No, it's that file size doesn't matter to YOU... ask any network admin if file size matters and you'll get the right answer. A couple of KB off a file for you is nothing, but multiply that by all the people on the Internet and you cn see how a couple of KB quickly becomes terabytes of content conjesting the network. Not to mention webmasters who have to watch their monthly bandwidth like a hawk or have their site inexcessible! File size does matter.
I use books only as a language reference. I find that no matter what I'm trying to accomplish in code, any book I own doesn't have examples that "fit" the pieces of my app that I'm struggling with. So what good is a book with 1000 pages of example codes and 300 pages of theory when 95% of the time it doesn't fit what I need anyways? I prefer the reference style book or snippet archive (TurboPascal days): "a Listbox has these properties, methods, and events and here is how they work" or "To make an HTTP Request first declare a TCP/IP Object...". That is all I really need, short and concise.
Beyond that it's just down to hacking. Working on sculpting code till it does what you want and how you want. I've learned more from doing than reading a million times over.
Personally the only book I would recommend buying is one on writing tight secure code. Regardless of language as well, the fundamentals of truely professional code design are applicable to any programming language. Bounds checking, error trapping, raising errors, etc, etc, etc. I think we need more of that kind of book instead of new iterations of existing product that primarily rehash most of a previous version.
My father used to work for defense research and they used a lot of SGI machines. One day the SGI showcase vehicle came to the research facility and I was granted permission and clearance to go and see it with the rest of DRE staff. It was a huge pure black 18 wheeler and in the trailer was their "demo area".
I got to use a flight training simulator running on a 32 processor Onyx (f'ing beautiful machine) with three 21 inch monitors. Even today it would still be cool just for the 32 CPU SMP and multimonitor gaming/training, and I saw all this around 1992.
Then it was on to some 3D workstations running wavefront. I had come from the C64-Amiga-PC branch of our computing family tree. I had even worked with the video toaster & lightwave at college, but nothing has impressed me more then seeing wavefront running on an SGI. My little 486 DX2/50 rendering a 800x600 Imagine3D image in six hours looked rather pathetic to say the least!
Even though most of the software today has far better features and output, I'll always think of the SGI as the pinnacle of 3D rendering. That's probably because of the huge impression I was left with because of SGI & Alias.
I worked for Future Shop as well, and although management were absolute idiots I can honestly say I never had pirated software.
Truth was I never really had anything. I provided my own tools, my own diagnostic apps gleaned off a local BBS or shareware CDs, and even my own billing policy! We didn't even have set rates for services. I worked like that for 4 months before I got anything, and that was just a registered copy of safearmor or something like that to lock down display PCs because customers were putting profanity on the screensavers.
It was one of the worst jobs I have ever had but I never saw pirated software unless it was on a customer's machine.
Re:weird perspective for a conflict... and wrong!
on
Sun's Open Source DRM
·
· Score: 1
Here is another arguement for "Open DRM", and by open I mean the following (rather Utopian) idea of DRM:
1. The DRM is applied after I purchase then rip or download and it is applied by me to protect my investment not the RIAA/MPAA's. They already got their cut.
2. I can remove my own, and only my own, applied DRM so I can move MY content to any device I also own. Now most coders/z in here will realize the comedy of that statement but there it is anyway.
Saying that a company owns everything on a laptop is like saying they own everything in your desk. So take a good long look around where you work and ask if you have anything personal inside company property. If you pick up the kids with the company car do they become an asset used on a balance sheet? No. It all comes down to common sense (something that is lacking more and more these days).
Personall I think this is nothing more then a case of them getting ticked off. They got pissed because he decided to go on his own as a real estate competitor and when he returned the laptop THEY tried to find incriminating evidence on him. No accusations of "You did this and we are looking for the proof" no, they went on a fishing trip through the hard drive. Seeing as they were looking for anything I think this guy was getting into sh*t no matter what.
