| last updated:14 Nov 2003 16:40 UK time |
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 09 Nov 2003) | View Other Weeks |
| Reporting options for a web based software | Sun 09 Nov | anon |
| Hi all, I am developing a database driven web based application. It will be used in an ASP business model. I am looking for some examples to build the reporting options. Any suggestions, both design and technology wise? I need some online examples to get some idea. Any pointers? Thanks for the inputs. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | What's your backend tech? Philo |
| What's ws2help.dll for? | Sun 09 Nov | Sathyaish Chakravarthy |
| While packaging my application, I discovered a few entries in the dependecy files list which rose my suspicion. Before, I pack them I ask, while I know ws2_32.dll is the Winsock 2.2 implemention, what is ws2help.dll for? Looks related but it also gives me nachi like feelers. Tell me it is not the MSBlast worm variant, please? I opened it with Dependency Walker and it seems to have a valid export table, but Ive not heard of the functions before WahEnumerateHandleContexts etc. I searched MSDN for one of the function names and got 0 search results. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Matthew | http://www.google.com.au/search?q=ws2help.dll+&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta= |
| Sun 09 Nov | Big B | The DLL Help Database is good. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/servicedesks/fileversion/dllinfo.asp |
| Sun 09 Nov | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Thanks guys. |
| Where are all the new abstractions? | Sun 09 Nov | Druzzil Ro |
| Where are all the new abstractions? This is whats going to keep this industry alive. I guess it starts at the operating system level. Hopefully with Longhorn comes many new (worthwhile) abstractions. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Nat Ersoz | Form over substance, abstraction for its own sake. Add in a pastel UI and that's the face of Longhorn? Delightful! |
| You can see the quality of my work in... | Sun 09 Nov | Artist |
| Quality of work is important to all of us. Lesser or Larger extent. When you are developer, you try to put what you have put years into your code. There is something that you have specially learned for that language or transferred the skill from another language etc.., No matter how fast your projects are you have enough time to put some quality display. It could be gui, algorithm, regex, interfaces, documentation, style, version control anything.. I am trying to stress, not the general mechanism of good source code, but the work that you have pour the quality in. It could be different for different level of people. Let it be project manager, system adminstrator, programmer, analyzer etc. The skills become important over the period. You might want to have other focus on particular aspects of your skill which may become important for review purpose etc .. Well, rambling means: Fill in the lines: You can the quality of my work in..... |
| Sun 09 Nov | Artist | Oops:: Read above: You can see the quality of my work in/at/... |
| Sun 09 Nov | realist | My hourly rate. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Jussi (www.zeusedit.com) | You can see the quality of my work in the final product: http://www.zeusedit.com/lookmain.png |
| On what basis does google let you display ads? | Sun 09 Nov | Prakash S |
| Check this website http://084.us/ Click on one of the listings to see the ads. this site does not seem to be doing much. Really interesting. What if a million of these websites come up, will googles way of selling ads still be popular? |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | Why is it interesting? And I think there already are a million of those sites. They don't seem at all interesting or even useful to me... I'm obviously missing something that you are seeing. |
| Sun 09 Nov | mb | this looks like a linkfarm, which has their own banner ad + google's ad, thus hoping to up their rank so you hit their bogus site when looking for something useful. i wonder if google gives a little extra preference to sites which display google ads? |
| Sun 09 Nov | www.marktaw.com | According to Google's terms of service, you should be getting 2 million + hits a month in order to display their ads. I doubt this site itself gets that many hits, so maybe they display these ads as part of a family of sites. |
| Sun 09 Nov | tomislav | Mark, where are you getting the 2 million+ number? I see a lot of sites with AdSense that aren't getting that many hits. I also don't see that number in any of the AdSense FAQs or policies. |
| Is there a market for video games for Linux | Sun 09 Nov | Fairlight |
| Do you think Linuxer are willing to pay $15 for a high quality shareware game when they got their OSes for next to $0 and a lot of software is available for free (Open Source Stuffs) |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | Some will, most want to just get it for free. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | IF you figure how to get more people to pay, due to a smart licensing (and enforcement) scheme, more will pay than they will admit if the game is great. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Eric Debois | Linux is kind of in a 'no chicken -no egg' place with regards to games. I bet alot of the gaming kids would love to be leet linux users, but since very few hot tiles are released for linux they stick with windows. All in all, it depends on the game. If its 'Fun For All Ages' linux might not be your platform of choice. An RTS game might do well though. |
| Sun 09 Nov | jm | The answer is in the market already and it is: 'No.' Game development requires a lot of expertise and open source dreamers just don't have it. This lack is much more obvious in games than, say, a word processor. There is stacks of source available for 3D games, and yet no best seller or really good or even vaguely good open source games. They're probably never will be either, because top developers, along with the necessary artists, are simply not stupid enough to go work for a wage for IBM, say. (That is, the difference between working for a company that likes to make games, and one where the salesmen make the money.) |
| Sun 09 Nov | jm | There probably never will be .... |
| Sun 09 Nov | fw | I would love to say there is a huge market, but there isn't a huge market. To be honest the biggest market seems to be porting exist games...e.g. halflife/counterstrike. |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | If you are developing a game, you target Windows as your #1 platform, or possibly Playstation 2. IF and *only if* the game is a mega, and I do mean *mega* hit, then you think about the ROI for porting to Linux, Mac and Nintendo. You certainly don't go targetting anything other than playstation/windows for your primary release, assuming it's a cuting edge game and not yet another Solitare/mahjong/platform jumper. |
| Developing a Replacement for "X" For Linux? | Sun 09 Nov | Bored Bystander |
| This question is posed in reference to the thread on Kylix abandonment where X itself is castigated as a terrible system. I always get arguments from strident *nix zealots over this, but to me X always feels like a unrefined internal demo of a decent GUI that is months away from even an alpha test release. Theres always something about it that is broken, that doesnt feel right... the mouse is ALWAYS annoying in X. The mouse movement and acceleration in X is always just f*cked up. A Windows using going to X typically has the sort of sensation you would get if you tried to raise your arm and your foot jerks instead. Everythings wrong while pretending to be idiot happy faced right. Another point of confusion in X is the distinction between X itself and the window manager of choice. Theres TWM, theres KDE, and theres a zillion other choices. And also a major barrier to adoption is the hassle factor in mastering the scheme(s) used in the many X window managers for things like links. I have to this date NEVER figured out how to simply set up a frikkin shortcut in any X window manager. This is not exactly a rant about choice. Its a rant about useless proliferation of snivelly-faced useless assed geek ways of doing things that net the end user a tower of babel of terminology. And Im not a Unix noob. I am quite happy and comfortable with the Unix command line. I write shell scripts, etc. and Ive installed and debugged many servers to my Linux host such as mysql, qmail, etc. It seems to me (in my naive Windows centric worldview) that someone would have over the years developed a good, solid replacement for X that implements the X programming interface and refines the behavior of the desktop, keyboard and mouse to the level of Windows. One that replicates the relatively simple Windows desktop. I do realize that the Win32 API is implemented as a local programming interface and X is designed to be remoted. I have read that the technical barrier is the concept of a frame buffer in Windows that is unavailable with X. Somehow, this explanation hasnt clicked. So, what are the technical barriers to someone writing an X+desktop manager replacement that doesnt suck @ss? Or is this simply a matter of the will or comprehension of the problem not being there? |
| Sun 09 Nov | wormser | there are no technical barriers. for instance, every apple computer comes with an X + window manager replacement that runs on top of unix. http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-download.html read chapter 7 for historical insight as to why X sucks the way it does. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike Swieton | I disagree with many of your points, but nothing of import, really. X has some significant downsides. As far as I can tell, it hasn't been replaced because no one can write something better without breaking twenty years of X application development. And as far as the plethora of interfaces goes, I think that's a plus. That's mostly me, because I happen to have a particularly obscure (yet efficient for me) setup here, and I want to keep it. Perhaps there should be a standard WM and DE. But one shouldn't make choice difficult. And in any case, you point out how bad things are. But did you use KDE 1.0? It was an improvement over many things out there, but in just a few years, it has come very far. I would even go as far as to say that KDE, from inception to current, has gone farther for its age than any other product. That's a bit extreme, I think, but in many cases, true. Things *are* improving. but they are keeping the X protocol because it's hard to replace and keep it compatible. And do you really expect backwards compatibility to be abandoned? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Jim Battin | X uses a framebuffer. One difference I'm aware of is that certain XFree86 functions don't use DMA to interface with the frame buffer (like it's font renderer for example), which causes it to feel so unresponsive. A lot of it has to do with what X server you're running. If most of your experience is with XFree86, I can understand why you'd feel that way. Commercial X servers are often much more fluid and responsive IME. Projects like Freedesktop and Xouvert are working towards fixing what's wrong with X and bringing it up to speed with reality. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Nat Ersoz | BoredB, X both sucketh, and yet it doesn't. I'm sick today, so you'll pardon me in that I've gt nothing better to do than troll the boards... :) Anyhoo, it is and it isn't X itself that you seem to hate so much. It is the 'desktop' that runs on top of X that you seem to despise. For that, I highly recommend giving the Ximian Gnome 2 desktop a try. (http://www.ximian.com/) http://www.ximian.com/products/desktop/ I used to loathe Gnome, for all the frustrating reasons you enumerate, and more. I used KDE for a long time - mostly because most everything was not broken the way Gnome 1.x was. However, the Gnome 2.x desktop is very polished and very intuitive. If you have time to screw around with it, I'd give it a try. FYI: the windows manager du jour is 'Metacity' - whatever that is. It gets my vote. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Albert D. Kallal | >>http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-download.html >>read chapter 7 for historical insight as to why X sucks the way it does. Gee, huffing aside, there is some really good reading in that article. (the stuff about drawing a IC chip on the screen, and moving it around is brilliant). The problem it seems s not really x-windows, however, after reading the above reference, one does see much of the short-comings of x-widows. There is some brilliant insights in that chapter 7 reference, and it explains much why .net makes so much sense. I am talking about coming up with a system that allows a INTELLIGENT division between client and server and .net does this in a very good way. We are talking about com automation across the net here. What is lost n x-widows is a means to provide a very good mechanism to use the server side, and the client side processor in a proper way. We can easily argue that x-windows should not have to be part of this division process anyway!. We do have to distinguish between applications talking to each other, and a simple network pipe to send graphics down (which is what x-windows really is anyway!). Note that people love windows because the appcltions provide such a incredible user experience. They look great, and they perform very well indeed. Further, you might be trying to play a golf game, or move a new barbecue design around on the screen in your favorite CAD program. For this kind of stuff, you need local high speed processing, and a good graphics card! A rich high performance GUI is not going away soon! Anyway, the real problem here seems not x-windows, but what standard the developers are going to develop their GUI to? I mean, just what library will you use to display/show/ and manage the creation of tool bars? Its the lack of a standard API that really seems to be a large part of the problem here. From this standard follows the ability to cut and paste. It is useless to just cut and paste a bit map. You want to at least have some meta display standard that cut and paste can use, so that you can have proper application integration. I can cut and paste a Visio ER diagram into excel, and MUCH more then just a bitmap is pasted into Excel. The original Mac was cool because it had a mouse, but it was true computer revolution that you could cut and paste between applications. Having software work with each other is far more important then just a mouse or cute GUI. In addition, x-windows as mentioned in that article does not have a good ability to off load some of the GUI to the client when needed. Of course, the big problem with windows was its un-ability to utilize the server side. However, that has now been addressed with .net (mostly soap stuff/web services...but still a big leap for windows developers). What this means is that once again, any market advantage that a better x-windows design could have provided due to better connectivity has been long lost. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada kallal@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn |
