I couldn't disagree more. Two tasks that both need the DVD drive, and heavily, will not benefit from a VM. There are countless other things that VMs are useless for as well. VMs are good for servers, allowing them to sandbox apps and get around limitations/reduce the number of beige boxes in the A/C closet. A VM is a kludge, 2nd best to multiple real computers and/or multiple monitors.
As to your specific situation, I am not at all convinced that a VM is better than just testing the thing "straight up" on your dev machine. Maybe only useful if it crashes things. You crash things a lot?
The whole point about 2nd (& nth) machine testing, is to test on different platforms. By defn a VM accesses the same stuff as your test machine. Also by defn you don't know what a specific combo of hardware, peripherals and software will do to UltiAp.exe until you try it.
At work:
I was giving a preference. I would rather, for example, one machine that is loaded to the gills, with a 24+" monitor and a modest second machine [say a 20" wide screen, gig of ram, 2+gHz cpu]. In this situation I assume I am in an office, so I have a network so, in a sense "cut and paste" does work (you can save a file to a shared network folder, to be reopened on the other one -- opening "tmp.txt" is a 5 second process at most, one more for Ctrl+A, another for Ctrl+C -- switching physically would take more time than this, so this a non-issue). But really, cutting and pasting would all happen on the primary machine. The secondary one is for "misc" -- other stuff that would cramp your style, have long periods of time where it ties up one or more resources, etc. And it would be perfect for testing -- for sure you are not c&p from a test machine -- because you want to test on something different from what you develop on, to test dependencies, etc.
(2) Two keyboards & two mice is one way to do this. Just as viable is a KBM setup -- then you have leveraged your 2560x LCD. Regardless, neither of these "extras" costs much.
(3) Who moves windows? I sure don't. I size and place them about once (might move it once or twice) a day). If I don't want it visible (e.g. a help file) then I minimize it. Clicking on its Start bar tab restores it to its exact previous location -- moving it is so much more cumbersome, time-consuming and inexact by comparison.
At home:
This is the best place for multiple computers, IMO.
(1) kids [we have 3 boys] want their own (yet I can load it down at times without them noticing)
(2) old computers never die at home, they just gather deeper levels of dust. People's home offices are multi-room. We don't have this kind of physical space at work. So computers become like TVs, one in every room except le salle de bain. Each relic can be used, at least to a point -- e.g. an old pc dedicated to a certain printer, or a movie watching station, etc. None of these scenarios is benefited by one multi-monitor setup -- the user/keyboard becomes the choke point, and Garfield The Movie can't be watched on screen two while you program the next BT on screen one.
(3) home tasks are more time-consuming and less-interrupted (for me anyway, YMMV). If computer in room A is near the TV blaring TLC, I'll "alt-tab" into the other room for a while, maybe to clean the malware or do/force/check updates, or play 3D Ultra Pinball Thrillride in peace, etc.
The difference between having to turn your head -- I mean some people are advocating four monitors FFS -- and pressing Alt-Tab (or equiv.) comes down to personal preference, really. Even on my single 24" 1920x1200 LCD I have "here, and over there" moments (i.e. at times, some stuff on the screen is too far for my peripheral vision to see it easily/ideally, and adding more square feet of screen real estate compounds this problem).
The cost of four monitors is more than one 24" one -- even with free LCDs, the video card(s) upgrade(s) and time/ongoing hassle are still hefty. Also, 4 displays and 2 or more video cards use more juice. So more than one monitor is not an obvious choice -- in fact I've tried (developed with) both and know that I do not like 2+ monitors.
Look, every ap wants to be full screen, just ask any novice. But isn't that the point of/., to rise above this level of "use" to window management? 1920x (and even 1650x) give me enough width to have two things up at once. Two things is enough the vast majority of the time. For other times, there are various ways to create and place various sized windows to deal with this. To be truly productive one needs to minimize the times when one just has to have 3+ big windows active. Really.
I think the only people who really really need multiple monitors are traffic controllers/monitors -- including air & train traffic controllers, and shipping or network management centers. These are a true "show me everything at once" application.
