Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:I don't like boost (Score 2) 333

by MassacrE (#43185689) Attached to: Comparing the C++ Standard and Boost

b) a darn STANDARD _Binary_ API so I don't have to worry about which _compiler_ AND _platform_ was used,

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you mean generate compiler/platform independent code (some IR like bytecode/LLIR)? Or do you mean ntoh/hton and the like?

h) Provide PROPER 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit characters
i) Fix the darn grammar so that compilers accept UNICODE source
j) Fix the darn grammar so that compilers RECOGNIZE identifiers WITH Unicode characters

Should both be fixed with C++11. Except 24-bit characters, which I've never heard of before.

k) Add a proper exponent operator
l) Add a proper wedge operator, along with inner and outer product operators

Seem rather special-cased here.

m) Add proper multiple return types

You can do this by returning a std::pair, a std::tuple, or a structure you build. However, I don't believe there is an easy syntactic way to split a pair/tuple into multiple local variables.

n) Fix all the times the spec says "undefined" or "implementation dependent". The point of a spec is to SPECIFY what the operations do, NOT to be ambiguous because in some idiotic universe 'char' is not exactly 8-bits.

Never going to happen. Most of those "undefined/implementation dependent" items are features, and compilers take advantage of them to optimize code. It does make some quirky edge cases, but makes a lot of code optimization techniques in use today possible.

When is C++ going to automatic garbage collection WITH the ability to tell the garbage system how many milliseconds you are allowed to use (inclusive from ZERO.)

Do you know a system that does this max time? Because it sounds ridiculously difficult, and would lead to cases where a program would have to fail because it has no memory yet is not allowed to do a full garbage sweep/reclaim.

The problem with that C++ is not that you can't write simple code, but is that the languages makes it easy to write verbose bloated code.

I actually don't believe this is the problem with C++ - you can write verbose, bloated code in most languages. The problem I see is that C++ was made to be as strict a superset of C as possible, and inherited an audience who want full control of things like object size, and memory allocation/deallocation behavior. Because of this, generialized code requires way more knobs to be tweaked than you expect, and templates have evolved to be a hacked-together functional programming language to determine optimal operation. In order to generate an optimal, generic library you have to make the code itself incredibly difficult to maintain.

Comment: Re:Of course it has a CPU in it. (Score 3, Informative) 392

by MassacrE (#43056775) Attached to: Apple's Lightning-to-HDMI Dongle Secretly Packed With ARM, Airplay

Although I don't have the means or desire to test it, it is far more likely that they decided most of what people would want to output via HDMI was H.264-encoded video. So they made an interface where H.264 was streamed over the lightning connector, and converted by this adapter to HDMI. Probably both sides use HDCP or similar protections.

The limitations Panic encountered are because the video support in the iPad mini can only h.264 encode the screen (for 'mirroring') at lower-than-1080p resolutions.

Comment: Re:I don't get it... (Score 1) 244

by MassacrE (#41329609) Attached to: Fragmentation Comes To iOS

The issue is that people program at a pixel ratio as if it is some measurement of minimal perceived size. If they had just quadrupled the pixels, most websites for instance would expect to scale to fill the larger size, but without any notion of whether the page was being rendered large enough to see.

Not to mention all the people who hard-coded mobile sites based on the horizontal width of the device. Which, btw, still hasn't changed even with the new dimensions.

Comment: Its their own damn fault (Score 4, Insightful) 393

by MassacrE (#41244645) Attached to: Apple Says "No" To Releasing New Dock Connector Specs

Accessory manufacturers (particularly case manufacturers) burnt all their bridges with Apple long ago. Since around when the iphone 3gs came out, nobody has gotten any advance notice of new hardware because of all the leaks.

Even now, many of the apple rumors come from case manufacturers who are attempting to bribe employees at the manufacturer for information.

Right now Apple has only even hinted that there may be an iphone 5, and if they are going to deprecate a decade of accessories with a new connector they want to do it on their own terms. There is no way Applw have confirmed or denied the dock connector except perhaps in controlled leaks to the media. Nobody making alarm clock docks is gonna know a damn thing until the rest of us do on the 12th.

