Although there are several worth downloading for free.
That's not a good advert for attracting commercial developers admittedly, but there are a lot of quality free apps for Android.
Where the Android market really went wrong was not having the charging mechanisms available on release. It meant that everybody got used to downloading free software for their phones, and that's inhibited commercialisation of the marketplace.
What the fuck? The n900 is already available in the US. In fact, at this precise moment in time, it's ONLY available in the US.
And of course, since you can download and install software from the 'net using the device itself, without even going near Nokia's store, developers can sell through the store and also directly through their own websites should they choose.
Disclaimer: I'm waiting for the n900 to go on sale in the UK so I can replace my Android phone. Yeah, I'm biased against Apple.
Irfanview still rocks. Sadly no longer free for commercial use, so I don't install it at work, but an essential on every Windows PC I own.
It's not just that it handles every image format I've ever heard of, it's not just that it works simply and effectively, it's the fact that it takes one straightforward and relatively common task (viewing images) and does it better than anything else out there.
That said, I'm about to reboot into Linux to download, install and try Gwenview. Hopefully it's comparable.
The answer is not to ignore the judiciary, penalise innocent people and throw away the principles embodied in the Magna Carta.
The answer is to encourage copyright holders to leverage the reduced distribution costs and easier access to their markets, and to reduce copyright terms to something that benefits society.
If Mandelson is still in power in June I'm going to end up getting arrested:(
Politicians in the UK do not vote on 'all or nothing'. They can vote on individual clauses in bills, raise new ones, and (between the two houses) send a bill back a couple of times for revision and wording changes.
It's rare for a bill to pass unchanged. It's common for the opposition to vote for 95% of a bill and stand against the government on the one or two clauses that differ from their own policy.
The point of the article, and of the person you replied to (or should that be 'to whom you replied') is that people that write high quality code will instinctively care about, know or just get right the difference between their, there and they're.
I've had enough experience (without joining the pissing match) hitting tough deadlines to know that no comment is better than a wrong comment, and my brain gets upset with poor grammar/spelling in comments.
You're right that productivity is impacted by grammar. Alas the evidence appears to be that companies benefit from higher productivity if their staff care about it.
db.connect; if (db.schema == null)
db.setSchema(newSchema);
db.loadTemplate(initialTemplate);
db.configureNode(Nodes.getInitialNode()); db.addNode(node);//etc
Sorry, but how exactly do your comments add value to the code? Why on earth would you write code any more complex than my example (syntax aside) for so simple a task?
Sure, 'db' may not have the necessary methods, but I can replace steps 3,4,5 with a method called
initialiseDatabase(db);
that hides the complexity, and thus retains readability. And nobody has to maintain the comments. Nobody has to go mad reading
# 1. Initiate communication with database db.connect();
You may not code maliciously, but the effect is much the same.
Apparently there *is* a dark side to a high-quality unit test suite... it gives idiots a false sense of security and justifies their idiotic development practices.
Only where the test suite has been retrofitted to the code.
The mere act of testing as you develop changes your development methodology, your design approach, and the quality of your code.
Well, assuming you're doing it right of course. There's a whole new area of discussion..
With all respect to the Indians with whom I've worked (and there have been many) it's very wrong to compare an Indian university degree with a British or American one.
Indian universities teach people how to do things. British universities teach people how to think about things.
There's a very strong and noticeable difference in the problem solving approach of graduates from the two countries.
Since my sample set includes Indians that went to British and American universities I'm very comfortable putting it down to teaching philosophy and not racial or genetic grounds.
I have the joy of working with some truly excellent, intelligent and capable Indians at the moment. I've also had the despair of working with intelligent and capable Indians that have been badly misused by their educational system.
I'm very lazy. I skipped most of my lectures at university. I got a good degree from "world top 5" business school (at the time I was there; they're down to merely the top 10-15 now, alas).
It's very easy to get a degree, even at a top university.
It's actually not that hard to get a masters.
Incidentally, I know professors (socially) at top universities in the UK and the US, and they're all dedicated and in love with their subjects.
(Two of them are also dedicated and in love with their drug habits, but I'm sure that's just coincidence)
The BCS. They hand out Chartered Engineer status. So do the IIT. So do the IEEE (I think).
It's not hard to become a Chartered Engineer as a computer programmer (although I prefer the term Software Engineer).