I've been a big monitor hound for quite a few revolutions around the Sun but I've never liked two monitors on one machine, even when programming. I would way prefer having two or more computers near at hand. There is no multi-tasking like two completely separate machines, you can do a true test on a second machine/setup, and distractions like the help center thing someone else mentioned go where they belong -- on a separate computer.
Having said all that, I think we are not far away from the "Your desk is your monitor" systems with six 1920x1200 or four 2560x1600 LCDs -- touchscreened, of course, with one keyboard to control them all!
Seriously, what the heck is wrong with using a text editor to program? Ok, maybe I'm biased because I'm so old I am genetically incapable of learning OOP but shouldn't 100 files open at once be enough for anyone?
6. When they spent millions of dollars building Windows 95 and created long filename support, do you think it was by mistake that they just happened to leave long filename support out of their new version of DOS?
Actually, the genius of what Microsoft did with Win95 (aka Win98alpha) was to support those LFN in DOS.
Or that you couldn't boot to a command prompt that had long filename support?
I don't ever recall this being the case. In fact in those days you could make boot disks as part of a Win9x install.
...And there was NO WAY to boot with a floppy and get long filename support. So where before you could use pkzip to zip up your whole windows and dos directory and back up your system to about twenty floppies, with Windows 95 you were basically hosed. Even if you DID zip up all the directories, when you unzipped them during the restore process they'd look like "Progra~1" instead of "Program Files" and you'd be hosed.
This was actually a PKZip issue. Versions after the unfortunately ubiquitous 2.5 resolved it.
As much as I hated that LFN broke my favorite DOS defrag program (Vopt), MS did this one right. It just took me a while to figure out how to use the new functionality -- e.g. you can use dir/x to see the SFN (next to the LFN) in XP today; copy by SFN or LFN; use spaces or not as you see fit yet still work with them at DOS (thanks to the "" wrapper). I use SFN, LFN and go between them without incident these days -- thanks to MS foresight.
Assuming you are, I was referring to a DOS box under Windows XP (and probably 2000, ME, 9x). People using Windows 3.0 should consider upgrading to 3.11 for those nifty VFAT/VCACHE thingies.
This sounds like a clue -- in Windows, apps that are not responding to the GUI will "white out" what is below them. I'll wildly guess that some part of the copy process is hogging the CPU, i.e. is not threaded correctly. This would slow things down, to say the least.
DOS anything (including DEL.) is faster, especially when deleting large numbers of files. Part of the reason is probably GUI overhead as it displays every file that is being deleted. People can try this themselves and see -- as it happens I had to delete, on two different occasions recently, something like 50,000 files. In the largest folders I would delete them from DOS, the dozens of folders with just a few files in each I did from XP's GUI. And related to this, why does XP not have deltree? That would allow even more to be done at DOS. Oh, that's right -- remove the power from users as you pretend to give them upgrades.
This just smells like another Microsoft ploy. Their goal right now is to cut off Win2k / XP at the knees, so that corporations have to move to all Vista shops. If these three types of machines work together there is never a reason for this.
Step 1 is to introduce grossly incompatible machines (i.e. Vista). Step 2 is to make them marginally more compatible but at a cost of time (SP1 won't be here for a while) and hassle (applying driver and application patches everywhere). Step 3 is six months from now when most Vista compatibility issues have been resolved through upgrades etc. and companies will find it easier to just go 100% Vista.
Boot optimization is a subset of overall system optimization. As has been said, we rarely boot up these days (for me it is every week or two). But we do use our systems, some more intensely than others. In our household, two systems have more than a gig of RAM, one has 1GB, and the other two are 256MB and 320MB low-enders. Machines with 512MB or less benefit greatly from process reductions.
(1) To get started, click Start, then Run, then type in Services.msc
(2) Go through the list. If you don't need a service, disable it. If you are not sure, turn it off for this session only (i.e. click Stop). For example I don't have a printer on this computer, so I don't need the print spooling service ever.