A friend and I play almost every night and we almost always get top of our team. Mainly because we are on TS and working with intelligence and planning. Helps we are both killer shots.
We just need Ea and Dice to "SORT OUT THE BUGS!!!!" and we'll be fine.
I was just remembering what I was programming/messing around with at home while in high school and college and it turns out most of it was free stuff, gleaned from BBS's and programming magazines. All of it was open and free. I came from the Commodore camp and always had a thriving SIG community. On Amiga there was a complete series of freeware and open code (can't recall the name but I think it was called Freddy Fish?) that came out every month or something like that.
So I would be taking classes and learning about Microsoft C and GW-Basic. I learned how to use DOS, Lotus 123, and all those old school 80x25/50 vid mode apps. Meanwhile at home I was coding 8502 assembler from magazine examples and learning everything about raster interupts and "cool" assembler code from euro demo groups and the coder underground. Even with the Amiga I was still using mostly free stuff.
Then I moved to the PC and had a hell of a time finding that information stream, the PC almost was exclusinvely a "money" system. You had to pay to get the apps. These days are absolutely perfect for young people who want to do more than "pwn the CS n00bs" and the OSS world is mostly to thank for that... the net being the other big player.
Many kids are online, and many kids belong to sites like myspace, various gaming forums and other SIG venues. Most kids these days online know phpbb2, mambo, etc like nobody's business. Heck I'd bet a good chunk even know MySQL and PHP just because it is so prevelant in their daily lives.
So let the kids decide! Have everyone from elementary to high school chime up about what they want, it's their education afterall. Always blows my mind how, when it comes to education, students are the last to be asked "what do you think?" when they should be the first.
You have to take it in context. This is not about physical interaction of players. It's about skill in playing the game. Many FPS games allow spectating of existing players in the game and I have used this feature many times.
There is a reason why people watch "boring" sports like golf and that is because they get to see the cream of the crop. It would suck to sit through 2 hours of amateur golf where no-one can break 110 let alone come near par. Where watching Tiger Woods light up a course can be fun because he is a pro. Video games are the same, the pros are fun to watch play.
I don't know if this method is still being taught but this is how I learned and it has affected every application I have written since. I think this is solid coding practice, any comments on it are greatly appreciated. This is a lot of work, and the pay-off is not only in the finished clarity of the application, but also returning to your code. Also, most of this work is done before you even reach for the keyboard.
Step 1 - Project Target
Write down everything you want your application to do in a short form list. This list is the very basic functions of your application, nothing toodetailed here. For an email client it would be as easy as get mail, send mail, read mail. Then take your list and sort it by listing the features you want the most at the top. Number these items.
Step 2 - Making Modules
Take your list and from the top take each item and make that a heading on a seperate page. Start listing again, but this time we are detailing these basic features. So for "Get Mail" for our email client example we would break that down into each "ingredient" to accomplish the task of getting mail. That would be: get user details, get server details, login to server, check mail, download mail, logout. So now we are getting into more detail. Letter these Items. So we have the basic features as numbers and the feature specifics as letters (maybe for an outline of features?). Note, if you are using an IDE like VS or Delphi you might also want to think about spliting your list up even more into the forms as well.
Step 3 - Algorithm/Psuedo-Code/Charting
This one is kinda optional for small classes, structs, etc. Anything large and I'd really consider it. Take each of your number.letter items and start a new page for each. Write out the algorithm or Psuedo-Code in basic words that are very easy to read. Another useful tool is the flowchart. Learn to make a flow chart because they can be invaluable in large projects.
Step 4 - Hand Written Code
Now take those basic descriptions of how to do the task and try to write them out in full language code. Don't use a computer, use a pencil.
We now have some serious goal focus on our application, let's move to the dev tools.
Step 5 - Cohesion
This is where the time coding becomes a big player. Those of us who have been coding for a LONG time can pretty much whip up a GUI in no time at all. I often already know what my application will look like before I've even loaded my IDE.
