Make it shiny, we will fix the bugs later! Of course later never comes, eventually the crap piles up too high and somebody decides to just start over. Which explains the piles of discarded stuff and the new one that also doesn't quite work in most areas, especially in system administration.
It also contains items that directly reference Godzilla and Legend of Zelda and MacGuyver and Fraggle Rock and Half-Life... hundreds of other pop-culture items. So by that logic, it's "influenced" by practically everything.
You can design forms and controls in the same way as Visual Basic, but it is C++.
Wow! So it's exactly like Microsoft's Visual C++, except less-supported!
Seriously, how out-of-date is your knowledge that you didn't know about Visual C++? It's been around for ages-- hell it's probably the reason most companies dumped Borland Builder.
But of course awesome things happen if someone manages to take that roguelike core and adds fitting graphics ( Diablo series. )
The Diablo series isn't a game, it's a click-tester for mouses.
The best conversion was the classic Mission: Thunderbolt for Macintosh, which took the basic engine, converted it into a sci-fi setting, and added all kinds of cool features and gags to the game.
WOW is a direct descendant of MUD, which probably wasn't influenced at all by Rogue/Nethack/whatever. They were inspired by Adventure, rather, a D&D-like text-based computer game in 1975, and Zork.
Windows is pretty damned secured at this point. Well, Vista and Windows 7 are. The problem is:
1) Most Windows install are running software that isn't, for example, Adobe Reader or Sun Java. The only virus I've gotten in the last ten years of using Windows was the Vundo virus, on my work computer, through Sun Java. Make sure you're holding the right company to task: I'm certain that at this point there are far more security holes in popular third-party applications from companies like Adobe than in Windows itself.
2) Windows users have been actively discouraged by many technical communities (especially you, Slashdot) from upgrading their XP machines to more secure OSes. Vista might have backwards-compatibility issues with older software, but it's a hell of a lot more secure than XP is a lot of ways-- IE runs in a sandbox, sensible default permissions. IMO, the technical community should always encourage less-technical users to upgrade to more secure products. (That includes service packs, and upgrading IE versions. Even if you hate IE, newer versions of it are much better than older-- tell your friends and relatives to upgrade IE *then* download Firefox.)
3) Many Windows users are perfectly willing to give spyware/viruses permissions to run. No matter how many protections are in Windows (and other OSes), eventually you're going to have to give users the ability to install new software-- when push comes to shove, sooner or later, Windows is going to show "Allow or Cancel" and the user's going to hit "Allow." And remember the virus a few years ago that required users to download a.zip file from their email, type in a password to extract it, then run the resulting.exe file?
Number 3 there is going to be a tough nut to crack-- if you can secure a computer used by this type of user, you deserve a Nobel.
That's from his fictionalized biographical movie, Private Parts. Do you have any evidence that that research exists and draws that conclusion?
I find it really sad that some people confuse "movies" with "history." And no, Admiral Yamamoto never said "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve"-- that was a line of dialog from a movie.
Windows 7, like Vista, aggressively caches. Really aggressively. My guess is that most of that 450 MB is cached DLLs you're likely to use. Would you rather the RAM sit totally blank? That would be a true waste.
As for the formula specification: Microsoft could have easily downloaded one of a half-dozen format parsers with source code for ODF to test their own parser against.
Oh yes.
But if you're making a web browser, you should NEVER EVER follow the defacto standards instead of following the W3C to the letter!! Because that situation is totally different than this is!
I think the real problem is that, for spreadsheets, the file format dictates how the program behaves. If you define "NUMDAYS" as returning the number of days from June 1st, 1955 (to use a random date as an example), that means everybody who reads your file format must *also* use June 1st, 1955, whether they wanted to or not!
The only real solution is to save the file with your spreadsheet's macro language "translated" into the file format's macro language "invisibly." i.e. if you want to use June 1st, 1956 as your date, you save the cell as "NUMDAYS+365". But imagine the layers upon layers of new problems that causes.
