Woman says to him, "You look new here, where were you before?"
Man says, "I just was released from a long prison term . . . for killing my wife."
"Oh, so you're single, then!"
The 32-bit to 64-bit change is a big jump, but int (32-bit) and long (64-bit) have the same meaning in Java whether 32 or 64 bit, and the "integer models" of C and C++ are OS dependent, but they made some effort to ease the transition. Here, you are telling me that Delphi 2009+ is a totally different and incompatible language from Delphi 7, that they didn't even make an attempt at a smooth migration path?
That gets back to my original question/observation. It does seem that there is a "Lost World" of Delphi programmers and application users still living in the era of Delphi 7, either out of sloth, inertia, legacy systems, or that Embarcadero has gone off into the ozone layer of the stratosphere with their product offerings, and this Lost World is cut off from the Embarcadero World.
Oh, don't move to Atlanta because you are experienced in Delphi. The traffic alone in the Atlanta Metro area will make the 6-figure pay not worth it.
I kinda quit upgrading my Delphi install after Version 7 having switched to Java for the work I am doing going forward. I needed a 64-bit capable Delphi for something so I downloaded the Embarcadero Trial of one of the current Delphi versions.
Besides New Delphi being a complete pig on resources, there is no comparison of its machine "footprint" to Visual Studio let along Classic Delphi (of which Delphi 7 is the "standard" because that is where Classic Delphi development stopped). I didn't do much with the trial install because I couldn't figure out the settings and modes on the compiler and I consider myself an old Delphi-hand. Attempting to compile a legacy Delphi 7 app with it resulted in a barrage of compiler errors.
When I need to "do something 64-bit" (also cross-platform) in Delphi, I have switched to Lazarus/Free Pascal, which I understand is targeting Delphi 7 for clonage -- kinda like Linux distros targeting something somewhat but not completely unlike XP for the GUI experience with Microsoft having gone off into the ozone UI-wise with Windows 8.
So, is it just me, or do others view Delphi 5-6-7 as the Windows 2000/XP of that world and the new Embarcadero offerings as being a whole 'nother language culture?
No offense to your 2004 Focus, but it has been years since I watched the program, but the stolen car was always a Saturn?
I know that auto theft is a felony and the police are there to protect and serve, and this car was some poor dude's ride before it got boosted. But the cops engage in a high-speed chase to recover . . . a Saturn? Which ends up wrapped around a light pole in most of the "episodes"? "Sir, we recovered your car . .
So is it really worth the danger to the public to give chase to a criminal who has boosted a 10-year old Saturn?
You will then take it home and then figure that it is a tenth mm too big in all dimensions to fit?
How about the "real life" launch sequence that the "shooters" on the carrier deck crews use?
(5 fingers out stretched) Release brakes.
(circle one finger in the air) Miltary power (i.e. full non-afterburner setting).
(wag two fingers in the air) Combat power (advance throttle to afterburner).
(put a knee to ground Tebow style, duck, and point with an outstretched arm, pilot acknowledges with a Navy salute) Go!
I have a 4-cyl gas engine grass cutting tractor that requires a tune up inasmuch as it has breaker-point ignition. That tractor dates from the early 1980s, though.
How old is your car that it needs a "tune up"?
I remember in the "run up" to the First Iraq War (the "Gulf War') about an interview with some high-ranking Saudi dude being concern-trolled "what about Iraq attacking the oil fields (with Scuds)?" The Saudi official smiled somewhat patronizingly at the news dude and responded, "We are equipped with the Patriot" at the time when the US public didn't know a Patriot from a Tory or that anyone was mad enough to use an ack-ack missile against a Scud rocket.
War is always about PR (i.e. deception). Everyone knew the Scud couldn't hit anything (except in some lucky for the enemy, unlucky for us shots). The Saudi leaders were just too happy to go along with "the Patriot is a Scud defense shield" because they knew that strategically, the Scud was of no consequence and this way they could tell their people to "just chill, bro, the Americans shared with us the Patriot" as the Scuds rained down. The US hurredly gave the Israelis the Patriot to get them to "just chill, bro", but everyone was coming out of the woodwork about how the Patriot was just a sham defense against an incoming missile not aimed at anything.