That said, I'm not a Chartered Engineer. I'm a Chartered IT Professional. It's like being a Chartered Engineer, but without the cachet, salary or hordes of admiring groupies.
Company of Heroes, played at a friend's house, subsequently bought. Expansion pack, bought. Bought for a different friend. Second expansion pack, bought. Precursors (Dawn of War) bought. Dawn of War expansion packs, bought.
That's a lot of purchases from 20 minutes playing a game I didn't own.
You seem to assume I'm a pirate. I don't recall mentioning pirating any games.
I do download demos. I find a lot of games don't have a playable demo. I do seek other ways to try out games before I pay for them. There are too many shit games out there - hell, I've downloaded, played and deleted 3 in the past two days; they just weren't worth the space on my hard disk, let alone actual cash.
Computer games, by and large, only exist because you can make money selling them. The creators of those games, by and large, do not want them to be free-- if they did, they could easily make them free, because copyright works that way.
Angband is a game I've been playing for 17 years. It cost nothing. The creators, maintainers and modifiers have all been paid nothing. Your statement is excessively broad sweeping and thus incorrect.
As I said, games that are worth spending money on receive income. Games that aren't don't. Downloading them is not relevant to that.
it's bullshit when you say it. You haven't paid for jack
You clearly missed the part where I mentioned the monthly subscriptions I'm paying for, the name of the legal download service I pay for and use, and the number of games I've purchased in the last month.
Do try and understand that this is not a black and white issue, and that the perspective of the games creators is only part of the equation.
I can afford to buy games. I do buy games. I also approve of piracy. This is not a contradiction. I can deal with the ambiguity and sophistication of this viewpoint.
I spend £25/month on subscriptions to online games every month. I buy games on top of that 8-9 times a year too. In the last month I've bought 4 games.
So clearly I can afford it.
However I still have the desire to download games. This is despite lacking the time to play them.
The game companies get a significant proportion of my income. The ones that get it are the ones that produce games I'm willing to pay for. If I play a game I don't own and really like it and want to play it some more, I'll buy it. I'll buy its sequel. I'll tell my friends to buy it. Hell, I'll buy it for my friends at times. I've lost count of the number of games I wouldn't have bought had I not had the chance to play them first.
If a company produces a game that I'm not willing to pay for then they don't get my money. Whether I download the game or not, they wont get my money.
Except that these days I'm downloading games from Metaboli, so sadly companies do get paid for their shite. I'm basically hoping Metaboli pays them only in proportion to how much people actually play the games..
Information wants to be free, and so do computer games. Computer game companies want to be paid. It's an uneasy balance but the answer is not to act like game piracy is inherently a bad thing.
You're ignoring my other posts that highlighted the 60lb I lost in 4 months this year.
You're disregarding the 8 hours of sport a week that I engage in.
Right now I'm eating one meal a day, no snacks, doing sport at the weekends, walking a mile each way to get to work and losing no weight.
I work with a girl that's half my size (shorter, smaller frame) that eats 3 meals a day, snacks throughout the day, drinks sugar-rich drinks and doesn't gain weight. She does go out running, but as the article highlights, that doesn't burn very many calories.
People are different. Their bodies react differently to food. There is not a direct linear relationship between exercise and fat levels, between calories and weight. There are a lot of complicating factors, those are recognised medically and by diet professionals, and your callous "I can stay thin so everyone else can or they're lazy" attitude is unhelpful, unnecessary, aggressive, insulting and wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Although there are several worth downloading for free.
That's not a good advert for attracting commercial developers admittedly, but there are a lot of quality free apps for Android.
Where the Android market really went wrong was not having the charging mechanisms available on release. It meant that everybody got used to downloading free software for their phones, and that's inhibited commercialisation of the marketplace.
I installed the VNC client directly from the web on my G1, back before the developer put it on the Android market.
Obviously I put it to good use (WoW on my phone!)
What the fuck? The n900 is already available in the US. In fact, at this precise moment in time, it's ONLY available in the US.
And of course, since you can download and install software from the 'net using the device itself, without even going near Nokia's store, developers can sell through the store and also directly through their own websites should they choose.
Disclaimer: I'm waiting for the n900 to go on sale in the UK so I can replace my Android phone. Yeah, I'm biased against Apple.