(4) As others have mentioned, remove the "free" trash your computer manufacturer bogged your machine down with.
(5) Turn off the "helper" apps -- you don't need the Microsoft Office "quickstart" thing, the Real player nor the Quicktime icons in your system tray. Etc. Get to know your system tray icons and what they are supposed to do.
(6) If you are having trouble turning off system tray thingies, or want to do further tweaks, try running MSConfig -- Start, Run, MSConfig, {enter}. The last tab lists some of the things that are starting at bootup. Go through the list (MS doesn't make this easy -- the MSConfig window can't be enlarged, so you have to increase the column sizes, then scroll to the right and back again, etc.). You can get online help via Google -- here's another starter search link.
(7) Run Task Manager -- its free with 2000/XP and it comes in handy, yet uses little CPU or RAM. I run mine all the time, with the "minimized to system tray" checked. This way it shows me when something is pushing my CPU to 100%. Anyway, run it and click on the Processes tab. Then click on Mem Usage -- at the bottom will be the programs using the most memory. Many can't be stopped, but the biggest offenders should certainly be looked at more closely. Also, this list should not run much more than one screenful. If it does you definitely have some more pruning to do. Some processes don't list all the RAM they are taking up -- e.g. my Opera browser can use up to 200MB, but never lists more than 80 to 100MB for itself. So, to perk up your system (if the free RAM is low), try closing and restarting Opera (this would probably work for Firefox as well).
I don't understand your point(s), if you made any.
As I just clarified in another reply, the hard plastic "housing" was damaged -- a big fat hole in it. There could be junk in there already, etc. And once one has burned discs, or even over time as one stores the new stack on a shelf, dust will get in because of the hole in the container. Dust will hinder burning, and reduce reading accuracy. Not good, not desirable, and not was a new product would do.
Try this simple test. Think back over your buying career. Have you ever seen something offered on a store shelf that was ripped open, __damaged__ and otherwise not new and pristine, yet wasn't offered at a reduced price? Neither have I.
The real message of this story is: Best Buy is struggling. They have junk, literally, sitting on their shelves that is not moving. People are finding the same stuff elsewhere at 200 and 300% less money. I think Best Buy could be the next CompUSA and have to close stores, etc.
Sounds a bit stingy, but not unreasonable; after all, it's the discs themselves that you're buying, and it's probably not worth his time arguing if he thinks someone else will buy them. I'm not defending their practices, just looking at it from their cynical point-of-view.
At a minimum, what bothers me is (1) they are quite happy passing off damaged goods as new -- this is just bad business, (2) the DVD holder is needed after one burns DVDs -- this was damaged and so there was damage to the package/product as a whole yet he was saying there was not.
I have no idea how long any of these DVDs last. I don't know if my no label discs are really very high end ones, or if they are timebombs. I can only really measure the short-term symptoms, and these point towards "cheaper is better". I think it is very strange that "16x" Verbatim, or whatever they were, burned VERY slowly (2.4x or something) and produced numerous coasters, but the Staples ones and this latest no name el-cheapo batch burn at full speed and zero coasters.
Nice to see someone else think of Steve Gibson and assembly. I think Spinrite is, pound for pound, some of the finest assembler ever written. That interface was downright cool, especially when DOS was what most of us were using. All in about 80KB.
So you'll have to learn an architecture. Intel 386 is a great place to start...
Choke. Cough. Laugh. Thanks a lot, now I have to clean soda off my keyboard.
While the rest of your comment is pretty much spot on, this advice is, frankly, absurd. x86 has one of the most convoluted, non-orthogonal, legacy-laden instruction sets and list of constraints of any architecture, ever.
This is exactly why you should start with the i386.
I am extremely glad I started with DOS (and PC Write, Qedit and Word for DOS, for that matter). Windows apps are trivially easy to use with that as a foundation. Similarly, I consider myself lucky to have English as a first language -- anything but Russian seems almost boring by comparison. French, despite being forced down my Canadian throat, was more consistent and had a fraction of the vocabulary. And Spanish was a lark in comparison to French.
