't see how something that simply falls out of the sky and drops into the ocean as being safer then a shuttle glider configuration. I guess the shuttle pretty much drops out of the sky as well, and has greater surface area which could become damaged, as we have learned.
What I don't get is that the payload section doesn't seem as well conceived on the "new" shuttle and they seem to be focusing mostly on a Moon landing. Is this configuration ideal for general orbital work? The Shuttle has proven to be very versitle once in space, I don't see a capsule offering the same maneuverability and adaptability as a Shuttle with the robotic arm and large payload section.
I think Nasa is on the brink of ruin if this is what they can come up with after 40+ years of innovation. Going back to an old design might improve safety at the cost of being robust and versitile. This is not a step forward. If Nasa's greatest goal is to go the moon after 13 years of preperation (after they have already been there once), one has to start questioning the usefullness of Nasa.
I think ultimatly that while Japan, China, Russia, and possibly Canada (talking about it) having launch capabilites, Nasa will become redundant as enterprises will opt for a more forward thinking and fruitfull space programs. Also, when "amateurs" can build space craft, Nasa's role in space is quickly becoming deprecated if there is an emerging privatization of space.
Agreed, open source is a wasteland of creative application design. While the concepts are unique and innovative, usually most get wrapped up in lousy, generic and sterile environments with major usibility issues. Mostly this is because they try and make it work on ALL platforms rather then focusing on one platform.
I am a software developer, but I do have an eye for creativity. I wrote my own library of classes to allow me to create more expressive and innovative interfaces for applications. I can easily duplicate UI found in iTunes or Picassa with it in a few hours. One of the things I struggle with using Microsofts Visual Studio is application design and how rigid (or rediculous) MS made UI design. Dialog and control design for VS has been anything but easy or enjoyable.
I have been very excited about Windows Vista if only for their new presentation layer and XAML support which does effectively separate GUI front ends with backend code. It will allow companies to more easily separate the GUI and pass it off to their art or marketing department while keeping most of the backend developers excluded from the UI design, which in many cases is ideal.
But it will also allow for a more streamlined design environment for those developers that have bridged the gap between GUI design and code design. Those developers who can use Photoshop or any other vector/pixel based graphics editor will be able to create more expresive GUI and with MS supporting more Flash like feature in GUI (like animation with "storyboard" support), I think applications on Windows will become very interesting in the near future.
I don't think MS wants to eliminate the graphics designer position in software development, they have effectively separated the two aspects of application design allowing for designers and developers to do both their jobs well without having to coordinate or synchronize production, which can hold up application progress.
MS seems to be catering to all, those companies with separate design and coding departments, and those with only a few developers doing everything. This should be a welcomed change in the Windows software development market.
If you need a 500 page manual to use it, especially a text editor. If you can't type and save text without a manual, then what good is the software?
I think some of these guys should take some time off and watch some movies, then they would realize that building Skynet, virtual reality, and face transplants almost never end happily, just usually in bad sequels!
I am finding P2P 2B more annoying then anything. I recently looked to download a video of a popular science fiction show based on a remake of a science fiction show that no channel in Canada is running yet. Expecting there to be a slew of people out there doing this, I figured I could get this video in a few minutes or at least a few hours, especially with my 6MB internet service.
What followed was just days of dissapointment and a bad taste left in my mouth concerning P2P.
First, using Limewire there was barely enough unsers that had this file to register it as even possible to download. In the few hours I left that app active, I downloaded about 10 mb of 300mb. Limewire is an example of why JAVA should never be used for a desktop application. The Java based UI of Limewire simply drives CPU usage to 100% and slows down anything else running on your computer.
Scrapped Limewire and tried eDonkey, eDonkey could only see about 30% of the completed file, I downloaded that in a few hours, but when your entire network of people have all downloaded the same 30%, you're waiting for that 1 person to connect long enough for the full file. A day later an nobody connected with the full file, so I scrapped eDonkey.
I thought I would try BitTorrent. The creator of BitTorrent's application is pure crap, period. A fine example of HOW NOT TO WRITE an application! I tried a few others like Bit Tornado and BitLord, both not very polished applications, and for the most part despite the Torrent I found supposedly being seeded by over 2000 users (according to TorrentSpy), I couldn't download any file faster then 10kbps and connect to more then 10 seeders regardless of which settings I used (like unlimited or super-seeder mode).
In ALL cases, when I provided a few files for uploading (to share the wealth), my uploading bandwidth was ALWAYS maxed out while my downloads were always a trickle. With Bit Torrent, I was uploading up to 10 times more then I was getting.
The bottom line is, P2P is still filled with mostly leachers looking to suck any file off your hard drive but either disconnect when they have what they want, or simply don't share files/bandwidth. Even the supposedly advanced P2P like eDonkey or Bit Torrent still favour leachers.
That, and the fact you can't do a search without gobs of porn being force fed to you your search list because someone wrote some script or bot to stuff porn into any keyword search pretty much turned me off P2P software. Torrents are a bit better because you have to find the torrent first before downloading, but Limewire and eDonkey simply cater to pornography.
Sorry, I will continue to buy my music and video and unfortunately wait for Canadian Television to show me that series I want to see. I can't be bothered to waste my time with P2P and sift through the crap the immature brats post on it.
Gee, I thought Firefox was just the best of Mozilla, without all the extraneous crap? Why would you insist on continuing to use an older, out-of-date legacy software (whether it is called seamonkey or mozilla) when Firefox took the best out of that generation, streamlined it and made it into a browser people actually want?
If there is one downside to open source software is that legacy software will far outlive its popularity and usefullness simply because some people can't let go or want to learn something new. Instead of wasting efforts on old deprecated software, contribute your skills to making Firefox (or any new generation software) better or more feature rich to make it more attractive to upgrade old software users.
Well, Bell pretty much OWNS DSL broadband anyways, while Rogers owns Cable broadband. Any 3rd party DSL provider must sign over their first born to Bell before they can offer "competitive" DSL service. Anyone using iStop DSL service is all too aware of how much control Bell has over DSL service, as Bell has shut down that ISP several times because iStop was negligent in handing over enough money to appease Bell. Besides, the CRTC won't allow Joe Schmoe internet company to setup a wireless broadband service anyways, only Bell and Rogers have enough money to pay off the government agency to allow them quick and monopolistic control of another broadband avenue allowing them to gouge customers. The CRTC has been Roger's and Bell's b*tch for a long time.