Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves.
It's important to note that you can think someone is "wrong" without "hating" them. Is homosexuality an example of "sexual immorality?" Maybe, maybe not; people interpret the Bible differently. But, does that mean you "hate" homosexuals, or think homosexuality is "wrong"?
If you read and believe in the Bible, do you "hate" the Quran, or simply disagree with it?
True Faith knows no politics. If you are a conservative, do you "hate" leftists or simply disagree with their politics?
"Love the sinner, hate the sin." (And remember that not all Christians think homosexuality and liberalism are "sins.")
I believe there is a restriction in 64-bit vista that prevents unsigned drivers.
Nope. There is a restriction in all versions of Vista against using unsigned kernel mode drivers. However, the new Windows Driver Model makes it possible for 99% of drivers (minus graphics drivers) to run in usermode.
So, you can't run unsigned kernel mode drivers. But, unlike XP, you don't have to run kernel mode drivers - they all run in userspace. Interesting, since this will cut heavily into the profits Microsoft makes from driver signing, but it make the OS a billion times more stable - usermode drivers can't bluescreen. (This is also why there's "hardware compatibility" problems with Vista right now - although the user-mode drivers are easier to write, not everyone has ported their drivers yet.)
After getting fed up with XP because of it complaining about me not having antivirus (apparently you can switch that off, but I don't know where), I switched to Ubuntu
Wait a minute. Wiping your hard drive and installing Linux was easier for you than finding the control panel (it's usually on the "start" menu) or downloading one of the many, many free virus scanners?
But, seriously, tho. You were running a Windows machine without a virus scanner?
Old news. You can turn the fishing filter off - in fact, when you first run IE7, it asks you if you want to turn it on.
They don't track the computers the filter requests come from. It's certainly techically possible that they could, but conspiracy theories aside, they don't.
The average (and even the above average) office drone couldn't program a microwave, let alone a computer.
I don't know about you, but my microwave's pretty hard to program.
Writing firmware in general is pretty hard, too - you generally have to know/learn assembly and machine language on a minimalist, non-standard architecture, and write small, fast code that never fails.
Yet, the freshmen in my high school can make VB slot machine and dice rolling games.
But, the article suggests career prospects are more promising for office drones...
The press release says that they're working on removing the Creator's Club requirement for playing XNA games.
The reason you need to be a member of the Creator's Club as of now is because of the XNA framework - a souped-up version of the.NET framework - that your games are built on top of. Your games won't run without it, which means anyone who wants to run your game needs it (i.e., be a member of the Creator's Club.)
A handle is NOT a pointer to a pointer; in CS lingo, that's a "vector." (Not to be confused with the C++ vector class.)
A handle is a "token" Windows gives the resources it controls - open windows, files, icons, etc, all have their own "handles." They cannot be dereferenced - they're not pointers to ANYTHING. The Windows API just uses them to number the things it keeps track of.
Go ahead and try it - call CreateWindowEx() and save the HWND window handle it returns. Try typing **hwndMyWindow once and watch your IDE debugger whine at you. This is because they're NOT pointers; they're more like coat check tokens. You give one to Windows, it gives you your resource because Windows, and Windows only keeps the actual pointers.
Doom/Quake? Yes; they had to run under DOS because Windows lacked an expedient way to do graphics programming (now called "DirectX").
PS2/PS3? GameCube/Wii? Outside the scope of PC graphics APIs. But, most game programmers already know DirectX because it's been an industry standard since a bit after 1994. I'm guessing they would be appreciative if programming for game consoles didn't require learning a new API every couple years and just used the DirectX versions.
But, closed-source APIs for a very specific hardware setup (i.e., ONE game console) given only to people who pay $dough for toolkits isn't exactly a "Linux Alternative." DirectX, on the other hand, supports most any arbitrary hardware setup - and currently powers PC, Xbox, and Xbox360 games, and Microsoft's XNA IDE makes developing accessible.
DirectX just has a way of making things better. I put DirectX on everything.
Indeed, silly mee. But then how am I supposed to know that the first parameter is a window when a null pointer is passed in (in which case it won't matter is old fashioned NULL or a modern 0 is used)? There is more to strong typing (which C/C++ does not posses) then an error message. There is readablity. For that best would have been an NWND constant or prehaps (hwnd)0.