Irfanview still rocks. Sadly no longer free for commercial use, so I don't install it at work, but an essential on every Windows PC I own.
It's not just that it handles every image format I've ever heard of, it's not just that it works simply and effectively, it's the fact that it takes one straightforward and relatively common task (viewing images) and does it better than anything else out there.
That said, I'm about to reboot into Linux to download, install and try Gwenview. Hopefully it's comparable.
The answer is not to ignore the judiciary, penalise innocent people and throw away the principles embodied in the Magna Carta.
The answer is to encourage copyright holders to leverage the reduced distribution costs and easier access to their markets, and to reduce copyright terms to something that benefits society.
If Mandelson is still in power in June I'm going to end up getting arrested :(
And yet, with Mandelson in charge, I'm not putting my money on anything..
Politicians in the UK do not vote on 'all or nothing'. They can vote on individual clauses in bills, raise new ones, and (between the two houses) send a bill back a couple of times for revision and wording changes.
It's rare for a bill to pass unchanged. It's common for the opposition to vote for 95% of a bill and stand against the government on the one or two clauses that differ from their own policy.
Which is why my letter to my MP didn't mention the xbox at all, and instead highlighted the various other issues with this fucked up legislation.
I haven't even started on the 'unelected government' issue..
all the details and nuances of a 50 line function
Ah, I see your problem.
The point of the article, and of the person you replied to (or should that be 'to whom you replied') is that people that write high quality code will instinctively care about, know or just get right the difference between their, there and they're.
I've had enough experience (without joining the pissing match) hitting tough deadlines to know that no comment is better than a wrong comment, and my brain gets upset with poor grammar/spelling in comments.
You're right that productivity is impacted by grammar. Alas the evidence appears to be that companies benefit from higher productivity if their staff care about it.
Surely his implementation merely ensured the donkey would be kicked whether it needed it or not?
Code should always be in English. Comments should always be in the language of the development team.
I just hope your colleagues are all from Africa ;)
db.connect; //etc
if (db.schema == null)
db.setSchema(newSchema);
db.loadTemplate(initialTemplate);
db.configureNode(Nodes.getInitialNode());
db.addNode(node);
Sorry, but how exactly do your comments add value to the code? Why on earth would you write code any more complex than my example (syntax aside) for so simple a task?
Sure, 'db' may not have the necessary methods, but I can replace steps 3,4,5 with a method called
initialiseDatabase(db);
that hides the complexity, and thus retains readability. And nobody has to maintain the comments. Nobody has to go mad reading
# 1. Initiate communication with database
db.connect();
You may not code maliciously, but the effect is much the same.
Which is why comments are bad. Why change the tests, the code and the comment when you can just change the tests and the code?
Good comments are rare. Good comments in changed code are even rarer. Easy to read uncommented code is actually more common, and quicker to write.
It's a no-brainer.
I've written unit tests that test all known valid inputs before.
I'm now trying to remember why that was the appropriate level to which to test, and why we just didn't turn the test cases into a simple map...
Apparently there *is* a dark side to a high-quality unit test suite... it gives idiots a false sense of security and justifies their idiotic development practices.
Only where the test suite has been retrofitted to the code.
The mere act of testing as you develop changes your development methodology, your design approach, and the quality of your code.
Well, assuming you're doing it right of course. There's a whole new area of discussion..
Although if you can highlight a bug in my code, I'll do my best to add a unit test that exposes it.
Thus passing all the unit tests tends to mean 'no known bugs'.
Strictly that's not true, as there may be environmental bugs or bugs that are cost ineffective to unit test, but it's a worthy start point.
I think I've just agreed with you by disagreeing with you. Doh.
With all respect to the Indians with whom I've worked (and there have been many) it's very wrong to compare an Indian university degree with a British or American one.
Indian universities teach people how to do things.
British universities teach people how to think about things.
There's a very strong and noticeable difference in the problem solving approach of graduates from the two countries.
Since my sample set includes Indians that went to British and American universities I'm very comfortable putting it down to teaching philosophy and not racial or genetic grounds.
I have the joy of working with some truly excellent, intelligent and capable Indians at the moment. I've also had the despair of working with intelligent and capable Indians that have been badly misused by their educational system.
I'm very lazy. I skipped most of my lectures at university. I got a good degree from "world top 5" business school (at the time I was there; they're down to merely the top 10-15 now, alas).
