Re:You know if I had a dollar for every time...
on
Is id Abandoning Linux?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Actually, unless the reported
sales numbers for august are way off it wouldn't surprise me if id games one day chose to abandon the
PC platform alltogether:
PC games:
[77,374] Bioshock - 2K Games
[49,126] World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi
Consoles:
[896,592] Madden NFL 08 - Xbox 360 - Electronic Arts
[643,617] Madden NFL 08 - Playstation 2 - Electronic Arts
[490,910] BioShock - Xbox 360 - 2K Games
[336,189] Madden NFL 08 - Playstation 3 - Electronic Arts
[256,781] Play With Remote - Wii - Nintendo of America
With even the 10th console game outselling the two top PC games combined, I can't
help but wonder how (if) the smaller PC game studios turn a profit.
Blaming Universal for Apple's unwillingness to license Fairplay to other online music stores is hardly fair, now is it?
I sincerely hope that Microsoft won't be the only monopoly that the EU commission targets.
Apple sold a million phones faster than any other company ever has.
Really? Though I don't see the iPod loosing its status as the market leader anytime soon either; the iPhone definitely is a niche product. Nokia shipped 100.8 million handsets in Q2.
Can someone give me an introduction/explanation to... functional programming that I can understand?
Yes, Robert Harper's book Programming in Standard ML is available for download. It's a nice and thorough introduction to functional programming. It was an absolute joy to read.
True, identifier names containing spelling errors can be a real annoyance, but I somehow doubt you'll ever find a usable solution, at least not as long as you'll need to interface to code beyond your control. What spell checker wouldn't choke on regular C++? Just picking a random declaration from MSDN (feel free to choose any other API, it won't change anything):
I bet Nokia's rather happy they didn't solder the battery onto the board, but opted for the replaceable solution.
Considering that every month brings with it a new story of a major hardware manufacturer having to recall xx million devices due to faulty batteries, I'm impressed that Apple had the guts to go for non-replaceables.
Stallman and his followers were the ones that created this whole thing
Stallman and his followers (diciples?) have indeed contributed significantly, but claiming that they created the whole thing is probably stretching it a bit too far. Assuming that you by this whole thing refer to the various Linux distributions, then none of them would have gained any momentum if it wasn't for (ignoring Linus for a moment) Apache, Mozilla, PERL/PHP/Python/Ruby, the Eclipse Foundation, OpenOffice.org, ect.
I'm not trying to downplay the importance of the GNU toolchain, but personally I actually consider the GPL to be Stallman's most significant contribution.
I'm however not so sure that he still has any role to play in this story...besides perhaps as the comic sidekick;-)
"Now" is probably an exaggeration, considering that we're talking about Vista SP1.
"Obsolete"...I guess my DX9 card has been obsolete for a few years now, it still ticks on nicely though. Heck, all my hardware is probably obsolete.
You could sum up TFA in a single line: "Microsoft discusses future extensions to the DirectX API. The current generation of hardware won't support those."
Dennis M. Ritchie gets paid.
Guy L. Steele gets paid.
John Carmack gets paid.
Shigeru Miyamoto gets paid.
Steve Jobs gets paid.
Steven Spielberg gets paid.
Carl Barks got paid (not nearly enough though).
While your argument may sound intriguing at first, it really doesn't fare well when confronted by reality...and you'll really hate yourself for saying so, when your boss refreshes your memory at the next salary negotiation.
A few years back a Danish art museum displayed an exhibition with ten blenders containing living goldfish, where the public were given the chance to switch them on, and of course a few couldn't resist the temptation. The whole thing caused quite a stir...
Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible, even at the cost of a little bit of blurriness.
Microsoft generally believes that the shape of each letter should be hammered into pixel boundaries to prevent blur and improve readability, even at the cost of not being true to the typeface.
Personally I can't really see any problems with making this video public, it's not as if you can actually identify the driver or any bystanders. However, as long as YouTube hosts it, then YouTube carries the responsibility. What technical difficulties they might have preventing this from happening is hardly relevant.
Would you still consider technical difficulties a valid excuse if YouTube was flooded with snuff videos or child pornography ?
Personally I wouldn't be too worried about the memory footprint, but I guess this means that they're dropping the text based configuration files in favour of a binary format? - If that's the case, I sincerely hope they'll reconsider, from The Art of Unix Programming:
When you feel the urge to design a complex binary file format, or a complex binary application protocol, it is generally wise to lie down until the feeling passes.
I had hoped that the mess that is the Windows Registry had taught people to avoid odd binary formats if at all possible...
That said, there's a system now that could change all of that. It's called MSBuild and it ships with Visual Studio. For anyone who does command line builds and whose codebase is mostly managed code, I highly recommend looking into it.
Eh, you do know that such tools have existed for quite a while now? You might want to first check out Apache Ant, or if you're a.NET developer then take a look at NAnt instead. You'll find a good introduction to NAnt here.
