"I listen very carefully to the safety lecture, especially that part where they teach us how to use the seat belts. Imagine this, here we are, a plane full of grown human beings, many of us partially educated, and they're actually taking time out to describe the intricate workings of a belt buckle."
"'In the unlikely event of a water landing...', Well, what exactly is a water landing? Am I mistaken, or does this sound somewhat similar to crashing into the ocean?!"
"Which brings me to terminal - another unfortunate word to be used in association with air travel. And they use it all over the airport, don't they? Somehow I just can't get hungry at a place called the Terminal Snack bar. But, if you've ever eaten there, you know it IS an appropriate name."
The great thing about Carlin is that it's obvious when he goes overboard for comedy's sake, so his comedy about the obviously overboard is always relevant. Rest in peace, George.
I fear when it comes to vote in the Senate, it will validate your statement, but I remain hopeful that Obama will follow through. I certainly will be disappointed if he votes for this legislation in anything close to its current form.
There are times to speak in a conciliatory manner, this is not one of them. There are a large number of slimy cowards in his party who don't give one god damn about the fundamental rights of US citizens. You couldn't be more right. The lack of fundamental understanding of what America is supposed to stand for is a bi-partisan problem; the disastrous effects of which are poisoning the efforts of those who really serve America.
"...It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses..."
I find less that people ask for help, but rather they're asking you to do the work for them. It's not uncommon that a question starts out as "I can't figure out x, can you help me?", and after I explain where to find the answers, ends up as "Can you just tell me what to do?"... I found this disturbingly common as a mentor in the CS lab during my undergraduate years.
Anyhow, your second sentence probably sums up the general case - most of these people have probably been bombarded with technical jargon by more than a few "hackers" who lack the skills to effectively communicate. It's no wonder they don't care to learn.
Nice thought, but that's not going to work. Prior art makes something less patentable, so it's not exactly in the applicant's best interest to report it. It's like expecting politicians to police their own ethics. Oh, wait, isn't that what Congress already does?
That is not entirely true. A patent approved by the patent office which cites prior art stands a much better chance of being (legally) valid in case the patent's validity is challenged in court.
Putting your romantic life on a website is an extraordinarily bad and naive idea. Put stuff online, the world knows, forever. Learn that now.
Try explaining to your girlfriend why you won't set your profile to read "in a relationship" with her. I'll give you a hint: as much sense as your argument makes, all she is going to hear is "I'm not that important to you."
Then again, I guess most people here would never have that problem...
Now how about a proper 1080p TV then? There are HDTV's that have a 1080p display, but don't take 1080p inputs, and TVs that take 1080p but downscale it to 720p. Make up your mind!
That's why I bought HP's DLP TV... 1080p inputs over HDMI, two HDMI inputs. People might argue that it isn't true 1080p (see Wobulation, but I own the TV, and every pixel looks perfect. Nothing's beats a 65" monitor at 1920x1080... I just wish I had two, so I could run dual monitors.;-)
I fear that if they make this illegal, it will also be illegal to point out inadequacies of the government &, before we know it, the press will be unable to criticize the government. Releasing information of sensitivity is a form of criticism and should be treated as such.
It's nothing the government hasn't tried before. Only this time, if any legislation were to pass, I doubt that it would be so easily repealed. After all, we're still happily chugging along with the Patriot Act and DMCA.
Intellisense helps when you are writing the code, but I don't want to have to click on every single obcure API call when reading code afterwards. It also helps when you print out a function for later reference.
Valid point about printing out code.
In VS.NET 2005 anyway, merely hovering over the function with the mouse is enough to get a help tooltip giving you all the parameter types and names. Honestly I've never been frustrated by the lack of clarity in knowing what the intent of specific parameters are. In the cases I don't know, it's simple and quick to figure out.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. Objective-C has the most intelligent syntax of any language I've ever worked with. Just because none of the latest "miracle" languages, like C# and Java, have adopted a new function calling syntax doesn't mean there aren't problems with it. Frankly, the constructor naming for C++, Java and C# is brain-dead. What makes more sense?
color = NSColor(128, 128, 64, 0);
or
color = [NSColor colorWithRed:128 Green:128 Blue:64 Alpha:0];
Sure, if you're using notepad.exe to edit, I agree with you. Modern editors (like Eclipse and VS.NET) have some intellisense feature that will tell you what the parameters are. Even better, you can often get comments about the parameter displayed right inside the editor.