Comment: For those confused. (Score 4, Informative) 395

by MassacrE (#40726447) Attached to: HTML5 Splits Into Two Standards

WHATWG split off from the W3C work because they couldn't organize additions and clarifications to the HTML 4 spec under the W3C. It is mostly a group of browser-makers (everyone except Microsoft).

The W3C then asked if they could standardize the WHATWG's work as HTML5

What happened a year ago (and is just being put on slashdot today?) was that the WHATWG announced that they weren't going to stop producing additional work. The version under the W3C would eventually be released as version 5.0, but WHATWG would effectively be the HEAD/master version of work on extending HTML.

Which HTML5 is an easy question to answer - there will only be one HTML5. People will put pressure on the browser manufacturers to support the W3C's standardization of HTML as version 5.0. But browser manufacturers will also continue to cram new crap and functionality in ahead of W3C standardization, and attempt to define interoperability of that under the flag "HTML" in WHATWG, a "specification" that grows as the members gain consensus on how new functionality should work (or in some cases, how to advertise the functionality is not offered).

In reality, this is how HTML has _always_ operated.

Comment: Friends of Eclipse (Score 1) 341

The recent Eclipse launch had several benefits for Eclipse users; the big one is that the donors got access to binaries 48 hours earlier, while anyone else supposedly could build the same release it is a huge project and that would be a labor-intensive process.

I would recommend something like this over denying users binaries, as your project probably does not need any barriers to user adoption.

Comment: Missing the point (Score 1) 575

by MassacrE (#40459645) Attached to: Bill Gates Says Tablets Aren't Much Help In Education

While tablets are definitely a cool gadget and sound like a draw to the school, in reality the switchover is to save money by killing paper books. They have worked the numbers out such that it appears cheaper for a school which buys new paper books to instead buy tablets per student (at edu pricing) and per-student licensing for the book content.

I don't know if these numbers take into account schools reselling those new books after a few years to schools with more budgetary constraints, and I suspect those poorer schools are going to be hurt hard by having their supply of second-hand books dry up. But this is not just about every kid getting a gadget.

Comment: Summary for those who didn't read the article (Score 2) 356

by MassacrE (#39871575) Attached to: Apple Blocks iOS Apps Using Dropbox SDK

Apple's iOS App Store rules state that all in-app purchases must use the In-app purchase mechanism. In addition, you cannot link to an external purchase mechanism. Finally, Apple charges their standard 30% fee for purchases for in-app purchasing.

The issue in the Dropbox SDK is that it fires up a web view for authentication, and the page it went to was not properly sandboxed. By creating an account, then clicking a link to go to the desktop version, you got to a page that let you pay to upgrade to a pro version. At this point, it broke the rule above. Since this was functionality within the SDK, all the applications being submitted to the store using this version of the SDK are breaking this rule and getting rejected.

My guess is Dropbox released a new SDK version that sends the user to a different web page for authentication, this one being properly sandboxed. I do not know what Dropbox would be talking to Apple about; unless Dropbox API support is added to the OS, you would need the Dropbox client installed in order to be able to even support in-app purchasing of a pro account.

Comment: Re:What I Want To Know... (Score 2) 658

by MassacrE (#39069989) Attached to: An Early Look At Mac OS X 10.8

I believe (like FreeBSD) they are fine with GPL v2. It seems like projects switching to GPL v3 is motivating Apple and a few other of the BSD'ers to create new open source projects for all the functionality they were getting from these projects. I love that it finally motivated someone to invest heavily in coming out with a gcc alternative (clang + llvm).

I have noticed a pattern that apple's replacements only implement the newest defined functionality or protocol, however. For an example, there is work going on to replace libstdc++, but the replacement is only meant to target compilers that support C++11. So I wouldn't be surprised to find out that say, a Lion Mac has trouble connecting to a Windows 2000 server using their samba replacement.

I've been wondering for a now if there is a project somewhere to come out with a BSD-licensed replacement for bash.

Comment: Re:mocoNews article explains Apple's dilemma well (Score 1) 93

by MassacrE (#36203764) Attached to: EFF Presses Apple To Indemnify Developers

but Apple already granted them legitimacy by signing an agreement with Lodsys.

I believe all of the large companies had rights to the patent as part of the Intellectual Ventures portfolio, and part of the deal of the sale of the patent to Lodsys included that companies who had license to the portfolio retained the right to use the patent.

No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it. -- C. Schulz

Working...