I've worked out what the real reason is - it's so simple when you think about it...
The Reality Distortion Field Generator is based in New York, right? Something that powerful's gotta be some kind of building sized installation, with its own special connection to the electrical grid, and there's no way Apple can afford to move it all to Boston. It would be a nightmare.
Aha...I have thought of an answer to my own question - perhaps Apple are annoyed because the first they heard about the 'Switch' was when it popped up on iCal after IDG published their updated calendar?:-)
Tim
"And so I was in Boston, but it was like, really busy...all the cabs were beeping their horns...it was like...beep beep beep beep beep...and then I fell over, and, like, half of my keynote was gone...and I was, like, huh? Boston devoured my keynote. It was a really good keynote. And then I had to write it again, and I had to do it fast, so it wasn't as good. It's kind of...a bummer.
So the next year we did it in New York, and it was so much easier. I'm never going back.
My name's Steve Jobs, and I'm an iCEO. Can you pass me that rattle? I think it's mine."
Ok, I live in the UK, and I seem to be missing something - I don't understand the reasoning behind this - could some Americans fill me in?
Apple HQ is in Cupertino which is already pretty far from NYC, I thought. Now MacWorld's going to be in Boston instead. A brief consultation of my Atlas reveals this is not significantly farther away from Cupertino. I can't imagine the geography is a problem - so what is the problem?
Is it just that NYC is 'cooler' than Boston? I saw how excited Jobs was to announce the Apple Store opening in NYC - is this coolness really the only reason? Is Boston a run-down dump? Is it hard to fly to? Is it a logistics nightmare? Do Apple have a big office in NYC, but not in Boston?
Or is it just an excuse for Apple to not go to the east coast MacWorld because they need to save money?
Heh...I just reread the Torvalds/Tanenbaum exchange, and was amused to see this from Tanenbaum on the newer and better CPUs that would be appearing:
What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. They will run old MS-DOS programs by interpreting the 80386 in software.
I found that funny, considering what Linus does for a living now:-)
Do I need to say "Saturn the car, not the planet", if I'm talking about a new 4 door sedan?
Well, I'm from the UK, and until a couple of years ago (when I went to the USA) I had never heard of Saturn cars.
So yes, you need to say it.
On the other hand, I am also fed up of seeing things announced on slashdot by name only, with no description at all of what it is. Even the goddamn press release took about 4 paras to mention what it was talking about. Somebody needs to learn how to write press releases.
From the comments it seems that there are many people like me who read the story, and found their first thought to be "What the blinking flip is it?!"
Yeah, sure, you can validate md5sums on binaries. But, no one can quite be sure that the binary is built from the official, non-trojaned source, even if they give the offical checksum for the distro.
Huh? Isn't that kind of the point of using md5?
If you have an md5 checksum for a binary (and assuming that it's from a reliable source), then why can't you use this to validate the binary is correct?
You could, in theory, construct a trojaned-binary that had the same md5 checksum, but I had always thought that this was so difficult as to be infeasible/not worth worrying about.
What am I missing? Are you saying the md5 checksum is being spoofed too?
I don't see how that could come about from open source software
I cant imagine it, so it cannot be done. Riiight.
I've already seen someone invoke Godwin's Law in this discussion (impressive), but I'll just invoke Clarke's 1st Law:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
I'm curious - this is different to Windows in what way?
That was evilviper's point, after all. Windows supports double-click, or you can use the Open command on the file menu, or press Return. (Certainly back to Windows 95 - I just checked - thanks VMWare!)
Blaming MS for inventing double-clicking seems harsh at best. It smacks of "Apple invented all the good stuff and Microsoft stole it, except when it's bad, in which case Microsoft invented it, the bozos. Even if it appeared first on the Mac."
I think that's what was bugging evilviper.
Indeed, it was the difficulty and hidden nature of double clicks that led Microsoft to create the Start menu. They watched new users trying to use Program Manager to launch a word processor - the results were that new users don't think of double-clicking - nor they did think of using File-Open. So the Start menu was created, which listed all the programs installed, and allowed them to be started with a single click.