Can't say I know if the C++ standards include strong typing, but most compilers I've used, do. Microsoft's Visual Studio will throw you a warning or an error depending on how cranky you have the compiler set to be (defaults to a warning in most versions.)
I'll give you readability - Microsoft uses HWND_DESKTOP instead of NULL. The first parameter is the "parent window" the message box belongs to; since our program has no window, per se, it "belongs" to and is clipped by the desktop, hence the HWND_DESKTOP. Some people (and too many textbooks) use the NULL constant (again, from windows.h, nothing to do with pointer definitions) to emphasize the fact that the message box does NOT have a parent window. Others are confused and think a pointer of some sort is being passed and not a window handle (big difference, HWNDs are NOT dereferenceable.)
Cedega is (somewhat) popular, not because DirectX is superior to Linux alternatives, but because many computer games depend on it.
Linux has an "alternative" to DirectX? DirectX generally kicks the pants off of OpenGL performance-wise, and graphics accelerators aren't built with anything else in mind.
Apart from the fact that the #includes are missing it's not C++. Shure (with the missing includes) it might compile. But it is not the way it is done in C++.
The Windows API is written in C, and designed for C. Of course it's not C++.
MFC - the Microsoft Foundation Classes - are a C++ object-oriented encapsulation of the original C API.
Besides, just correcting parent poster (who didn't use correct cout syntax, or #include . But, yes, you would need a #include at the top of your program, and you'd probably want a #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN if you want to keep your program size smallish reduce your compile times.
The C++ (as well as C99) standart define 0 to be the null pointer. With older C standards that was different and there where indeed some platforms with [...]
That's nice, except windows.h defines NULL to be 0. You can also use HWND_DESKTOP for the first parameter of MessageBox(), or the actual window handle to your program. You're also forgetting that C has been ANSI/ISO standardized, too.
Most C++ programmers don't actualy know how C++ works. And just because MS used NULL it does not mean it is current standart.
Silly you - it doesn't matter what the current pointer standard is; the first parameter isn't a pointer, but a window handle (hwnd). Besides, I'm pretty sure Microsoft decides what's "standard" for their own API. You may not want to use NULL in other programs, or you may want to #define your own if you're paranoid about it compiling in Borland Turbo C.
As for the slam on C++ programmers from a person who didn't recognize C code... We'll leave it at that.
Any sufficiently large organization will invariable fuck up and fuck over those that it ostensibly tries to serve. This applies to corporations and governments alike.
Except that if a corporation "fucks up", that corporation faces the very real risk of going out of business. You tend not to fuck up when your very existence is on the line.
Our government has been fucking up for centuries. There's no motivation to improve when you'll be around tomorrow regardless.
Removing regulations would leave us with exploitation of workers and inevitable short sightedness to maximize current profit (for those in the position to do so) at the expense of most of the rest of us (see the early industrial revolution, or modern day sweat shops)
Exploitation of workers? A worker can't be "exploited" if he's allowed to seek a job elsewhere. Laws that try to prevent the so-called "exploitation" of workers, such as France's law that makes firing people illegal in most cases, simply discourages companies from hiring anyone.
The early industrial revolution saw the rise of the union and the improvement in many peoples' standards of living. Tradesmen definitely suffered, but how many people who lacked specialized trade skills could afford to pay a cobbler for shoes, or a tailor for clothing? Although many people suffered as resources were drastically reallocated to take advantage of new technology, our country as a whole became wealthier and unions and government eliminated labor abuses. I'm sure that you personally would rather have computers, modern appliances, the internet, cars, and everything else that came from the factory system rather than the alternative: eke out a subsistence living farming just so that a cobbler can make shoes at a cost of several hundred times more than they need to be.
Modern day sweatshops in pre-industrial nations are absolutely essential to developing economies. When you face the choice of starvation or menial employment, even the menial employment is a blessing. Although labor tends to be exploited in pre-industrial economies, this lasts only as long as there is just one sweatshop. If any others try to take advantage of the cheap labor, they begin competing for the same workers. This gives them the most important freedom a laborer has: choice of occupation.
As long there is only one sweatshop, the worker has the choice of starvation or menial employment. If you get rid of the sweatshop, the worker is left with starvation. If more sweatshops move in, he has a choice of where to work. If enough "sweatshops" move in, the shops have to compete with each other through wages and health benefits to attract workers. You make the shops compete with each other for the workers, not the workers compete with each other for the shops' jobs.
