Oh geeze.. This is almost too foolish bother with... The lottery is based on chance. Pure Chance. Killer games are based on quality, marketing, and consumer needs
But in a complex system, evaluating this isn't easy; moreover, the people in position to do this evaluating aren't necessarily competent at doing so, and may have ulterior motives (getting a bigger budget) that interfere with making the smart decisions. If everyone did competently analyze the situation with full knowledge and understanding, then there would be no lousy games or games that never ship at all. Clearly, given that there are plenty of games in those two categories, there are plenty of people with access to funds who aren't making the smart decisions, and are giving the industry a bad name.
I personally was part of a development team that lost lots of money for Revell...
Interesting that most users are happy to pay for a development environment. Money well spent in my opinion.
The thing with closed-source dev tools, though, it that you can't fix them, and with dev tools you have a very high percentage of users who could fix problems. I'd be happy to pay for tool improvement (for example, I want diff tools that will only highlight the words that change on a line if it's very similar to the line in the file compared to), but I want the resulting tools open. Figuring out a way to do that practically (and in a way the suits will trust) may be a problem. Open source isn't necessary, but available source (and the right to distribute at least small patches) is.
One possibility might be just that. A tool that uses gcc as the compiler, uses makefiles and the autoconf system and just provides an easy-to-use wrapper for the less Linux-savvy could be quite popular.
Clearly the people who took the survey, a self-selected bunch who are interested in Borland stuff, want Delphi for Linux. I would be stunned, then, if this isn't their main product. Or even better would be a base IDE that can work with gcc-based development and has an optional Delphi "plug-in." I know I'd buy it.
It is nice to see that the main interest is people currently doing mainly Windows stuff that want to do Linux stuff. It's a sign that the growth curve for Linux will continue its steep upwards slope.
Windows already does everything KDE currently does, will do, and will ever do.
I have tried multiple virtual desktop managers for Windows NT. I have yet to find one that works in the presence of Visual C++ in debug mode. KDE handles multiple desktops quite nicely.
You can get themes for Windows too and you've been able to get them since Windows 95
What, the collections of a few bitmaps, a background, some cursors, and default window colors? I think most Linux themes are more flexible than that.
For example, not a theme issue directly, but KDE will allow menus to be attached either to each application, like in Windows, or the top of the screen, like on Macs.
My favorite newsreader is Agent, but I can't run it on linux w/o a reverse-engineered compatibility layer that doesn't work correctly (WINE)
Have you tried the 073199 version of Wine? Much improved. My Wine works pretty well, except for displaying images, etc. Not sure if there are any settings I can change to fix that.
My long-term hope is for Mozilla's news reader to provide the same functionality. Communicator's definitely needs work, joining of binaries in particular.
I'd say Wine already picked up the pace. My company's Windows app now sort of works with Wine as of the 073199 release, whereas it crashed shortly after the splash screen with the releases of six months ago. There's still refresh problems with it, but otherwise it's close to usable.
My hope is that demonstrating that it works with Wine will influence our higher-ups to consider a full-fledged port to Linux.
Re:Moderators - Can't "suppress"
on
Quack!
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· Score: 2
Given the language in those posts that were moderated down, I can only say, "Thank you." If you can't argue a point without a liberal sprinkling of expletives, you aren't worth listening to. Ditto if you can't figure out how to use Slashdot to hide all Jon Katz articles from your sight forever.
I've only seen the movie once, but all I remember was seeing [Darth Maul] stabbed, followed by a fall off-screen.
As my four-year-old says, "He lost his pants." Obi-Wan slashes him across the midsection, and then you clearly see two separate pieces of Darth Maul falling into the obligatory nigh-infinitely deep pit that seems to be required for just about every light saber duel.
I think you're confusing his death with that of Qui-Gon, who was killed with a stabbing thrust.
The article says that SGI will integrate IRIX with Linux and release the result.
Probably a large part of that is XFS. It'll probably be a lot easier to get people to switch over if they don't have to reformat their hard drives; just install a new version of linux, set up a LILO-type configuration, and reboot. The IRIX can even remain until the user is happy with Linux.
Hah. Nice try, but since the melting point of a styrofoam cup is about 150 degrees (IIRC) and the hottest a coffee could ever get is, ooh, maybe 103 absolute tops, it's hardly likely to be the truth now, is it?
This a 'Merkin site, we use 'Merkin units. Find yourself a fahrenheit-celsius converter and come back.