Now it is just a matter of taking the hand-code you've already written and typing it in to the IDE, and Comment everything that you can. Also, range and error check where it is needed. I could write a whole spiel just on that but basically you should trap everything you can, even it "seems" redundant, trap it! You'll need to hack at the hand-code after entering it but eventually you'll learn how to recognize the needs of the dev tools and be able to minimize that impact in the first steps. Normally there is quite a bit of code editing once we move to the IDE but that is to be expected. The main thing is that with all the planning we have done we have total focus so the work of hacking code becomes easier.
This is a lot of work, and worth every second on large projects. Anything that takes more then a day or two to write could benefit from this method. I can't stress enough how easy it is to update a strongly organized code base. This method helps in that regard. This method comes from a time when most languages were not very "readable" so this made it easy.
Step 6 - Refactoring
Once you have your code running and working (as far as you can tell) it is time to look through and try to identify areas that could benefit from refactoring, or modularizing even further. If you find, like we all do, that you are performing the same task many times and you are using similar code to do each one then maybe create one function or procedure and then make
which led to Genovese's indictment under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act, which makes it a felony to sell a company's stolen trade secrets... [Microsoft]
Funny that, he gets jail for selling stolen code and MS gets off scott free after stealing the code in the first place!
RIM didn't create this problem. A greedy patent only company created this problem. RIM's "Lack of vision" is not an accurate description of their position... it should be more like "unable to read the minds of every bozo who thinks they deserve a profit for doing nothing, and this is from the moment we make our device till the end of time".
I do agree with you on the service though. There has to be redundancy and there has to be contingency. A failed service is a dead service and one that once it does fail will likely lose market share rather quickly.
16. The conduct of Defendant is causing and, unless enjoined and restrained by this Court, will continue to cause Plaintiffs great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money. Plaintiffs have no adequate remedy at law.
Huh? All we freaking hear about is the "money" and the "laws" at their disposal from the RIAA gestapo. How can they claim immeasurable monetary loss yet put a price tag on settlement of suit?
Hypocritical assholes!
That is it, I'm done. I refuse to purchase a single CD, DVD, or plastic "round-thing" containing Data that the %%AA's bring out. Problem is that we as consumers have lost the knowledge that we are in control. We have the money, they have stuff to sell, nothing says we have to buy it! Screw 'em, let them feel what REAL money loss is!
From my understanding NTP is a very small patents only firm. They have no actual product just the patent.
I'm all for ensuring proper compensation and protection for legitimate software/hardware processes but when vague patents get passed without any due diligence it stagnates true innovation.
The Blackberry is a huge success, NTP has a BS claim and is only seeing dollar signs. I wonder if there would be ANY legal issue if RIM was a small 5 person company selling "mom & pop" wireless in a small town?
By using new and improved quantum hardware interfaces, QuantumSoft (formily MicroSoft) have engineered the absolute finest example of "Non Viewership". By never opening the box to see if the cat is dead QuantumSoft can say with 100% certainty that Windows Celesta 2020 will never crash and never be compromised."
Fine print at the bottom -
Void to those who actually determine the quantum state of Windows Celesta 2020 at anytime.
Slashdot Mirror
Straw in brick... yeah I have to go with Moses having "prior art" on this one. Or didn't you see that movie with Chuck Heston?
No, it's that file size doesn't matter to YOU... ask any network admin if file size matters and you'll get the right answer. A couple of KB off a file for you is nothing, but multiply that by all the people on the Internet and you cn see how a couple of KB quickly becomes terabytes of content conjesting the network. Not to mention webmasters who have to watch their monthly bandwidth like a hawk or have their site inexcessible! File size does matter.
Me Too.