This is an issue Microsoft *should* remember, since they had the same issue when copying 1-2-3's functionality (they had to duplicate 1-2-3's macro functions, *even those that contained bugs*), and porting to other OSes (the file had to store whether date offsets were from Windows 1901 (IIRC), or MacOS' 1904 dates.)
I don't know the solution. Perhaps the function definitions used should be included in the file as well, somehow? But I'm pretty sure no existing file formats are sane enough to take this into account.
(The article saying that even though there's no specs for formulas, Excel should "just do what it's always done" as assume every other spreadsheet understands Excel formulas... that sounds like a recipe for disaster, to me.)
And from the article, the format version 1.1 doesn't even define how spreadsheet formulas should be stored! Which is why Microsoft's implementation, which doesn't bother to store the formulas at all, is compliant with the standard. This is a joke. Gee, I wonder why Microsoft fought a bunch of non-technical government offices from forcing them to use a file format that's woefully insufficient for their (both Microsoft's and the government offices') needs?
In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?
I don't want "Desperate Housewives" or "American Idol". It's crap. I don't want it in my house.
FCC regulations require you to receive channels over cable/satellite you'd normally receive via antenna. Those two shows are on networks, so unfortunately you can't opt out.:)
You could probably program your TV or receiver to skip them though, when you channel-up and channel-down.
I hate to break this to you, but community college in the US is basically "High School, Take 2." If you want to judge American students, that's fine-- in fact I bet most of your observations are still correct-- but please do so at a REAL university.
I think slashdot is far better - SO's idea of moderation is good, but does suffer from groupthink somewhat. Slashdot has similar, but at least slashdot has a better means of moderating the moderators.
The system is good in theory, but the problem with Slashdot is:
1) Half the time, the source material is bullshit. (I'd say about 40-50% of the articles are either extremely misleading, or plain wrong.) With Slashdot you *have* to read the comments to get the true story.
2) Stuff that gets moderated up is often plain wrong. A recent example that's come up in a few articles lately, people modding up the "fact" that XP requires IE to do updates-- even though it doesn't, and never has. Plus, the tendency for the first post to be modded up regardless of the quality of the content.
As for OpenID: I *could* spend hours and hours setting up some idiotic system I'd only ever use for one website, or I could just choose not to use that website. I'm doing the latter.
I'm sure it still has it. I guess I should have been more specific, since I seem to have confused people:
This virtual XP takes the existing compatibility "stuff" in Vista to the next level Vista already has a bunch of compatibility tweaks to lie to the application in ways that makes it think it's bad operations are working. With this virtual XP, those applications *are* actually working.
... or they could provide the same username/password login system every other site on Earth provides (including the vast majority of sites that take OpenID), and then I don't have to waste those hours/days of effort. I don't *want* to be an OpenID provider, or use my domain for anything except serving web pages. I just want to log on to their damned site.
There's still the possibility of particularly old topics sticking around with obsolete answers, but the good thing about that site is that older questions basically become wiki entries, so if you do find an obsolete answer, you can easily fix it to be relevant, or direct viewers to a more relevant entry.
The OpenID thing just bugs the crap out of me, because I don't see any advantage to it and tons of disadvantages to it. If I signed up using OpenID, built up a huge reputation, history of answers and edits, etc... then my OpenID provider went away, suddenly my account would be lost, with no way to recover it. I don't like all my data relying on the whims of an OpenID provider who might decide tomorrow that OpenID is no longer profitable and get rid of it. That really discourages people (like me at least) from signing up for an account and using the site *seriously* instead of casually.
Slashdot Mirror
Make it shiny, we will fix the bugs later! Of course later never comes, eventually the crap piles up too high and somebody decides to just start over. Which explains the piles of discarded stuff and the new one that also doesn't quite work in most areas, especially in system administration.
Ah, yes, that would be the CADT development model: http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
Also be sure to read Joel Spolsky's article helpfully titled "Things you should never do": http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
The IBM implementation has to represent about 99.9% of all EBCDIC systems in existence. Ignoring it is just asinine.
