but the reason you don't is because people realized that it isn't maintainable, any you'll probably lose count of the parentheses. Of course a LISP guru would probably complain about the semi colon. Before they get to excited about their own superiority and job security, they should realize most VB types will pick up LISP very quickly, thanks to their experience with *gasp* Excel.
no, look what your passing around. In C/C++, probably the biggest resource hog in untuned code is passing around big ugly structures (esp. strings) instead of a pointer, reference, or a state flag.
While it may be possible to create 5000 connecting flights between Boston & LA with a maximum of 3 hops in a 24 hour period, you'll have to include flights like:
LAX -> JFK
JFK -> SFO
SFO -> BOS
It shouldn't take a smart computer to rule those out. Also, the possibility of 5000 (going) x 5000 (returning) x 100000 (fares) is ludicrous. Plus, airlines use hubs airports, so there are only a limited number of logical flights.
And to top it all off, you don't have to consider every combination. You can start with a list of (arbitrary number) 50 likely flights for price, time, speed, etc. and try their connections. You just do a simple query, pull up the 5000, and before even eliminating illogical and conflicting ones, pull a few the top of the list.
the difference is that most of Linus' barbs are jokes. Lots of people don't get them, but there isn't very often malice. Political correctness is aimed at staving off humor (nobody can be funnier, or smarter than someone else), not rudeness.
I forgot to mention my main point, and that's that for 90% of us (running servers or desktops), 99% of the time, we'll never notice the difference between either VM or even the old 2.2 (which I still use)
Am I the only one who's spent more time reading the Linux Kernel Mailing List than slashdot recently *because* of the feuding and flaming that's going on? All the patches, bug reports, insults, ideas, and philosophical asides are like a soap opera (with diffs). Okay, I admit I'm addicted to reading through diffs that I have no idea what they're doing, but it makes me *feel* smarter.
About the only thing I didn't like was Linus' rambling evolution thread. Personally, I'm on Andrea's side in the VM wars, but I think its because he had a clever flame or two a while back. Plus, I've had to build kernels for two friends with 2.4.13 & 15 who were having problems with memory with older 2.4.x's (probly redhat's problems) but since Rik's siding with redhat, that's another strike against him. I don't run a data warehouse, and I hate xinetd, and am still bitter over the RPM incompatibilities between 3 & 4.
Apple gives no support. You have to pay by the minute to be put on hold and talk to some ex-hamburger flipper for some contract tech support call center in Podunk, Oregon, sitting in front of a PC reading a script with phrases like "make sure all your cables are properly connected", and "what is your model number" who is more likely to hang up on you to improve their "call resolution time" than listen to a single word you say.
Microsoft developers are increasingly non-American. While Indian programmers are fairly windows-centric, a lot of talent these days comes from eastern European countries, where older hardware, assembly language, and free software play large roles. In the days before VB macro "viruses", alot of real viruses came out of eastern Europe. Alot of these guys have intimate knowledge of how hardware and network protocols actually work.
The Rockefellers turned Democrat in the sixties. Nelson was the last strong Republican, but after he lost the bid for presidential nomination because of an affair, he distanced himself from the party. The younger generation all became hippy wannabes, along with most of the pedigreed East Coast WASP families. There is still a degree of conservativism in banking, even Chase, but the majority of the wealthy elite are Democrat now.
do you know how long it would take FreeBSD to install if it had to compile everything? And do you know how hard it is to bootstrap a system into compiling its compiler, etc?
and then the next day the database changes
and the next the business rules that determine the queries
and then there's a data change that would be faster to change by hand 1000 times than build the regexp to do it for you.
and then there's data corruption because of a solar flare.
Philips tried to release a DVD-R last year too, I think. At least they demo'ed it at some expo. They are a hardware company and want to sell hardware. Think of competitors like Sony, whose vested interest is in the Movies/Music/Software instead of the products that play them. That is the sort of thing anti-trust legislation is meant to stop.
Maybe not, since it is on the invoice, but every car comes with a free engine (and windshield wipers!), and Internet Explorer came free with my computer (which only runs Linux)
The UI design community consistently shows they are out of touch with the people who use graphical user interfaces. Yes, grandma may complain about being able to move the mouse until she gets used to it. And, yes, so do I, still, when I use one of those annoying labptop substitutes. But efficient computing is NOT large anti-aliased auto-previewing animated glaring (and pastel!) icons filling the screen. In case you didn't notice, all those high paid UI designers are now unemployed, and while the dot-com bubble was going on, the most obvious sign of wasteful excess to the ordinary public was the ridiculous, unusable, paintstakingly created, perfectly designed, ugly web sites.