Okay thats like totally screwed. Oh Sure a normal person really has no need for e jet.. but don't OFFER it if yer not gonna follow your promise.
...and if your real estate agent accidentally writes down $15,000 instead of $150,000 as the selling price for your home, I'll demand that you sell it to me for that price too.
Pepsi made a mistake. The only question is the cost of the consequence of that mistake. Giving the jet or cash equivalent is not a reasonable cost, especially since the guy could have checked with Pepsi that the offer was bonafide but did not -- because he expressly wanted to get to this point and win the case. He's a parasite, screw him.
It's a matter of having someone accepting liability.
Bingo! After all, this isn't a case of hospitals buying off-the-shelf PCs, installing slackware, and then perusing Freshmeat for MRI control software. Generally you get a package of machine plus software, and the software development/testing costs are part of the cost of buying the machine. Open source isn't really an issue, since you aren't supplying source for someone else to debug, and you don't have to worry about someone else releasing a CD with your software for $1.99 -- they still need the machine. Now you might snarf some algorithms off the net, test the hell out of them, and then incorporate them into the MRI software, but the Free Software Bazaar isn't going to start receiving offers to write controllers for radiation emitters any time soon.
My own wish would be to have a few permanent slashdot discussion areas. To name two of them, news, and Slashdot ideas/bugs. Maybe have the comments deleted after 3 days or something.
Slashdot could run a newserver, but Rob seems to be phobic about learning how to do it... sigh. Much faster loading of new messages, kill filters, decent conversations, etc. Maybe some day...
Let's take some generic civ, and we'll say that the average woman in that civ has 6 kids.
Many of them have that many kids because so few live to adulthood, and with that many you assure having someone to support you in your old age. Up the survival rate and the birth rate tends to go down.
In 30-50 years, we can make a population completely dependant upon us for survival.
We're all pretty much dependent on modern technology for survival. The land of the U.S. wouldn't support 250 million hunter-gatherers.
Re:KDevelop most promising Linux IDE yet...
on
Some KDE news
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· Score: 2
It seems to me IDEs should be one of the most effective applications for open source development. A significant percentage of programmers want one on a variety of platforms, its users are mostly capable of improving it, and having an IDE lowers the barrier to new developers for projects.
SlickEdit looks pretty cool though, it's the first place I've seen intra-line file differencing as opposed to plain old line-by-line file differencing. I've been thinking of hacking a version of diff to have an option to do that, or perhaps a post-process filter on the diff output.
So why not spend valuable research time and money on something that kills so many more people a year (no... not Windows) like Cancer.
Cancer may kill more in the U.S., but in Africa, AIDS is epidemic. (Oh, and by the way, a high percentage of those cancer deaths are likewise preventable -- lung cancer from cigarette smoking.) 1.4 million people in Africa died from AIDS last year. The cost is staggering, in terms of caring for the dying, lost productivity from the young adults killed by it, the large number of orphans created, etc. And the number of cases is expected to rise.
Furthermore, with AIDS, you have the fear of possible mutation. What would happen if a strain of AIDS became airborne, like Tuberculosis, or could be passed through bodily fluids? It wouldn't take long for it to get from Africa to New York.
Education programs are being used in Africa to try to reduce risky behaviour as well, with some degree of success.
What you can or can't do depends on details of your situation which you haven't specified.
Are you 18+? If so, you can open your own bank account and deposit the money there, and your father will not be able to access it directly. Then you can control the purse strings, and can insist your father use whatever you give him the appropriate manner, or pay off any debts he has incurred directly. Thus if he's still wasting money on drinks, drugs, gambling, etc., you can limit the further damage he can do. Also, this would enable you to set aside funds for moving, getting a higher-paying job, etc. If you're under 18, you would have to petition the court for adult status, I'm not sure exactly how this works. (Check into what the gymnast Dominique Moceanu was doing, she was trying for this sort of status.)
Above all, don't panic! It must be frustrating not to control your earnings, but if you are less than 18, you're still approaching that age, and then you will have control over it. And in the meantime, you're gaining useful experience and contacts that will help you in future endeavors.
If you respond to this message with more info, I can give you more specific advice. I have no particular qualifications other than being older than your average slashdotter...
(After all, when was the last time you saw an AP reporter who even knew what a WHOIS lookup was, let alone one who would consider that the concept of "contact information" for domains in a country like China might be completely different from that in the States.)
Don't you think that maybe people who would know how to do this, for instance U.S. Government hackers who might not want to go public, might contact reporters and give them enough info and background to do such checks? I'm sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes we simply don't know.