Personally I think the government should claim ownership of ALL lines, and then remove all regulations. Meaning if you want to build new lines and compete with the government, thats fine, but you're going to have to do it on your own penny.
Too bad confiscation of private property is illegal and unconstitutional. That's what socialist and communist states do.
Besides, subsidies very rarely make sense - especially when the recipients large, profitable corporations. You can fix most of the problems by removing the regulations and removing subsidies.
The government has a horrible track record of efficiency. The Social Security slush fund is filled with T-Bills - the government is writing IOU notes to itself so Congress can spend your social security check. Congressmen get paid $dough for barely 100 days of work and little accomplished. The USDA does little of use other than enforce food quality standards, yet only a handful of its myriad of sub-agencies are actually tasked with this. The armed services ordered $400 toilet seats, and the FBI is scrapping a ridiculously expensive, over-budget computer system it purchased for another more expensive one - and they still don't know what they want it to do. The government decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it could provide passenger service much more efficiently than railroad companies (which the governmentalso regulated into maintaining unused passenger routes, because evidently the only way people can travel is by train). Now, look at the mess AMTRAK has become - it's bleeding cache, it's stops were decided for political reasons rather than where there were actual passengers.
Government has a horrible track record in "efficiency" because the individual agents of the government are motiviated not to provide the best possible services to the nation, but to keep their desk and telephone another term.
I hear you saying "If this is true, then it would be easy for private corporations to do it on 'their own penny', right?" Wrong. You just took every telephone, cable, and fiber line in the United States. Building new lines apart from these is worthless - an ISP is useful because it can connect you to the rest of the internet, not just the two ends of the cable the telco just rebuilt between your house and itself.
Also, look at places like India and some middle eastern countries that actually did this and have one official government telco. They're shutting downVoIP services and censoring the internet.
often "the highest price the market can bear" turns out to be a blisteringly stupid idea
Except that, as you pointed out, bad PR makes "the highest price the market can bear" rather low. If you don't shoot for this price, you're screwing over your suppliers, your shareholders, your employees, and anybody at all associated with your company. Seeking the market-bearing price requires good PR, corporate citizenship, etc.
Perhaps consider the intentions of the framers. Thomas Jefferson said that "a little revolution now and then is a good thing", and the "shot heard 'round the world" was in defense of a private cache of arms about to be confiscated by the British.
Jefferson, at least, saw revolution as another check against the government and weapons as a way to enable the citizenry to do this.
This is an "emperor with no clothes" thing - if you can't tell the difference, you must not be an experienced gamer. Since I'm an experienced gamer, I can tell the difference. HORSE PUCKY, boy!
Naw, latency is an easily measured and quantified number and evidently this card does lower your latency somewhat.
How much that "somewhat" is noticeable is debatable. For those spending $bucks a month for high-speed internet for their $buckbucksbucks gaming rig, a crappy NIC is going to be rather bothersome. Go talk to a rabid "knife-makes-you-run-faster" CounterStrike player and ask him about the importance of latency.
But, for the rest of us, a NIC isn't really a bottleneck and onboard/generic PCI NICs do just fine. It's not "noticeable" enough.
Think of it as "online gamer viagra" - lower your ping by 5 ms!
Actually, the "hello world" program using the native Win32 API is:
int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR szCmdLine, int iCmdShow) { MessageBox(NULL, "Hello, World!", "HelloWorldApp", MB_OK); return 0; }
You don't need 100 lines of code, obviously. The WinMain function can be a little intimidating, unless you consider that the parameters actually make ince. hInstance is a handle to your program in memory - you only need this if you want to dig icons or other resources out of your EXE while it's running. hPrevInstance is no longer used. szCmdLine is - you guessed it - the command line (rarely used) and iCmdShow is whether your program should be starting maximized, minimized, etc (but can be ignored.)
Granted, the 100 lines of code comes in when you want to make a "real" Windows app - have a real window that responds to events. But, all this entails is filling out a struct that describes your window, creating the window from that struct, and setting up your message queue. About 1 page of code, but it's the same for every program and you can copy/paste.
Price and demand are entirely different concepts. I'll refer you to Wikipedia.