| Sun 09 Nov | M | BB - I am with you on this. Every six months I'll take my system and load a fresh copy of WhizBang Linux with the latest ThisAndThat WM to see if they have arrived yet. Using a WM like KDE or Gnome makes me feel like I am playing a game of Jenga - it could all collapse at any point because of all the levels and complexity of how they stack. I have settled on Windows as my desktop system with an older FreeBSD system sitting under the desk. I can open up a CMD prompt in WinXP and telnet to the system - just like having a Terminal application in an X windows system. I consider it all the benefits of WinXP with the fun Unix toys when I need them (thank you Samba team!). |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike | http://catalog.com/hopkins/unix-haters/ls-x-windows.html Has some thoughts from one of the Unix haters |
| Running multiple OS on one PC | Sun 09 Nov | Ram Dass |
| Hi: I have a situation where I am developing a piece of software (in Java) and my development environment is in Windows XP. The verification environment is in Linux/Unix. I was wondering how can I best set this type of environments on my humble Notebook - IBM R40, 256 mb, 1.3 G Intel Mobile. I was thinking of going the route of Installing VMware on my Win XP - and run Mandrake Linux on the virtual machine. I was thinking this would be a better way than partitioning my disk and having to turn on/off the Notebook to flip between the OSes. Also, I hear, that running Mandrake on the virtal machine I can also access the Internet etc. Does the above make sense? Thanks. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | The problem with laptops and Linux are winmodems. There are drivers however so you could try. Do a google search for 'Linux on laptops'. Anyway, if that is your only worry a hardware modem would come in cheaper than the license for VM ware. Partition Magic would set you off some money though, although boxed Linux distros normally have decent partitioning tools It is up to you to decide. I would have thought it would be more reliable to test out code on a real tnan on a Virtual OS, but others know better. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ram Dass | Thanks Stephen. I have not used VMware before - the idea of virtual machine appeals to me from the perspective I do not have to reboot the notebook to navigate between the OSes. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | IBM R40, 256 mb, 1.3 G Intel Mobile. You probably want to dual boot if you can batch up all your testing for the Linux platform at once. Because although you can comfortably run Linux in say a 64 or 128Mb memory configuration, it's quite painful to run anything large inside that in VM after Linux started. This year's RedHats eats up 128-256MB, and most java programs can easily eat up 16MB-76MB. Add a few other over-heads like memory and database instances and you got yourself a real problem. Your host os would also be hosted. If you do this professionally, consider upgrading to 512MB if possible, if 384MB is the max at least to the machine to that max. But 768 or 1024 is really the point you want to be at. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | Now I know there are plenty of people who can run OpenBSD, qmail, apache, mod_perl, perl, and a few security programs quite comfortably in a 64mb vm--that's after alot of optimization (and the few instances of perl serving mod_perl will make the virtual machine swap abit), java (and a workstation linux) is a bit more (okay -- a lot more) hungry--unless you clean up unnecessary services and go console (X eats up a bit). |
| Sun 09 Nov | Wayne | I run RH7.3 with KDE on my Vaio 1.3Ghz/512MB laptop with no problem. The VM gets 256MB of the RAM to use, but 128 would be OK too depending on the app size it's needed to test. I recommend to use a minimal theme on KDE at 800x600 resolution (Host OS is at 1024x768). Also, tweak Windows so you're running minimal services (no fast user switching/themes/real player/etc.). I also second the motion to upgrade RAM to whatever your laptop can handle. The winmodem shouldn't be a problem since the Guest OS can use the VMWare NAT service to get internet access thru the Host OS (thru a virtual NIC). One last note: A guy I used to work for always told me that it's better to test in a slower environment, because it will help you put more performance into your design. Although VMWare machines are not *that* much slower than the Host OS they run on, you can simulate it with less virtual memory. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike Swieton | As I recall, VMWare lets you do a lot of magic with virtual devices. The winmodem shouldn't be a problem, because VMWare ought to be able to just work like a ethernet bridge between the host and VM systems. But it's been a while since I mucked w/ vmware and my memory is always hazy. |
| Supporting Multiple OS for a one man band | Sun 09 Nov | Fairlight |
| Im planning to develop a 2D video game on a wide range of platforms : - PC - Pocket PC - Palm - Mac OS - Linux Do you think that supporting all of these for a one man band is possible. What Im afraid is even if I get my game working on all these platforms is of all the customer support I will have to provide : NewPocket PC is release : My game is not working on this new fabulous piece of harware ?!, why? I got this new joystick for my mac and its not supported by your game, why?! Basically I currently have a day time job and unless I get a lot of orders for my game Im not going to quit my day time job What do you guys recommend me ? Should I only focus on 3 platforms only ? less ? is more manageable ? Any advice or inputs from people who have got cross platform development and support experiences here ? Thanks in advance for your inputs! |
| Sun 09 Nov | sedwo | Don't bite off more then you can chew. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Almost Anonymous | Start with one platform and build for that. Try and design for cross-platform but you're not likely to get it entirely right. Move to the next likely platform and build for that; probably have to change some of your design. Then try the next platform and so on... Obviously try and look for some existing cross-platform gaming frameworks to see if they will fit with your project. Then a lot of the work is done for you. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Tom Vu | First write a game for a PC in somewhat portable style. If you actually finish then try to sell it. If it actually sells then offer a port if there is demand. Keep it simple. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Robert Jacobson | What's your target market? A game that's amazing for a handheld won't necessarily translate well to a PC game, or vice versa. I'd pick your strongest target platform and build for that. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Eric Debois | I dont know of any gaming platforms that support all of those platforms. SDL ( http://www.libsdl.org ) Has Linux, Windows and Mac OSX support. Start out by writing a prototype game for one platform, but make sure all platform specific functions are fully abstracted. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Fairlight | Eric : I had in mind the SDL Library, So there might be some re-coding to do on all the other unsupported platform. Another alternative would be to team up with some other developers and port SDL on other platforms, but that might be a hell of a job... but in the long run it's worth it |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | If you take your company (and your customers) seriously you'd probably have a lab of test machines. Probably 7-24 machines to a major platform. |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | I think the only way to make sure its portable without a huge rewrite is to target 2 systems from the beginning. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Fairlight | Li-fan Chen : I will take this company and the customers seriously but at this stage I cannot have such testing lab at home. As my software will be shareware, I'll highly recommend to my prospects (as they have not purchase the game yet) to try the evaluation version of the game to ensure that it work on their hardware. I was planning to fix bugs when they're reported by people who try the software before buying it. I'm assuming that if the trial version work fine on the target platform, the full version will do to (it's will be the same release, version, compile build) Unless I manage to stick a bug in the routine which check if the Serial No entered is correct ;-) Do you think that his approach is unprofessional ? |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | > I was planning to fix bugs when they're reported by people who try the software before buying it. I feel uncomfortable with this plan. If you go this way, try a very small release initially before you do much marketing. When the interest for the program shows up, you want the program to be very stable, otherwise you'll either be overwhelmed with support requests, or destroyed by bad reviews. |
| Salary question | Sun 09 Nov | Ricochet |
| Can I do a little survey here? Guess a salary for me: B.S. and Masters in CS from Cornell University 1 1/2 years experience in C/C++ coding at a video game company some theoretical knowledge of audio/DSP that is relevant for the job I am considering living/working in San Francisco, CA |
| Sun 09 Nov | Prakash S | 65000 - 75000 - depending on how well you negotiated:-) |
| Sun 09 Nov | ktm | same guess as prakash. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ricochet | Is this base salary + bonus or just base salary? Let's consider it with the 'average/expected bonus' since every company is different in this respect. Also the tricky thing is that my old company offered stock options while the new one does not. They happened to be VERY VERY lucrative this year. So I'm not sure how to figure that into the equation. Iit is likely that I would be taking a pay CUT if you figure in the stock options. Thank you for all your answers, I will post a summary at the end when I get some more responses. : ) |
| Sun 09 Nov | Prakash S | I thought you said salary and not compensation! so my guess was annual salary (no bonus or stock options included) |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | Is 1.5 yrs the sum total of paid programming experience you have? What other languages are you adept at? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | Be thankful for anything but 'no hire because we can't afford you' (based on the MSCS) :) Philo |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ricochet | Yes, 1.5 years, and some internships that don't really count. The job is all C/C++, but I did Java some in school, had a couple internships doing Access DBs and VB, Matlab in one course, Assembly in another, Perl Python, etc. With my background, hopefully they are not looking at specific language skills, but rather general aptitude. Philo, what is overpriced? Name a figure? And this company is very 'high-tech'... been around for 40 years, and they have tons of Ph.D's there in the research division. They also have a coding branch, which is where I'm applying to. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | Ricochet, sounds like you should be okay. Some companies won't even approach coders with advanced degrees, feeling they can't 'offer what they're worth' (note: they don't give you a chance to turn it down, they just put you in the 'no hire' stack). I have a friend with an MSCS who found he got far more responses to his resume when he took the MSCS off. Philo |
| Sun 09 Nov | wormser | $65-75K |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | OK then I guess 65-75 is OK for average skills and in that geographical area. The high end seems a bit high for just over a year of experience, but it depends on the person. Depending on the actual person and what they can really do, the range could be $40-$90. So, someone who is helpless without a lot of handholding when told to create a new system from scratch, that's more like $40. If the person comes in with actual robust working apps they've written themselves that make use of DSP algorithms that they themselves have invented, then that starts at $90 for 2 yrs paid experience (+ an assumed many years unpaid) and rapidly advances with time. At 5 years, $120, for example. But those folks are rare. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | >Be thankful for anything but 'no hire because we can't afford you' (based on the MSCS) :) If you can survive 4 years on that rock, you'll probably be able to hack it at any fast pace best of breed IT company. If you came out with anything more than an unimpressionable grade you should be able to get into a tech firm in San Jose that pays enough for rent (65K+). Are there a lot of jobs in San Jose, for you there will be, but the job market isn't that great--but that's the same problem for anyone. Depends on what you want to do with your life, you might want to get an MBA.. or just start a company if you have enough work experience and you have friends and coworkers in the field who trust you enough and will work for you. |
| Visual Basic.NET books | Sun 09 Nov | Prakash S |
| One of my friends wants to start of with VB.net and was asking me for book recommendations. She has around 3 years of experience in Java. Before I made my recommendations I wanted some feedback. Deitels books - I feel this is a little too introductory Mike Gunderloys Certification Books - though these are certification books - the coverage of material is excellent. I remember hearing good things about Francesco Balena’s Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET - anyone has used this book or what would your recommendation be? Thanks. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Frederic Faure | http://discuss.fogcreek.com/dotnetquestions :-) |
| Sun 09 Nov | no name | http://www.learnvisualstudio.net |
| Object Oriented VS Structured Oriented Programming | Sun 09 Nov | Fairlight |
