Darin Morgan FTW! Best X-Files writer. Only wrote a few episodes but all great (and personal I preferred the others to WotC) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Too much recording everything; too little experiencing it.
This isn't old person moaning about youth and throwing sticks at the moon, but really... Look at stuff, enjoy it. Really want an image? Buy a postcard. It'll be better than your photo anyway. Want a few? Buy a book.
There's a rather gorgeous Sassoferrato in the National Gallery in London. I've been in with friends just to find the one picture. Could have a terrible image of it on my phone... Yes, that'd be easier but sometimes less (often) is more (of an experience).
True, but... you're not an average user. It's mass market stuff now, for better or worse. Things could more easily support geek and real people but there are more real people using this stuff....
> The condescending My Docs, My Music, et al should also go
They have. It's Documents, Music, etc. in Win7. Never liked "my" either but having libraries is quite useful. (Especially seeing people still save everything to their desktop.)
However, as they're libraries the UI behaves unexpectedly: it'd be nice if a library let you create a new folder. Yes, I know it's an aggregate of more than directory but being able to set a default for new folders would be useful.
The said part is, that's actually true. systemd manages virtual machines as one of its features. In fact, the client and host versions even communicate with each other through the virtual barrier...
Let's go further: get a system based distro on Raspberry PI 2; use a systemd virtual machine for a Windows 10 installation. FTW!
AI is not a threat to humanity; or at least not a big a threat as humanity itself.
I'm sure it would be possibly to have politeness and decency by default. But now technology can solve the problem for us. Sigh...
It can be. I have years of developing with a proprietary solution. And a very nice house, thank you. And an ability to sleep at night.
Whilst some people want to argument amongst themselves or - more cordially be united in condemn of whatever nasty corporation it is this week - some of us are using tools to solve problems. Get over it.
"First: research your topics. Don't believe every click-bait (but you *wanted* to believe that, didn't you?)."
You could post this on more or less any story on Slashdot. No, the entire internet. Good luck.
Re:And all in less than 32K!
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
*opt 1,2
Tell that to kids today and they just wouldn't understand...
And all in less than 32K!
on
Elite Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
If not reading TFA (or Wikipedia): The BBC B has 32K RAM of which 10K was mapped to video and another 3K was used by the beeb itself (include a few 256bytes pages for the disk drive).
The disk version did page to disk on docking but only to load alternate sets of ships, etc. All that game in basically 10K. (Props to Star Raiders too for similar on the Atari as referenced elsewhere) Those were the days, etc.
Off topic but I recall a similar code-cram pubished in a magazine: a small routine to display text in any colour at any angle at any size anywhere on screen. This did use the OS character maps (each display character stored in 8 bytes) but managed the functionality in 256 bytes of 6502 assembly.
Beeb was good for first introduction to beating protection mechanisms - it was possible to set an execution only flag on binary programs (so run only - you could load then save). However, this could be defeated by a few bytes of code to reset the relevant protection bit in a routine called several times a second by using the screen refresh interrupt. Very useful for getting games available on tape only onto disk. Load the image from disk, then move it down in memory over the memory allocated to the disk drive and run it. &E00 - those were the days, etc. As a professional programmer that same buzz is hard to come by...
Could just be marketing to tie in with Vista. With a new OS at the same time MS marketing gets to do "New shiny! And a new shiny Office version" rather than "New OS - with last year's Office that you might already have". Perhaps they'd just prefer to go big-bang with the rationale that selling lots of two things together might be better than lots of single things individually.
The lecturer is the qualified teacher in this scenario and possible wants to teach in an environment that's best for the class. So what?
IMHO any calls of "luddite" are me-me-me-BS. "I want to go to a good University... but when I get there I'm paying for it and want to do it on my terms! What do the academics know?" Not every problem (lecture notes) needs an IT solution (a laptop).
This might be slightly rantish but I've heard fellow pupils (from an early age to graduate) ask what the date is (one of my secondary/highschool teachers always addressed this with asking "What was the date yesterday?" and when, correctly, answered, "So that makes today?"). If you want a decent education at some point you'll have to accept you'll probably need to actually think a little.
Yes, you're paying for the education but this doesn't mean you have absolute consumer rights and get to call every single shot. If you're an undergraduate then some element of you're education will, at least tangentially, be a preparation for the world at large and a working environment you'll enter into. It migth be a shock but the world doesn't owe you anything and you won't have everything on your own terms. Get over it. For anyone objecting to the lecturer's actions here this might actually be a lesson worth learning.
It's a little facetious but where is the line drawn? I might discover I concentrate better when juggling or humming. You probably don't want to support my "right" to do this in a lecture if I'm sitting next to you.