If someone's one job in life is to design a button, they may quickly forget that buttons are not the primary goal of a graphical interface (or a coat.) A button is only there to help you do something else. If it takes the average user an extra 10 seconds to "actualize" a button, but he only has to click it half as often to get his work done (try clicking on the background when you're reading a document on a screen smaller than 19 inches) he still gets his work done faster.
Most people do not carefully aim the mouse, pause and take a deep breath for dramatic effect, ponder over how very simple it is to not wonder which button they need to press, and then with an audible click (and a color change that is not red to green or vice versa) pronounce to the world
"I have clicked the button!"
and wait for their boss, and/or loved ones to come around and congratulate them while they savor the esthetic beauty of the button click, noticing the obvious color change, the animated visual queue that SOMETHING is happening, and the reassuring audible (synthesized) click; resting assured that if they were blind, deaf, and nepalese -- that there would be appropriate cues to let them know that indeed, the button had been pressed.
they changed the rules in the early eighties because everyone read Lord of the Rings in the seventies, after which no science fiction was produced until Star Wars.
Re:Science fiction/Fantasy is not interesting anym
on
Hugo Award Voting Open
·
· Score: 2
Every generation plays this tune, but if it wasn't true this time, the "copyright hoarders" wouldn't be fighting so hard to keep what they've got. And these days anyone can be the judge, even kids, who are spending more time in the library with dusty old book club editions than good citizens without eye patches and peg legs should.
*Linus was talking about Minix and the word was 'portability' then. Basically, he was saying that sure, Minix may run on an Atari or 8086, but it can't take advantage of the advanced features of 386 CPU. While I'm not a fan of too fast change -- Windows's is backward compatibility is severely limited by what it is able to do. Try porting a multithreaded networked 32 bit Windows application from say, 6 years ago. Heck, try running a dos program with more than 640K memory. I think in "modern" windows OS, you can't even use half that.
Slashdot Mirror
struct
you can write functions in C!
you can even do stuff like:
do(something(else(again(and(again()))));
but the reason you don't is because people realized that it isn't maintainable, any you'll probably lose count of the parentheses. Of course a LISP guru would probably complain about the semi colon. Before they get to excited about their own superiority and job security, they should realize most VB types will pick up LISP very quickly, thanks to their experience with *gasp* Excel.
no, look what your passing around. In C/C++, probably the biggest resource hog in untuned code is passing around big ugly structures (esp. strings) instead of a pointer, reference, or a state flag.
While it may be possible to create 5000 connecting flights between Boston & LA with a maximum of 3 hops in a 24 hour period, you'll have to include flights like:
LAX -> JFK
JFK -> SFO
SFO -> BOS
It shouldn't take a smart computer to rule those out. Also, the possibility of 5000 (going) x 5000 (returning) x 100000 (fares) is ludicrous. Plus, airlines use hubs airports, so there are only a limited number of logical flights.
And to top it all off, you don't have to consider every combination. You can start with a list of (arbitrary number) 50 likely flights for price, time, speed, etc. and try their connections. You just do a simple query, pull up the 5000, and before even eliminating illogical and conflicting ones, pull a few the top of the list.
you looked up pseudolatin, your dialectics must be superior!
the difference is that most of Linus' barbs are jokes. Lots of people don't get them, but there isn't very often malice. Political correctness is aimed at staving off humor (nobody can be funnier, or smarter than someone else), not rudeness.
I forgot to mention my main point, and that's that for 90% of us (running servers or desktops), 99% of the time, we'll never notice the difference between either VM or even the old 2.2 (which I still use)
Am I the only one who's spent more time reading the Linux Kernel Mailing List than slashdot recently *because* of the feuding and flaming that's going on? All the patches, bug reports, insults, ideas, and philosophical asides are like a soap opera (with diffs). Okay, I admit I'm addicted to reading through diffs that I have no idea what they're doing, but it makes me *feel* smarter.
About the only thing I didn't like was Linus' rambling evolution thread. Personally, I'm on Andrea's side in the VM wars, but I think its because he had a clever flame or two a while back. Plus, I've had to build kernels for two friends with 2.4.13 & 15 who were having problems with memory with older 2.4.x's (probly redhat's problems) but since Rik's siding with redhat, that's another strike against him. I don't run a data warehouse, and I hate xinetd, and am still bitter over the RPM incompatibilities between 3 & 4.
Apple gives no support. You have to pay by the minute to be put on hold and talk to some ex-hamburger flipper for some contract tech support call center in Podunk, Oregon, sitting in front of a PC reading a script with phrases like "make sure all your cables are properly connected", and "what is your model number" who is more likely to hang up on you to improve their "call resolution time" than listen to a single word you say.