| When you start a project what criterias will define if you will use a classical (Structured Programing) approach to Sofware Development or Object Oriented. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Eric Debois | Well, I dont get to choose much these days, but Id say that data centric applications are better off in OO while process-centric or highly interactive programs (like games) are better done in a procedural/structured language. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Tayssir John Gabbour | Depends on the language. With some, I use oop when I want to define my own types. Others might push you to use it. The interface to many decent guis are oop. And some languages don't make it such a tradeoff with other styles. Personally: When I used pure java, everything seemed to be oop and stateless functions. With python, I keep using oop faster than I expect. (Because python uses oop to abstract both syntax and data. And it tends to want a single 'right' solution.) With lisp, I never needed it yet; I really get to defer the choice until much later, and I don't yet write large enough lisp programs that the chance of wanting oop is significant. In fact, today with my little database app, I just went down in data abstraction from structs to simple lists, because I have full syntax control that isn't affected by how I treat data. There's also oop's ability to restrict others' freedom to hurt you. http://mumble.net/jar/articles/oo.html It's easy to see that answers to this question are too often framed as objective, when it can really depend on what your coworkers need. Here's an Alan Perlis epigram: 'Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process.' http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html |
| Sun 09 Nov | X. J. Scott | Gabbour, Those are interesting links and they bring to mind something I'd like to say: C++ has its uses, but C++ is not an object-oriented programming language. Anyone with me on this? This argument is separate from an argument as to whether OOL are useful or better or whatever. As examples of more object oriented programming languages, I'd give as examples: Java, because a executable object can exist in its own separate file that can be linked in at run time to other objects communicating with it and genuinely does not need to let others know about its internal representation... but it does need to let others know about what messages it accepts, which prevents it from being a full blown OOL. Objective C, because it does not need to let other objects know what messages it accepts. Pure Data, this is the only totally and completely object oriented programming language I know of. Programming in it FEELS like object oriented programming. ViewLogic -- an object oriented hardware description language. The way I see it, object oriented programs can be programmed by creating a visual schematic showing the interconnection of discrete, fully encapsulated objects. When the language supports this, it's object oriented. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | C++ _can be_ an object oriented language. I'm no guru at it, but I don't see why code couldn't be generated from schematics. If it's OOP purity you're after, then you restrict yourself to the subset of C++ that is pure OOP. It can also be a procedural language, or an object-based language, or a generics language, or any mix of the above. That was Bjarne Stroustrup's point. [Sorry if that sounds pedantic, but I'm reading _The Design and Evolution of C++_ right now, and Bjarne is just so much more... level headed about programming than most I've read in books and on message boards.] |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike Swieton | X. J.: Your position on C++ doesn't look too strong to me from here. You seem to be implying that C++ is not OO because it can be used in non-OO fashions. I also don't follow your logic on Java: Because of linker features it's more OO than C++? And you argue for Pure Data on feel? Maybe I'm missing part of the definition of OO, but I always thought that the techniques could be used in any language (though casting structs in C to do it is ugly and error-prone). How are you defining OO? I don't think I've ever had it defined to me in terms of much more than inheritance and encapsulation. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike Swieton | My bad, I just read that first article ;) Given that specific definition of C++ I could agree with you on C++ is not naturally a OO language, though I suspect a framework to allow all of the specified features could be built. The only question is whether or not you want to include some of those things in an OO language. Here's a question: Why is it that the pure OO languages are vastly less popular than C/C++/Java? Ones with, apparently, broken object models. I won't say that Lisp, for example, is unused, but it is vastly less used than C++ and Java today. Thoughts? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | My guesses: First, C++ is widely used because Stroustrup (correctly) assumed that being a follow-on language to C would lower the transition costs, so that C++ would be playing to an already large installed base. Java, to some extent, played the same trick with C++. Second, being unusefully dogmatic about theory is rarely a practical advantage, since theoretical correctness usually offers only long-term gains. C++ and Java both broke with correctness where it was useful--C++ in not breaking C programs, Java in, for example, allowing primitive, non-object data types. |
| Sun 09 Nov | X. J. Scott | I think what I said didn't quite come across as I was hoping. That's why I said, 'This argument is separate from an argument as to whether OOL are useful or better or whatever.' I think you guys do agree with me that C++ is not an object oriented programming language, so I'm happy with that. To deal with the stuff I didn't want to discuss in this thread, I use C++ quite a bit and do use certain object oriented programming idioms in it, though I don't think that it's designed to support OOP well. I also program in a OO style when appropriate in assembly and C, and I think both of those languages are fine for that. In fact, I think it's easier to maintain OO idioms in a big project in C than in C++, but that's just me. I didn't want to drag in any of this though -- I am only interested here if anyone has a similar perspective that C++ is not a object oriented programming language. Arguments about which idom or language is most productive or best I'm not interested in here -- those have been done to death and I doubt there's any new territory to be covered there. Regarding 'feel', I mean to convey that in the sense that a hammer, as a tool, feels better for driving nails than a wrench does, even though a wrench can certainly be forced to do the work if needed . OOP in C++ is much more of a struggle to architect in a OO manner than certain other languages, in the same way that it is a struggle to architect in a OO manner in assembly. Java's a little better but pd, or any other run time system in which each object is a separate component or library. I think this is one of the things that makes the OO thing really work -- when each object is a separate component that can only be accessed through a well defined messaging protocol, then that's encapsulated. Macros and grammar systems that allow a abstract notion of encapsulation don't go far enough because they break down the abstraction. With separate components, there is no abstraction, the objects really are genuitely, physically encapsulated. |
| Sun 09 Nov | X. J. Scott | Oh and I have no interest in arguments of purism or theory. I find that object orientation is useful from a practical standpoint, and I also find that procedural idioms are very useful from a practical standpoint. Again, these are different issues from the ones I intended to bring up. Sorry for the confusion. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | 'I think you guys do agree with me that C++ is not an object oriented programming language, so I'm happy with that.' Well, no, I'm explicitly disagreeing with you. It seems that you're saying that C++ is a poor OOP language because it doesn't restrict you to pure OOP. What I'm saying is that you can usefully program in pure OOP in C++, and it's no more difficult than programming C++ procedurally, generically, object-based, or any combination. Pure OOP programming in Java or another fundametally OOP language may be 'easier', but that's because they're higher level, not because of some flaw in C++. C++ can be, at the programmer's discretion, as pure OOP as desired with no penalty (regarding other C++ programming styles). Stroustrup thinks that's an advantage of C++; you seem to feel it's not. Have I mischaracterized your argument? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | To put it another way, I've done pure OOP in C++, and I didn't feel like I was fighting the language, as I would if I were attempting the same thing in C. |
| Sun 09 Nov | X. J. Scott | Yeah, I'm not really getting across what I intend to say. I've read Stroustrop extensively, including his newest book, and the points you're making are known to me. I think you might be projecting an image of the beliefs of object purists or theorists or such onto me. I'm not talking theory but practice and implementation. C++, in implementation, does not provide support for encapsulation, for example. Maybe we could throw out 'OO' and replace it with 'encapsulation' or something and put the schematic idea (which is another element of my idea here) to the side for the time being. But I guess it's not really coming across what I wanted to express so sorry I'm not able to communicate it. Was more looking to see if others had noticed the same thing rather than to get into a merits of OO or merits of this and that language flamewar. Really, this isn't about language X vs Y, but more an observation of properties of some languages, or something. The observation comes from years of experience with various languages and is an issue of practice and implementation and not so much theory. But trying to describe it I guess forces the use of words, which drags in associations with various theories and confuses the issue to much. So I'll just drop it unless there's anyone with experience in the various languages, particularly the schematic oriented ones, or ones in which objects are actual discrete, encapsulated components. Probably the words I am using are not the right ones, probably they are calling to mind the wrong associations. Sorry for that. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Jussi (www.zeusedit.com) | > But I guess it's not really coming across what I wanted > to express so sorry I'm not able to communicate it. IMHO I think one reason for the communication breakdown relates to your definition of what is an OO language. As stated earlier you define an OO language is: The way I see it, object oriented programs can be programmed by creating a visual schematic showing the interconnection of discrete, fully encapsulated objects. When the language supports this, it's object oriented. While this definition might clearly define and easy to use OO tool, it is not the generally accepted definition of an OO langauage. For a language to be OO like it should support inheritance, encapsulation, abstraction and polymorphism and C++ definitely offers these characteristics. For what it's worth I personally think C++ is not such a great programming langauge but it definitely fits the definition of an OO programming language. |
| Sun 09 Nov | X. J. Scott | Yeah I know that C++ is considered by just about everyone as either a OOL or a multi-paradigm language that natively supports OO. So it's real easy to attack my assertion on these grounds, heck I can do it myself if you like. I'm approaching this from a different direction, seeing that C++ does not natively support OO. Encapsulation, for example, is not supported in C++. Yes, you can do it manually, but with the same amount of effort as in C. Java has better support for encapsulation, Objective C has very good support for encapsulation, and modular programming (I am making this word up, it's not the right one perhaps) fully supports encapsulation. Really, when the interface and the implementation both are completely exposed and required to access an object, it simply can not be said to be encapsulated. And without encapsulation, it can't possible be considered to be object oriented. It is possible to support object oriented architectures in all these languages, but you have to do it yourself. The apparent lack of standardization on name mangling in C++ makes it the clumsiest lanugage to do OOP in. C has more standardization in this regard, and thus objects compiled with different compilers can be mixed and matched more easily with C than C++. I do find encapsulation to be useful from a practical standpoint and so I am thinking about it in terms of languages really supporting that. Regarding the schematic stuff, I am not talking about class diagrams and such supported in an IDE, but schematic diagrams in which signal flow is drawn rather than typed. Encapsulated OOP is most useful for signal processing, in my experience. For GUIs I find a combination of structured and tabel based programming to be the most useful approach. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | I think I get what you're saying, but you're overstating your case by saying that C++ 'can't possibly be OOP'. You're saying that encapsulation in C++ is by syntactic convention rather than run-time and compile-time behaviour. If that's true, I don't see why that's a problem. I don't see why objects have to be 'really' encapsulated, the way you're suggesting. I don't see why the flow you describe that's drawn can't be done for C++. |
| Sun 09 Nov | X. J. Scott | Right, yes. The benefit is that you can reuse and extend objects, both without having to have the source code, and also without having to recompile other code that uses the objects. |
| motherboard crazy | Sat 08 Nov | Confused |
| the numbers of variety of motherboards, chipset etc today is crazy!!. I wonder whether by always delivering new kind of motherboard every month will appeal to customers. I think it will just hurt the producer inventory level isnt it? and the margin will be lower and lower for them. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Leonid Brezhnev | Back when I was alive, tovarich, we had ONE motherboard that comrades in the Soviet Union could buy. Our central committee allowed citizens of the proud Soviet state to own any Abacus-II motherboard they wanted, complete with 256 bytes of RAM. You're correct. The sheer quantity of choices is absolutely disgusting. Capitalist imperialists will regret this orgy of choicemaking some day... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Phizo | I think George Carlin says it best: Political parties - two choices Dog Food - 197 choices Priorities? |
| Sun 09 Nov | www.marktaw.com | (insert product type here) crazy. Shampoos, rock and roll bands (do those exist anymore), televisions, cabinets, bookshelves, faucets, toilet paper, cars, ways to get from NY to California, bottled waters, shoes, bespoke suits, popping corns, rubber stamps, instant messaging clients, coffee houses (no wait, we consolidated those and people started to complain), beer brands, Operating Systems (no wait, we consolidated those too and there seems to be a war going on because of it), colors of paint, places to eat lunch, CPU's (thank god for AMD right? Otherwise Moore's law could've been 'computing prices double every 18 months'), stand up comedy acts, soft drinks, books, Saturday morning cartoons, vacuum cleaners, potato chips, cigarettes...... |
