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some of those are silly.
a program that's stuck in a VM might not know time has effectively stopped and restarted ? how the hell is a programmer supposed to handle that situation - resync the clock with NIST before calling any function that gets time ?
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Chris Losinger wrote: resync the clock with NIST before
No guarantees...
A problem I had to fix a number of years ago was that we got the time from NIST, stored it in a script, and ran the script on the cluster (this was OpenVMS), but when the system was busy, it didn't run on time, thereby setting the clocks back.  It was actually a simple fix.
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Here's some more:
- Time always goes forward.
- At least, it doesn't go backwards.
- There is a whole number of days in a year.
(ok those were easy)
- Date strings can be unambiguously converted to timestamps.
(you might even encounter that one)
- Every day of the month always exists, except the leap day.
- If a date exists in one country, it also exists in every other country.
- The differences between the dates in two places is never larger than one.
- Whether a year is a leap year can be calculated from the just the year.
- etc?
We made a huge mess, and no one is making any serious move to clean it up.
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I've never used time for anything beyond generating unique names and sorting, so honestly most of that isn't important. (I do make some attempts at dealing with it properly, like using the UTC time instead of local time).
But I would add an interesting one I came across:
- a time stamp converted to another format and back will match the original time stamp
(ran into that problem with converting a .Net DateTime to a Unix time stamp and back, DateTime has a higher resolution than Unix time stamps, so some data was truncated)
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This is an impressive and first-time experience in my anti-virus career. I chatted with a hacker while debugging a virus. Yes, it’s true. It happened when the Threat team were researching key loggers for Diablo III while many game players playing this game found their accounts stolen.... This hacker was not so foolish to tell us all the truth. He then shut down our system remotely. The ultimate Boss Battle?
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The other day a student and I were trying to understand a subtle part of the C standard. Often, the easiest way to clarify this kind of issue is to recognize that compiler writers have already grappled with it — so just write some code and see what various compilers do with it.... That’s a lot of trouble being caused by a two-line function. C may be a small language, but it’s not a simple one.
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Spreadsheets have been used by accountants for hundreds of years. Computerized or electronic spreadsheets are of much more recent origin. Information Systems oral history and some published newspaper and magazine stories celebrate Dan Bricklin as the "father" of the electronic spreadsheet. Bricklin and Bob Frankston then co-invented or co-created the software program VisiCalc. What happened after that? The sum of all worksheets.
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The advertising industry is brawling with some of the biggest names in technology: Microsoft, Mozilla, and the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body for the Web. The fight is taking place because the consortium, known as W3C, is developing a new "Do Not Track" standard so Web users can signal that online ad targeting companies should leave them alone. Advertising industry representatives say the standards-setting process has turned into an existential threat that could mean the end of free online content. Are standards bodies beholden to the technology or the commercial status quo?
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Many years ago, Microsoft made a decision to OEM their operating system. It went stellar, and runs on machines built by lots of manufacturers. These machines support peripherals developed by an even larger number of companies. There’s no doubting the success this has led to. There’s a knock on effect though... Is it possible to satisfy a huge installed base of customers and still make surprise announcements?
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With the release of Windows 8 looming, Microsoft was indeed desperate for a hardware company to do something to blunt Apple’s runaway tablet machine. The Surface tablet represents an indictment of the entire PC and device industry, which has stood by for a couple of years trying to mimic Apple with a parade of hapless, copycat products. Rather than complaining, PC makers ought to take note of what Microsoft has produced.
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Yesterday Microsoft announced it would be making two Windows tablets of its own — one Windows 8-based and another Windows RT-based. Today, pundits, partners and potential customers are sifting through thousands of articles, the streaming video feed of the announcement and online documents for more particulars about the coming devices. Here’s what I’ve found so far. What are you still waiting to hear about the Surface tablets?
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Microsoft just raised the bar in the tablet market. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, you know that Microsoft finally revealed their own tablet device, dubbed “Microsoft Surface”, built independently from its traditional OEMs. This new Microsoft Surface comes in two flavors, running either Windows 8 Pro or Windows RT.
The Microsoft Surface devices are very new and there are still some hardware features we do not know about yet, but the operating systems powering Microsoft Surface are not new. The details about Windows 8 and Windows RT have been known for months, dating as far back as the Microsoft //Build conference last year in September 2011.
However, the differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT are still creating confusion, both for consumers and developers. Some of the common questions asked include:
Is Windows 8 compatible with my current Windows app?
Can I build Windows 8 Metro apps in .NET?
Are Windows 8 games built in C++ or XNA?
Can I build apps for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone?
This post seeks to answer the most common questions and clarify things primarily for developers, with a few consumer tidbits thrown in for form. I’m also addressing Windows Phone development here since many questions arise about the compatibility between the new platform.