Interviewer: So, we've all seen the new I-Mac by now, and I'm sure everyone has the same question -- What the hell were you thinking?
JI: I, er, um...that is-- it seemed like a good idea at the time.
they could by Tom's hardware for the price of a TV ad
Microsoft developers are increasingly non-American. While Indian programmers are fairly windows-centric, a lot of talent these days comes from eastern European countries, where older hardware, assembly language, and free software play large roles. In the days before VB macro "viruses", alot of real viruses came out of eastern Europe. Alot of these guys have intimate knowledge of how hardware and network protocols actually work.
The Rockefellers turned Democrat in the sixties. Nelson was the last strong Republican, but after he lost the bid for presidential nomination because of an affair, he distanced himself from the party. The younger generation all became hippy wannabes, along with most of the pedigreed East Coast WASP families. There is still a degree of conservativism in banking, even Chase, but the majority of the wealthy elite are Democrat now.
do you know how long it would take FreeBSD to install if it had to compile everything? And do you know how hard it is to bootstrap a system into compiling its compiler, etc?
what with Google, Yahoo, and ... MSN?
and then the next day the database changes
and the next the business rules that determine the queries
and then there's a data change that would be faster to change by hand 1000 times than build the regexp to do it for you.
and then there's data corruption because of a solar flare.
Philips tried to release a DVD-R last year too, I think. At least they demo'ed it at some expo. They are a hardware company and want to sell hardware. Think of competitors like Sony, whose vested interest is in the Movies/Music/Software instead of the products that play them. That is the sort of thing anti-trust legislation is meant to stop.
so your stereo comes free with your car?
Maybe not, since it is on the invoice, but every car comes with a free engine (and windshield wipers!), and Internet Explorer came free with my computer (which only runs Linux)
yeah, i miss the days when i had all the choices of twm or fvwm95 in all its subtle varieties.
that's because God doesn't get carpal tunnel sydrome from pushing the mouse around. Pulling (down) is easier on the arm, and its easier to aim.
The UI design community consistently shows they are out of touch with the people who use graphical user interfaces. Yes, grandma may complain about being able to move the mouse until she gets used to it. And, yes, so do I, still, when I use one of those annoying labptop substitutes. But efficient computing is NOT large anti-aliased auto-previewing animated glaring (and pastel!) icons filling the screen. In case you didn't notice, all those high paid UI designers are now unemployed, and while the dot-com bubble was going on, the most obvious sign of wasteful excess to the ordinary public was the ridiculous, unusable, paintstakingly created, perfectly designed, ugly web sites.
If someone's one job in life is to design a button, they may quickly forget that buttons are not the primary goal of a graphical interface (or a coat.) A button is only there to help you do something else. If it takes the average user an extra 10 seconds to "actualize" a button, but he only has to click it half as often to get his work done (try clicking on the background when you're reading a document on a screen smaller than 19 inches) he still gets his work done faster.
Most people do not carefully aim the mouse, pause and take a deep breath for dramatic effect, ponder over how very simple it is to not wonder which button they need to press, and then with an audible click (and a color change that is not red to green or vice versa) pronounce to the world
"I have clicked the button!"
and wait for their boss, and/or loved ones to come around and congratulate them while they savor the esthetic beauty of the button click, noticing the obvious color change, the animated visual queue that SOMETHING is happening, and the reassuring audible (synthesized) click; resting assured that if they were blind, deaf, and nepalese -- that there would be appropriate cues to let them know that indeed, the button had been pressed.
they changed the rules in the early eighties because everyone read Lord of the Rings in the seventies, after which no science fiction was produced until Star Wars.
Every generation plays this tune, but if it wasn't true this time, the "copyright hoarders" wouldn't be fighting so hard to keep what they've got. And these days anyone can be the judge, even kids, who are spending more time in the library with dusty old book club editions than good citizens without eye patches and peg legs should.
to paraphrase Linus:
"If, by compatability* you mean lack of features"
*Linus was talking about Minix and the word was 'portability' then. Basically, he was saying that sure, Minix may run on an Atari or 8086, but it can't take advantage of the advanced features of 386 CPU. While I'm not a fan of too fast change -- Windows's is backward compatibility is severely limited by what it is able to do. Try porting a multithreaded networked 32 bit Windows application from say, 6 years ago. Heck, try running a dos program with more than 640K memory. I think in "modern" windows OS, you can't even use half that.
25 is cold for summer -- that's below freezing!