Why? Any details beyond obligatory MS-bashing (which is iffy given T-SQL was created by Sybase and not MS)?
On the one hand PL/SQL might be a richer procedural language than T-SQL but on the other T-SQL might mean the average Joe-developer starts to think in terms of sets and not procedurally. (From personal experience SQL is generally poorly understood and PL/SQL invites the unaware to write 100s of lines of code where a few simple DML commands would do: just because it's possible to use a cursor doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea...)
So he prefers OO. So what? If this was a pro-Office article they'd be people here calling "FUD".
He writes that he's "used it [Outlook] and do not find it impressive". We all have opinions but as an Office user I'm not swayed by this. He continues "I use Thunderbird for my e-mail, and it beats Outlook in stability and ease of use by many miles". I can put my finger in the air to come up with unqualified rubbish too. In my experience Outlook is not unstable. Not at work, not at home. I can't remember having to restart it or watching it crash. This is just mud-slinging or the type that gets shot down when MS are perceived to do it.
Then there's the "more logical division" of separating other apps from email. I'd suggest otherwise. Working in a real office I notice there's quite of a lot of emailed Office documents going around. Word has a toolbar button to email the current document. Real people find this useful. There's also a lot of general emailing happening and quite a bit of meeting organising. With Outlook. I can even get someone's telephone extension by right-clicking their name in an email. Outlook 2003 also tells me when they're free by checking their calendar. All useful stuff. Can't see why they're shouldn't be a division in the real world: I can write Word documents without Outlook so what's the problem?
It might be that Office users are all working inefficiently or somehow incorrectly. But what they have works. In a real environment it could be argued email makes more sense of part of an office suite than a browser/internet app as some organisations limit web-browsing.
Although a bit of a geek (I'd not be here otherwise) I think it'd be a shame to loose CDs to virtual equivalents. Although I've an mp3 player I've not really bothered with downloads: I still prefer something physical; I prefer CD quality; it's less likely to get lost/damaged (I've lost two hard-drives over the years but only one single CD to damage); browsing in HMV is still more fun; I'd like to have the opportunity to be pwned by Sony.
The balance will probably continue to shift but as they're are still people that search out vinyl they'll still be people after disks over downloads. The more worrying aspect is the rise of ringtones - the horror - over decent quality music.
The quick to criticise should proof their posts too... (Only joshing.)
As for prepositions isn't this style rather than grammar? This is a genuine question, honestly.
The case in support of being a style guideline rather than a rule is the first sentence of Dickens's (there goes another thread) A Christmas Carol: "Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that." None of the alternatives seem quite as poetic or immediate.
What versions are these? What incompatibilities? VB6 to VB.Net, yes. But what else? If you mean 16-32 bit in VB4 that was a while ago. I'd call FUD but I might have missed something.
I'm note sure I'd completely agree. If legalese was precise, accurate and unambiguous then terms and conditions would not have to be argued over in court. There's always scope for ambiguity - as there is with all language - and I don't think legalese reduces this.
From personal experience it doesn't always help. I made a will recently and specified an additional, but hardly complicated, extra condition to a clause. As far as I was concerned my explanation was clearer and less ambiguous and than the legalese it was translated into. (Having to have the legalese version corrected, twice, seemed to back this up.)
You've a point but I think writing is either clear or not clear, and legalese doesn't infer it's necessarily the former. It's possible to write poorly structured English and obfuscating legalese but being able to cope with the latter is certainly useful as you describe.
More often than not both. Often describing it and asking if it's an issue drew blanks too. I use it as a BS filter - I'm happier to draw a blank than get some gimp trying to blag an answer - typically "well I know what it means in maths". Sometimes honesty works best.
Is it that much of a lock-in? Working in finance I continuously see systems evolving over time and being "re-engineered". Critically this might be because the systems aren't that great but that's because everything's done to time and priorities change (this is unavoidable and business driven).
Over the next couple of years I'd expect to see more "fad" lock-in than vendor problems. Idiots using web services where there's no need and additional architectural levels for no reason.
Vendor lock-in is, IMHO, a bit moot wrt database often anyway. If you're doing anything non-trivial in Oracle with PL/SQL packages porting functionality elsewhere is not going to be a pleasant experience.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing but whatever works works. For many it's going to be MS.
It's a shame that there's not greater acceptance that an ability to program (well) is one thing, knowledge of another is something else (more easily gained but someone able to program). (My CS degress was Ada based too.)
Not targetted at the poster but are we (as people that have got passed this) guilty of perpetuating the same thing? When recruiting for more junior positions can everyone here say they went for ability first and specific language knowledege second?
