Did you forget about the decades before the 80s, and did you forget about minicomputers and mainframes even into the 90s? The idea of portable software came about around the time of Unix and didn't really catch on to a big degree until the 80s at the earliest. For a lot of computing history, portable software has not been the mainstream.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in MySQL, at least, you can have procedures run in the context of the defining user, not the invoking user. Thus, the procedures can access tables that the user calling the procedures cannot.
That too, but OS X had it first and Windows followed with a nice implementation. I guess I could have listed every environment with that feature, but honestly, Windows and OS X do it the best. KDE and GNOME 3 are in second place.
They're just doing a bad job of morphing to a new paradigm. They seem to get stuck in half paradigms, something that Apple avoids nicely. The Windows 7 taskbar, for example, is probably the worst way to do a taskbar that I can think of. Like on OS X, each app gets one entry, but unlike OS X, it's actually multiple sub-entries. You can't just go to an app because, surprise, it's still just like it used to be. But neither can you actually just go straight to a specific window. In other words, it takes the worst elements of both systems and none of the good elements. They picked the one wrong combination of features.
So moving stuff around isn't necessarily a big deal, as long as it's obvious where and why things were moved (even if just for the heck of it). Microsoft seems to fail to grasp this concept.
It does too much, granted, but that's entirely separate from whether it makes sense to have shutdown in there. Given that it does what it does, it makes sense for shutdown to be in there.
I don't know that it's that bad, though. If a computer contains a hierarchy of relevant user items, then having that hierarchy expressed as a menu system isn't entirely unreasonable. And aside from Programs, most stuff in the start menu just launches all the top level things that then deal with the items directly. Documents aren't in the start menu (well, they can be), but My Computer and the home folder is. Configuration items aren't in the start menu, but control panel is. It's the top level launcher for all the other things that take care of the details. I don't think it's that big of a mess.
It's really not that hard. And unlike the command line, you get to see related items, which might end up being more what you want. I'm a big fan of the command line, but even I like the ability to just type relevant words into the start menu and almost always get exactly what I want at the top of the list, plus other options. That feature of Windows and OS X is nice.
The only people complaining about shutdown being under the start menu are the kind of people who get their panties in a twist over "less" vs "fewer" and things like that: pedants. The start menu is clear the place to make things happen, as it includes programs, configuration options, file browsing options, etc. It makes sense that you go there to make your computer do things, including shutting it down. I never had to think twice about it. Not even my computer illiterate family found it confusing.
No, a GUI is a more expressive way of displaying information and allowing the user to interact with the application. Discoverability is only one of the benefits of a GUI, one that I think is overplayed. Any serious piece of GUI software has a learning curve, and that's a-okay with me, as I'm not using the GUI because it's easy, I'm using it because it's effective.
The CLI has its place, just like the the GUI has its place. The GUI presents a different view and provides a wider range of available operations because it can take advantage of our advanced visual and spatial abilities (something that the CLI doesn't really do). Would you want to do photo editing with a CLI? Form design? Web browsing? Even some programming tasks are better suited to a GUI environment because it can display program structure and other things in a more advanced way than a CLI can. Don't throw things like Vi/Emacs at me: they are essentially GUIs that use a lo-fi display.
On Windows, at least, you can just type "appearance" into the start menu search box and go straight to it. Where's that functionality on the command line?
When you say things like "if you don't have an edge" and "the amount you should bet...is given by the Kelly Criterion" it sounds like you're saying it's really not a risk. These types of statements imply that you have a good chance of getting a return on investment. Risk in real life means that you have a small chance of succeeding, but it may be worth the cost if it does succeed. That's not what this sounds like.
And in many databases, there'd be more performance gains from proper normalization than pre-mature optimization. I'm working with a legacy database that has this problem. Proper normalization would probably make it lightning fast, but instead it's slow as fuck because too many concerns are put in one table when they should be put in several tables. Also, it uses functions to retrieve values, which is just...so wrong.