The demand curve is the graphical representation of demand - how much consumers are willing to buy at each and every price level. How much people are willing to pay has nothing to do with how much you want them to pay.
There are a number of things that affect demand, public relations included. You are correct in saying that price and PR are entirely different, but I made absolutely no reference to price.
I doubt he used the Visual COBOL IDE to write the assembly; in C++ (at least Microsoft's Visual Studio 6.0 flavor it it) you put your assembly in an __asm{} block. No need to boot another IDE.
But... I didn't know there was such a thing as Visual COBOL. Or that it worked without a tape reel.
Science and religion aren't exactly opposed to each other. It is true that science cannot prove the existence of God any more than the existance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but it is also true that science cannot disprove the existence of God.
That's why it's called "Faith." For the same reasons, it's foolhardy to try to use the scientific vernacular to articulate matters of faith; science is a wholly inadequate tool for reasoning out the existence/nonexistence of a divine being.
If for no other reason, look at Faith from the view of the pragmatist. Although any group has its asshats, the truly faithful have morals, try to be good people in any way they are called, and in my experience are happy. The "evangelical athiests" I know are angry, bitter, elitist, and destructive. Look past the individual: fascism, nazism, and communism are actually perfectly sensical and rational outside some external source of morals.
I can see various counterpoints involving the crusades to trickle up, but stay them a moment. Are kings seeking wealth and power, and a then-corrupt Roman bureacracy actually examples of Faith and religion, or of more secular, political motives?
The point: Believing in something higher than your own mortal self is not a rejection of science. Not everyone who listens to an iPod "enjoying its effect", the product of science, is rejecting Faith or religion. Science cannot disprove the existence of God; by the very definition of an Almighty, this is impossible. There is no reason outside politics of convenience (think secular liberals or witch burners) that the two cannot coexist.
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Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves.
It's important to note that you can think someone is "wrong" without "hating" them. Is homosexuality an example of "sexual immorality?" Maybe, maybe not; people interpret the Bible differently. But, does that mean you "hate" homosexuals, or think homosexuality is "wrong"?
If you read and believe in the Bible, do you "hate" the Quran, or simply disagree with it?
True Faith knows no politics. If you are a conservative, do you "hate" leftists or simply disagree with their politics?
"Love the sinner, hate the sin." (And remember that not all Christians think homosexuality and liberalism are "sins.")
I believe there is a restriction in 64-bit vista that prevents unsigned drivers.
Nope. There is a restriction in all versions of Vista against using unsigned kernel mode drivers. However, the new Windows Driver Model makes it possible for 99% of drivers (minus graphics drivers) to run in usermode.
So, you can't run unsigned kernel mode drivers. But, unlike XP, you don't have to run kernel mode drivers - they all run in userspace. Interesting, since this will cut heavily into the profits Microsoft makes from driver signing, but it make the OS a billion times more stable - usermode drivers can't bluescreen. (This is also why there's "hardware compatibility" problems with Vista right now - although the user-mode drivers are easier to write, not everyone has ported their drivers yet.)
I know you Americans consider "the USA" the same as "the world", but I can assure you that IE7 was NOT pushed out in the Dutch version of Windows XP.
Silly you. Dutchistan is in a completely different world - there's an ocean between them.
After getting fed up with XP because of it complaining about me not having antivirus (apparently you can switch that off, but I don't know where), I switched to Ubuntu
Wait a minute. Wiping your hard drive and installing Linux was easier for you than finding the control panel (it's usually on the "start" menu) or downloading one of the many, many free virus scanners?
But, seriously, tho. You were running a Windows machine without a virus scanner?
Old news. You can turn the fishing filter off - in fact, when you first run IE7, it asks you if you want to turn it on.
They don't track the computers the filter requests come from. It's certainly techically possible that they could, but conspiracy theories aside, they don't.
The average (and even the above average) office drone couldn't program a microwave, let alone a computer.
I don't know about you, but my microwave's pretty hard to program.
Writing firmware in general is pretty hard, too - you generally have to know/learn assembly and machine language on a minimalist, non-standard architecture, and write small, fast code that never fails.
Yet, the freshmen in my high school can make VB slot machine and dice rolling games.
But, the article suggests career prospects are more promising for office drones...
The press release says that they're working on removing the Creator's Club requirement for playing XNA games.