Once you've gotten the hang of (N)Ant you might want to set up a automated build server:
CruiseControl or CruiseControl.NET
I'm normally a big fan of MS development tools, but when it comes to automating the build process MS is really playing catch up.
The USA is by far the country with the least vacation time in the world -- much lower than most third-world countries.
If you live in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico you'll only get 7 days. Chinese workers probably envy their neighbors, assuming that this page can be trusted...it's not without errors though, here in Denmark we've only got five weeks and not six.
You can't sue the individual contributors - at least I hope you can't, but then again, IANAL - but you can definitely sue Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, and other distributors. You can force sourceforge to remove a project, and you can force an ISP to close any website offering the infringing piece of software for download.
When the little company tells them "we abide by the GPL, so we're safe from license problems, and we wrote the new code ourselves", that's not good enough.
No, and it never has been. The patent indemnity agreements formed recently have not changed anything - except perhaps to raise the general awareness of this problem.
What you are missing is that it's a *good* thing that Java generics are not "real" generics.
It appears that you're confusing CLI generics and C++ templates. I must admit that I have little knowledge of C++ templates, but a comparison of Java's Generics by Type Erasure and C#/CLI's true generics definitely favours the latter.
Slide no. 23 sums up the major advantages of the C#/CLI implementation:
In C#, a type parameter can be used almost as an ordinary type:
class C<T> { void M(Object o) { T[] arr = new T[10];// Array creation if (o is T) {// Instance-of test T t = (T)o;// Type cast ... } T d = default(T):// Get default value for T Type ty = typeof(T);// Get type object (reflection) } void MO(T x) {... }// Overloading on type parameters void MO(IMyList<T> x) {... }// and type instances }
Java simply does not allow this (slide no. 32):
[...] in Java, a generic type parameter in many respect cannot be used as an ordinary type:
class C<T> { void m(object o) { T[] arr = new T[10];// Declaration OK, array creation not if (o instanceof T) {// No instance-of test T t = (T)o;// Type casts are "unchecked" ... } Class ty = T.class;// No getting the type object } void mo(T x) {... }// No overloading on type parameters void mo(MyList<T> x) {... }// and type instances }
Then of course there's the fact that C# type arguments can be value types, not only reference types. No boxing or unboxing is needed for value type arguments; hence better performance and less memory usage.
While perhaps producing some rather amusing results, this is a unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of Notepad having to support a variety of encodings of text files.
But you are (well, at least the real picture is a bit more muddled)
Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which "causes too much pain for legitmate buyers" while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are "huge problems" with DRM, he says, and "we need more flexible models, such as the ability to "buy an artist out for life" (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.
His short term advice: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then."
Thing is, if neither Microsoft nor Apple had gone the DRM route, they would still get on board [...]
I sincerely doubt that (but feel free to back it up with facts). No, without DRM support by Vista you'd just get 3rd party DRM instead, as has been the case with XP: SecuROM, Safedisc, StarForce, and a lot more.
DRM won't go away before people stop stealing, and whereas people in these forums feel strongly about it, most people are perfectly happy with the way the iTunes Music Store works.
As we can't get rid of it, I for one prefer a standardized platform provided by the OS, instead of the current crop of dirty hacks (yes Sony, I'm looking at you).
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With even the 10th console game outselling the two top PC games combined, I can't help but wonder how (if) the smaller PC game studios turn a profit.
Blaming Universal for Apple's unwillingness to license Fairplay to other online music stores is hardly fair, now is it? I sincerely hope that Microsoft won't be the only monopoly that the EU commission targets.
True, identifier names containing spelling errors can be a real annoyance, but I somehow doubt you'll ever find a usable solution, at least not as long as you'll need to interface to code beyond your control. What spell checker wouldn't choke on regular C++? Just picking a random declaration from MSDN (feel free to choose any other API, it won't change anything):
HRESULT MFGetService(
IUnknown* punkObject,
REFGUID guidService,
REFIID riid,
LPVOID* ppvObject
);
You'll probably just end up spending all your day removing false positives.
I bet Nokia's rather happy they didn't solder the battery onto the board, but opted for the replaceable solution.
Considering that every month brings with it a new story of a major hardware manufacturer having to recall xx million devices due to faulty batteries, I'm impressed that Apple had the guts to go for non-replaceables.
Stallman and his followers (diciples?) have indeed contributed significantly, but claiming that they created the whole thing is probably stretching it a bit too far. Assuming that you by this whole thing refer to the various Linux distributions, then none of them would have gained any momentum if it wasn't for (ignoring Linus for a moment) Apache, Mozilla, PERL/PHP/Python/Ruby, the Eclipse Foundation, OpenOffice.org, ect.
I'm not trying to downplay the importance of the GNU toolchain, but personally I actually consider the GPL to be Stallman's most significant contribution.