What do you think happens when you want to leave MS?
The same thing that happens when you want to leave any other development platform in existence. Better not use any commercial vendors; you might want to leave them one day.
You will be stuck watching Java people migrate from machine to machine, OS to OS, VM to VM, App Server to App Server... taking advantage of actual marketplaces full of innovation and competition... while you stagnate in MS's walled garden.
That sounds all very ideal, but in the real world (or at least the subset of it that I work with), I have very little desire or need to be migrating. Even the probability that we would *need* to migrate is so low, that I would rather take advantage of the development productivity gained by using the products we use, and accept the miniscule risk that we *may* have to rewrite some code should we choose to migrate.
Ironically enough, the market we deal in typically uses quite a bit of proprietary database systems built on Linux boxes. We make our money precisely because there is a lack of innovation in this market, using almost exclusively Microsoft products. Not that our solutions aren't possible using a non-MS solution, because they most certainly our - it is just our preference.
The picture is abundantly clear... I doubt it's even that different in Dallas (although it's possible I suppose)...
I don't disagree with your references; the demand for Java overall is clearly higher. Even a quick search on Monster agrees with it, there are 350 java positions and only 208.NET. I have observed a sharp increase in the demand for.NET developers over the last couple of years, and I don't expect that it will go away. This is partly due to the fact that using.NET is orders of magnitude easier to use than Microsoft's previous attempts at application frameworks (like MFC.) Even my own company is increasing its staff of.Net developers (know any? Send resumes!). IMO, I don't think it would be a terrible choice to learn either language. In time, I'd say it's pretty reasonable there will be equal demand sometime in the near future.
Theoretically has nothing to do with practicality; if you read me, I am speaking about performance. I have no doubt you can shoehorn a shitty implementation of anything you want onto CLR or the JVM for that matter...
If you are in need of that much performance, then your choice of VM, be it CLR or JVM is irrelevant. Chances are you've already chosen the wrong place to start.
I believe the intent of the "language-agnostic" API was to unify the development efforts between the flagship languages used on Windows machines, like C# and VB.NET. They have succeeded in this effort and I will prove it to you: People view VB.NET as a professional development language. I say this half jokingly, but it's true. I can't stand VB, but the performance argument against it is gone because in the end, the IL produced is practically the same.
So you apparently concede the point that CLR is not as flexible in terms of practical support for other languages that significantly different from C/C++/Java as its proponents sometimes claim...?
That could be a yes or a no, depending on your definition of "practical support." I am not a CLR guru, so my opinion is meaningless, but given that IL is pretty much a generic assembler with some extensions for calling virtual methods and the like, I don't think it would make a significant difference what language you did use -- It would depend on the compiler. There are some features in the CLR that don't translate exactly to other languages, and there are plenty of examples of this in VB.NET. That is to say, you'd pretty much have to make ".NET" versions of whatever language, but to me, that appears to be
I've done it. It works. It was pretty awesome, actually - I would edit the code on Visual studio, but the project lived on the Linux box, so changes happened live.
When I tried it, Mono only supported the C# 1.0 spec and framework - I had alot of C# 2.0 specific things in my code, so I had to abandon the idea. If it supported to C# 2.0, and enough of the asp.net framework - running my stuff on a linux box would work out very nicely.
If they want they can take it and go home. When MS decides its time to stop, as they did for many of their other much vaunted initiatives, then that's it, your party is over.
My company, along with many others, are switching to a practically 100%.NET development environment. ASP.NET is 100% reliant on.NET. Microsoft would be absolutely insane to even think about dropping.NET - it's not even a remote possibility.
Java is well specified and unencumbered.
The C# language is very well defined. Unencumbered? What, pray tell, is encumbering about C#? It's almost exactly like Java. Sure, there are probably a few more keywords to throw around, but all of them have a pretty well-defined place. I find the language quite the opposite of cumbersome.