| Sun 09 Nov | Phoenix | Now, things are not so complicated. If you ask me, there's only one worthy chipset on the market today: the nForce2. And only one worthy manufacturer - Asus. Now, Asus make three or so motherboards with that chipset, but three I think you can handle :-) |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | The important thing is the underlying chipset. That normally only changes because of superior design or because the bus speed changes. The amazing thing is how well disparate parts do work together. I hardware we seem to have the best of both worlds, standards plus competition. If only software worked that way! |
| Sun 09 Nov | Brad Wilson | I agree that the choices are actually easy when you're informed. Want a Pentium 4? Got a lot of money? Intel 875-based. Budget? Intel 865PE-based. Want an Athlon? nForce 2-based. Buy from a reputable manufacturer (Asus, Abit, Gigabyte), or check for round-up comparisons and reviews for the chipset of your choice. From the point where I don't know what the good chipsets are, to the point where I'm ready to buy an actual motherboard, is usually a few hours worth of research. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Heston Holtmann | If you know you want to buy an Intel based solution, use Intel's mobo selector! It is a very powerfull tool to simplify the mobo selection process. check it out. http://indigo.intel.com/mbsg/ The AMD doesn't give nearly as many configuration options.. but it does help narrow down the list http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_869_4348%5e7923,00.html |
| Sun 09 Nov | Thomas | the numbers of variety of cards, trucks etc today is crazy!!. I wonder whether by always delivering new kind of car every month will appeal to customers. I think it will just hurt the producer inventory level isn't it? and the margin will be lower and lower for them. -Thomas |
| Sun 09 Nov | Thomas | the numbers of variety of stereos, speakers etc today is crazy!!. I wonder whether by always delivering new kind of stereos every month will appeal to customers. I think it will just hurt the producer inventory level isn't it? and the margin will be lower and lower for them. -Thomas |
| Sun 09 Nov | Thomas | Okay, that was my silly attempt to show how silly your complaint was. I do sympathize with you; I bought a new system several months ago for the first time in a few years, and I too was boggled at the variety of components. Heck, it took me a while just to figure out what kind of RAM I ought to use. Perseverance in research paid off though. I browsed forums, read reviews and asked questions. It was time consuming, but I got the components I wanted, and I'm well pleased with the results. -Thomas |
| Coding while watching TV | Sat 08 Nov | Fairlight |
| Im planning to install a TV set in my work room And Im wondering if any if some of you can still produce high quality code while watching/listening to TV |
| Sat 08 Nov | Eric Debois | Suer, I watsh TV wihle typign al teh time |
| Sat 08 Nov | Almost Anonymous | I recommend you put the TV behind you so you have to turn away from the computer to watch it. It's not going to increase your productivity but sometimes when doing certain tasks its nicer to have something else going on. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Philo | I've had a TV in my home office for years, and I'm about to take it out. I *think* it helps to have it on, but I'm really just enabling my procrastination desire - the TV is a distraction. In addition, if you have a family there's a real problem of increased isolation - the more your home office is an apartment, the more you live there. Put the TV in an area where you can watch with the family or your wife, and when there's something on you want to watch, 'leave work' and go watch. Finally, sitting in an office chair is bad for you. Getting up and moving to a recliner or couch is (believe it or not) healthier than sitting in the chair for hours a day. Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | Phizo | I'd suggest a nice crack habit instead... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tom Vu | I don't even have a TV. What are the benefits? For me, it seems like a 24 hour infomercial. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Stress | Philo, Why is sitting on a couch or recliner healthier than sitting in an office chair? Stress |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tim Lara | I'm just entering my sixth month without a TV for the first time in my life...lost it in the breakup. The cravings were there at first, but now I've gotten so used to it that the thought of buying a new one barely even crosses my mind anymore. I don't know whether I'm really more productive at home without it, though. Now it just seems like I waste twice as much time online... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Li-fan Chen | I do worst when there are lots of distractions. I love music, tv shows, loud server rooms--but if you really gotta pump out good elegant code and solve bugs in a cinch nothing beats a quiet early morning and good sleep. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Li-fan Chen | Even without all those things, a quiet computer can be filled with clutter*. There are solutions**. You'll save hours of time. * Here's what I found to waste my time, YMMV: 1. Like skimming through slashdot, 2. debating the good debating on JOS, 3. making MP3 playing lists that sucks less, 4. uber-pack-ratting (organizing.. backing up.. archiving.. deleting.. 5. renaming whatever the hell it is you downloaded last night), 6. replying to emails from friends, 7. chatting on MSN Messenger with cousins, 8. monitoring the perilous task of making the perfect burn using a stupid CD filesystem and el cheapo write-once medium designed to fail in 2 years, 9. drinking 3 different kinds of liquids and then battling the dish washer. 10. reinstalling windows ** There are ways to get around this time-wasting hell: 1. You have to get all of these things off your computer. Setup a pc at home and run ssh, linux and perl on it. Whatever utility you can find to make surfing more fun on Windows--I have been able to (most of the time) find a somewhat adequate to unmatchable replacement in Linux. 2. Let the linux box do all those download and organization using perl scripts. Have it throttle so if someone (your spouse or kids) at home is surfing it won't ruin a webcast. 3. Let it do all the reading of slashdot and JOS for you. Don't be a network hog but have watch dogs that tells you when something interesting is being mentioned on a thread. 4. Buy 4 big hard drive a year and don't backup anything (just mirror it), 6. drink water. all the other stuff makes you thirsty as hell 7. send letters, real thoughtful ones, using your bloody hand for once, less says more, i have notice most people on instant messengers and other impressive instant mediums use it for transmitting brain farts more than anything worth reading. 8. Keep Windows CLEAN, don't install shit on a whim, you won't have to reinstall it all the time then. If you have to try something, use a second PC or vmware it. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Li-fan Chen | PVR.. buy one. The PC-based ones from ATI are wonderful. Let it run over-night on Food TV/Food Network, or your SCI-FI channel, or your music television, or that channel that records those cool obscure shows that can't beat out the crappiest sitcoms you can't bear out of prime time (XMC, Beat the Geek, Robot Wars, whatever). It usually can record one channel at a time, and I hate the following limitations: 1. inability to record english subtitles 2. inability to automatically skip commercials 3. difficult to set up scriptable recording schedules (record this channel now.. that channel next) I heard there are standalone PVRs you can buy, I would recommend getting one, they are way worth it. If you buy a PVR, and get watch tv interactively with a PVR, chances are you'll watch tv less and less, probably 4-8 hours a week. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | LI fan chen, What's a PVR? And you mirroring strategy isn't much use against burglars or fire. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | >LI fan chen, What's a PVR? Too lazy to google? >And you mirroring strategy isn't much use against burglars or fire. Too lazy to drive the drives to another location? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | ---'Too lazy to google?'--- Yea, just like you're too lazy to write the word out so we know WTF you're talking about. ---'Too lazy to drive the drives to another location?' If you're going to be carrying it around in your pocket then you'll want to be using a removeable hard drive, so basically you'll be backing up to it, not mirroring. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | Tom Vu: I second what you say. Can't watch most of the stuff on tv--even the ones you can fast forward and filter all you want with an personal video recorder (PVR) *smirk*. I did get a dvd player and a sony wega just so I can catch up on all the movies. Hmm... most movies aren't any good. Yeah.. basically the tv and the $46CDN cable bill is there for my family. Around 3 month ago I tried real books, works wonders. If one want to spend idle time watching tv, he'd lying to himself if his claims he can think about the problem in front of his screen at the same time. So why not just read a page or two? I can go through maybe a couple of good novels a week. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Brad Wilson | Oh boy, it's the 'bad TV trolls'. There is a lot of really great TV out there to be found. If you want to be some hippy anti-establishment freak and wipe TV out of your life, that's fine. But don't lie to yourself and say there's nothing worth watching. There's A LOT of stuff that's worth watching. (Oh, and I know what a PVR is, because I have one. Most people call it a TiVo, though. :-p) |
| Sun 09 Nov | Nat Ersoz | 'There is a lot of really great TV out there to be found.' Not much during working hours. Daytime TV is more interesting with the audio turned off. When you randomly glance up you see 'Mother is self-reproducing transexual with identity issues.' Mmmmmmmmm. Daytime TV. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Jason Watts | While I agree in theory that there may be few things on broadcast television that would add something to my life, the cost of filtering them out from the chaff is too prohibitive. There are other avenues to get all the 'benefits' of television that I can do according to my schedule, not one I have to adjust my life around. We haven't had broadcast TV in our house for several years now and the only thing I miss is...um, nothing. Hopefully the Simpsons DVD's will come out more than once a year in the future - I have a lot of catching up to do ;) |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | Sadly, I've recently become addicted to Law & Order (which has several reruns a day) and ER (ditto). Law & Order is a great show for anyone who wants to know how the criminal justice system works - it's frighteningly accurate. I've read several reviews by doctors that ER is a pretty accurate portrayal of how an ER works. As for 'why is a sofa healthier than an office chair' - unless you've spent over $500 on your chair, odds are it's restricting circulation in your thighs. This can lead to circulatory problems in your legs and possibly even blood clots. In addition, even if neither is healthier than the other, sitting in the same one for 6-12 hours a day is worse than alternating between the two. (in any question about human physiology, 'variety' is generally a healthier answer.) Philo |
| Sun 09 Nov | Tim Lara | Brad: While the 'hippy anti-establishment freak' moniker may actually describe me fairly well ;-) I would definitely agree with you that there are LOTS of excellent programs on TV worth watching. In my case, though, that is actually part of the problem! Some people are born with an alcoholic gene - I have the TV-OCD gene. I don't know when to stop and end up spending a bunch of money that I don't really have because I'm never satisfied until I have HBO and all the other premium cable packages as well...Half the reason I'm trying the no TV route for a while is to just save some $$. I also find that it's more of a treat when I get to see my favorite shows now because I have to go over to a friend's house and actually make it a social event. Helps keep me from being such a hermit. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Thomas | Philo, Regarding ER and Law & Order -- they are relatively realistic portrayals of medicine and law, but in real life there is much less drama, fewer happy endings, and about 100x more boring stuff like filling out TPS reports, sitting in PHB meetings, and surfing the web. (I've spoken with a few ER and law folks too.) -Thomas |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ray | What really bothers me are the cover sheets on those TPS reports. I mean, I got the memo (8 times) but I just can't seem to remember them. |
| Downloading Linux | Sat 08 Nov | Jan |
| Hi: I would like to download a Debian distribution of Linux. The link for download is at http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ However I do not know what to downlad. The instructions are sparse. Thanks, jan |
| Sat 08 Nov | Jan | I have found an easier to understand site for a Mandrake Linux distribution - http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3 Would I have to download all the files listed Thanks, jan |
| Sat 08 Nov | mb | try http://www.knoppix.net/ haven't used it myself but it has excellent reviews--a bootable linux CD. it is based on the debian distro. |
| Sat 08 Nov | mb | btw, the instructions for 'normal' debian are here: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual you probably have an Intel x86. i think there's another set of instructions somewhere else too. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Mike | In fact if you like Knoppix, you can install it to your hard drive here are instructions. http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/knx-install.htm |
| Sat 08 Nov | Almost Anonymous | Try one of the debian-based distrubtions instead of just debian. They are easier to install, come with a nice setup, and are otherwise pure debian. I recommend Libranet which you can download from http://www.libranet.com/ Also, I believe that Lycoris desktop/lx is also debian based. http://www.lycoris.com/products/desktoplx/ -- you can download it from linuxiso.org |