The reason you need to be a member of the Creator's Club as of now is because of the XNA framework - a souped-up version of the .NET framework - that your games are built on top of. Your games won't run without it, which means anyone who wants to run your game needs it (i.e., be a member of the Creator's Club.)
Internet Explorer 7 popup blocker works. If Flash and other add-ons bother you, you can click Tools -> Manage Add-ons -> Enable or Disable Add-ons.
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Facts don't change - they're facts. There's your problem.
Don't compare one OS with one game when there are only ~3 OSes and 3000 games.
Compare desktop sales with game sales. I wonder which one of those figures is higher...
A handle is NOT a pointer to a pointer; in CS lingo, that's a "vector." (Not to be confused with the C++ vector class.)
A handle is a "token" Windows gives the resources it controls - open windows, files, icons, etc, all have their own "handles." They cannot be dereferenced - they're not pointers to ANYTHING. The Windows API just uses them to number the things it keeps track of.
Go ahead and try it - call CreateWindowEx() and save the HWND window handle it returns. Try typing **hwndMyWindow once and watch your IDE debugger whine at you. This is because they're NOT pointers; they're more like coat check tokens. You give one to Windows, it gives you your resource because Windows, and Windows only keeps the actual pointers.
Doom/Quake? Yes; they had to run under DOS because Windows lacked an expedient way to do graphics programming (now called "DirectX").
PS2/PS3? GameCube/Wii? Outside the scope of PC graphics APIs. But, most game programmers already know DirectX because it's been an industry standard since a bit after 1994. I'm guessing they would be appreciative if programming for game consoles didn't require learning a new API every couple years and just used the DirectX versions.
But, closed-source APIs for a very specific hardware setup (i.e., ONE game console) given only to people who pay $dough for toolkits isn't exactly a "Linux Alternative." DirectX, on the other hand, supports most any arbitrary hardware setup - and currently powers PC, Xbox, and Xbox360 games, and Microsoft's XNA IDE makes developing accessible.
DirectX just has a way of making things better. I put DirectX on everything.
Indeed, silly mee. But then how am I supposed to know that the first parameter is a window when a null pointer is passed in (in which case it won't matter is old fashioned NULL or a modern 0 is used)? There is more to strong typing (which C/C++ does not posses) then an error message. There is readablity. For that best would have been an NWND constant or prehaps (hwnd)0.
Can't say I know if the C++ standards include strong typing, but most compilers I've used, do. Microsoft's Visual Studio will throw you a warning or an error depending on how cranky you have the compiler set to be (defaults to a warning in most versions.)
I'll give you readability - Microsoft uses HWND_DESKTOP instead of NULL. The first parameter is the "parent window" the message box belongs to; since our program has no window, per se, it "belongs" to and is clipped by the desktop, hence the HWND_DESKTOP. Some people (and too many textbooks) use the NULL constant (again, from windows.h, nothing to do with pointer definitions) to emphasize the fact that the message box does NOT have a parent window. Others are confused and think a pointer of some sort is being passed and not a window handle (big difference, HWNDs are NOT dereferenceable.)
Cedega is (somewhat) popular, not because DirectX is superior to Linux alternatives, but because many computer games depend on it.
Linux has an "alternative" to DirectX? DirectX generally kicks the pants off of OpenGL performance-wise, and graphics accelerators aren't built with anything else in mind.
Apart from the fact that the #includes are missing it's not C++. Shure (with the missing includes) it might compile. But it is not the way it is done in C++.
The Windows API is written in C, and designed for C. Of course it's not C++.
MFC - the Microsoft Foundation Classes - are a C++ object-oriented encapsulation of the original C API.
Besides, just correcting parent poster (who didn't use correct cout syntax, or #include . But, yes, you would need a #include at the top of your program, and you'd probably want a #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN if you want to keep your program size smallish reduce your compile times.
The C++ (as well as C99) standart define 0 to be the null pointer. With older C standards that was different and there where indeed some platforms with [...]
That's nice, except windows.h defines NULL to be 0. You can also use HWND_DESKTOP for the first parameter of MessageBox(), or the actual window handle to your program. You're also forgetting that C has been ANSI/ISO standardized, too.
Most C++ programmers don't actualy know how C++ works. And just because MS used NULL it does not mean it is current standart.