More on my blog at: http://community.infragistics.com/blogs/nick-landry/archive/2012/06/19/developing-apps-for-microsoft-surface-windows-8-windows-rt-and-windows-phone.aspx[^]
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ActiveNick wrote: Is Windows 8 compatible with my current Windows app?
If W8 isn't compatible with existing Windows apps, Microsoft will have decapitated itself. Obviously, thousands of business aren't going to migrate to W8 if their existing apps don't run on it.
ActiveNick wrote: Can I build Windows 8 Metro apps in .NET?
At least in my business sector, Metro is an absurd front end. I'm not talking commercial apps, but rather in-house engineering apps, where engineers don't usually care too much about the UI, as long as it looks and feels like Excel. Seriously.
ActiveNick wrote: Are Windows 8 games built in C++ or XNA?
I totally do not care.
ActiveNick wrote: Can I build apps for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone?
If I were to build an app for a pad or phone, it would initially target Apple and/or Android devices. And again, building an app that can load a couple hundred thousand records in a few seconds and do some engineering computation on the dataset, now why would I do that on a freakin' phone???
Just saying. I know I work in a particular business sector, but pretty much, I don't care what Microsoft (or anybody else) does in the pad / phone market. I don't write games or cutesy apps - certainly I enjoy using them, but it's not my area of interest at the moment. Show me a customer willing to pay for some development, and I'll happily learn the ropes. Until then, I'm happy to ignore the whole mess.
Marc
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ActiveNick wrote: Is Windows 8 compatible with my current Windows app?
Windows 8 yes, Windows RT(the ARM version) no.
ActiveNick wrote: Can I build Windows 8 Metro apps in .NET?
Sure. Even Windows RT. Further more, one can debug directly on the ARM machine with the latest release of VS wich is still beta.
ActiveNick wrote: Are Windows 8 games built in C++ or XNA?
Both. You can create in XNA or in C++ or the combination of the beasts 
ActiveNick wrote: Can I build apps for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone?
Now that's tricky. Short answer yes. Longer answer some tweaks will be needed for the UI at least.
All the best,
Dan
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As mobile devices and their app stores become more popular, there's a rising risk of more roadblocks for free software. [ITworld]
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I don't see how he makes these connections, giving users access to a unified repository of apps (many of which are free!) will destroy free software? Every Linux distribution I've used has a model fairly close to Google's (there's a central repository for most software that is moderated to some extent to keep out dangerous and broken software, and you can take risks and download them from elsewhere as well).
If anything, this seems like a way to make the distribution of free software easier, because it puts the free and paid alternatives together in one place so even less technically inclined users will be able to download and install them. 
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Apparently Linus is not a fan of Nvidia... and he doesn't hold back how he really feels about them. 
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/torvalds-nvidia-linux/[^]
Can't blame him, drivers have been a major cause of headaches in Linux for years.
Warning: The video in the story is long and it doesn't allow you to skip ahead... thanks Wired... 
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Only a little later he says "... because I'm a nice guy".
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I'd hate to see someone he deems not nice
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So let me get this straight...Nvidia is bad because they don't want to spend their money to have their employees develop graphics drivers for a system with only a small market share and almost no programs that even need a graphics card?  Just because Linux is free and people donate their time to it, doesn't mean it's free for Nvidia to support it, and unless it's profitable for them they have no reason to support it. It's basic economics...
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Nvidia also tries its best to keep the linux guys from developing their own driver.
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I'm pretty sure the Linux community would be happy to write their own drivers. As I understand, they are pissed because nVidia is an undocumented* moving target of proprietary crapola.
So no, they don't expect Nvidia to spend money to insanely obvious ridiculism. They just want Nvidia to enable others to do so for free.
*) Lower that gun, JoSi, NOT in the sense of "illegal alien"
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That makes sense, but it still takes them some time and money to create and distribute documentation (a lot less I would think, especially if they already have suitable documentation for public distribution being used internally).
As far as the moving target goes, graphics hardware has always been a rapidly changing segment of hardware, they have to keep changing to prevent AMD from getting ahead. I doubt they do it on purpose to prevent the Linux community from making drivers. And like I said, it's not like anything on Linux needs the advanced features of a graphics card, and I wouldn't think the basics change much.
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lewax00 wrote: it still takes them some time and money to create and distribute documentation (a lot less I would think, especially if they already have suitable documentation for public distribution being used internally).
No doubt, it would cost them something. I'd almost expect a crockshit of brittle "only with the right incantation" API's - which is how I meant the moving target. Of course, graphics card drivers are always on the move, but if done right by the manufacturer, that makes them an interesting problem, too 
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lewax00 wrote: only a small market share
Only a small market share? ...Linux is probably the most prominent embedded system and server OS in the world... and now owns a huge market share of handheld devices with Android. I'd say that's a pretty big market share.
lewax00 wrote: and unless it's profitable for them they have no reason to support it
Do you think just because people are running Linux they don't buy their hardware? 
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