One, the world is always spiralling down the drain. With large numbers of people and ever-present threats of natural disaster or internal chaos in human society, the world could easily spiral into utter chaos and destruction. However, there are those brave and hardworking souls who counteract the tide, and an army of complicit neutral regular folks who toil their life away, stemming the tide of chaos, and contributing to the works of the aforementioned group. There's always a battle and it could always be lost.
Two, it's not some new concoction of the media. People all over the world have complained about the imminent demise of man since about as long as we've had written commentary on society. I would go so far as to say that this is a good thing. By constantly pointing the mirror at our society's flaws and potential doom, we keep the people and the leaders aware of legitimate problems, and motivated to solve them. I really think our media ought to mostly be doing negative stories, as a service to the civilization.
ctags just doesn't compare with a modern IDE and a modern metadata-laden language. Vim just simply can't do that stuff because Vim wasn't designed to do it. Vim is a text editor, and a damn good one at that, but it is just a text editor. Right tool for the job and all that. I'm sure we'll both get downvotes from the old-timers...
Use VS with ReSharper with a large project and then go back to Vi and tell me that Vi makes you more productive. Hint: it's not just about cool text-editing features. Call me when Vi can do complex refactorings across dozens of projects.
Libraries, flexibility and a different type model aren't worth it? A more straightforward syntax isn't worth it? Maybe Python isn't as far away from C as C is from assembly (though, to be honest, C isn't *that* far away from assembly, except in syntax).
It does make Minecraft a great benchmark, though. If Minecraft runs fast on a machine, you know you have either an awesome CPU or a great video card (or a combo of both in all likelihood).
Slashdot Mirror
And not on minicomputers and mainframes and only really got started in the later 70s.
Did you forget about the decades before the 80s, and did you forget about minicomputers and mainframes even into the 90s? The idea of portable software came about around the time of Unix and didn't really catch on to a big degree until the 80s at the earliest. For a lot of computing history, portable software has not been the mainstream.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in MySQL, at least, you can have procedures run in the context of the defining user, not the invoking user. Thus, the procedures can access tables that the user calling the procedures cannot.
Are you Tommy Wiseau?
That too, but OS X had it first and Windows followed with a nice implementation. I guess I could have listed every environment with that feature, but honestly, Windows and OS X do it the best. KDE and GNOME 3 are in second place.
They're just doing a bad job of morphing to a new paradigm. They seem to get stuck in half paradigms, something that Apple avoids nicely. The Windows 7 taskbar, for example, is probably the worst way to do a taskbar that I can think of. Like on OS X, each app gets one entry, but unlike OS X, it's actually multiple sub-entries. You can't just go to an app because, surprise, it's still just like it used to be. But neither can you actually just go straight to a specific window. In other words, it takes the worst elements of both systems and none of the good elements. They picked the one wrong combination of features.
So moving stuff around isn't necessarily a big deal, as long as it's obvious where and why things were moved (even if just for the heck of it). Microsoft seems to fail to grasp this concept.
It does too much, granted, but that's entirely separate from whether it makes sense to have shutdown in there. Given that it does what it does, it makes sense for shutdown to be in there.
I don't know that it's that bad, though. If a computer contains a hierarchy of relevant user items, then having that hierarchy expressed as a menu system isn't entirely unreasonable. And aside from Programs, most stuff in the start menu just launches all the top level things that then deal with the items directly. Documents aren't in the start menu (well, they can be), but My Computer and the home folder is. Configuration items aren't in the start menu, but control panel is. It's the top level launcher for all the other things that take care of the details. I don't think it's that big of a mess.
It's really not that hard. And unlike the command line, you get to see related items, which might end up being more what you want. I'm a big fan of the command line, but even I like the ability to just type relevant words into the start menu and almost always get exactly what I want at the top of the list, plus other options. That feature of Windows and OS X is nice.