I use books only as a language reference. I find that no matter what I'm trying to accomplish in code, any book I own doesn't have examples that "fit" the pieces of my app that I'm struggling with. So what good is a book with 1000 pages of example codes and 300 pages of theory when 95% of the time it doesn't fit what I need anyways? I prefer the reference style book or snippet archive (TurboPascal days): "a Listbox has these properties, methods, and events and here is how they work" or "To make an HTTP Request first declare a TCP/IP Object...". That is all I really need, short and concise.
Beyond that it's just down to hacking. Working on sculpting code till it does what you want and how you want. I've learned more from doing than reading a million times over.
Personally the only book I would recommend buying is one on writing tight secure code. Regardless of language as well, the fundamentals of truely professional code design are applicable to any programming language. Bounds checking, error trapping, raising errors, etc, etc, etc. I think we need more of that kind of book instead of new iterations of existing product that primarily rehash most of a previous version.
My father used to work for defense research and they used a lot of SGI machines. One day the SGI showcase vehicle came to the research facility and I was granted permission and clearance to go and see it with the rest of DRE staff. It was a huge pure black 18 wheeler and in the trailer was their "demo area".
I got to use a flight training simulator running on a 32 processor Onyx (f'ing beautiful machine) with three 21 inch monitors. Even today it would still be cool just for the 32 CPU SMP and multimonitor gaming/training, and I saw all this around 1992.
Then it was on to some 3D workstations running wavefront. I had come from the C64-Amiga-PC branch of our computing family tree. I had even worked with the video toaster & lightwave at college, but nothing has impressed me more then seeing wavefront running on an SGI. My little 486 DX2/50 rendering a 800x600 Imagine3D image in six hours looked rather pathetic to say the least!
Even though most of the software today has far better features and output, I'll always think of the SGI as the pinnacle of 3D rendering. That's probably because of the huge impression I was left with because of SGI & Alias.
Optimized Ol'Skool:
10 addmoreDrm(everythingDigital)
20 fileLawsuit(Random(world.population))
30 inc(money)
40 goto 10
...my 350 Billion in tax dollars
Those are some harsh taxes... maybe you need a new accountant?
Linux...easy.. The hard task is doing that with Windows.
;)
"M$ Mortar-Shield" was to be a feature of Vista... but subsequent "code restructuring" required the proposed XP Firewall add-on to be dropped.
I worked for Future Shop as well, and although management were absolute idiots I can honestly say I never had pirated software.
Truth was I never really had anything. I provided my own tools, my own diagnostic apps gleaned off a local BBS or shareware CDs, and even my own billing policy! We didn't even have set rates for services. I worked like that for 4 months before I got anything, and that was just a registered copy of safearmor or something like that to lock down display PCs because customers were putting profanity on the screensavers.
It was one of the worst jobs I have ever had but I never saw pirated software unless it was on a customer's machine.
Here is another arguement for "Open DRM", and by open I mean the following (rather Utopian) idea of DRM:
1. The DRM is applied after I purchase then rip or download and it is applied by me to protect my investment not the RIAA/MPAA's. They already got their cut.
2. I can remove my own, and only my own, applied DRM so I can move MY content to any device I also own. Now most coders/z in here will realize the comedy of that statement but there it is anyway.
...over-eager government wiping its feet on the flag and blowing its nose in the Constitution.
Good ol' "W" himself has some thoughts on this.
Saying that a company owns everything on a laptop is like saying they own everything in your desk. So take a good long look around where you work and ask if you have anything personal inside company property. If you pick up the kids with the company car do they become an asset used on a balance sheet? No. It all comes down to common sense (something that is lacking more and more these days).
Personall I think this is nothing more then a case of them getting ticked off. They got pissed because he decided to go on his own as a real estate competitor and when he returned the laptop THEY tried to find incriminating evidence on him. No accusations of "You did this and we are looking for the proof" no, they went on a fishing trip through the hard drive. Seeing as they were looking for anything I think this guy was getting into sh*t no matter what.
Wow, I think this is a full blown case of RTFA-itis or my sarcasm meter needs batteries.
That is the strength of BF2 over other shooters.