It's very easy to get a degree, even at a top university.
It's actually not that hard to get a masters.
Incidentally, I know professors (socially) at top universities in the UK and the US, and they're all dedicated and in love with their subjects.
(Two of them are also dedicated and in love with their drug habits, but I'm sure that's just coincidence)
Yet ironically my degree in Accounting and Financial Analysis required no calculus.
(That doesn't mean I didn't use some, but hey, one of the courses covered creative accounting..)
The BCS. They hand out Chartered Engineer status.
So do the IIT.
So do the IEEE (I think).
It's not hard to become a Chartered Engineer as a computer programmer (although I prefer the term Software Engineer).
That said, I'm not a Chartered Engineer. I'm a Chartered IT Professional. It's like being a Chartered Engineer, but without the cachet, salary or hordes of admiring groupies.
Yah. "I don't pirate games, except the three I pirated in the last 2 days!"
Which part of "legal download service" did you choose to misread?
That's ok, I kept count for you: it's zero.
Company of Heroes, played at a friend's house, subsequently bought. Expansion pack, bought. Bought for a different friend. Second expansion pack, bought. Precursors (Dawn of War) bought. Dawn of War expansion packs, bought.
That's a lot of purchases from 20 minutes playing a game I didn't own.
You seem to assume I'm a pirate. I don't recall mentioning pirating any games.
I do download demos. I find a lot of games don't have a playable demo. I do seek other ways to try out games before I pay for them. There are too many shit games out there - hell, I've downloaded, played and deleted 3 in the past two days; they just weren't worth the space on my hard disk, let alone actual cash.
Computer games, by and large, only exist because you can make money selling them. The creators of those games, by and large, do not want them to be free-- if they did, they could easily make them free, because copyright works that way.
Angband is a game I've been playing for 17 years. It cost nothing. The creators, maintainers and modifiers have all been paid nothing. Your statement is excessively broad sweeping and thus incorrect.
As I said, games that are worth spending money on receive income. Games that aren't don't. Downloading them is not relevant to that.
it's bullshit when you say it. You haven't paid for jack
You clearly missed the part where I mentioned the monthly subscriptions I'm paying for, the name of the legal download service I pay for and use, and the number of games I've purchased in the last month.
Do try and understand that this is not a black and white issue, and that the perspective of the games creators is only part of the equation.
I can afford to buy games. I do buy games. I also approve of piracy. This is not a contradiction. I can deal with the ambiguity and sophistication of this viewpoint.
Can you?
I spend £25/month on subscriptions to online games every month.
I buy games on top of that 8-9 times a year too.
In the last month I've bought 4 games.
So clearly I can afford it.
However I still have the desire to download games. This is despite lacking the time to play them.
The game companies get a significant proportion of my income. The ones that get it are the ones that produce games I'm willing to pay for. If I play a game I don't own and really like it and want to play it some more, I'll buy it. I'll buy its sequel. I'll tell my friends to buy it. Hell, I'll buy it for my friends at times. I've lost count of the number of games I wouldn't have bought had I not had the chance to play them first.
If a company produces a game that I'm not willing to pay for then they don't get my money. Whether I download the game or not, they wont get my money.
Except that these days I'm downloading games from Metaboli, so sadly companies do get paid for their shite. I'm basically hoping Metaboli pays them only in proportion to how much people actually play the games..
Information wants to be free, and so do computer games. Computer game companies want to be paid. It's an uneasy balance but the answer is not to act like game piracy is inherently a bad thing.
You appear to be assuming that I'm obese.
You're ignoring my other posts that highlighted the 60lb I lost in 4 months this year.
You're disregarding the 8 hours of sport a week that I engage in.
Right now I'm eating one meal a day, no snacks, doing sport at the weekends, walking a mile each way to get to work and losing no weight.
I work with a girl that's half my size (shorter, smaller frame) that eats 3 meals a day, snacks throughout the day, drinks sugar-rich drinks and doesn't gain weight. She does go out running, but as the article highlights, that doesn't burn very many calories.
People are different. Their bodies react differently to food. There is not a direct linear relationship between exercise and fat levels, between calories and weight. There are a lot of complicating factors, those are recognised medically and by diet professionals, and your callous "I can stay thin so everyone else can or they're lazy" attitude is unhelpful, unnecessary, aggressive, insulting and wrong.