Slashdotter parents, give your child(ren) the toughest language, the weakest editor and the pokiest computer -- I guaranty this will produce more benefit to them than paying their way through college. Slashdotter parents? Hello???
I've worked with people with very focused high-level programming skills and found that while they could write mostly decent code, their code was also most likely to fail in production since they were completely mentally removed from concepts like disk-seek times or bandwidth constraints.
I'm not a great programmer, but I've always had a good "sense" (for lack of a better word) about technical things. I worked a bit at a company doing mid to high level (V)FoxPro programming. They put me on the least desired machine and I set to work. Within minutes I realized the machine was not running right, CPU at 100% or close to it most of the time. Turns out it was virus-infected (despite NAV, of course). I found the name of the EXE, renamed it in autoexec.bat before it loaded, then deleted same. Problem solved and the oldest 'clunker' became a quite acceptable computer.
I think this story illustrates the two broad classes of programmers. (1) those able to get a task done, no matter how nerdy or obscure (but who are pathologically incapable of documenting their work, or teaching others) [e.g. my co-worker who had used that computer for months or years without noticing the virus] and (2) those who are good at interface, optimization, and documentation but lack the penetrating power to solve the more difficult problems [e.g. myself -- I had to leave that job because I couldn't 'crack' the OO stuff].
Speaking to this thread's main question: both classes of programmer would need to understand some assembly, but for different reasons. Group 1ers would likely end up using it (or having to debug/change it) from time to time -- and it would be no big deal to them to learn it, use it, whatever. Group 2ers would likely want to know _when_ to use it, and probably get someone else to do that coding.
In the geek cred hungry world of/., not many would want to admit to being a Group 2er but I have no problem with it. For example, Group 2ers would also know when a Group 1er's code sucked, from a performance standpoint. Coders with a trailblazer mindset are rarely good optimizers.
BTW, in considering where Woz, Ciarcia, Kahn and Hertzfeld fit into this, I think they are Group 1ers who simply took an interest in Group 2 stuff. If you can learn both mindsets, you are one powerful programming dude, IMO. [Pity that 2ers like myself can't easily (ever?) become 1ers.] Most 1ers just want to get the job done and move on, yet so much can be learned after you think you have finished your program. [MS deserves props for realizing this and assigning a second unit to work on optimizing the code already working -- Win95 crap became slightly less crappy Win98 through this process (pdf)]
I needed a stack of blank DVDs badly enough to drop in there on the way somewhere else. All blank DVD prices are outrageous. I spy two spindles (of their cheapest 'house' brand) where the outer packaging is mutilated, to the point where the clear plastic casing itself is damaged. I grab them and go see the manager. "Any discount for these?" He paws over them before intoning "There is no damage to the discs so there is no discount".
Postscript: I go home, browse a bit, settle on cdrdvdrmedia.com and purchase blank DVDs for one-third (no exaggeration) the price. All have burned perfectly so far.
Side note: I find that the cheapest, most no-name blank DVDs burn the fastest (with the least coasters). Based on 5 different brands to date and an external less-than-year-old Lite-On drive.
SBT (now owned by AccPac) accounting software runs on FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. Many many companies run this, and the support of these systems is a good business to be in.
The strange thing is that just yesterday I was commenting on how FoxPro was all but ignored by Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
Much as I like that movie I don't have the time to fire it up at the moment. Perhaps you can elaborate on what the limitation is of this virtual desk?
I couldn't disagree more. Two tasks that both need the DVD drive, and heavily, will not benefit from a VM. There are countless other things that VMs are useless for as well. VMs are good for servers, allowing them to sandbox apps and get around limitations/reduce the number of beige boxes in the A/C closet. A VM is a kludge, 2nd best to multiple real computers and/or multiple monitors.
As to your specific situation, I am not at all convinced that a VM is better than just testing the thing "straight up" on your dev machine. Maybe only useful if it crashes things. You crash things a lot?