Re:Huray! Now, more people use C++!!
on
GCC 2.95 Released
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· Score: 1
From an OO perspective, that is 'equality'. Two objects that happen to contain the same information, are still two different objects, and thus not equal.
This is not correct.
Equality for char *s is comparison of addresses, because they are pointers. Compare two pointers and it's the addresses that determine equality. Strings stored in char *s are not truly objects. If you want to compare string contents, you should use a string object of some sort or a comparator function. If you want to use char *s with an STL algorithm, you'll need to provide a comparator function object that does the comparison technique you desire. For example, I have two sets, one of which has as its keys iterators into the other set. By providing a special comparing function object, the iterator set is sorted on a different property of the key than the other set.
Re:Huray! Now, more people use C++!!
on
GCC 2.95 Released
·
· Score: 1
The other thing about C++ is the STL. Don't even make me talk about the STL, I just tried to use it in a program and I'm now trying to remove all references to it. [...] my hash tables [...]
Hash tables are not part of the standard library as defined in the C++ standard. Thus it isn't too surprising that they might cause you problems. You can't blame the language for features that aren't part of it.
If you took two char *'s and compared them, it would compare the addresses. Don't expect the default behaviour of C++ to do anything different. If you wish to compare based on the contents of the strings, you should be able to provide an alternative comparator in the template.
(It's hard to include much code in Slashdot due to character munging. If you want specific help, demunge my e-mail address and e-mail me.)
For example, if you had a std::set of char *s, it would just compare by value. But if you do std::set mySet; Then it will sort using the () operator of MyComparator, which you can tie to strcmp or something like that. You might also want to consider using a string type instead of char*'s, for internationalization reasons.
One of my co-workers starting using STL two days ago, and came to me for a little starting help. Two hours later he came back and was gushing about how cool it was to encode powerful, efficient algorithms in just a few lines of code. Perhaps you just need another me handy? Ask for help on comp.lang.c++.moderated.
You can have my C++ compiler when you peel it from my cold, dead fingers.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh geeze.. This is almost too foolish bother with... The lottery is based on chance. Pure Chance. Killer games are based on quality, marketing, and consumer needs
But in a complex system, evaluating this isn't easy; moreover, the people in position to do this evaluating aren't necessarily competent at doing so, and may have ulterior motives (getting a bigger budget) that interfere with making the smart decisions. If everyone did competently analyze the situation with full knowledge and understanding, then there would be no lousy games or games that never ship at all. Clearly, given that there are plenty of games in those two categories, there are plenty of people with access to funds who aren't making the smart decisions, and are giving the industry a bad name.
I personally was part of a development team that lost lots of money for Revell...
Interesting that most users are happy to pay for a development environment. Money well spent in my opinion.
The thing with closed-source dev tools, though, it that you can't fix them, and with dev tools you have a very high percentage of users who could fix problems. I'd be happy to pay for tool improvement (for example, I want diff tools that will only highlight the words that change on a line if it's very similar to the line in the file compared to), but I want the resulting tools open. Figuring out a way to do that practically (and in a way the suits will trust) may be a problem. Open source isn't necessary, but available source (and the right to distribute at least small patches) is.
One possibility might be just that. A tool that uses gcc as the compiler, uses makefiles and the autoconf system and just provides an easy-to-use wrapper for the less Linux-savvy could be quite popular.
Clearly the people who took the survey, a self-selected bunch who are interested in Borland stuff, want Delphi for Linux. I would be stunned, then, if this isn't their main product. Or even better would be a base IDE that can work with gcc-based development and has an optional Delphi "plug-in." I know I'd buy it.
It is nice to see that the main interest is people currently doing mainly Windows stuff that want to do Linux stuff. It's a sign that the growth curve for Linux will continue its steep upwards slope.
Windows already does everything KDE currently does, will do, and will ever do.
I have tried multiple virtual desktop managers for Windows NT. I have yet to find one that works in the presence of Visual C++ in debug mode. KDE handles multiple desktops quite nicely.
You can get themes for Windows too and you've been able to get them since Windows 95
What, the collections of a few bitmaps, a background, some cursors, and default window colors? I think most Linux themes are more flexible than that.
For example, not a theme issue directly, but KDE will allow menus to be attached either to each application, like in Windows, or the top of the screen, like on Macs.
My favorite newsreader is Agent, but I can't run it on linux w/o a reverse-engineered compatibility layer that doesn't work correctly (WINE)
Have you tried the 073199 version of Wine? Much improved. My Wine works pretty well, except for displaying images, etc. Not sure if there are any settings I can change to fix that.