A friend and I play almost every night and we almost always get top of our team. Mainly because we are on TS and working with intelligence and planning. Helps we are both killer shots.
We just need Ea and Dice to "SORT OUT THE BUGS!!!!" and we'll be fine.
I was just remembering what I was programming/messing around with at home while in high school and college and it turns out most of it was free stuff, gleaned from BBS's and programming magazines. All of it was open and free. I came from the Commodore camp and always had a thriving SIG community. On Amiga there was a complete series of freeware and open code (can't recall the name but I think it was called Freddy Fish?) that came out every month or something like that.
So I would be taking classes and learning about Microsoft C and GW-Basic. I learned how to use DOS, Lotus 123, and all those old school 80x25/50 vid mode apps. Meanwhile at home I was coding 8502 assembler from magazine examples and learning everything about raster interupts and "cool" assembler code from euro demo groups and the coder underground. Even with the Amiga I was still using mostly free stuff.
Then I moved to the PC and had a hell of a time finding that information stream, the PC almost was exclusinvely a "money" system. You had to pay to get the apps. These days are absolutely perfect for young people who want to do more than "pwn the CS n00bs" and the OSS world is mostly to thank for that... the net being the other big player.
Many kids are online, and many kids belong to sites like myspace, various gaming forums and other SIG venues. Most kids these days online know phpbb2, mambo, etc like nobody's business. Heck I'd bet a good chunk even know MySQL and PHP just because it is so prevelant in their daily lives.
So let the kids decide! Have everyone from elementary to high school chime up about what they want, it's their education afterall. Always blows my mind how, when it comes to education, students are the last to be asked "what do you think?" when they should be the first.
You have to take it in context. This is not about physical interaction of players. It's about skill in playing the game. Many FPS games allow spectating of existing players in the game and I have used this feature many times.
There is a reason why people watch "boring" sports like golf and that is because they get to see the cream of the crop. It would suck to sit through 2 hours of amateur golf where no-one can break 110 let alone come near par. Where watching Tiger Woods light up a course can be fun because he is a pro. Video games are the same, the pros are fun to watch play.
That said though, video games are not sports.
I don't know if this method is still being taught but this is how I learned and it has affected every application I have written since. I think this is solid coding practice, any comments on it are greatly appreciated. This is a lot of work, and the pay-off is not only in the finished clarity of the application, but also returning to your code. Also, most of this work is done before you even reach for the keyboard.
Step 1 - Project Target
Write down everything you want your application to do in a short form list. This list is the very basic functions of your application, nothing toodetailed here. For an email client it would be as easy as get mail, send mail, read mail. Then take your list and sort it by listing the features you want the most at the top. Number these items.
Step 2 - Making Modules
Take your list and from the top take each item and make that a heading on a seperate page. Start listing again, but this time we are detailing these basic features. So for "Get Mail" for our email client example we would break that down into each "ingredient" to accomplish the task of getting mail. That would be: get user details, get server details, login to server, check mail, download mail, logout. So now we are getting into more detail. Letter these Items. So we have the basic features as numbers and the feature specifics as letters (maybe for an outline of features?). Note, if you are using an IDE like VS or Delphi you might also want to think about spliting your list up even more into the forms as well.
Step 3 - Algorithm/Psuedo-Code/Charting
This one is kinda optional for small classes, structs, etc. Anything large and I'd really consider it. Take each of your number.letter items and start a new page for each. Write out the algorithm or Psuedo-Code in basic words that are very easy to read. Another useful tool is the flowchart. Learn to make a flow chart because they can be invaluable in large projects.
Step 4 - Hand Written Code
Now take those basic descriptions of how to do the task and try to write them out in full language code. Don't use a computer, use a pencil. We now have some serious goal focus on our application, let's move to the dev tools.
Step 5 - Cohesion
This is where the time coding becomes a big player. Those of us who have been coding for a LONG time can pretty much whip up a GUI in no time at all. I often already know what my application will look like before I've even loaded my IDE.