The whole point about 2nd (& nth) machine testing, is to test on different platforms. By defn a VM accesses the same stuff as your test machine. Also by defn you don't know what a specific combo of hardware, peripherals and software will do to UltiAp.exe until you try it.
At work:
I was giving a preference. I would rather, for example, one machine that is loaded to the gills, with a 24+" monitor and a modest second machine [say a 20" wide screen, gig of ram, 2+gHz cpu]. In this situation I assume I am in an office, so I have a network so, in a sense "cut and paste" does work (you can save a file to a shared network folder, to be reopened on the other one -- opening "tmp.txt" is a 5 second process at most, one more for Ctrl+A, another for Ctrl+C -- switching physically would take more time than this, so this a non-issue). But really, cutting and pasting would all happen on the primary machine. The secondary one is for "misc" -- other stuff that would cramp your style, have long periods of time where it ties up one or more resources, etc. And it would be perfect for testing -- for sure you are not c&p from a test machine -- because you want to test on something different from what you develop on, to test dependencies, etc.
(2) Two keyboards & two mice is one way to do this. Just as viable is a KBM setup -- then you have leveraged your 2560x LCD. Regardless, neither of these "extras" costs much.
(3) Who moves windows? I sure don't. I size and place them about once (might move it once or twice) a day). If I don't want it visible (e.g. a help file) then I minimize it. Clicking on its Start bar tab restores it to its exact previous location -- moving it is so much more cumbersome, time-consuming and inexact by comparison.
At home:
This is the best place for multiple computers, IMO.
(1) kids [we have 3 boys] want their own (yet I can load it down at times without them noticing)
(2) old computers never die at home, they just gather deeper levels of dust. People's home offices are multi-room. We don't have this kind of physical space at work. So computers become like TVs, one in every room except le salle de bain. Each relic can be used, at least to a point -- e.g. an old pc dedicated to a certain printer, or a movie watching station, etc. None of these scenarios is benefited by one multi-monitor setup -- the user/keyboard becomes the choke point, and Garfield The Movie can't be watched on screen two while you program the next BT on screen one.
(3) home tasks are more time-consuming and less-interrupted (for me anyway, YMMV). If computer in room A is near the TV blaring TLC, I'll "alt-tab" into the other room for a while, maybe to clean the malware or do/force/check updates, or play 3D Ultra Pinball Thrillride in peace, etc.
The difference between having to turn your head -- I mean some people are advocating four monitors FFS -- and pressing Alt-Tab (or equiv.) comes down to personal preference, really. Even on my single 24" 1920x1200 LCD I have "here, and over there" moments (i.e. at times, some stuff on the screen is too far for my peripheral vision to see it easily/ideally, and adding more square feet of screen real estate compounds this problem).
/., to rise above this level of "use" to window management? 1920x (and even 1650x) give me enough width to have two things up at once. Two things is enough the vast majority of the time. For other times, there are various ways to create and place various sized windows to deal with this. To be truly productive one needs to minimize the times when one just has to have 3+ big windows active. Really.
The cost of four monitors is more than one 24" one -- even with free LCDs, the video card(s) upgrade(s) and time/ongoing hassle are still hefty. Also, 4 displays and 2 or more video cards use more juice. So more than one monitor is not an obvious choice -- in fact I've tried (developed with) both and know that I do not like 2+ monitors.
Look, every ap wants to be full screen, just ask any novice. But isn't that the point of
I think the only people who really really need multiple monitors are traffic controllers/monitors -- including air & train traffic controllers, and shipping or network management centers. These are a true "show me everything at once" application.
(on FC5 in mplayer 1.0pre8-rpm.livna.org-4.1.1)
Is this the geek equivalent of "My car has a 454 with dual carbs"? I lost interest after Fedora Core 5...
(This message pasted from Microsoft Notepad, Version 5.1 (Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.061219-0316 : Service Pack 2)
I've been a big monitor hound for quite a few revolutions around the Sun but I've never liked two monitors on one machine, even when programming. I would way prefer having two or more computers near at hand. There is no multi-tasking like two completely separate machines, you can do a true test on a second machine/setup, and distractions like the help center thing someone else mentioned go where they belong -- on a separate computer.