My long-term hope is for Mozilla's news reader to provide the same functionality. Communicator's definitely needs work, joining of binaries in particular.
That would be Elisha Gray, who ended up founding Western Electric.
I was stunned that no one mentioned Beowulf clustering on that recent Playstation 2 article. C'mon fellow smart alecks, we're letting the side down...
>Or better, a cluster made of people
A Soylent Green cluster?
I'd say Wine already picked up the pace. My company's Windows app now sort of works with Wine as of the 073199 release, whereas it crashed shortly after the splash screen with the releases of six months ago. There's still refresh problems with it, but otherwise it's close to usable.
My hope is that demonstrating that it works with Wine will influence our higher-ups to consider a full-fledged port to Linux.
Given the language in those posts that were moderated down, I can only say, "Thank you." If you can't argue a point without a liberal sprinkling of expletives, you aren't worth listening to. Ditto if you can't figure out how to use Slashdot to hide all Jon Katz articles from your sight forever.
I've only seen the movie once, but all I remember was seeing [Darth Maul] stabbed, followed by a fall off-screen.
As my four-year-old says, "He lost his pants." Obi-Wan slashes him across the midsection, and then you clearly see two separate pieces of Darth Maul falling into the obligatory nigh-infinitely deep pit that seems to be required for just about every light saber duel.
I think you're confusing his death with that of Qui-Gon, who was killed with a stabbing thrust.
>2 - The bones are fake. They never existed. god simply put them there when the world was created.
>(why? to mess with us?)
It would be interesting, then, to see the religious reaction to a Jurrasic Park-style experiment.
I mean, Since the machine is offline because it crashes half the time, it cannot be accessed globally, therefore higher security.
Instead of "Security through obscurity", it's "Security through instability"?
The article says that SGI will integrate IRIX with Linux and release the result.
Probably a large part of that is XFS. It'll probably be a lot easier to get people to switch over if they don't have to reformat their hard drives; just install a new version of linux, set up a LILO-type configuration, and reboot. The IRIX can even remain until the user is happy with Linux.
Yeah, I particularly wonder what Linux said that was paraphrased as "[nontechnical computer users]"...
Or perhaps we should play it like Madlibs, figuring out what would be the funniest words to put inside the brackets.
Hah. Nice try, but since the melting point of a styrofoam cup is about 150 degrees (IIRC) and the hottest a coffee could ever get is, ooh, maybe 103 absolute tops, it's hardly likely to be the truth now, is it?
This a 'Merkin site, we use 'Merkin units. Find yourself a fahrenheit-celsius converter and come back.
Okay thats like totally screwed. Oh Sure a normal person really has no need for e jet.. but don't OFFER it if yer not gonna follow your promise.
...and if your real estate agent accidentally writes down $15,000 instead of $150,000 as the selling price for your home, I'll demand that you sell it to me for that price too.
Pepsi made a mistake. The only question is the cost of the consequence of that mistake. Giving the jet or cash equivalent is not a reasonable cost, especially since the guy could have checked with Pepsi that the offer was bonafide but did not -- because he expressly wanted to get to this point and win the case. He's a parasite, screw him.
It's a matter of having someone accepting liability.
Bingo! After all, this isn't a case of hospitals buying off-the-shelf PCs, installing slackware, and then perusing Freshmeat for MRI control software. Generally you get a package of machine plus software, and the software development/testing costs are part of the cost of buying the machine. Open source isn't really an issue, since you aren't supplying source for someone else to debug, and you don't have to worry about someone else releasing a CD with your software for $1.99 -- they still need the machine. Now you might snarf some algorithms off the net, test the hell out of them, and then incorporate them into the MRI software, but the Free Software Bazaar isn't going to start receiving offers to write controllers for radiation emitters any time soon.
My own wish would be to have a few permanent slashdot discussion areas. To name two of them, news, and Slashdot ideas/bugs. Maybe have the comments deleted after 3 days or something.
Slashdot could run a newserver, but Rob seems to be phobic about learning how to do it... sigh. Much faster loading of new messages, kill filters, decent conversations, etc. Maybe some day...
Let's take some generic civ, and we'll say that the average woman in that civ has 6 kids.
Many of them have that many kids because so few live to adulthood, and with that many you assure having someone to support you in your old age. Up the survival rate and the birth rate tends to go down.
In 30-50 years, we can make a population completely dependant upon us for survival.