That's also why you get that "Click here to run programs" message bouncing onto the screen the first time you run Windows 95.
Tim
Disclaimer: I use Macs and PCs. Hell, I even used to use Acorn machines.
Now I could be wrong, but wouldn't this new keyboard exacerbate this even more? Muscles which are overused for small movements will simply lock up; sounds to me like we should find a way to increase the forces while maintaining the best possible speed.
I'm also sceptical - I worked with a guy who had RSI and had to be off work for 6 months. He told me that apparently one of the problems is not pressing the keys - it's the lifting of the finger afterwards which is the movement that causes the problems - hence you should use a nice springy keyboard. I think this is why people always pop up in these discussions and say how great those old IBM PC keyboards are (the ones with a sheet of steel in them which makes them so damn heavy).
Seems to me that this keyboard gives you no help whatsoever in this regard, but of course it depends how hard you have to 'press' a key to get it to register I guess.
Having multiple monitors is nothing new, they were doing that 10 years ago with the Windows SDK and Codeview via a serial port to a 2nd terminal monitor.
As were Apple, but it was a standard part of their GUI 10 years ago. More than 10 years ago, actually, if I remember correctly.
Someone once pointed out to me that a lot of people know how to quit the default Unix editors without writing anything back to the file, and don't know how to do anything else.:)
e.g. for vi, they know:q! and that's it
I used to know Emacs, but it's been so long. Meta-C, Meta-X?
I have found that a lot of people I have contacted have not been very helpful with license issues to be honest. I know that I have only done this a few times but a lot people spew the GPL rhetoric like fanatics...
Oh, I'm sure many of them do. But then, they have that right.
I want free and open software too but I want to be able to sell programs (sometimes not always) too.
A perfectly reasonable desire. I am sure many of these 'fanatics' might be happy for you to do that. It's just not necessarily why they wrote that code in the first place.
To be precise:
It is a strange hard balance of using good free code like GNU code (gcc, flex, bison, emacs... etc) and still being able to make money at it.
Bear in mind that this code was not necessarily written to help you make money.
Maybe viral is not the best word for the license since there is some negative energy in that word...
I can see lots of problems that might come up with using GPL code. Luckily, most people, (both of us included) have discovered the vaccine* that protects us from that particular virus - i.e., check the license. The GPL, like any license that is attached to 'free' code, can be annoying, especially when it categorically prevents you from using the code in your project.
I'm not sure I'd ever have the gall to complain about that, though:)
As for you being a whiner - I don't think so; you merely seem to be expressing a problem associated with usage of the GPL. There are people who complain much more loudly than you do about the GPL. Again, I'm not sure how they have the nerve to complain about free stuff, but hey ho, there it is.
Tinkerty-tonk.
Tim
* Sorry, can't remember if vaccines protect you from viruses - it's late - but you know what I mean:-)
1) Globals very bad. File Statics bad. The number of globals and statics should be small enough that you have no problem remembering who's who.
Like gotos, a few globals or statics used wisely can be very useful. FWIW, I rarely use globals (usually when knocking something up to test an idea), and file statics I pretty much never use - I use class statics.
Also, the names should be VERY distinctive.
Did you miss the part where I said I put "g_" or "s_" at the start of globals/statics? What's the alternative? ThisIsAGlobalVariable_NumberOfUsers? Well, it's VERY distinctive, but I'm not sure it's what I'd use.
If you need a convention for identifying globals or file statics you are ALREADY doing something wrong.
I have a convention for globals and statics so that the poor maintenance programmer (you remember them? They don't know nearly as much about your code as you do) gets a big warning plastered across the variable, saying "This is not local!" I consider this good, and certainly not evidence that I am doing something wrong. If you think globals/statics are inherently bad, go read about the Singleton design pattern.
2) Members are either accessed off an object or within an object. In the first case it is very apparent they are members, in the second case the only things you could confuse them with would be locals or function parms.