I'm however not so sure that he still has any role to play in this story ...besides perhaps as the comic sidekick ;-)
"Now" is probably an exaggeration, considering that we're talking about Vista SP1.
...I guess my DX9 card has been obsolete for a few years now, it still ticks on nicely though. Heck, all my hardware is probably obsolete.
"Obsolete"
You could sum up TFA in a single line: "Microsoft discusses future extensions to the DirectX API. The current generation of hardware won't support those."
Are anyone really surprised? Newsworthy?
Dennis M. Ritchie gets paid.
...and you'll really hate yourself for saying so, when your boss refreshes your memory at the next salary negotiation.
Guy L. Steele gets paid.
John Carmack gets paid.
Shigeru Miyamoto gets paid.
Steve Jobs gets paid.
Steven Spielberg gets paid.
Carl Barks got paid (not nearly enough though).
While your argument may sound intriguing at first, it really doesn't fare well when confronted by reality
Nope, this guy is a troll who's been living here for a few years.
The specimen is believed to be the best of its kind to date.
Yeah right whatever... but will it blend?
Will you settle for a goldfish ?
A few years back a Danish art museum displayed an exhibition with ten blenders containing living goldfish, where the public were given the chance to switch them on, and of course a few couldn't resist the temptation. The whole thing caused quite a stir...
Personally I can't really see any problems with making this video public, it's not as if you can actually identify the driver or any bystanders. However, as long as YouTube hosts it, then YouTube carries the responsibility. What technical difficulties they might have preventing this from happening is hardly relevant.
Would you still consider technical difficulties a valid excuse if YouTube was flooded with snuff videos or child pornography ?
A single file contains the schema and data.
Personally I wouldn't be too worried about the memory footprint, but I guess this means that they're dropping the text based configuration files in favour of a binary format? - If that's the case, I sincerely hope they'll reconsider, from The Art of Unix Programming:
When you feel the urge to design a complex binary file format, or a complex binary application protocol, it is generally wise to lie down until the feeling passes.
I had hoped that the mess that is the Windows Registry had taught people to avoid odd binary formats if at all possible...
It might also be that the idea wasn't any good after all...
Not all former MS employees hold a grudge. Joel Spolsky appears thoroughly impressed with his former boss: My First BillG Review
Eh, you do know that such tools have existed for quite a while now? You might want to first check out Apache Ant, or if you're a .NET developer then take a look at NAnt instead. You'll find a good introduction to NAnt here.
Once you've gotten the hang of (N)Ant you might want to set up a automated build server: CruiseControl or CruiseControl.NET
I'm normally a big fan of MS development tools, but when it comes to automating the build process MS is really playing catch up.
If you live in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico you'll only get 7 days. Chinese workers probably envy their neighbors, assuming that this page can be trusted ...it's not without errors though, here in Denmark we've only got five weeks and not six.
You can't sue the individual contributors - at least I hope you can't, but then again, IANAL - but you can definitely sue Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, and other distributors. You can force sourceforge to remove a project, and you can force an ISP to close any website offering the infringing piece of software for download.
So yes, it matters.
No, and it never has been. The patent indemnity agreements formed recently have not changed anything - except perhaps to raise the general awareness of this problem.
It appears that you're confusing CLI generics and C++ templates. I must admit that I have little knowledge of C++ templates, but a comparison of Java's Generics by Type Erasure and C#/CLI's true generics definitely favours the latter.
The following set of slides by Peter Sestoft sums up the differences pretty well: http://www.itu.dk/courses/PFOO/F2006/diku-javacsha rpgenerics.pdf
Slide no. 23 sums up the major advantages of the C#/CLI implementation:
Java simply does not allow this (slide no. 32):
Then of course there's the fact that C# type arguments can be value types, not only reference types. No boxing or unboxing is needed for value type arguments; hence better performance and less memory usage.
While perhaps producing some rather amusing results, this is a unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of Notepad having to support a variety of encodings of text files.
It's not really news though, and I doubt Hugh Thompson deserves any credit, Raymond Chen explained why things behave like this back in 2004.
If I'm not mistaken
But you are (well, at least the real picture is a bit more muddled)
...and if you don't feel like reading through 32 pages, then Aaron Swartz boiled it down:
Edward R. Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" Presented in the Form of a PowerPoint Presentation
Thing is, if neither Microsoft nor Apple had gone the DRM route, they would still get on board [...]
I sincerely doubt that (but feel free to back it up with facts). No, without DRM support by Vista you'd just get 3rd party DRM instead, as has been the case with XP: SecuROM, Safedisc, StarForce, and a lot more.
DRM won't go away before people stop stealing, and whereas people in these forums feel strongly about it, most people are perfectly happy with the way the iTunes Music Store works.
As we can't get rid of it, I for one prefer a standardized platform provided by the OS, instead of the current crop of dirty hacks (yes Sony, I'm looking at you).