We're all pretty much dependent on modern technology for survival. The land of the U.S. wouldn't support 250 million hunter-gatherers.
It seems to me IDEs should be one of the most effective applications for open source development. A significant percentage of programmers want one on a variety of platforms, its users are mostly capable of improving it, and having an IDE lowers the barrier to new developers for projects.
SlickEdit looks pretty cool though, it's the first place I've seen intra-line file differencing as opposed to plain old line-by-line file differencing. I've been thinking of hacking a version of diff to have an option to do that, or perhaps a post-process filter on the diff output.
So why not spend valuable research time and money on something that kills so many more people a year (no... not Windows) like Cancer.
Cancer may kill more in the U.S., but in Africa, AIDS is epidemic. (Oh, and by the way, a high percentage of those cancer deaths are likewise preventable -- lung cancer from cigarette smoking.) 1.4 million people in Africa died from AIDS last year. The cost is staggering, in terms of caring for the dying, lost productivity from the young adults killed by it, the large number of orphans created, etc. And the number of cases is expected to rise.
Furthermore, with AIDS, you have the fear of possible mutation. What would happen if a strain of AIDS became airborne, like Tuberculosis, or could be passed through bodily fluids? It wouldn't take long for it to get from Africa to New York.
Education programs are being used in Africa to try to reduce risky behaviour as well, with some degree of success.
What you can or can't do depends on details of your situation which you haven't specified.
Are you 18+? If so, you can open your own bank account and deposit the money there, and your father will not be able to access it directly. Then you can control the purse strings, and can insist your father use whatever you give him the appropriate manner, or pay off any debts he has incurred directly. Thus if he's still wasting money on drinks, drugs, gambling, etc., you can limit the further damage he can do. Also, this would enable you to set aside funds for moving, getting a higher-paying job, etc. If you're under 18, you would have to petition the court for adult status, I'm not sure exactly how this works. (Check into what the gymnast Dominique Moceanu was doing, she was trying for this sort of status.)
Above all, don't panic! It must be frustrating not to control your earnings, but if you are less than 18, you're still approaching that age, and then you will have control over it. And in the meantime, you're gaining useful experience and contacts that will help you in future endeavors.
If you respond to this message with more info, I can give you more specific advice. I have no particular qualifications other than being older than your average slashdotter...
(After all, when was the last time you saw an AP reporter who even knew what a WHOIS lookup was, let alone one who would consider that the concept of "contact information" for domains in a country like China might be completely different from that in the States.)
Don't you think that maybe people who would know how to do this, for instance U.S. Government hackers who might not want to go public, might contact reporters and give them enough info and background to do such checks? I'm sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes we simply don't know.
From an OO perspective, that is 'equality'. Two objects that happen to contain the same information, are still two different objects, and thus not equal.
This is not correct.
Equality for char *s is comparison of addresses, because they are pointers. Compare two pointers and it's the addresses that determine equality. Strings stored in char *s are not truly objects. If you want to compare string contents, you should use a string object of some sort or a comparator function. If you want to use char *s with an STL algorithm, you'll need to provide a comparator function object that does the comparison technique you desire. For example, I have two sets, one of which has as its keys iterators into the other set. By providing a special comparing function object, the iterator set is sorted on a different property of the key than the other set.
The other thing about C++ is the STL. Don't even make me talk about the STL, I just tried to use it in a program and I'm now trying to remove all references to it. [...] my hash tables [...]
Hash tables are not part of the standard library as defined in the C++ standard. Thus it isn't too surprising that they might cause you problems. You can't blame the language for features that aren't part of it.
If you took two char *'s and compared them, it would compare the addresses. Don't expect the default behaviour of C++ to do anything different. If you wish to compare based on the contents of the strings, you should be able to provide an alternative comparator in the template.
(It's hard to include much code in Slashdot due to character munging. If you want specific help, demunge my e-mail address and e-mail me.)
For example, if you had a std::set of char *s, it would just compare by value. But if you do
std::set mySet;
Then it will sort using the () operator of MyComparator, which you can tie to strcmp or something like that. You might also want to consider using a string type instead of char*'s, for internationalization reasons.
One of my co-workers starting using STL two days ago, and came to me for a little starting help. Two hours later he came back and was gushing about how cool it was to encode powerful, efficient algorithms in just a few lines of code. Perhaps you just need another me handy? Ask for help on comp.lang.c++.moderated.
You can have my C++ compiler when you peel it from my cold, dead fingers.