Yeah, in an ideal world. But you're not in an ideal world - you're in a world where other programmers usually have to read and understand your code under time pressure. Personally, I give those guys all the help I need - not least because one day it will be me thanking the original author for making things clear.
As for "only" being able to confuse them with locals or parameters, I put an "m_" at the front precisely so it's not possible to confuse them. At all.
3) Locals should be limited in scope enough that you can see the whole scope at one time. Therefor[sic] you don't need a way to differentiate them.
4) Functions should be small enough that you can see the whole function. The parmeter names should be obvious anyway.
"Small enough?" So they fit on a screen? So I can't have functions larger than about 45 lines? (What I can see on screen)
"Should"? Citations please. (Mine? See Section 5.5, "How Long Can a Routine Be?" in "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell. The research is by no means conclusive, and sometimes seems to suggest longer routines are better)
OpenOffice and AbiWord both open simple Word documents without formatting errors just fine. AbiWord will even open moderately complex Word documents accurately.
Really? I normally use MS Word, but try out Abiword every few months. So far I haven't switched precisely because it can't open simple Word documents without formatting errors.
And I don't use complex Word features - I use standard heading styles, bulleted lists and sometimes a (simple) table or two in the documents I write.
Sigh. I just tried out the latest version of Abiword (1.0.3) to check the current status. Ignoring the weird redraw bug with the left margin on initial load (on vanilla Windows XP, not SP1), I just tried to load a simple 3 page Word doc I wrote the other day. It's really simple - headings, paragraphs, and bullet lists. Not even a table in sight.
Abiword crashed when trying to load it. Just disappeared completely - no SEH handler or anything, it just disappeared.
This concludes my 4-monthly evaluation of Abiword:-)
Slashdot Mirror
You'd figure with all those guns they could shoot some of the fish in my barrel :-)
Tim
I've worked out what the real reason is - it's so simple when you think about it...
The Reality Distortion Field Generator is based in New York, right? Something that powerful's gotta be some kind of building sized installation, with its own special connection to the electrical grid, and there's no way Apple can afford to move it all to Boston. It would be a nightmare.
The case is solv-ed!
Tim
Aha...I have thought of an answer to my own question - perhaps Apple are annoyed because the first they heard about the 'Switch' was when it popped up on iCal after IDG published their updated calendar? :-)
Tim
"And so I was in Boston, but it was like, really busy...all the cabs were beeping their horns...it was like...beep beep beep beep beep...and then I fell over, and, like, half of my keynote was gone...and I was, like, huh? Boston devoured my keynote. It was a really good keynote. And then I had to write it again, and I had to do it fast, so it wasn't as good. It's kind of...a bummer.
So the next year we did it in New York, and it was so much easier. I'm never going back.
My name's Steve Jobs, and I'm an iCEO. Can you pass me that rattle? I think it's mine."
Ok, I live in the UK, and I seem to be missing something - I don't understand the reasoning behind this - could some Americans fill me in?
Apple HQ is in Cupertino which is already pretty far from NYC, I thought. Now MacWorld's going to be in Boston instead. A brief consultation of my Atlas reveals this is not significantly farther away from Cupertino. I can't imagine the geography is a problem - so what is the problem?
Is it just that NYC is 'cooler' than Boston? I saw how excited Jobs was to announce the Apple Store opening in NYC - is this coolness really the only reason? Is Boston a run-down dump? Is it hard to fly to? Is it a logistics nightmare? Do Apple have a big office in NYC, but not in Boston?
Or is it just an excuse for Apple to not go to the east coast MacWorld because they need to save money?
Just curious...
Tim
Heh...I just reread the Torvalds/Tanenbaum exchange, and was amused to see this from Tanenbaum on the newer and better CPUs that would be appearing:
What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. They will run old MS-DOS programs by interpreting the 80386 in software.
I found that funny, considering what Linus does for a living now :-)
Tim
"And...umm....I'm gonna have to ask you to go ahead and play Everquest on Sundays, too..."