Silly you - it doesn't matter what the current pointer standard is; the first parameter isn't a pointer, but a window handle (hwnd). Besides, I'm pretty sure Microsoft decides what's "standard" for their own API. You may not want to use NULL in other programs, or you may want to #define your own if you're paranoid about it compiling in Borland Turbo C.
As for the slam on C++ programmers from a person who didn't recognize C code... We'll leave it at that.
Any sufficiently large organization will invariable fuck up and fuck over those that it ostensibly tries to serve. This applies to corporations and governments alike.
Except that if a corporation "fucks up", that corporation faces the very real risk of going out of business. You tend not to fuck up when your very existence is on the line.
Our government has been fucking up for centuries. There's no motivation to improve when you'll be around tomorrow regardless.
Removing regulations would leave us with exploitation of workers and inevitable short sightedness to maximize current profit (for those in the position to do so) at the expense of most of the rest of us (see the early industrial revolution, or modern day sweat shops)
Exploitation of workers? A worker can't be "exploited" if he's allowed to seek a job elsewhere. Laws that try to prevent the so-called "exploitation" of workers, such as France's law that makes firing people illegal in most cases, simply discourages companies from hiring anyone.
The early industrial revolution saw the rise of the union and the improvement in many peoples' standards of living. Tradesmen definitely suffered, but how many people who lacked specialized trade skills could afford to pay a cobbler for shoes, or a tailor for clothing? Although many people suffered as resources were drastically reallocated to take advantage of new technology, our country as a whole became wealthier and unions and government eliminated labor abuses. I'm sure that you personally would rather have computers, modern appliances, the internet, cars, and everything else that came from the factory system rather than the alternative: eke out a subsistence living farming just so that a cobbler can make shoes at a cost of several hundred times more than they need to be.
Modern day sweatshops in pre-industrial nations are absolutely essential to developing economies. When you face the choice of starvation or menial employment, even the menial employment is a blessing. Although labor tends to be exploited in pre-industrial economies, this lasts only as long as there is just one sweatshop. If any others try to take advantage of the cheap labor, they begin competing for the same workers. This gives them the most important freedom a laborer has: choice of occupation.
As long there is only one sweatshop, the worker has the choice of starvation or menial employment. If you get rid of the sweatshop, the worker is left with starvation. If more sweatshops move in, he has a choice of where to work. If enough "sweatshops" move in, the shops have to compete with each other through wages and health benefits to attract workers. You make the shops compete with each other for the workers, not the workers compete with each other for the shops' jobs.
Personally I think the government should claim ownership of ALL lines, and then remove all regulations. Meaning if you want to build new lines and compete with the government, thats fine, but you're going to have to do it on your own penny.
Too bad confiscation of private property is illegal and unconstitutional. That's what socialist and communist states do.
Besides, subsidies very rarely make sense - especially when the recipients large, profitable corporations. You can fix most of the problems by removing the regulations and removing subsidies.
The government has a horrible track record of efficiency. The Social Security slush fund is filled with T-Bills - the government is writing IOU notes to itself so Congress can spend your social security check. Congressmen get paid $dough for barely 100 days of work and little accomplished. The USDA does little of use other than enforce food quality standards, yet only a handful of its myriad of sub-agencies are actually tasked with this. The armed services ordered $400 toilet seats, and the FBI is scrapping a ridiculously expensive, over-budget computer system it purchased for another more expensive one - and they still don't know what they want it to do. The government decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it could provide passenger service much more efficiently than railroad companies (which the governmentalso regulated into maintaining unused passenger routes, because evidently the only way people can travel is by train). Now, look at the mess AMTRAK has become - it's bleeding cache, it's stops were decided for political reasons rather than where there were actual passengers.
Government has a horrible track record in "efficiency" because the individual agents of the government are motiviated not to provide the best possible services to the nation, but to keep their desk and telephone another term.
I hear you saying "If this is true, then it would be easy for private corporations to do it on 'their own penny', right?" Wrong. You just took every telephone, cable, and fiber line in the United States. Building new lines apart from these is worthless - an ISP is useful because it can connect you to the rest of the internet, not just the two ends of the cable the telco just rebuilt between your house and itself.