Slashdot Mirror
So... company doesn't invent much but is good as sales. *cough* Apple *cough*
... MS might be forty this year but 2015 is the year of Linux on the desktop.
Darin Morgan FTW! Best X-Files writer. Only wrote a few episodes but all great (and personal I preferred the others to WotC) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Too much recording everything; too little experiencing it. This isn't old person moaning about youth and throwing sticks at the moon, but really... Look at stuff, enjoy it. Really want an image? Buy a postcard. It'll be better than your photo anyway. Want a few? Buy a book. There's a rather gorgeous Sassoferrato in the National Gallery in London. I've been in with friends just to find the one picture. Could have a terrible image of it on my phone... Yes, that'd be easier but sometimes less (often) is more (of an experience).
True, but... you're not an average user. It's mass market stuff now, for better or worse. Things could more easily support geek and real people but there are more real people using this stuff....
> The condescending My Docs, My Music, et al should also go They have. It's Documents, Music, etc. in Win7. Never liked "my" either but having libraries is quite useful. (Especially seeing people still save everything to their desktop.) However, as they're libraries the UI behaves unexpectedly: it'd be nice if a library let you create a new folder. Yes, I know it's an aggregate of more than directory but being able to set a default for new folders would be useful.
The said part is, that's actually true. systemd manages virtual machines as one of its features. In fact, the client and host versions even communicate with each other through the virtual barrier...
Let's go further: get a system based distro on Raspberry PI 2; use a systemd virtual machine for a Windows 10 installation. FTW!
... which can run Linux. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those puppies.
AI is not a threat to humanity; or at least not a big a threat as humanity itself. I'm sure it would be possibly to have politeness and decency by default. But now technology can solve the problem for us. Sigh...
It can be. I have years of developing with a proprietary solution. And a very nice house, thank you. And an ability to sleep at night. Whilst some people want to argument amongst themselves or - more cordially be united in condemn of whatever nasty corporation it is this week - some of us are using tools to solve problems. Get over it.
"First: research your topics. Don't believe every click-bait (but you *wanted* to believe that, didn't you?)." You could post this on more or less any story on Slashdot. No, the entire internet. Good luck.
*opt 1,2
Tell that to kids today and they just wouldn't understand...
The disk version did page to disk on docking but only to load alternate sets of ships, etc. All that game in basically 10K. (Props to Star Raiders too for similar on the Atari as referenced elsewhere) Those were the days, etc.
Off topic but I recall a similar code-cram pubished in a magazine: a small routine to display text in any colour at any angle at any size anywhere on screen. This did use the OS character maps (each display character stored in 8 bytes) but managed the functionality in 256 bytes of 6502 assembly.
Beeb was good for first introduction to beating protection mechanisms - it was possible to set an execution only flag on binary programs (so run only - you could load then save). However, this could be defeated by a few bytes of code to reset the relevant protection bit in a routine called several times a second by using the screen refresh interrupt. Very useful for getting games available on tape only onto disk. Load the image from disk, then move it down in memory over the memory allocated to the disk drive and run it. &E00 - those were the days, etc. As a professional programmer that same buzz is hard to come by...
Could just be marketing to tie in with Vista. With a new OS at the same time MS marketing gets to do "New shiny! And a new shiny Office version" rather than "New OS - with last year's Office that you might already have". Perhaps they'd just prefer to go big-bang with the rationale that selling lots of two things together might be better than lots of single things individually.
The lecturer is the qualified teacher in this scenario and possible wants to teach in an environment that's best for the class. So what?
IMHO any calls of "luddite" are me-me-me-BS. "I want to go to a good University... but when I get there I'm paying for it and want to do it on my terms! What do the academics know?" Not every problem (lecture notes) needs an IT solution (a laptop).
This might be slightly rantish but I've heard fellow pupils (from an early age to graduate) ask what the date is (one of my secondary/highschool teachers always addressed this with asking "What was the date yesterday?" and when, correctly, answered, "So that makes today?"). If you want a decent education at some point you'll have to accept you'll probably need to actually think a little.
Yes, you're paying for the education but this doesn't mean you have absolute consumer rights and get to call every single shot. If you're an undergraduate then some element of you're education will, at least tangentially, be a preparation for the world at large and a working environment you'll enter into. It migth be a shock but the world doesn't owe you anything and you won't have everything on your own terms. Get over it. For anyone objecting to the lecturer's actions here this might actually be a lesson worth learning.
It's a little facetious but where is the line drawn? I might discover I concentrate better when juggling or humming. You probably don't want to support my "right" to do this in a lecture if I'm sitting next to you.
Fair enough. I recall some pain going the other way. (Like a first kiss the first RDBMS date mangling convention stays with you...)