Having said all that, I think we are not far away from the "Your desk is your monitor" systems with six 1920x1200 or four 2560x1600 LCDs -- touchscreened, of course, with one keyboard to control them all!
I don't know how anyone wrote software back in the days before dual high resolution screens.
Answer: MultiEdit.
Seriously, what the heck is wrong with using a text editor to program? Ok, maybe I'm biased because I'm so old I am genetically incapable of learning OOP but shouldn't 100 files open at once be enough for anyone?
6. When they spent millions of dollars building Windows 95 and created long filename support, do you think it was by mistake that they just happened to leave long filename support out of their new version of DOS?
...And there was NO WAY to boot with a floppy and get long filename support. So where before you could use pkzip to zip up your whole windows and dos directory and back up your system to about twenty floppies, with Windows 95 you were basically hosed. Even if you DID zip up all the directories, when you unzipped them during the restore process they'd look like "Progra~1" instead of "Program Files" and you'd be hosed.
/x to see the SFN (next to the LFN) in XP today; copy by SFN or LFN; use spaces or not as you see fit yet still work with them at DOS (thanks to the "" wrapper). I use SFN, LFN and go between them without incident these days -- thanks to MS foresight.
Actually, the genius of what Microsoft did with Win95 (aka Win98alpha) was to support those LFN in DOS.
Or that you couldn't boot to a command prompt that had long filename support?
I don't ever recall this being the case. In fact in those days you could make boot disks as part of a Win9x install.
This was actually a PKZip issue. Versions after the unfortunately ubiquitous 2.5 resolved it.
As much as I hated that LFN broke my favorite DOS defrag program (Vopt), MS did this one right. It just took me a while to figure out how to use the new functionality -- e.g. you can use dir
The Dell diag cd doesn't diagnose "soft" hard disk failures, even though you can hear it retrying like mad. These indicate impending disk failure but Dell's far east techs totally deny the issue.
I'm not sure if you are serious.
Assuming you are, I was referring to a DOS box under Windows XP (and probably 2000, ME, 9x). People using Windows 3.0 should consider upgrading to 3.11 for those nifty VFAT/VCACHE thingies.
Awesome, thanks. Tips like this, or F2 to rename a file via the keyboard, are quite handy.
This sounds like a clue -- in Windows, apps that are not responding to the GUI will "white out" what is below them. I'll wildly guess that some part of the copy process is hogging the CPU, i.e. is not threaded correctly. This would slow things down, to say the least.
even dos based norton commander is faster
.) is faster, especially when deleting large numbers of files. Part of the reason is probably GUI overhead as it displays every file that is being deleted. People can try this themselves and see -- as it happens I had to delete, on two different occasions recently, something like 50,000 files. In the largest folders I would delete them from DOS, the dozens of folders with just a few files in each I did from XP's GUI. And related to this, why does XP not have deltree? That would allow even more to be done at DOS. Oh, that's right -- remove the power from users as you pretend to give them upgrades.
DOS anything (including DEL
This just smells like another Microsoft ploy. Their goal right now is to cut off Win2k / XP at the knees, so that corporations have to move to all Vista shops. If these three types of machines work together there is never a reason for this.
Step 1 is to introduce grossly incompatible machines (i.e. Vista). Step 2 is to make them marginally more compatible but at a cost of time (SP1 won't be here for a while) and hassle (applying driver and application patches everywhere). Step 3 is six months from now when most Vista compatibility issues have been resolved through upgrades etc. and companies will find it easier to just go 100% Vista.
Boot optimization is a subset of overall system optimization. As has been said, we rarely boot up these days (for me it is every week or two). But we do use our systems, some more intensely than others. In our household, two systems have more than a gig of RAM, one has 1GB, and the other two are 256MB and 320MB low-enders. Machines with 512MB or less benefit greatly from process reductions.