Tim
Well, I'm from the UK, and until a couple of years ago (when I went to the USA) I had never heard of Saturn cars.
So yes, you need to say it.
On the other hand, I am also fed up of seeing things announced on slashdot by name only, with no description at all of what it is. Even the goddamn press release took about 4 paras to mention what it was talking about. Somebody needs to learn how to write press releases.
From the comments it seems that there are many people like me who read the story, and found their first thought to be "What the blinking flip is it?!"
Tim
So what you actually mean is, instead of saying this:
You should have said this:
as it's more accurate. And probably less contentious.
Hmmm....I think I feel another exception coming on... :)
Tim
Proof by counterexample: I write free programs for Windows - so do a few thousand others, the last time I checked.
Ooh, that was easy! Give me another one! :-)
Tim
Oh great, so the next time you take a picture, all you will be able to see on the LCD is "Hacked by Chinese!"... ;-)
Tim
Wow, I really hope no-one out there wanted to read the book, because you just spoiled it quite effectively for them...
Tim
Is there a better way of making sure you have the correct source files?
Gentoo goes for the sources directly, and verifies they are correct before doing anything with them.
How? By visual inspection? Code review?
Tim
Huh? Isn't that kind of the point of using md5?
If you have an md5 checksum for a binary (and assuming that it's from a reliable source), then why can't you use this to validate the binary is correct?
You could, in theory, construct a trojaned-binary that had the same md5 checksum, but I had always thought that this was so difficult as to be infeasible/not worth worrying about.
What am I missing? Are you saying the md5 checksum is being spoofed too?
Tim
I cant imagine it, so it cannot be done. Riiight.
I've already seen someone invoke Godwin's Law in this discussion (impressive), but I'll just invoke Clarke's 1st Law:
Tim
I'm curious - this is different to Windows in what way?
That was evilviper's point, after all. Windows supports double-click, or you can use the Open command on the file menu, or press Return. (Certainly back to Windows 95 - I just checked - thanks VMWare!)
Blaming MS for inventing double-clicking seems harsh at best. It smacks of "Apple invented all the good stuff and Microsoft stole it, except when it's bad, in which case Microsoft invented it, the bozos. Even if it appeared first on the Mac."
I think that's what was bugging evilviper.
Indeed, it was the difficulty and hidden nature of double clicks that led Microsoft to create the Start menu. They watched new users trying to use Program Manager to launch a word processor - the results were that new users don't think of double-clicking - nor they did think of using File-Open. So the Start menu was created, which listed all the programs installed, and allowed them to be started with a single click.
That's also why you get that "Click here to run programs" message bouncing onto the screen the first time you run Windows 95.
Tim
Disclaimer: I use Macs and PCs. Hell, I even used to use Acorn machines.
I'm also sceptical - I worked with a guy who had RSI and had to be off work for 6 months. He told me that apparently one of the problems is not pressing the keys - it's the lifting of the finger afterwards which is the movement that causes the problems - hence you should use a nice springy keyboard. I think this is why people always pop up in these discussions and say how great those old IBM PC keyboards are (the ones with a sheet of steel in them which makes them so damn heavy).
Seems to me that this keyboard gives you no help whatsoever in this regard, but of course it depends how hard you have to 'press' a key to get it to register I guess.
Tim
I'm sorry - did you say that out loud?
You have to be skilled with an OS for it not to crash?!
Sheesh. Kidding, right? Or just trolling?
Tim
I think the problem comes from trying to buy iPod software from Apple that runs on Linux. I suggest you try it.
Tim
Or some more Unix stuff, of course :)
Tim
As were Apple, but it was a standard part of their GUI 10 years ago. More than 10 years ago, actually, if I remember correctly.
Tim
Someone once pointed out to me that a lot of people know how to quit the default Unix editors without writing anything back to the file, and don't know how to do anything else. :)
e.g. for vi, they know :q! and that's it
I used to know Emacs, but it's been so long. Meta-C, Meta-X?