The "Patriot works" fit Saudi propaganda interests, but went against the Israeli propaganda at the time because they Israelis were itchy to get into the fight of "Scud hunting", where air attacks against this mobile platform that couldn't hit anything in the first place were regarded as futile by the U.S.. The Israelis argued that their pilots would press futile attacks against the Scud more aggressively because they were defending their women and children against the largely ineffective Scud attacks, but the US argued this was Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti's war aim, to lob Scuds to draw the Israelis in to fracture the coalition.
As for Palestinians and the war fighting power they have, suicide bombing are perhaps the most effective thing they have to inflict Israeli casualties, but it really works against them propaganda wise. The singularly most effective thing they had going was the First Intifida, where they were using rock-throwing young people as rubber-bullet sponges. From a propaganda standpoint, that was devastating in its effectiveness of portraying the Israeli troops as hateful goons, whether this was true or not, but the optics on TV were rapidly undermining Israel as a just cause. Why the PLO gave up on a tactic that was working I have no idea, but this may speak to why the conflict has dragged on so long when the Palestinians have demographics and world sympathy in their corner. The Palestinians may simply have bad leaders.
The rocket attacks are a kind of middle ground tactic in sacrificing your own guys. It is not the casualties inflicted by the rocket attacks, it is the 100:1 casualties of your own people that is a feature-not-a-bug, of rallying your own people and of getting Americans to pray in their Christian churches "for an end to the violence."
As to why the Israelis are playing along be inflicting so many casualties, maybe that is a feature-not-a-bug. For one thing, they are targeting "the leaders" and trying to be creative in a tactical sense with their tech for giving telephone warnings. Maybe the Israeli calculus is "the leaders talk tough but they are not that keen on being blown up themselves."
Also, on one hand, Israel is a "Western" country where people get all hand-wringy about the "violence" (I use scare quotes because what is taking place is a war between two sides with irreconcilable national interests and not some unexplained "violence"). On the other hand, Israel is a Middle Eastern country with a substantial Oriental Jewish population displaced from Cairo, Baghdad, Tehran, etc., where the heavy hand of a punative military campaign, responding with a sledgehammer blow to a slap from a fly swatter, is standard procedure in Middle Eastern governance.
If one's sympathies are with the Palestinian side and against the Israeli side, those are your beliefs, but I don't have much respect for the intellectual honesty of the BAS. As for the Palestinians, my advice is "there are people like you among the German-speaking peoples of Eastern Europe. I know of this because these were my parents and grandparents. Whether it is just or unjust, there are consequences to losing a war. My mom's legacy is the most productive farmland on the planet, but there is no getting that back or ever resettling there. There are times when one has to make peace and move on."
What you have to realize is that Brent Spiner (the "mad scientist" in Area 51 who related "we don't get out much") had been hacking the alien tech since the early 1950s so Goldblum didn't have to do that much.
Getting back on topic, the Rebels in St/ar Wars smuggled the plans to the Death Star, which the Grand Moff/Toff/Dufus thought would do the rebels no good because the Death Star was properly engineered.
The Rebel engineers studied those plans and found a weakness in that reactor exhaust port thingy. Maybe there were her flaws, but this is what they were able to find.
As to the WW-II style anti-aircraft, the whole attack on the Death Star was supposed to be the Battle of Midway and Waldron's Lost Squadron running their suicidal torpedo attack down to the last man with the tide of the battle reversing at the last minute (the dive bombers sinking the carriers of Kido Butai at Midway, Luke using The Force to guide his last blaster shot to the exhaust port after Han Solo drove off his pursuers in "Star Wars").
This telling of the tale resonanted with the audience in the late 70's, whose parents of The Greatest Generation told the stories of the WW-II battles. When I first told a friend at work "The whole Star Wars ending scene is just the Battle of Midway", there was this recognition on his part, where he related his father being a Navy submarine combat veteran. Stories of how WW-II was fought from different vantage points was what our generation grew up with.
"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!" -- Bryan Michael Wendt