Based purely on raw numbers of job offers, if you're looking to make money off this skill you would be flipping crazy to learn C#...
What numbers are you looking at? In Dallas at least, there is extremely high demand for C#/.NET developers.
... C# is not better enough to justify the baggage of being locked into the world's most notorious vendor. In many cases the supposed advantages of C# are a wash or even bad ideas - such as their pointless and absurd practice of mixing VM and non-VM code at every opportunity, and allowing unsafe code to be mixed in...
By default, you can't even use unsafe code without explicitly telling the compiler to allow it. Unsafe code is rarely used throughout the actual framework itself, but when it is, it's primary purpose is performance. I suppose that they should have bit the bullet and used a slower method, so you could complain about performance instead?
C# people claim their runtime is language agnostic. It is not. It's C* agnostic. Any language significantly different from a C/C++/Java-like language can't be supported efficiently. No surprise there.
This may be somewhat true for any non-object oriented language, but their claim does hold: the runtime can, theoretically, support any language -- it all compiles to what basically amounts to assembler code. But, I'd rather the runtime support a language style that is highly used than anchor the thing down because want their [insert obscure programming language here] to compile just as efficiently. In light of that, the efficiency of the compiler is probably more related to how much work is put into making it efficient in IL code. C may be a better language, but code written in BASIC will run faster if the C compiler sucks. Not surprisingly, people are more interested in optimizing C code.
I don't expect Mono to succeed even in its modest promises, although if they do, they may wish they didn't. Perhaps their best path will be to stop trying to be compatible and diverge into a kind of "dirty.NET"...
Which is unfortunate, I've had occasion to want to use Mono, and I'd love to run ASP.NET 2.0 code on a linux box (I still think Apache > IIS).
Students at my university (who are also more likely to appreciate a $500 gaming rig) can get a Windows XP license for $6.
Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.
on
Firefox Momentum Slows
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
But because FireFox is not "integrated" with the OS, the vulnerabilities aren't as severe as those found in IE.
Finding 1,000 different "vulnerabilities" that cause the app to crash does not equal 1 vulnerability that gives remote admin access to the machine.
What difference does it make on a Windows machine? 99% of Windows users are running as "root" anyway - give me a vulnerability in FireFox, and I will get "remote admin access".
Slashdot Mirror
His airplane bit is a classic.
"I listen very carefully to the safety lecture, especially that part where they teach us how to use the seat belts. Imagine this, here we are, a plane full of grown human beings, many of us partially educated, and they're actually taking time out to describe the intricate workings of a belt buckle."
"'In the unlikely event of a water landing...', Well, what exactly is a water landing? Am I mistaken, or does this sound somewhat similar to crashing into the ocean?!"
"Which brings me to terminal - another unfortunate word to be used in association with air travel. And they use it all over the airport, don't they? Somehow I just can't get hungry at a place called the Terminal Snack bar. But, if you've ever eaten there, you know it IS an appropriate name."
The great thing about Carlin is that it's obvious when he goes overboard for comedy's sake, so his comedy about the obviously overboard is always relevant. Rest in peace, George.
Did you read the whole statement?
"...It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses..."
I find less that people ask for help, but rather they're asking you to do the work for them. It's not uncommon that a question starts out as "I can't figure out x, can you help me?", and after I explain where to find the answers, ends up as "Can you just tell me what to do?"... I found this disturbingly common as a mentor in the CS lab during my undergraduate years.
Anyhow, your second sentence probably sums up the general case - most of these people have probably been bombarded with technical jargon by more than a few "hackers" who lack the skills to effectively communicate. It's no wonder they don't care to learn.
If Microsoft made cameras, this feature would be included automatically.
Nice thought, but that's not going to work. Prior art makes something less patentable, so it's not exactly in the applicant's best interest to report it. It's like expecting politicians to police their own ethics. Oh, wait, isn't that what Congress already does?
That is not entirely true. A patent approved by the patent office which cites prior art stands a much better chance of being (legally) valid in case the patent's validity is challenged in court.
Then again, I guess most people here would never have that problem...