Also, look at places like India and some middle eastern countries that actually did this and have one official government telco. They're shutting downVoIP services and censoring the internet.
often "the highest price the market can bear" turns out to be a blisteringly stupid idea
Except that, as you pointed out, bad PR makes "the highest price the market can bear" rather low. If you don't shoot for this price, you're screwing over your suppliers, your shareholders, your employees, and anybody at all associated with your company. Seeking the market-bearing price requires good PR, corporate citizenship, etc.
Perhaps consider the intentions of the framers. Thomas Jefferson said that "a little revolution now and then is a good thing", and the "shot heard 'round the world" was in defense of a private cache of arms about to be confiscated by the British.
Jefferson, at least, saw revolution as another check against the government and weapons as a way to enable the citizenry to do this.
This is an "emperor with no clothes" thing - if you can't tell the difference, you must not be an experienced gamer. Since I'm an experienced gamer, I can tell the difference. HORSE PUCKY, boy!
Naw, latency is an easily measured and quantified number and evidently this card does lower your latency somewhat.
How much that "somewhat" is noticeable is debatable. For those spending $bucks a month for high-speed internet for their $buckbucksbucks gaming rig, a crappy NIC is going to be rather bothersome. Go talk to a rabid "knife-makes-you-run-faster" CounterStrike player and ask him about the importance of latency.
But, for the rest of us, a NIC isn't really a bottleneck and onboard/generic PCI NICs do just fine. It's not "noticeable" enough.
Think of it as "online gamer viagra" - lower your ping by 5 ms!
Actually, the "hello world" program using the native Win32 API is:
You don't need 100 lines of code, obviously. The WinMain function can be a little intimidating, unless you consider that the parameters actually make ince. hInstance is a handle to your program in memory - you only need this if you want to dig icons or other resources out of your EXE while it's running. hPrevInstance is no longer used. szCmdLine is - you guessed it - the command line (rarely used) and iCmdShow is whether your program should be starting maximized, minimized, etc (but can be ignored.)
Granted, the 100 lines of code comes in when you want to make a "real" Windows app - have a real window that responds to events. But, all this entails is filling out a struct that describes your window, creating the window from that struct, and setting up your message queue. About 1 page of code, but it's the same for every program and you can copy/paste.
MFC makes this easier, of course, but that's C++.
Price and demand are entirely different concepts. I'll refer you to Wikipedia.
The demand curve is the graphical representation of demand - how much consumers are willing to buy at each and every price level. How much people are willing to pay has nothing to do with how much you want them to pay.
There are a number of things that affect demand, public relations included. You are correct in saying that price and PR are entirely different, but I made absolutely no reference to price.
Except supply and demand isn't the only factor. There's also longer-term issues like PR.
PR shifts the demand curve to the right (good PR) or the left (bad PR). They're one in the same.
I doubt he used the Visual COBOL IDE to write the assembly; in C++ (at least Microsoft's Visual Studio 6.0 flavor it it) you put your assembly in an __asm{} block. No need to boot another IDE.
But... I didn't know there was such a thing as Visual COBOL. Or that it worked without a tape reel.
Do you assume anyone with Faith is a hypocrite?
Science and religion aren't exactly opposed to each other. It is true that science cannot prove the existence of God any more than the existance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but it is also true that science cannot disprove the existence of God.
That's why it's called "Faith." For the same reasons, it's foolhardy to try to use the scientific vernacular to articulate matters of faith; science is a wholly inadequate tool for reasoning out the existence/nonexistence of a divine being.
If for no other reason, look at Faith from the view of the pragmatist. Although any group has its asshats, the truly faithful have morals, try to be good people in any way they are called, and in my experience are happy. The "evangelical athiests" I know are angry, bitter, elitist, and destructive. Look past the individual: fascism, nazism, and communism are actually perfectly sensical and rational outside some external source of morals.
I can see various counterpoints involving the crusades to trickle up, but stay them a moment. Are kings seeking wealth and power, and a then-corrupt Roman bureacracy actually examples of Faith and religion, or of more secular, political motives?
The point: Believing in something higher than your own mortal self is not a rejection of science. Not everyone who listens to an iPod "enjoying its effect", the product of science, is rejecting Faith or religion. Science cannot disprove the existence of God; by the very definition of an Almighty, this is impossible. There is no reason outside politics of convenience (think secular liberals or witch burners) that the two cannot coexist.