| Sat 08 Nov | Mike Swieton | I believe debian has an irc channel on openprojects.net (or whatever they've been renamed to nowadays). You could ask there. Keep in mind that debian doesn't *want* you to download it. They want you to *install* it. If you download it, you're pulling down over 10,000 packages that you will likely not use or install. They have a lot available, and that bandwidth costs them alot to serve up ISOs. Why not download one of the net install images? Those were pretty easy to find and reliable last time I checked, particularly if you can boot off of a CD-ROM drive. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | Fedora Linux seems kinda interesting. The bit torrent waves for it is currently pretty strong. Despite my ISP's (istop.com) throttling*, the 3-disc iso came to my hard drive pretty quick. * Full blast UL/DLs between noon to midnight are rejected/throttled now. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | As Li-Fan says you want to download an ISO image. then burn onto a CD and install (aftr printing out the install guide if you only have one computer). If you don't have broadband then try and get a DVD shipped. Shouldn't cost much more than postage. In the UK you get loads of free software from the computer mags. Also, unless you are 100% committed to Debian, consider Mandrake. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | http://www.linuxcentral.com/ is one of many sites that sell distro CD sets for under $10. Try Debian, Fedora (nee Redhat) or Mandrake. In fact, when I was first playing around with Linux, I bought four different distros, and tried installing each one until I found one that installed without problems. That overcame a lot of my early frustration with Linux, which was a sort of 'off by one' problem--this one didn't have a modem driver, this one didn't like my monitor, etc. |
| Sun 09 Nov | M | Jan - I have always used http://linuxiso.org and in fact just downloaded Debian a few weeks ago. |
| Do you organize web pages? | Sat 08 Nov | Philo |
| I keep too many links to web pages, and I want an easy way to organize them. I like this: http://www.icarousels.com/ However it has no way to import favorites - you have to add pages one by one (feedback already sent). Anyone know of something similar? Something that can snapshot web pages and make them easier to organize? Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | www.marktaw.com | I used to have a program that cataloged all the web pages I visited and allowed me to search them, but I don't remember what it was called. It also got bloated after a few weeks. I currently like PowerMarks http://www.kaylon.com/power.html which allows you to add bookmarks, tag them with keywords, and search (read: filter) through the keywords at a later date. While searching for the PowerMarks homepage, this DMOZ / Google page turned up: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Web_Applications/Bookmark_Managers/?tc=1 |
| Sat 08 Nov | www.marktaw.com | Oh and Zoot, if you could ever figure it out... It lets you add snippets from web pages & other applications and sort/organize them later... Apparently Zoot does a lot more than that, but I never could figure it out. http://www.zootsoftware.com/ |
| Sun 09 Nov | Guy Bjerke | This software does a good job of saving webpages and indexing them. Not a links or favorites solution, though. http://www.surfsaver.com Good luck. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | I ended up picking up NetVisualize Favorites Organizer, which does exactly what I need (thumbnails web pages, verifies links, allows drag and drop organizing) Philo |
| Sun 09 Nov | name not available | i checked zoot. uuhhh. what an UI. probably there are a lot of functions, but learning this stuff could take several days |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ethan Herdrick | A little startup called Seruku has a neat IE toolbar that keeps track of every page you have been to and allows you to search them, Google-style. http://seruku.com/Toolbar/Toolbar.html The founder is a good guy, too. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ethan Herdrick | Also, here is a good page of links on this topic: http://seruku.com/News/SerukuLibrary.html |
| Sun 09 Nov | mb | did you know you can search your history with IE? it's just whatever's in your cache, and not very fast, but it does work well enough to use. bring up the history pane and say 'search'. |
| What Anti-virus do you use? | Sat 08 Nov | fd |
| I dont use anti-virus, but am thinking of getting either norton or mcafee i think are the two most popular. Anyone wanna share details on what they use and why? |
| Sat 08 Nov | Philo | EZ Trust Antivirus, because it's the only AV product I've found that will run on Win2k Server without charging an arm and a leg (which is really odd, because it's from CA) Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | Stephen Jones | For the desktop I use AVG6 free editon from www.grisoft.com Works great, and they have a professional edition as well. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Philo | [Note that the professional edition won't run on win2k server, though AVG's server edition is the cheapest server edition I'm aware of] Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | Chen | I don't use any as Windows xp is the most secure ever and I think that with Microsoft's new security religion, I have nothing to worry about |
| Sat 08 Nov | Brad Wilson | Except when forced to by corporate policy, I've never used any anti-virus beyond any evaluation purposes. They were all too intrusive, and given nearly 2 decades of virus free activity, I don't lose any sleep over it, either. |
| Sat 08 Nov | no name | Common sense is my anti virus protection. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Greg Hurlman (blogs.squaretwo.net) | I've been using e-Trust from CA for the last 3 years, and I haven't had any incidents at all, server OS or no. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tim Lara | Like Brad, I've never been hosed by a virus in all my years, but nevertheless, since I work in a fairly lax IT dept with LOTS of trigger-fingered novice users around, I am not cavalier enough to go without an AV utility running, just in case. I have always used the Norton line as I've had little or no application conflict type problems with it and, as I mentioned, have never had any virus catastrophes. (Whether that means that NAV is really doing that much or whether it just means that I'm a nervous nellie who doesn't take many risks is debatable) My only real complaint with Norton is that it seems to be fairly resource-intensive...if anyone here has compared several AV products in that respect, it would be interesting to see your findings... |
| Sun 09 Nov | Matt Foley | Ditto Brad and Tim, I find AV products too intrusive and too resource intensive. I hate hearing my HDD start crunching when I'm not even touching the keyboard. I hate those multi-second pauses whenever I access a large file. I hate the general sluggishness of my PC. I run without AV protection and have never been hosed by a virus (knock on wood). However I am pretty anal about backing up my data frequently, so if I ever do get hosed I will simply format/reinstall and reload from a backup. The time required for a complete reload would be roughly equivalent to those precious seconds lost over the course of running with a 'protected' PC. Plus it eliminates the frustration I experience when my 3GHz P4 runs like a 386SX-25. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Man on the street | I use Norton Internet Security and have no complaints thus far. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | Matt Foley: if AV vendors fixed the way they scan would you use it? Wait, that's a dumb question. They will never fix it. It's been like that since the beginning. All this time they could have build digests of kosher files and cached comparisons and monitored new file adds, updates, and deletes and do on the spot checks during idle time. Like what tripwire folks are trying to do with the giant software vendors of the world. But why do all that when you can just take the money home and spend it on nice cars? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Li-fan Chen | I have used Symantec and Norton antivirus and currently use norton. On Linux I have mostly gone without. Do they help? AVs don't cover the threat model nearly enough. And vendors are quicker to place blame (oh the white hats didn't tell us first! *wahhhh*) and coming up with half ass fixes then putting forward preventive measures: 1. You shouldn't have to buy Zone Alarm, most av senior engineers should have seen this a mile away in 1996 and written what zone alarm does (allow only proper programs to do outbound connection, stop the trojans) as an integrated part of any security plan. They didn't. 2. A major consumer firewall vendor then started selling a personal firewall that was also missing that feature for the longest time (see grc.com's article on this) I don't sleep any better, but I have it installed. I badly need sleep. Vendors please get your acts together! |
| Sun 09 Nov | Jarred | McAfee helped me by detecting the Blaster worm when it was new - and the AV was NOT updated. It detected it as a generic RPC exploit. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | ---' You shouldn't have to buy Zone Alarm'--- You don't have to; the free one works perfectly --'most av senior engineers should have seen this a mile away in 1996 and written what zone alarm does (allow only proper programs to do outbound connection,'----- Do you realize how small a number of computers world wide were connected to the Internet in 1996? I think Finland was the only country in Europe that went above 10% of the population connected. I don;t recellect anybody being really bothered about Trojans until three or four years later. |
| Sun 09 Nov | I did not have sex with that Woman | 'Do you realize how small a number of computers world wide were connected to the Internet in 1996?' True, but ...... There has been a shift in virsues over the last few years. Viruses used to be destructive (delete files or otherwise farq your system) and virus writers were little more than the computer equivalent of vandals who like to go around smashing windows. That seems to have changed -- maybe the virus writers of 10 years ago grew up and got tired of being destructive. Today, most virsues don't do any harm to the host system, their main function is to spead as widely as possible, for a variety of purposes -- DOS attacks, sending out spam, etc. However, given that 'always on' broadband connections have been around a while (I've had a cable modem since late 1999) I think that the AV companies are long overdue in adding a built-in firewall-type function to their products. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike | 'I think that the AV companies are long overdue in adding a built-in firewall-type function to their products. ' I agree. Most vendors alreeady have a firewall product. Their view is why roll this into one when I can sell them two products. Plus you know people are used to $39 or $49 for AV, now it's $89 or $99 - why. And logically shouldn't that large monopoly hailing from the Pacific Northwest build a DECENT firewall in and have it RUN by default, especially seeing how they are all about trustworthy computing now? Yes I know XP comes with a firewall, it is one step above worthless and not turned on by default. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Justin Johnson | At work we switched from Norton to CA's E-trust, and promptly found a lot of stuff that Norton missed. CA also seems to be less resource intensive than Norton--the IT department no longer gets complaints about slow computers during the weekly, company-wide scan. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Noname | Those who say they haven't had viruses in years ... how do you know if you don't have software to detect them? They may be present without you noticing. You could have Trojans that are transmitting your keystrokes or data files, which go undetected by your firewall because they have embedded themselves in another executable which is normally allowed to access the Internet. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Mike | So for the really paranoid you accept the fact that you buy a 3ghz machine but really end up with a 2ghz machine because of av and firewall software load. If you had keylogging trojans, you would probably notice it on your bank and credit card statements. Those people aren't monitoring you for typos you know. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | I had Pinfi for I don't know how long. I only bothered to check because a) a vague feeling that my system wasn't working right b) a 'disk full' message 2-3 times on a disk with GB of space free That prompted installing an AV program and working to eradicate the bugger. (also had two other dormant viruses in downloaded exe's) Philo |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | ---'you buy a 3ghz machine but really end up with a 2ghz machine because of av and firewall software load. '---- This is absolute rubbish. Running Task Manager to check on their CPU usage actually uses more CPU time than both firewall and anti-virus combined. I can't tell whether I have Zone Alarm on or off; the only time anti-virus is a problem is if you let it run its scheduled scan while you are trying to do something else on the machine. The answer is to set the scheduled scans to run when you are sleeping or elsewhere. If you've got real time protection on you can leave the scheduled scans to once a week or less. |
| Movie recommendation | Sat 08 Nov | Philo |
| Anyone whos ever been involved in project design needs to see The Pentagon Wars to see the management/ tech interface in action. Its about the design and construction of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but the principles are the same. (And its very funny) Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | Frederic Faure | Looks interesting :-) http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/ |
| Sat 08 Nov | Grumpy Old-Timer | If you're a 'policy wonk' (like me), this is a hilarious movie. The scene wih the hot plates was wonderful. In a different vein, I just saw 'Snatch', and loved it. If you liked 'Go!', you'll love this... |
| Sun 09 Nov | no name | If you in the right mood... King Pin Walking past his two drunken neighbors: Woody: 'How's Life' Drunken Neighbors: 'Taking Forever' Drunken Neighbor 1: 'Can you get sick drinking piss' Drunken Neghbor 2: 'I think so' Drunken Neighbor 1: 'Even if it's your own?' |
| C hash or C bang | Sat 08 Nov | tapiwa |
| is C# hash or bang where I come from # is hash, but I have seen C# referred to as C bang. what is the official line? |
| Sat 08 Nov | r1ch | It's C Sharp - see the last question here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/productinfo/faq/default.aspx |
| Sat 08 Nov | tapiwa | I still can't get around calling it C sharp.
