Indeed, there's absolutely no reason to single out Wikipedia here. Wikipedia is no less trustworthy/politically biased than any other encyclopedia.
Instead of considering a ban on Wikipedia, the professors ought to teach their students methods for judging the quality or sources...but that of course is a much harder task.
Reminded me of a poll jwz put up, pointing to the story: The Worm Within
I'm definitely with jwz on this one: Save that fucker, wash it off, and put it in a jar on your mantle labeled with your name, the date, and "Sample #0001"
Let me take a wild guess, you've never had to write code targeting multiple architectures? As if having to include code paths for different versions of DirectX (and subsets hereof) wasn't hard enough, try to imagine the number of paths you'd need without DirectX providing the layer between you and whatever hardware your code runs on right now.
No, no one pushed DirectX down any throat. DirectX brought the long needed standardization allowing the PC to become a viable gaming platform.
Add methods to a class, even if it's part of the standard library and I don't have the source code
Just for the record: Extension Methods as introduced with C# 3.0 allows you to do this. The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Project relies heavily on this feature.
MS provides a rather neat extension of the C# language: Spec#.
Spec# adds the method contracts and class invariants of Eiffel, the checked exceptions of Java, and introduces non-null types. But the thing that at least I find the most interesting, is the idea of static program verification.
NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.
Think about Samba, [f]or instance. When Novell had good standing in the community, they had Jeremy Allison working for them, if there were things they had a need for in Samba they could just give him a call and know he'd put that on the front burner. Now, their desires are no longer relevant.
What has Jeremy Allison being *employed* by Novell to do with maintaining "good relations with the community that produces the software"? While Jeremy Allison was working for Novell, were Novell not the ones producing the software? Is it not so that Linux would be left dead in its tracks without the backing of major companies (IBM, Novell, Sun, Nokia, etc.) forced to join efforts in order to compete with Microsoft?
Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing
that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:
1. SMB2: Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux.
Purely speculative.
7. Five Versions: The array of Vista editions could prove to be three too many, and upgrades between versions remain an unknown.
8. Activation: The need to activate the product via the Web could prove to be a time-waster during mass deployments.
More guesswork.
9. Storage Space: With Vista taking as much as 10 Gbytes of hard drive space, big and fast hard drives will be a must.
Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.
10. Backup: See No. 9. Backing up desktops will take a great deal of space.
No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
11. Urgency: Unlike Windows XP and Windows 95, there seems to be no must-have reasons behind Vista.
That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
12. Learning Curve: Vista is just different enough from XP that technicians and users will need training.
13. Cost: Moving to Vista can prove to be expensive when one considers the price
of the OS, the cost of hardware upgrades and the cost of migration.
These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed
actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.
"10 good habits that improve your UNIX command line efficiency" would probably have been a better title.
The title did however bring back fond memories of Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming.
The book is available online, and if you were hoping for something a bit more substantial as well, then the section Basics of the Unix Philosophy might be worth a read.
'The PC without an OS is not a product because it doesn't work,' said Alain Spitzmuller, legal affairs director for HP France. 'We believe the market is for products that work.'
That would be like selling printers without including the paper... Oh, never mind...
Two of the greatest rallying cries in XP are the slogans "Do the Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work" and "You Aren't Going to Need It" (known as YAGNI). Both are manifestations of the XP practice of Simple Design.
The way YAGNI is usually described, it says that you shouldn't add any code today which will only be used by feature that is needed tomorrow. On the face of it this sounds simple. The issue comes with such things as frameworks, reusable components, and flexible design. Such things are complicated to build. You pay an extra up-front cost to build them, in the expectation that you will gain back that cost later. This idea of building flexibility up-front is seen as a key part of effective software design.
However XP's advice is that you not build flexible components and frameworks for the first case that needs that functionality. Let these structures grow as they are needed. If I want a Money class today that handles addition but not multiplication then I build only addition into the Money class. Even if I'm sure I'll need multiplication in the next iteration, and understand how to do it easily, and think it'll be really quick to do, I'll still leave it till that next iteration.
One reason for this is economic. If I have to do any work that's only used for a feature that's needed tomorrow, that means I lose effort from features that need to be done for this iteration. The release plan says what needs to be worked on now, working on other things in the future is contrary to the developers agreement with the customer. There is a risk that this iteration's stories might not get done. Even if this iteration's stories are not at risk it's up to the customer to decide what extra work should be done - and that might still not involve multiplication.
This economic disincentive is compounded by the chance that we may not get it right. However certain we may be about how this function works, we can still get it wrong - especially since we don't have detailed requirements yet. Working on the wrong solution early is even more wasteful than working on the right solution early. And the XPerts generally believe that we are much more likely to be wrong than right (and I agree with that sentiment.)
The second reason for simple design is that a complex design is more difficult to understand than a simple design. Therefore any modification of the system is made harder by added complexity. This adds a cost during the period between when the more complicated design was added and when it was needed.