Now it is just a matter of taking the hand-code you've already written and typing it in to the IDE, and Comment everything that you can. Also, range and error check where it is needed. I could write a whole spiel just on that but basically you should trap everything you can, even it "seems" redundant, trap it! You'll need to hack at the hand-code after entering it but eventually you'll learn how to recognize the needs of the dev tools and be able to minimize that impact in the first steps. Normally there is quite a bit of code editing once we move to the IDE but that is to be expected. The main thing is that with all the planning we have done we have total focus so the work of hacking code becomes easier.
This is a lot of work, and worth every second on large projects. Anything that takes more then a day or two to write could benefit from this method. I can't stress enough how easy it is to update a strongly organized code base. This method helps in that regard. This method comes from a time when most languages were not very "readable" so this made it easy.
Step 6 - Refactoring
Once you have your code running and working (as far as you can tell) it is time to look through and try to identify areas that could benefit from refactoring, or modularizing even further. If you find, like we all do, that you are performing the same task many times and you are using similar code to do each one then maybe create one function or procedure and then make
which led to Genovese's indictment under the U.S. Economic Espionage Act, which makes it a felony to sell a company's stolen trade secrets ... [Microsoft]
Funny that, he gets jail for selling stolen code and MS gets off scott free after stealing the code in the first place!
RIM didn't create this problem. A greedy patent only company created this problem. RIM's "Lack of vision" is not an accurate description of their position... it should be more like "unable to read the minds of every bozo who thinks they deserve a profit for doing nothing, and this is from the moment we make our device till the end of time".
I do agree with you on the service though. There has to be redundancy and there has to be contingency. A failed service is a dead service and one that once it does fail will likely lose market share rather quickly.
From the comlaint...
16. The conduct of Defendant is causing and, unless enjoined and restrained by this Court, will continue to cause Plaintiffs great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money. Plaintiffs have no adequate remedy at law.
Huh? All we freaking hear about is the "money" and the "laws" at their disposal from the RIAA gestapo. How can they claim immeasurable monetary loss yet put a price tag on settlement of suit?
Hypocritical assholes!
That is it, I'm done. I refuse to purchase a single CD, DVD, or plastic "round-thing" containing Data that the %%AA's bring out. Problem is that we as consumers have lost the knowledge that we are in control. We have the money, they have stuff to sell, nothing says we have to buy it! Screw 'em, let them feel what REAL money loss is!
Gravitron Theory of Relativity -
:-(
P = mGrav^2 (Volume of Puke = Your Mass * Speed of the Gravitron Squared.)
I speak from experience!
...it was always amusing to see Linux notice the FDIV bug on boot.
Oldie but a goody:
Q. How many Pentium engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. 1.00000061
:)
From my understanding NTP is a very small patents only firm. They have no actual product just the patent.
I'm all for ensuring proper compensation and protection for legitimate software/hardware processes but when vague patents get passed without any due diligence it stagnates true innovation.
The Blackberry is a huge success, NTP has a BS claim and is only seeing dollar signs. I wonder if there would be ANY legal issue if RIM was a small 5 person company selling "mom & pop" wireless in a small town?
Things that make you go hmmm?
New marketing slogan for the year 2020 -
"Windows Celesta 2020 - 100% Secure and Stable !!
By using new and improved quantum hardware interfaces, QuantumSoft (formily MicroSoft) have engineered the absolute finest example of "Non Viewership". By never opening the box to see if the cat is dead QuantumSoft can say with 100% certainty that Windows Celesta 2020 will never crash and never be compromised."
Fine print at the bottom -
Void to those who actually determine the quantum state of Windows Celesta 2020 at anytime.
As far as my background, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Best laugh I've had in a while, thanks!
I can't believe that we /.'ed Microsoft!
/.'ers for trying a DDOS attack.
Yep, and they'll likely blame us