It also contains items that directly reference Godzilla and Legend of Zelda and MacGuyver and Fraggle Rock and Half-Life... hundreds of other pop-culture items. So by that logic, it's "influenced" by practically everything.
But it hasn't been for almost a decade so... welcome to the modern era!
You can design forms and controls in the same way as Visual Basic, but it is C++.
Wow! So it's exactly like Microsoft's Visual C++, except less-supported!
Seriously, how out-of-date is your knowledge that you didn't know about Visual C++? It's been around for ages-- hell it's probably the reason most companies dumped Borland Builder.
But of course awesome things happen if someone manages to take that roguelike core and adds fitting graphics ( Diablo series. )
The Diablo series isn't a game, it's a click-tester for mouses.
The best conversion was the classic Mission: Thunderbolt for Macintosh, which took the basic engine, converted it into a sci-fi setting, and added all kinds of cool features and gags to the game.
WOW is a direct descendant of MUD, which probably wasn't influenced at all by Rogue/Nethack/whatever. They were inspired by Adventure, rather, a D&D-like text-based computer game in 1975, and Zork.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD
Can you set up traps, use polymorphic spells in unpredictable ways, suffer from hallucinations or become randomly invisible in 3D RPG/FPS these days?
Yah. Play Oblivion, and the Shivering Isles expansion. In fact, I'm pretty (but not 100%) sure all that stuff was in Morrowind, too.
I'm sorry, I guess we weren't aware that it was the US' responsibility to look after France's national defense.
Windows is pretty damned secured at this point. Well, Vista and Windows 7 are. The problem is:
1) Most Windows install are running software that isn't, for example, Adobe Reader or Sun Java. The only virus I've gotten in the last ten years of using Windows was the Vundo virus, on my work computer, through Sun Java. Make sure you're holding the right company to task: I'm certain that at this point there are far more security holes in popular third-party applications from companies like Adobe than in Windows itself.
2) Windows users have been actively discouraged by many technical communities (especially you, Slashdot) from upgrading their XP machines to more secure OSes. Vista might have backwards-compatibility issues with older software, but it's a hell of a lot more secure than XP is a lot of ways-- IE runs in a sandbox, sensible default permissions. IMO, the technical community should always encourage less-technical users to upgrade to more secure products. (That includes service packs, and upgrading IE versions. Even if you hate IE, newer versions of it are much better than older-- tell your friends and relatives to upgrade IE *then* download Firefox.)
3) Many Windows users are perfectly willing to give spyware/viruses permissions to run. No matter how many protections are in Windows (and other OSes), eventually you're going to have to give users the ability to install new software-- when push comes to shove, sooner or later, Windows is going to show "Allow or Cancel" and the user's going to hit "Allow." And remember the virus a few years ago that required users to download a .zip file from their email, type in a password to extract it, then run the resulting .exe file?
Number 3 there is going to be a tough nut to crack-- if you can secure a computer used by this type of user, you deserve a Nobel.
That's from his fictionalized biographical movie, Private Parts. Do you have any evidence that that research exists and draws that conclusion?
I find it really sad that some people confuse "movies" with "history." And no, Admiral Yamamoto never said "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve"-- that was a line of dialog from a movie.
Reminds me of the Kids in the Hall sketch: "Sorry for causing all that cancer."
http://www.kithfan.org/work/transcripts/one/brucecancer.html
Windows 7, like Vista, aggressively caches. Really aggressively. My guess is that most of that 450 MB is cached DLLs you're likely to use. Would you rather the RAM sit totally blank? That would be a true waste.
Agreed, and then there's the associated pleasures that come with sheep, if ya know what I mean :-).
Please tell me you're talking about mutton!
I've managed to obtain footage of their celebration after this acquisition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fua0g13djo
As for the formula specification: Microsoft could have easily downloaded one of a half-dozen format parsers with source code for ODF to test their own parser against.
Oh yes.
But if you're making a web browser, you should NEVER EVER follow the defacto standards instead of following the W3C to the letter!! Because that situation is totally different than this is!