|
| Sat 08 Nov | Not-a-MS-Hack | From 'Wilbur's Music Tutorial #2' at http://www.hoerl.com/Music/music2_notes.html : ' FLATS and SHARPS: As previously stated, every note on a line or space on the staff has a pitch. This pitch can be raised or lowered in whole steps by going from one note to the next...OR the pitch can be raised or lowered in half steps by using SHARPS and FLATS. SHARPS are indicated by the '#' sign. A SHARP raises the musical tone by one half step (Ex: from C to C#). ' |
| Sat 08 Nov | Philo | And by the way, #=sharp predates computers, calculators, and Univac. Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | mhp | bang is an exclamation point |
| Sat 08 Nov | Troy King | In the immortal words of Bremmer and Kroese: <> ! * ' ' # ^ ' ` $ $ - ! * = @ $ _ % * <> ~ # 4 & [ ] . . / | { , , system halted The pronunciation is: waka waka bang splat tick tick hash caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash bang splat equal at dollar under-score percent splat waka waka tilda number four ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma crash |
| Sat 08 Nov | tapiwa | 'by the way, #=sharp predates computers' I should have guessed ... my bad... Now I can see why I am the only one in my family that is not musically gifted mom-sings sister- piano brother - rap artist. me-Joel on Software!! |
| Sat 08 Nov | tapiwa | Troy, nice one... will hang onto this one. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Robert Jacobson | Some cheeky devils have also called it "D Flat." (In musical notation, C Sharp and D Flat are the same note.) |
| Sat 08 Nov | Mark Bessey | I always call it 'C pound', myself. Seems appropriate, somehow :-) -Mark |
| Sat 08 Nov | Ron Porter | 'Some cheeky devils have also called it 'D Flat.' (In musical notation, C Sharp and D Flat are the same note.)' Wasn't there a D-Flat project several years ago in Dr. Dobb's Journal or Computer Language or some such magazine? |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tuning Maven | D flat is slightly sharp of C sharp. D flat is a fifth below A flat. C sharp is a fifth above F sharp. D flat and C sharp are only 'enharmonically equivalent' in theoretically exact twelve tone equal temperament. On Handel's harpsichord, for example, C sharp and D flat were two different keys. |
| Sat 08 Nov | z | # is an octothorp, so it should be "C octothorp". |
| Sat 08 Nov | somebody | >> In musical notation, C Sharp and D Flat are the same note. << Not quite true. C sharp and D flat do share the same pitch but are otherwise very different and not typically used interchangeably. Whether this pitch is referred to as a C sharp or D flat (or B double sharp or whatever) is determined by its intervallic relationship with the other notes in the section of music that contains it. For example, the B major scale contains a C sharp but not a D flat. |
| Sun 09 Nov | HeWhoMustBeConfused | Tuning Maven, you are right. From memory, D-Flat was a character-based windowing system from a guy that used to do tutorials on ISAM, memory buffering, stuff like that. Damn, I wish I hadn't got divorced. That led to destruction of my archive of DDJ and other stuff :( |
| Sun 09 Nov | Damian | >>Not quite true. C sharp and D flat do share the same >>pitch but Actually.... The tempering of the major scale isn't perfect and those notes aren't exactly the same. Not that anybody here likes being nitpicky ;) |
| Sun 09 Nov | sgf | ' those notes aren't exactly the same' Odd, my piano has only one key for both notes. Anybody have a link to more information? I thought I knew something about music, but never heard this. |
| Sun 09 Nov | anon | http://www.albany.edu/piporg-l/tmprment.html |
| Sun 09 Nov | Philo | Dammit, is there ANYTHING that math and physics can't screw up? Philo |
| Sun 09 Nov | Aussie Chick | Not wanting to sound condescending, just curious. I assumed everyone new immediately that c# was pronounced c-sharp. Yes I did music all through highschool. I know the # is also called 'hash' (never heard bang though) but just looking at it it was obvious it was a sharp (because with the choice between c-sharp and c-hash, sharp made more sense). Is it really non-obvious? Is the fact that # = sharp not well known? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Ron | # is pronounced 'octothorpe' http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=octothorpe |
| Music Selection While Coding? | Sat 08 Nov | H. Lally Singh |
| Ok, so weve talked about fonts. How about music? When Im doing think-heavy code (or debugging for long hours), I go for this stuff: -Massive Attack -Dido -Sarah McLachlan -Carla Warner -Tori Amos -R.E.M. For straight code-as-fast-as-I-can-type code: -Crystal Method -Rob Zombie -Powerman 5000 -Marilyn Manson Both times I play various tunes from the 2 matrix soundtracks. Anyone else? |
| Sat 08 Nov | Sven Hohage | These days: Elliott Smith - all his albums..especially Figure 8....r.i.p Elbow - Asleep in the back Badly Drawn Boy |
| Sat 08 Nov | scoz | Satriani and Pink Floyd !! I remember reading some research that instrumental music and instrumental rock helps studying math and things like that.. I'll try to find the link again.. |
| Sat 08 Nov | christopher baus (www.baus.net) | Tricky Blue Six afro mystik the dandy warhols Thievery Corporation Sound Tribe Sector 9 Dzihan & Kamien Kruder & Dorfmeister DJ Shadow Gawd, I'm so hip it hurts. ...Oh wait. I'm posting on a geek web site at 1:19 AM on a Friday Night. Never mind.... |
| Sat 08 Nov | MX | Abba Modern Talking some classical music etc. It's a kind of music that doesn't distract me. If I play something like Annihilator, Megadeth, etc :) it distracts me a lot. :-) Also, one thing about classical music: many people think that it sounds very badly, that it's hard on the ear, etc. That's not true. If played through an inexpensive audio system, it sounds bad and is tiring to the ear. If you play it through a good hi-fi system, it sounds absolutely excellent. Also, the best is to listen to it live. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Meri Williams | Again, a distinction between concentration coding and quick coding... Concentration coding: Dido Melissa Etheridge Live Michelle Branch Garbage Quick coding: Everclear Matrix Soundtracks Violent Femmes --Meri ( http://blog.meriwilliams.com ) |
| Sat 08 Nov | DanG | Hey H. Lally Singh, rock on man, like your choices Im the same. If Im doing some tedious, repetitive, thoughtless stuff I will crank up the metal/punk stuff like Slipknot, Slayer, Hed PE, Manson, Rob Zombie, Sevendust But if its deeply perplexing and interesting, I cant be listening to other distractions, so I usually just have headphones on without music to block out all sounds |
| Sat 08 Nov | Ori Berger | Peopleware had a very interesting tale about this: 2 groups of students; one group was made of people that like to listen to music while coding, the other group liked silence while coding. A task was given out, and each student was individually asked to do the same task. When later compared, there was no apparent difference in code quality, correctness or time taken between the two groups. But none of the music listeners noted that the task was actually an identity function (a set of transformation that eventually cancel out each other, so that the program's output was its input), and ~half of the 'silence' group did notice that. Personally, I recommend: 'soft' classical music 90's Depeche Mode (Violator, Songs of Faith and Devotion, Ultra, Exciter) Alan Parson's project (especially the instrumental material) And the occasional pure silence. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Patrik | I listen to alot of different stuff, one end of the spectrum includes things like old school Metallica (pre Black album), Iron Maiden, Queensr˙che and Rammstein. Some days its the 80's pop I grew up on :-) |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tim Sullivan | Currently I have a short list music I've got in my playlist: 'Battile Without Honour or Humanity' (Kill Bill) Dead Souls (NIN cover) Confusion (Pump Panel mix) Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie) Spybreak! (Propellerheads) Clubbed to Death (Rob D.) The Heart's Filthy Lesson (David Bowie) Hallo Spaceboy (David Bowie) Self Esteem (The Offspring) Come Out and Play (The Offspring) Stigmata (Ministry) Fun With Drugs (Velvet Acid Christ) The City Sleeps (MC 900 Ft. Jesus) Supernaut (1000 Homo DJs) Sidewinder (Download) Cookie Day (Shonen Knife) Banana Chips (Shonen Knife) No Name, No Slogan (Acid Horse) Frontline of Violence (Armageddon Dildos) You Suck (Consolidated) America Number One (Consolidated) I've also been listening to an obscene amount of difm's Trance/Goa radio station. In most cases, I find music that has energy makes me code more than I play popcap games. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tim Lara | Ori - interesting about the 2 types. Guess I'm from the segment that prefers absolute silence, especially when trying to solve difficult problems. Even if I'm doing light coding tasks, I find that listening to music (esp. music that I like a lot) actually seems to slow my productivity because I find my mind drifting and focusing too much on the music. Either that, or the music kick starts my imagination into the mode that makes me think about all the things I'd rather be doing than sitting at the desk at work. The only possible exception for me would be if there is an excessive amount of annoying chit-chat going on in the cube farm around me that I need to shut out -- in that case, a nice instrumental piece over headphones can be a godsend, but I'd still be getting less done than I would in a library-like setting... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Rick | I'm like Tim, I can't code at all when music is on. I literally can't think through a simple for-loop. Yet I don't mind driving somewhere 16 hours straight, as long I have the radio on. Without, I can only go a couple hours. |
| Sat 08 Nov | mackinac | This topic comes up with some regularity. I'll agree with Tim and Rick. When I am working on a problem that requires some thinking, I want quiet. |
| Sat 08 Nov | fw | Daft Funk is pretty nice, the ministry of sound chillout collections, Rachmaninov, Barber...sometimes I'd be more into rage against the machine, and soundtracks for channel four films (snatch etc..), oh and the soundtrack to the film PI is good too. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Wayne | Isn't it daft punk? |
| Sat 08 Nov | SG | I prefer absolute silence, but since I work in an office environment in a cubicle, that's rarely possible. (I'm most productive at 5am!) http://www.nightwish.com is my preferred background sound blocker. It's Finnish melodic metal opera! |
| Sat 08 Nov | Philo | I like streaming trance (Digitally Imported, etc). Sometimes I like some 80's or speedmetal, but for long periods of coding trance is the best. I really need to learn the mixes and buy some CD's, because it's really annoying when I'm on a roll and suddenly some girl starts singing (someone needs to set up a 'nonvocal trance' shoutcast stream) Philo |
| Sat 08 Nov | Mitch & Murray (from downtown) | Quiet for writing code. Ambient for general desk work. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Stephen Jones | Id the music has lyrics I can't do anything, unless it's in a cafe or bar, in which case I can get through twelve hours of books without noticing. Foor marking books Bach is passable background music. Mozart tends to distract. Yet when I'm diriving the music doesn't affect my concentration at all - quite the opposite. I always thought this was a question of age (none of may generation studied tnrough music but doing the occasional boarding school homework supervision ten years after leaving school I found maybe a third of the students needed music). |
| Sat 08 Nov | Prakash S | I second Nightwish & di.fm ! their song "She is my sin" is pretty good, it will remind you of Evanescance's - bring me to life. |
| Sat 08 Nov | RP | Massive Attack Tricky Portishead Gorillaz Nirvana Stone Temple Pilots Pearl Jam Oasis |
| Sat 08 Nov | Vince | I second Crystal Method. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Sum Dum Gai | Music collection is too big to list, i listen to just about anything. I like music to code and to read to. Sometimes I lift up my headphones above my ears so i only get a very low level of noise ... I find switching between that and full music helps me think, maybe it's the change? |