That's why I bought HP's DLP TV
It's nothing the government hasn't tried before. Only this time, if any legislation were to pass, I doubt that it would be so easily repealed. After all, we're still happily chugging along with the Patriot Act and DMCA.
In VS.NET 2005 anyway, merely hovering over the function with the mouse is enough to get a help tooltip giving you all the parameter types and names. Honestly I've never been frustrated by the lack of clarity in knowing what the intent of specific parameters are. In the cases I don't know, it's simple and quick to figure out.
The same thing that happens when you want to leave any other development platform in existence. Better not use any commercial vendors; you might want to leave them one day.
That sounds all very ideal, but in the real world (or at least the subset of it that I work with), I have very little desire or need to be migrating. Even the probability that we would *need* to migrate is so low, that I would rather take advantage of the development productivity gained by using the products we use, and accept the miniscule risk that we *may* have to rewrite some code should we choose to migrate.
Ironically enough, the market we deal in typically uses quite a bit of proprietary database systems built on Linux boxes. We make our money precisely because there is a lack of innovation in this market, using almost exclusively Microsoft products. Not that our solutions aren't possible using a non-MS solution, because they most certainly our - it is just our preference.
I don't disagree with your references; the demand for Java overall is clearly higher. Even a quick search on Monster agrees with it, there are 350 java positions and only 208 .NET. I have observed a sharp increase in the demand for .NET developers over the last couple of years, and I don't expect that it will go away. This is partly due to the fact that using .NET is orders of magnitude easier to use than Microsoft's previous attempts at application frameworks (like MFC.) Even my own company is increasing its staff of .Net developers (know any? Send resumes!). IMO, I don't think it would be a terrible choice to learn either language. In time, I'd say it's pretty reasonable there will be equal demand sometime in the near future.
If you are in need of that much performance, then your choice of VM, be it CLR or JVM is irrelevant. Chances are you've already chosen the wrong place to start. I believe the intent of the "language-agnostic" API was to unify the development efforts between the flagship languages used on Windows machines, like C# and VB.NET. They have succeeded in this effort and I will prove it to you: People view VB.NET as a professional development language. I say this half jokingly, but it's true. I can't stand VB, but the performance argument against it is gone because in the end, the IL produced is practically the same.
That could be a yes or a no, depending on your definition of "practical support." I am not a CLR guru, so my opinion is meaningless, but given that IL is pretty much a generic assembler with some extensions for calling virtual methods and the like, I don't think it would make a significant difference what language you did use -- It would depend on the compiler. There are some features in the CLR that don't translate exactly to other languages, and there are plenty of examples of this in VB.NET. That is to say, you'd pretty much have to make ".NET" versions of whatever language, but to me, that appears to be
The C# language is very well defined. Unencumbered? What, pray tell, is encumbering about C#? It's almost exactly like Java. Sure, there are probably a few more keywords to throw around, but all of them have a pretty well-defined place. I find the language quite the opposite of cumbersome.
What numbers are you looking at? In Dallas at least, there is extremely high demand for C#/.NET developers.
By default, you can't even use unsafe code without explicitly telling the compiler to allow it. Unsafe code is rarely used throughout the actual framework itself, but when it is, it's primary purpose is performance. I suppose that they should have bit the bullet and used a slower method, so you could complain about performance instead?
This may be somewhat true for any non-object oriented language, but their claim does hold: the runtime can, theoretically, support any language -- it all compiles to what basically amounts to assembler code. But, I'd rather the runtime support a language style that is highly used than anchor the thing down because want their [insert obscure programming language here] to compile just as efficiently. In light of that, the efficiency of the compiler is probably more related to how much work is put into making it efficient in IL code. C may be a better language, but code written in BASIC will run faster if the C compiler sucks. Not surprisingly, people are more interested in optimizing C code.
Which is unfortunate, I've had occasion to want to use Mono, and I'd love to run ASP.NET 2.0 code on a linux box (I still think Apache > IIS).
Visual Studio 2005 should at least be in the Top 10, IMHO. Alot of Microsoft's products may suck, but their development tools are top-notch.
Zero Tolerance ... Why educate, when it's easier to just kick them out?
Students at my university (who are also more likely to appreciate a $500 gaming rig) can get a Windows XP license for $6.