(1) To get started, click Start, then Run, then type in Services.msc
(2) Go through the list. If you don't need a service, disable it. If you are not sure, turn it off for this session only (i.e. click Stop). For example I don't have a printer on this computer, so I don't need the print spooling service ever.
(3) Know your services. Many web sites will detail the services for you. Here's the first link I got on Google to get you started.
(4) As others have mentioned, remove the "free" trash your computer manufacturer bogged your machine down with.
(5) Turn off the "helper" apps -- you don't need the Microsoft Office "quickstart" thing, the Real player nor the Quicktime icons in your system tray. Etc. Get to know your system tray icons and what they are supposed to do.
(6) If you are having trouble turning off system tray thingies, or want to do further tweaks, try running MSConfig -- Start, Run, MSConfig, {enter}. The last tab lists some of the things that are starting at bootup. Go through the list (MS doesn't make this easy -- the MSConfig window can't be enlarged, so you have to increase the column sizes, then scroll to the right and back again, etc.). You can get online help via Google -- here's another starter search link.
(7) Run Task Manager -- its free with 2000/XP and it comes in handy, yet uses little CPU or RAM. I run mine all the time, with the "minimized to system tray" checked. This way it shows me when something is pushing my CPU to 100%. Anyway, run it and click on the Processes tab. Then click on Mem Usage -- at the bottom will be the programs using the most memory. Many can't be stopped, but the biggest offenders should certainly be looked at more closely. Also, this list should not run much more than one screenful. If it does you definitely have some more pruning to do. Some processes don't list all the RAM they are taking up -- e.g. my Opera browser can use up to 200MB, but never lists more than 80 to 100MB for itself. So, to perk up your system (if the free RAM is low), try closing and restarting Opera (this would probably work for Firefox as well).
I don't understand your point(s), if you made any.
As I just clarified in another reply, the hard plastic "housing" was damaged -- a big fat hole in it. There could be junk in there already, etc. And once one has burned discs, or even over time as one stores the new stack on a shelf, dust will get in because of the hole in the container. Dust will hinder burning, and reduce reading accuracy. Not good, not desirable, and not was a new product would do.
Try this simple test. Think back over your buying career. Have you ever seen something offered on a store shelf that was ripped open, __damaged__ and otherwise not new and pristine, yet wasn't offered at a reduced price? Neither have I.
The real message of this story is: Best Buy is struggling. They have junk, literally, sitting on their shelves that is not moving. People are finding the same stuff elsewhere at 200 and 300% less money. I think Best Buy could be the next CompUSA and have to close stores, etc.
Sounds a bit stingy, but not unreasonable; after all, it's the discs themselves that you're buying, and it's probably not worth his time arguing if he thinks someone else will buy them. I'm not defending their practices, just looking at it from their cynical point-of-view.
At a minimum, what bothers me is (1) they are quite happy passing off damaged goods as new -- this is just bad business, (2) the DVD holder is needed after one burns DVDs -- this was damaged and so there was damage to the package/product as a whole yet he was saying there was not.
I have no idea how long any of these DVDs last. I don't know if my no label discs are really very high end ones, or if they are timebombs. I can only really measure the short-term symptoms, and these point towards "cheaper is better". I think it is very strange that "16x" Verbatim, or whatever they were, burned VERY slowly (2.4x or something) and produced numerous coasters, but the Staples ones and this latest no name el-cheapo batch burn at full speed and zero coasters.
Nice to see someone else think of Steve Gibson and assembly. I think Spinrite is, pound for pound, some of the finest assembler ever written. That interface was downright cool, especially when DOS was what most of us were using. All in about 80KB.
So you'll have to learn an architecture. Intel 386 is a great place to start...
Choke. Cough. Laugh. Thanks a lot, now I have to clean soda off my keyboard.
While the rest of your comment is pretty much spot on, this advice is, frankly, absurd. x86 has one of the most convoluted, non-orthogonal, legacy-laden instruction sets and list of constraints of any architecture, ever.
This is exactly why you should start with the i386.