| Sat 08 Nov | somebody | I wonder if that study had the two groups perform the tasks in a realistic environment. The one group may prefer silence but in the "real world" that seems to be a rare thing. A better study would have been to have the programmers sit in cubicles with someone typing loudly in the cubicle on the right, someone talking loudly over the phone in the cubicle on the left, two people having a meeting in the hall, strange music coming from who-knows-where, and random people walking by while whistling. Then let's see the results of those listening to music (to cover up the background noises) versus those who don't. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Beth | My office has steam heat and it sometimes sounds like a bad drum solo first thing in the morning. If complete silence isn't an option, music is the next best thing. In addition to stuff that's already been mentioned, I've been listening to jazz albums on Rhapsody lately. My favorites are John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Sometimes I'll put on a random electronica compilation instead, if I can find one that's all/mostly instrumental. When I do put on something with words, I wind up listening to the lyrics if I don't know them and I get distracted. If I put on something I've heard a million times, like an old Indigo Girls album, I tune it out once I start working and then I notice half an hour later that I've missed all the songs I was thinking I wanted to hear. . |
| Sun 09 Nov | anybodyBesidesMeRememberLil'DeuceCoupe? | It's easiest and most convenient for me to listen to channels off spinner.com, and I've gone through various phases. I used to listen to hard rock/classic rock channels, then switched over to laugh tracks channel, which surprised me. Normally I couldn't concentrate with talking like that in the background, but for a while it really worked for me. Some of those comedians are really funny, too. After a couple months of that, I switched over to the 'Trance' channel on spinner. I'm with that now and have been with it the longest. still not tired of it. Guess I'm seconding philo's choice there. For me at least, I think it's two things about trance that work well: 1) it's lively with a strong beat, which I like 2) it's highly repetitive, and much of it is instrumental, which makes it easy for me to ignore. Sounds contradictory, I guess, 'lively music I can ignore', but I've never been much of a classical music fan, and music without a beat either puts me to sleep or pisses me off. Who knows why -- just weird I guess. Oh, and though he doesn't monitor JoS, our sysadmin also listens to Trance on spinner.com, I think we're the only two. One of our developers listens to light classical, his officemate listens to various flavors of rock. Not sure about the other folks. |
| Sun 09 Nov | Broadway Coder | Am I the *only* code who listens to showtunes? |
| Sun 09 Nov | Gen'Xer | 'Dead Souls (NIN cover)' Hey Tim - nice choice!!! I prefer the original Joy Division version though... My playlist would have to contain: The Smith Travis Suede Ned's Atomic Dustbin Lush Mojave 3 Stereophonics Cranes The Cure Mazzy Star Echobelly Belle & Sebastian The Stone Roses Teenage Fanclub The Ocean blue Blur ...... |
| so I heard through the grapevine | Sat 08 Nov | christopher baus (www.baus.net) |
| that the gut feel of our (very experienced) QA lead is that we are about a year away from shipping our latest release. As a senior developer with ownership over many of the new features including our new font engine http://www.baus.net/archives/000012.html, I feel we are in our last bug fixing round and will meet the year end deadline. Has anyone seen such a difference of opinion in the state of the an application before? Are developers optimists and QA folks pessimists at heart? This has lit a fire under my butt, and now I want to do everything possible to prove them wrong. Which makes me think this is some sort of management conspiracy ; ) |
| Sat 08 Nov | H. Lally Singh | 'Are developers optimists and QA folks pessimists at heart?' Yeah. On the bright side, sometimes many malfunctions are symptoms of the same bugs :-) |
| Sat 08 Nov | M | Lucky for you the decision on who is right is a strategic one left up to your able management. Of course, it helps to work on your case. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Norrick | The fact that two members of a product team have such wildly divergent opinions on the product's state of completion tells me that your spec is not detailed enough. If it were, comparing the completed work to the spec would reveal exactly what remains to be done. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Mike Treit | Norrick, the spec won't tell you how long it will take to stabilize the code. The diverging opinions might come from the difference between how long it will take to get code complete (all features implemented) vs. how long it will take to actually ship (all major bugs found, triaged and fixed.) |
| Sat 08 Nov | christopher baus (www.baus.net) | The major features are in. It is just after putting the features in you realize that the either performance of the feature is not acceptable, or a database handle garabage collection thread occasionally aborts the application, or some portion of the macro engine doesn't work with specific graphic types. You usually don't put bugs in the spec. My theory is that certain bugs can look much worse than they actually are. A really sinister, difficult to fix bug, might be difficult to reproduce, yet a easy to fix bug might effect the application at all over place and give the impression that the application is in poor condition. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Julian | It sounds like a communications breakdown. It's possible that QA found some serious issues but haven't told you. Or, they're worried about something that's easy to fix. Have a face-to-face conversation and figure out what's going on. The other possiblity is differing standards regarding the quality necessary before releasing. If months of testing without finding any bugs are viewed as mandatory, it will take a year to ship. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Chen | Please fix your server 'This is your custom 404 'Not found' Error page. This page is displayed whenever a file that a web browser requests is not found on your website. If you would like to change this page, edit the file '404.html' in your 'www' dir. Important!!!! If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, please read this important article about '404' pages. It will save you a lot of frustration! ' Force IE5 to display your 404 and not its own You may also wish to read this article: click here for Microsoft Knowledge Base article |
| Sat 08 Nov | Chris Tavares | If your experienced QA person thinks you're a year away from shipping, LISTEN TO HIM!!! Go talk to him, tell him you've heard this, and ask him what he thinks needs to be fixed. It certainly won't hurt to ask, and you may find out something you didn't know. |
| Sun 09 Nov | christopher baus (www.baus.net) | I think the 404 error is really a bug in Joel's URL recognition. It includes a comma as part of the URL. http://www.baus.net/archives/000012.html |
| Sun 09 Nov | christopher baus (www.baus.net) | Chris, I just found this out on Friday, again indirectly. I am going to find out what his concerns are on Monday. My feel is the bugs look worse to QA than they actually are. They 100% black box testing. I wish we could budget in a white box tester, but that seems unlikely. christopher |
| Default language for homepage? | Fri 07 Nov | JD |
| I just happen visit Nero Burning Rom Softwares homepage. http://www.nero.com To my surprise, I found content in language (de - Denmark?) which I dont understand. Then I saw International link on Top, I clicked on the same, was greeted with another page where I had to select between 1. Great Britain English 2. USA/Canada Version 3. ?? German Version ?? and finally I reached the English version of Nero homepage! Phew! I was wondering what made Ahead Software (Creators of Nero) to make De as their default language rather than English. To my knowledge Nero is EXTREMELY popular software and I am 100% sure that number of Nero users speaking English will be far greater than any other language. I find it extremely stupid to see some other language as default language for Nero homepage! What say? JD |
| Fri 07 Nov | Robert Jacobson | I just visited the link (for the top-level page) and was redirected automatically to the US-English page: http://www.nero.com/us/index.html Maybe it's a browser issue -- I'm using IE 6 on Windows XP. Also, FWIW, de = Germany (Deutschland.) |
| Fri 07 Nov | ktm | .de is germany. the company is based in germany (which you could figure out by looking at the about link) when I go to www.nero.com, the content is in english. what are you talking about? |
| Fri 07 Nov | Q | Interesting. It comes up german for me and my language preferences are definitely set for english. I'm guessing they use some regional ip check rather than read the http header preferences. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Frederic Faure | It depends : Some web servers rely on the languages set up in the user's web browser. Others depend on the IP address used by the client host, with the occasional screw-up. |
| Fri 07 Nov | www.marktaw.com | JD - where does your IP address say you are? Are you surfing through a Proxy of some sort? Maybe it was the referring URL that shuttled you off to the German version of the site, or your cracked version of the German version of Nero. (just kidding) |
| Fri 07 Nov | JD | That's interesting to know. No, I do not use any proxy server [Other sites like Google and php.net recognizes correctly that I am browsing from India] neither I have cracked any version. I also use Windows XP - IE 6.0.2800. So if they are using some way to figure out which language to use for homepage, they should MAKE SURE it's fool proof! JD http://jdk.phpkid.org |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tarun Upadhyay | Ahh that explains it. You are from India !! They probably have one redirection for users from USA and a few others for countries with higher number of users. To everyone else, including India, they probably direct to the their default page and ask you to chose the language. That makes sense. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Stephen Jones | I've just called for www.nero.com from Saudi and the page came up in Engish. Maybe they looked at the UK keyboard. Possibly there is some automatic rerouting goiing on. Try again and see what happens. |
| Sat 08 Nov | JD | I am not sure if they have policy like, if you are from USA/Canada, you will be served page in English. Otherwise in German. And if that's the policy, it's pretty stupid! And I tried to access page number of times, EVERY SINGLE TIME, they sent me to german page. At least they should have used some cookies to know that I prefer to use International version and serve me the same. JD http://jdk.phpkid.org |
| Sat 08 Nov | NeroIndia | Directs to the English version for me. I'm also located in India and using a local ISP. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Stephen Jones | I suspect you went to the German page accidentally the first time and it set up a persistent cookie that continues to direct you there. Try deleting all cookieis for the site and go there again. |
| Sat 08 Nov | JD | Hi Stephen, I checked Cookie details using bookmarklet found at http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/misc.html . There are no cookies set by domain. This is getting more and more interesting. JD http://jdk.phpkid.org |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | What URL are you accessing? |
| Sun 09 Nov | JD | I am opening browser window and just typing www.nero.com And it ALWAYS goes to http://www.nero.com/de/index.html and I wonder why... Btw, my IP starts from 61.95.*.* JD |
| Sun 09 Nov | Stephen Jones | Auto complete. Turn it off. |
| Google & .NET | Fri 07 Nov | NC |
| Just venting some frustration here. Does anyone have any idea why Microsoft would choose a name for a product, .NET, that you cant search for on Google? How do I find articles related to .NET, and not every page that has net somewhere in the text? If Im missing something obvious, feel free to wound my pride. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Robert Jacobson | It's a major annoyance. My trick: most articles on .Net will either be discussing VB.Net or C#, so I use a query like: Foo 'VB.Net' OR 'Visual Basic .Net' OR 'C#' Where 'Foo' is the main search term. If you don't want to type that all the type, you can bookmark a Google results page with the boilerplate in the search field. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Walt | I encounter problems with Google any time I want to use puctuation. Sometimes I want to find a specific string with periods and commas, but Google won't give it to me. It's not MS's naming problem, it's Google's deficiency of searching puctuation. |