Now this advice strikes a lot of people as nonsense, and they are right to think that. Right providing that you imagine the usual development world where the enabling practices of XP aren't in place. However when the balance between planned and evolutionary design alters, then YAGNI becomes good practice (and only then).
So to summarize. You don't want to spend effort adding new capability that won't be needed until a future iteration. And even if the cost is zero, you still don't want to it because it increases the cost of modification even if it costs nothing to put in. However you can only sensibly behave this way when you are using XP, or a similar technique that lowers the cost of change.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, communism fell (at least officially) December 1989. As of today Romania has been a member of the EU for a full month.
70 percent of software used in the country continues to be of an illicit nature
Linux accounts for the remaining 30 percent?
and why is it flirting with me
Continuing an age-old tradition I guess: "Why is a dog asking me questions?" - Award for the Silliest User Interface: Windows Search
Thank God that the slashdot community is around to prove them otherwise ;)
Indeed, there's absolutely no reason to single out Wikipedia here. Wikipedia is no less trustworthy/politically biased than any other encyclopedia.
Instead of considering a ban on Wikipedia, the professors ought to teach their students methods for judging the quality or sources ...but that of course is a much harder task.
Then don't eat it!
Reminded me of a poll jwz put up, pointing to the story: The Worm Within
I'm definitely with jwz on this one: Save that fucker, wash it off, and put it in a jar on your mantle labeled with your name, the date, and "Sample #0001"
There is a better way, by which you avoid the loss in quality caused by the decompression->compression process (however slight it may be): http://hymn-project.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=155 3
...and you'll save that cd for something useful instead (pr0n?)
I for one welcomed your DirectX overloards.
Let me take a wild guess, you've never had to write code targeting multiple architectures? As if having to include code paths for different versions of DirectX (and subsets hereof) wasn't hard enough, try to imagine the number of paths you'd need without DirectX providing the layer between you and whatever hardware your code runs on right now.
No, no one pushed DirectX down any throat. DirectX brought the long needed standardization allowing the PC to become a viable gaming platform.
From my parents' home in Wyoming, I stab at thee!
I really like the tagging beta thing. It's a really neat way of moderating the editors, and once again it's spot on: wrong, fud.
Add methods to a class, even if it's part of the standard library and I don't have the source code
Just for the record: Extension Methods as introduced with C# 3.0 allows you to do this. The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Project relies heavily on this feature.
Hate it if you must, but the low hum you can hear in the background is the sound of photocopiers starting up all around the globe.
MS provides a rather neat extension of the C# language: Spec#.
Spec# adds the method contracts and class invariants of Eiffel, the checked exceptions of Java, and introduces non-null types. But the thing that at least I find the most interesting, is the idea of static program verification.
Nope, it's growing fatter and fatter
Overall however, the layer appears to be recovering.
What has Jeremy Allison being *employed* by Novell to do with maintaining "good relations with the community that produces the software"? While Jeremy Allison was working for Novell, were Novell not the ones producing the software? Is it not so that Linux would be left dead in its tracks without the backing of major companies (IBM, Novell, Sun, Nokia, etc.) forced to join efforts in order to compete with Microsoft?
Nothing whatsoever, but the GP said "someone else, who" and not "something else":
I figured the GP was comparing Microsoft to Apple and not Vista to OS X
Can it? - I've upgraded my hardware quite a few times and reactivation has never failed (if required at all).
I personally consider locking OS X to Apple hardware the ultimate DRM, but feel free to disagree...
The iTunes Music Store?
(okay, that was actually four words...)
Most of the 'shortcomings' listed in the article are either purely speculative or worse, revealing that the author lacks insight. Just to pick a few examples:
Purely speculative.
More guesswork.
Hardly relevant, any hard drive sold within the last few years will allow > 100GB.
No, do not back up the full installation, only your personal data.
That hardly qualifies as a shortcoming... to anyone but MS of course.
These are not issues specific to Vista. A platform switch will always be a costly affair (the cost of retraining your staff is several orders of magnitude greater than anything else).
And so it drags on... It might very well be that some of the issues raised are indeed actual problems, but as the article stands it's mostly FUD.
"10 good habits that improve your UNIX command line efficiency" would probably have been a better title.
The title did however bring back fond memories of Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming. The book is available online, and if you were hoping for something a bit more substantial as well, then the section Basics of the Unix Philosophy might be worth a read.
Don't hold your breath, it might take a while before they arrive...
Martin Fowler has written a few words on the subject Is Design Dead?
...or two ;)
Highly recommended, grab a cup of coffee
Are they going to ban Java as well?
c /intl/faq.jsp#imf
http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/core/basi
The death toll is catastrophic!
I thought of penny-arcade when reading that post as well, but apologies, this was what popped up in my mind...