I am extremely glad I started with DOS (and PC Write, Qedit and Word for DOS, for that matter). Windows apps are trivially easy to use with that as a foundation. Similarly, I consider myself lucky to have English as a first language -- anything but Russian seems almost boring by comparison. French, despite being forced down my Canadian throat, was more consistent and had a fraction of the vocabulary. And Spanish was a lark in comparison to French.
Slashdotter parents, give your child(ren) the toughest language, the weakest editor and the pokiest computer -- I guaranty this will produce more benefit to them than paying their way through college. Slashdotter parents? Hello???
I've worked with people with very focused high-level programming skills and found that while they could write mostly decent code, their code was also most likely to fail in production since they were completely mentally removed from concepts like disk-seek times or bandwidth constraints.
/., not many would want to admit to being a Group 2er but I have no problem with it. For example, Group 2ers would also know when a Group 1er's code sucked, from a performance standpoint. Coders with a trailblazer mindset are rarely good optimizers.
I'm not a great programmer, but I've always had a good "sense" (for lack of a better word) about technical things. I worked a bit at a company doing mid to high level (V)FoxPro programming. They put me on the least desired machine and I set to work. Within minutes I realized the machine was not running right, CPU at 100% or close to it most of the time. Turns out it was virus-infected (despite NAV, of course). I found the name of the EXE, renamed it in autoexec.bat before it loaded, then deleted same. Problem solved and the oldest 'clunker' became a quite acceptable computer.
I think this story illustrates the two broad classes of programmers. (1) those able to get a task done, no matter how nerdy or obscure (but who are pathologically incapable of documenting their work, or teaching others) [e.g. my co-worker who had used that computer for months or years without noticing the virus] and (2) those who are good at interface, optimization, and documentation but lack the penetrating power to solve the more difficult problems [e.g. myself -- I had to leave that job because I couldn't 'crack' the OO stuff].
Speaking to this thread's main question: both classes of programmer would need to understand some assembly, but for different reasons. Group 1ers would likely end up using it (or having to debug/change it) from time to time -- and it would be no big deal to them to learn it, use it, whatever. Group 2ers would likely want to know _when_ to use it, and probably get someone else to do that coding.
In the geek cred hungry world of
BTW, in considering where Woz, Ciarcia, Kahn and Hertzfeld fit into this, I think they are Group 1ers who simply took an interest in Group 2 stuff. If you can learn both mindsets, you are one powerful programming dude, IMO. [Pity that 2ers like myself can't easily (ever?) become 1ers.] Most 1ers just want to get the job done and move on, yet so much can be learned after you think you have finished your program. [MS deserves props for realizing this and assigning a second unit to work on optimizing the code already working -- Win95 crap became slightly less crappy Win98 through this process (pdf)]
I needed a stack of blank DVDs badly enough to drop in there on the way somewhere else. All blank DVD prices are outrageous. I spy two spindles (of their cheapest 'house' brand) where the outer packaging is mutilated, to the point where the clear plastic casing itself is damaged. I grab them and go see the manager. "Any discount for these?" He paws over them before intoning "There is no damage to the discs so there is no discount".
Postscript: I go home, browse a bit, settle on cdrdvdrmedia.com and purchase blank DVDs for one-third (no exaggeration) the price. All have burned perfectly so far.
Side note: I find that the cheapest, most no-name blank DVDs burn the fastest (with the least coasters). Based on 5 different brands to date and an external less-than-year-old Lite-On drive.
Looks interesting. Thanks for the link.
SBT (now owned by AccPac) accounting software runs on FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. Many many companies run this, and the support of these systems is a good business to be in.
The strange thing is that just yesterday I was commenting on how FoxPro was all but ignored by Microsoft.
Anyway, that's who still uses it...
That link didn't work for me [404'd at vmware.com].
E RS/DOSidle/">This one did.
A HREF="http://ftp.bspu.unibel.by/pub/HardWare/COOL
Yes, there are half a dozen FoxPro books. Compare that to other MS languages. No comparison.