| Fri 07 Nov | obvious | Perhaps because .net is so much hype and vapor, MS wanted to make it difficult for you to ascertain that by Googling. Now they want to buy Google. Hmmmm... |
| Fri 07 Nov | no name | searvh for "dotnet" |
| Fri 07 Nov | NC | using VB.NET, or dotnet are good ideas, but in this case I wanted something a bit more general; anything to do with Navision and .NET. Perhaps it is a Google deficiency, but Microsoft should've known it would be an issue, and accomodated somehow. I can only assume that for some reason they desired this. Then again, this is the same company that let their co.uk domain lapse ;-) Beats me. |
| Fri 07 Nov | somebody | I agree that this is a Google deficiency. They seem to have decided that many features of the English language are superfluous (such as punctuation, capitalization, and certain words). Very annoying for a variety of searches other than .NET. I don't seem to be having any problem getting relevant results by searching for Navision and .NET. Interestingly, Google claims that 'and' is unnecessary yet returns entirely different results if it isn't included! |
| Fri 07 Nov | runtime | This is all part of Microsoft's strategy to undermine Google. I remember when Google did not support any punctuation. So you could not search for 'C++'. Google would ignore the '++' and just return pages about C. :-) |
| Fri 07 Nov | Roose | Also try searching for COM! doesn't really work... The next microsoft technology should be ecalled www... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Xxxxx Xxx | Or 'sex', the most common search term on the Internet. :-) |
| Sat 08 Nov | fw | >It's not MS's naming problem, it's Google's deficiency of searching puctuation. Fine, can you please post exactly how you'd keep the search quality as they are now, and still allow for a search for .net come up. What if I release a product tomorrow called .com, will it outrank all the stories about .com failures, and verisign etc... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Tim Lara | NC, I think in the case of Navision and .NET, the bigger problem might actually be that there doesn't seem to be much useful information about Navision online anywhere, at least not in English. I have yet to find anything online about Navision other than extremely high-level marketing fluff. I am starting to get the feeling that this could be by design because it seems that a lack of publicly available technical documentation would be a huge advantage for all the expensive VAR contractors out there selling Navision solutions, since they don't really want customers to be able to figure out things for themselves... |
| Sat 08 Nov | Greg Hurlman (blogs.squaretwo.net) | I rarely find anything about .Net answered via a Google web serach that isn't just a web-enabled copy of the newsgroups. With a Google Groups search, I just tack on "group:microsoft.public.dotnet*" to grab all of the .Net-related groups... works like a charm. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Steve | > Fine, can you please post exactly how you'd keep the search quality as they are now, and still allow for a search for .net come up. What if I release a product tomorrow called .com, will it outrank all the stories about .com failures, and verisign etc... If it has a higher PageRank(tm), then yes, of course. |
| Sun 09 Nov | fw | >If it has a higher PageRank(tm), then yes, of course. What an ignorant reply. No, sorry, tell me how you fiter. |
| Kylix development abandoned | Fri 07 Nov | John |
| Borland announced that there wont be any updates for Kylix in 2004. http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=122384005&eid=-50 This tells us a lot about Linux. It tells us that it is unlikely for commercial applications to succeed on Linux. So, on Linux there will be 2 kinds of work: - write code for free - tech support for existing code Please, kill me now! |
| Fri 07 Nov | Johnny Bravo | There have been no spaceships flying to the moon in the last three decades. I guess sooner or later the lights will go out on the moon. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Agree with your conclusion but not how you got there | 'It tells us that it is unlikely for commercial applications to succeed on Linux' Yet another case where Logic should be taught every year all the way through high school. |
| Fri 07 Nov | RocketJeff | Take the experience of one poorly done but expensive development tool and extrapolate that to all software. Right... (note to Delphi fans, I'm talking about Kylix being poorly done - Delphi on Windows is an excellent product, Borland just did a bad job of the linux version) |
| Fri 07 Nov | MSHack | It may also tell us: - Borland is doomed because they could not produce a product people wanted to buy. - Kylix was such a bad name no one knew what it was. - Linux developers are as picky as Windows Developers when it comes to paying for software - Delphi on Linux was never going to happen and there are better C++ IDEs - Borland made another bone head business move - Anyone can make sweeping and irrelvant statements base on a single event. It is time to face reality. Linux is not going away. As an MS developer though, I do not see my life ending as Linux expands. I may need to learn new skills, but guess what, I have to when MS releases their next version of anything. (Ask the VB to VB.net people) |
| Fri 07 Nov | Dennis Atkins | > There have been no spaceships flying to the moon in the last three decades. What about the Lunar Prospector? http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980306.html |
| Fri 07 Nov | Dennis Atkins | Regarding Kylik, I agree with the original poster. 'If only a big name development company would make great development tools for Linux wue would all buy it' the masses shouted. So Borland (you expected microsoft to do it maybe?) did just that. Result -- no sales. What does that tell you? |
| Fri 07 Nov | NC | How well does Trolltech (QT) do? I have no idea, but I think they sell primarily for Linux UI development. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Agree with your conclusion but not how you got there | Dennis, bad logic. Maybe it occured to you that the 'community' didn't think Kylix was that great of a tool? |
| Fri 07 Nov | RocketJeff | >> What does that tell you? That Kylix was overpriced at $1500 and has way too many bugs. The 'masses' didn't say 'give us an overpriced and buggy tool and we'll buy it.' Give them some credit for having common sense and not saying 'It's complete crap but we'll buy it anyways.' Kylix only ran well on one version of Red Hat Linux, and was only available for x86 machines. It is hard/impossible to install and run on Suse, Debian, or any of the other distributions, including current versions of Red Hat. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Brian McGroarty | I'd venture a guess that Borland's penetration among Linux commercial developers was about as healthy, percentage-wise, as their penetration among commercial Windows developers: they're not doing so hot there either. |
| Fri 07 Nov | windows hacker | The last time I had to do Linux development, I used a product called "KDevelop". Don't know if it's still around or not but it reminded me of visual studio & I was up & running with it, and being productive, in minutes. And it was free. |
| Fri 07 Nov | John | Aww, c'mon ... I used KDevelop, too ... it's no match for Delphi! |
| Fri 07 Nov | Dennis Atkins | Hm, you guys could be right. Given the price, one would expect miracles, but if there was stuff that was already better for free, then there's no point. Also, given the number of distributions', combined with the lower marketshare than windows, it was that much harder to break even while maintaining the program costs that much more. I guess the lesson is that there's little incentive to create commercial software for Linux when there's everything you could want of decent quality for free. |
| Fri 07 Nov | windows hacker | Well John, I should add that I spend about 95% of my time using C++, and the layout is very similar to visual studio, so it wasn't a big stretch. Dennis, I think you're right: Who wants to pay for an app when there's quality free versions available. That's why I hate the open source movement, yet love CodeProject. |
| Fri 07 Nov | John | Well, 'windows hacker', I work with both Delphi and Visual C++. Delphi is heaps more productive than Visual C++. Also, it doesn't suck like VB - you can do anything, call Windows API, etc. |
| Fri 07 Nov | John | I mean, in Delphi I can call Windows API without having to import the function yourself from a Windows DLL. There is simply no comparison between Delphi's productivity and Visual C++'s productivity. |
| Fri 07 Nov | windows hacker | Cool. Language war troll. It's sooo usenet of you. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Sunish | Is Novell doomed with Linux ? |
| Fri 07 Nov | John | I don't care if my message is a 'troll' or not. I care if my message is true or not. And, as far as I know, it is very true. Now, go ahead and interpret it as a 'troll' - I don't mind. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Ged Byrne | Commercial applications cannot succeed on Linux because of the cool free tools available? Every decent Linux tool get ported to Windows, so how come theres still a thriving market there? I remember getting junk mail from Borland declaring Kylix as 'Visual Basic for Linux.' Kylix failed because it was a poor quality product, plain and simple. |
| Fri 07 Nov | Mitch & Murray (from downtown) | Kylix was a POS and DOA. I am sure there is some area for commercial apps to florish on Linux. Development tools in general, and Kylix in particular, is not one of them. A pox on the house of Borland for (1) pricing Kylix so high, (2) not updating it as needed to fix bugs and run on the mainstream Linux distros that have been released since the last release of Kylix, and (3) being so out of touch that items #1 and #2 were allowed to happen. What a bunch of complete dopes. Want a Borland wake-up call? Just listen to the archived quarterly earnings teleconferences that Borland management hold for Wall Street analysts. Borland has been losing their ass the last several quarters, and the Borland talking heads don't seem to have a clue - blame this guy, blame that guy, ... HEY GUYS - FIX YOUR STUFF AND WE'LL BUY IT AGAIN. The suits don't get this of course. You think the Kylix fiasco was a stink? Just wait - JUST YOU WAIT - unitil Delphi .NET (aka Delphi 8) hits the street. Turds in the punchbowl all around. You heard it here first. |
| Sat 08 Nov | ChrisO | 'It is hard/impossible to install and run on Suse, Debian, or any of the other distributions, including current versions of Red Hat. ' - RocketJeff Could this explain why Linux development will never take off? If we have to make a seperate version of our apps for each and every linux distro then Linux is in a very sad state. - This may be fine for the corporate developers that can dictate (or know in advance) what distribution their users will be using, but for ISVs like my company this isn't possible. (NB: I have only installed linux 2 or 3 times and not used it extensively, so I am basing this purely on RocketJeffs post and the fact that I respect Borland as a fairly capable company and if they failed in this 'cross-distribution' development, then that doesn't speak to well for the chances for smaller companies to succeed in the same field.) |
| Sat 08 Nov | Mister Fancypants | Yeah, Kylix sucked, but commercial application development on Linux is still stillborn and this trend shows no signs of changing. |
| Sat 08 Nov | windows hacker | We thought about distributing a Linux version of our application, but the amount of work required to get it out the door and support it thereafter was prohibitive. About the only way to have a product that would easily install & run on all the different brands was to distribute the source and have people use autoconf & make - something we weren't willing to do. |
| Sat 08 Nov | Bored Bystander | On the binary incompatibilities of various Linuxes... It seems to me that the Linux culture is based upon everything that you install on a Linux system being in 'make'able packages and therefore, almost nobody installs binary images onto Linux of software that they didn't build themselves. Therefore, there has never been the discipline in the Linux camp of having to conform to binary compatibility. You build the tarball and it compiles and inhales in all the library references it needs for the Linux that is building it. This also means, of course, that 'all' software in Linux land is 'supposed' to be distributed as source code. So I wonder if Borland, as well as anyone else trying to resell Linux software, ever considered any of this as problematic? |
| Sat 08 Nov | Brad Wilson | Even distributing a |