I think the real problem is that, for spreadsheets, the file format dictates how the program behaves. If you define "NUMDAYS" as returning the number of days from June 1st, 1955 (to use a random date as an example), that means everybody who reads your file format must *also* use June 1st, 1955, whether they wanted to or not!
The only real solution is to save the file with your spreadsheet's macro language "translated" into the file format's macro language "invisibly." i.e. if you want to use June 1st, 1956 as your date, you save the cell as "NUMDAYS+365". But imagine the layers upon layers of new problems that causes.
This is an issue Microsoft *should* remember, since they had the same issue when copying 1-2-3's functionality (they had to duplicate 1-2-3's macro functions, *even those that contained bugs*), and porting to other OSes (the file had to store whether date offsets were from Windows 1901 (IIRC), or MacOS' 1904 dates.)
I don't know the solution. Perhaps the function definitions used should be included in the file as well, somehow? But I'm pretty sure no existing file formats are sane enough to take this into account.
(The article saying that even though there's no specs for formulas, Excel should "just do what it's always done" as assume every other spreadsheet understands Excel formulas... that sounds like a recipe for disaster, to me.)
And from the article, the format version 1.1 doesn't even define how spreadsheet formulas should be stored! Which is why Microsoft's implementation, which doesn't bother to store the formulas at all, is compliant with the standard. This is a joke. Gee, I wonder why Microsoft fought a bunch of non-technical government offices from forcing them to use a file format that's woefully insufficient for their (both Microsoft's and the government offices') needs?
In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?
I don't want "Desperate Housewives" or "American Idol". It's crap. I don't want it in my house.
FCC regulations require you to receive channels over cable/satellite you'd normally receive via antenna. Those two shows are on networks, so unfortunately you can't opt out. :)
You could probably program your TV or receiver to skip them though, when you channel-up and channel-down.
I hate to break this to you, but community college in the US is basically "High School, Take 2." If you want to judge American students, that's fine-- in fact I bet most of your observations are still correct-- but please do so at a REAL university.
I think slashdot is far better - SO's idea of moderation is good, but does suffer from groupthink somewhat. Slashdot has similar, but at least slashdot has a better means of moderating the moderators.
The system is good in theory, but the problem with Slashdot is:
1) Half the time, the source material is bullshit. (I'd say about 40-50% of the articles are either extremely misleading, or plain wrong.) With Slashdot you *have* to read the comments to get the true story.
2) Stuff that gets moderated up is often plain wrong. A recent example that's come up in a few articles lately, people modding up the "fact" that XP requires IE to do updates-- even though it doesn't, and never has. Plus, the tendency for the first post to be modded up regardless of the quality of the content.
As for OpenID: I *could* spend hours and hours setting up some idiotic system I'd only ever use for one website, or I could just choose not to use that website. I'm doing the latter.
I'm sure it still has it. I guess I should have been more specific, since I seem to have confused people:
This virtual XP takes the existing compatibility "stuff" in Vista to the next level Vista already has a bunch of compatibility tweaks to lie to the application in ways that makes it think it's bad operations are working. With this virtual XP, those applications *are* actually working.
... or they could provide the same username/password login system every other site on Earth provides (including the vast majority of sites that take OpenID), and then I don't have to waste those hours/days of effort. I don't *want* to be an OpenID provider, or use my domain for anything except serving web pages. I just want to log on to their damned site.
There's still the possibility of particularly old topics sticking around with obsolete answers, but the good thing about that site is that older questions basically become wiki entries, so if you do find an obsolete answer, you can easily fix it to be relevant, or direct viewers to a more relevant entry.
The OpenID thing just bugs the crap out of me, because I don't see any advantage to it and tons of disadvantages to it. If I signed up using OpenID, built up a huge reputation, history of answers and edits, etc... then my OpenID provider went away, suddenly my account would be lost, with no way to recover it. I don't like all my data relying on the whims of an OpenID provider who might decide tomorrow that OpenID is no longer profitable and get rid of it. That really discourages people (like me at least) from signing up for an account and using the site *seriously* instead of casually.