Tim
The words 'sock' and 'drawer' spring irresistibly to mind.
Tim
Oh, I'm sure many of them do. But then, they have that right.
I want free and open software too but I want to be able to sell programs (sometimes not always) too.
A perfectly reasonable desire. I am sure many of these 'fanatics' might be happy for you to do that. It's just not necessarily why they wrote that code in the first place.
To be precise:
It is a strange hard balance of using good free code like GNU code (gcc, flex, bison, emacs... etc) and still being able to make money at it.
Bear in mind that this code was not necessarily written to help you make money.
Maybe viral is not the best word for the license since there is some negative energy in that word...
I can see lots of problems that might come up with using GPL code. Luckily, most people, (both of us included) have discovered the vaccine* that protects us from that particular virus - i.e., check the license. The GPL, like any license that is attached to 'free' code, can be annoying, especially when it categorically prevents you from using the code in your project.
I'm not sure I'd ever have the gall to complain about that, though :)
As for you being a whiner - I don't think so; you merely seem to be expressing a problem associated with usage of the GPL. There are people who complain much more loudly than you do about the GPL. Again, I'm not sure how they have the nerve to complain about free stuff, but hey ho, there it is.
Tinkerty-tonk.
Tim
* Sorry, can't remember if vaccines protect you from viruses - it's late - but you know what I mean :-)
Like gotos, a few globals or statics used wisely can be very useful. FWIW, I rarely use globals (usually when knocking something up to test an idea), and file statics I pretty much never use - I use class statics.
Also, the names should be VERY distinctive.
Did you miss the part where I said I put "g_" or "s_" at the start of globals/statics? What's the alternative? ThisIsAGlobalVariable_NumberOfUsers? Well, it's VERY distinctive, but I'm not sure it's what I'd use.
If you need a convention for identifying globals or file statics you are ALREADY doing something wrong.
I have a convention for globals and statics so that the poor maintenance programmer (you remember them? They don't know nearly as much about your code as you do) gets a big warning plastered across the variable, saying "This is not local!" I consider this good, and certainly not evidence that I am doing something wrong. If you think globals/statics are inherently bad, go read about the Singleton design pattern.
2) Members are either accessed off an object or within an object. In the first case it is very apparent they are members, in the second case the only things you could confuse them with would be locals or function parms.
Yeah, in an ideal world. But you're not in an ideal world - you're in a world where other programmers usually have to read and understand your code under time pressure. Personally, I give those guys all the help I need - not least because one day it will be me thanking the original author for making things clear.
As for "only" being able to confuse them with locals or parameters, I put an "m_" at the front precisely so it's not possible to confuse them. At all.
3) Locals should be limited in scope enough that you can see the whole scope at one time. Therefor[sic] you don't need a way to differentiate them.
4) Functions should be small enough that you can see the whole function. The parmeter names should be obvious anyway.
"Small enough?" So they fit on a screen? So I can't have functions larger than about 45 lines? (What I can see on screen)
"Should"? Citations please. (Mine? See Section 5.5, "How Long Can a Routine Be?" in "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell. The research is by no means conclusive, and sometimes seems to suggest longer routines are better)
Tim
Really? I normally use MS Word, but try out Abiword every few months. So far I haven't switched precisely because it can't open simple Word documents without formatting errors.
And I don't use complex Word features - I use standard heading styles, bulleted lists and sometimes a (simple) table or two in the documents I write.
Sigh. I just tried out the latest version of Abiword (1.0.3) to check the current status. Ignoring the weird redraw bug with the left margin on initial load (on vanilla Windows XP, not SP1), I just tried to load a simple 3 page Word doc I wrote the other day. It's really simple - headings, paragraphs, and bullet lists. Not even a table in sight.
Abiword crashed when trying to load it. Just disappeared completely - no SEH handler or anything, it just disappeared.
This concludes my 4-monthly evaluation of Abiword :-)
Tim