Why? Any details beyond obligatory MS-bashing (which is iffy given T-SQL was created by Sybase and not MS)?
On the one hand PL/SQL might be a richer procedural language than T-SQL but on the other T-SQL might mean the average Joe-developer starts to think in terms of sets and not procedurally. (From personal experience SQL is generally poorly understood and PL/SQL invites the unaware to write 100s of lines of code where a few simple DML commands would do: just because it's possible to use a cursor doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea...)
So he prefers OO. So what? If this was a pro-Office article they'd be people here calling "FUD".
He writes that he's "used it [Outlook] and do not find it impressive". We all have opinions but as an Office user I'm not swayed by this. He continues "I use Thunderbird for my e-mail, and it beats Outlook in stability and ease of use by many miles". I can put my finger in the air to come up with unqualified rubbish too. In my experience Outlook is not unstable. Not at work, not at home. I can't remember having to restart it or watching it crash. This is just mud-slinging or the type that gets shot down when MS are perceived to do it.
Then there's the "more logical division" of separating other apps from email. I'd suggest otherwise. Working in a real office I notice there's quite of a lot of emailed Office documents going around. Word has a toolbar button to email the current document. Real people find this useful. There's also a lot of general emailing happening and quite a bit of meeting organising. With Outlook. I can even get someone's telephone extension by right-clicking their name in an email. Outlook 2003 also tells me when they're free by checking their calendar. All useful stuff. Can't see why they're shouldn't be a division in the real world: I can write Word documents without Outlook so what's the problem?
It might be that Office users are all working inefficiently or somehow incorrectly. But what they have works. In a real environment it could be argued email makes more sense of part of an office suite than a browser/internet app as some organisations limit web-browsing.
Although a bit of a geek (I'd not be here otherwise) I think it'd be a shame to loose CDs to virtual equivalents. Although I've an mp3 player I've not really bothered with downloads: I still prefer something physical; I prefer CD quality; it's less likely to get lost/damaged (I've lost two hard-drives over the years but only one single CD to damage); browsing in HMV is still more fun; I'd like to have the opportunity to be pwned by Sony.
The balance will probably continue to shift but as they're are still people that search out vinyl they'll still be people after disks over downloads. The more worrying aspect is the rise of ringtones - the horror - over decent quality music.
The quick to criticise should proof their posts too... (Only joshing.)
As for prepositions isn't this style rather than grammar? This is a genuine question, honestly.
The case in support of being a style guideline rather than a rule is the first sentence of Dickens's (there goes another thread) A Christmas Carol: "Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that." None of the alternatives seem quite as poetic or immediate.
What versions are these? What incompatibilities? VB6 to VB.Net, yes. But what else? If you mean 16-32 bit in VB4 that was a while ago. I'd call FUD but I might have missed something.
I'm note sure I'd completely agree. If legalese was precise, accurate and unambiguous then terms and conditions would not have to be argued over in court. There's always scope for ambiguity - as there is with all language - and I don't think legalese reduces this.
From personal experience it doesn't always help. I made a will recently and specified an additional, but hardly complicated, extra condition to a clause. As far as I was concerned my explanation was clearer and less ambiguous and than the legalese it was translated into. (Having to have the legalese version corrected, twice, seemed to back this up.)
You've a point but I think writing is either clear or not clear, and legalese doesn't infer it's necessarily the former. It's possible to write poorly structured English and obfuscating legalese but being able to cope with the latter is certainly useful as you describe.
More often than not both. Often describing it and asking if it's an issue drew blanks too. I use it as a BS filter - I'm happier to draw a blank than get some gimp trying to blag an answer - typically "well I know what it means in maths". Sometimes honesty works best.
Is it that much of a lock-in? Working in finance I continuously see systems evolving over time and being "re-engineered". Critically this might be because the systems aren't that great but that's because everything's done to time and priorities change (this is unavoidable and business driven).
Over the next couple of years I'd expect to see more "fad" lock-in than vendor problems. Idiots using web services where there's no need and additional architectural levels for no reason.
Vendor lock-in is, IMHO, a bit moot wrt database often anyway. If you're doing anything non-trivial in Oracle with PL/SQL packages porting functionality elsewhere is not going to be a pleasant experience.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing but whatever works works. For many it's going to be MS.
It's a shame that there's not greater acceptance that an ability to program (well) is one thing, knowledge of another is something else (more easily gained but someone able to program). (My CS degress was Ada based too.)
Not targetted at the poster but are we (as people that have got passed this) guilty of perpetuating the same thing? When recruiting for more junior positions can everyone here say they went for ability first and specific language knowledege second?