The only people complaining about shutdown being under the start menu are the kind of people who get their panties in a twist over "less" vs "fewer" and things like that: pedants. The start menu is clear the place to make things happen, as it includes programs, configuration options, file browsing options, etc. It makes sense that you go there to make your computer do things, including shutting it down. I never had to think twice about it. Not even my computer illiterate family found it confusing.
No, a GUI is a more expressive way of displaying information and allowing the user to interact with the application. Discoverability is only one of the benefits of a GUI, one that I think is overplayed. Any serious piece of GUI software has a learning curve, and that's a-okay with me, as I'm not using the GUI because it's easy, I'm using it because it's effective.
The CLI has its place, just like the the GUI has its place. The GUI presents a different view and provides a wider range of available operations because it can take advantage of our advanced visual and spatial abilities (something that the CLI doesn't really do). Would you want to do photo editing with a CLI? Form design? Web browsing? Even some programming tasks are better suited to a GUI environment because it can display program structure and other things in a more advanced way than a CLI can. Don't throw things like Vi/Emacs at me: they are essentially GUIs that use a lo-fi display.
On Windows, at least, you can just type "appearance" into the start menu search box and go straight to it. Where's that functionality on the command line?
When you say things like "if you don't have an edge" and "the amount you should bet...is given by the Kelly Criterion" it sounds like you're saying it's really not a risk. These types of statements imply that you have a good chance of getting a return on investment. Risk in real life means that you have a small chance of succeeding, but it may be worth the cost if it does succeed. That's not what this sounds like.
The anonymous coward comment was by me. I forgot to log in on this account.
MySQL has a version 5 now, you should check it out.
And in many databases, there'd be more performance gains from proper normalization than pre-mature optimization. I'm working with a legacy database that has this problem. Proper normalization would probably make it lightning fast, but instead it's slow as fuck because too many concerns are put in one table when they should be put in several tables. Also, it uses functions to retrieve values, which is just...so wrong.
In my experience, the only software that doesn't work on x64 is Microsoft dev stuff, mainly in the DB/BI area.
I'm going to disagree, for several reasons.
One, the world is always spiralling down the drain. With large numbers of people and ever-present threats of natural disaster or internal chaos in human society, the world could easily spiral into utter chaos and destruction. However, there are those brave and hardworking souls who counteract the tide, and an army of complicit neutral regular folks who toil their life away, stemming the tide of chaos, and contributing to the works of the aforementioned group. There's always a battle and it could always be lost.
Two, it's not some new concoction of the media. People all over the world have complained about the imminent demise of man since about as long as we've had written commentary on society. I would go so far as to say that this is a good thing. By constantly pointing the mirror at our society's flaws and potential doom, we keep the people and the leaders aware of legitimate problems, and motivated to solve them. I really think our media ought to mostly be doing negative stories, as a service to the civilization.
The Unisys site has had a wind streamlines map for ages: http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sfc_con.php?image=st&inv=0&t=cur&expanddiv=hide_bar
vortex.plymouth.edu lets you make maps with streamlines as well.
Granted, none of these are animated, but the point is that streamlines are hardly new in the online weather visualization field.
ctags just doesn't compare with a modern IDE and a modern metadata-laden language. Vim just simply can't do that stuff because Vim wasn't designed to do it. Vim is a text editor, and a damn good one at that, but it is just a text editor. Right tool for the job and all that. I'm sure we'll both get downvotes from the old-timers...
Use VS with ReSharper with a large project and then go back to Vi and tell me that Vi makes you more productive. Hint: it's not just about cool text-editing features. Call me when Vi can do complex refactorings across dozens of projects.
Maybe the guy really is running circles around other programmers for fun or something.
ReSharper nullifies this argument.
Libraries, flexibility and a different type model aren't worth it? A more straightforward syntax isn't worth it? Maybe Python isn't as far away from C as C is from assembly (though, to be honest, C isn't *that* far away from assembly, except in syntax).
It does make Minecraft a great benchmark, though. If Minecraft runs fast on a machine, you know you have either an awesome CPU or a great video card (or a combo of both in all likelihood).