But how do you generate them if you dont know the number of images available. Plus, it actually loads more pictures as you scroll down. Is this being done with manual algorithm?

I'd imagine that if you have the ability to just bind to a flow layout control, then it will be much less complicated.

Thanks.

maybe i should ask for this feature to IE team?

i was testing ie9 rc and played this demo. i won quite a lot and one of the opponents lost all their money, and the game freeze there. i guess a demo is just for demo afterall. still it was a fun game

BTW, I have Office 2010 installed but haven't really use it much.

When the project was in development, I was the lead developer, architect and manager. These overlapping responsibilities makes it hard for me to monitor and to be too much involved in the development. Instead I was focusing on some of the critical module architectures, the management stuffs, such as resource planning, meetings, getting people to daily meetings, discussing priorities with users, etc (yes we are (try) using scrum). I found that scrum actually makes developers and users to understand each other better and  we have very good productivity and flexibilities compared to other teams. We don't work long hours, yet the users are very satisfied with our progress.

However, after the project turns to maintenance phase, I found that there's a lot of things that are 'not as good as I hoped'. bad codes, bad designs are littering the software. I need to fix it, but who would ever give me the time to fix the whole software? So what do I do? Most of the times users demanded that bugs gets fixed immedietly. I can't rewrite the whole code/module in a limited amount of time, so I hack it. Now, this is the time where I'm not proud of my codes. But doing this means more hacks introduced everytime and the module will become more and more complex... given time it becomes very unmanageable.

Usually when I feel that the module has too much mess, because of the complexity and because of the bugs it contains, I will raise the case to my users. I will usually demand to have the next development cycle focusing on fixing that module and that I need them to give me a full week or two. What I usually do, though, I don't fix the module, I trashed it, and recreate it from scratch. Now, that is when I'm proud of my codes.

Of course not all users will immedietly give me the time for doing it. So, sometimes I need to work behind their backs. Working with the new implementation as I have the time. And when I finished with it, I demonstrated it to the users. They usually understand and accept the new implementations. That's also another win for me and when I think I produced codes that I'm proud of.

W3bbo said:

littleguru said:

*snip*

W3C specifications only hit the final "TR" stage when there are at least two independent implementations. This does create a chicken/egg scenario for Microsoft as they won't implement specifications until they're finalised, which means it's up to the more flexible and supple development groups at Mozilla, Apple, and Opera to implement them first, which means IE will always have to play catch-up.

Microsoft needs to change their policy so they'll at least implement the major things that are unlikely to change, like rounded corners and client-side databases,

I somewhat agree with your opinion that Microsoft needs to make a move and be more active. But implementing the standard partially is also not a good solution. IE had been non standard in the past and have bad reputations, even now after IE is fully standard. You definitely do not want make those people to come back and start pointing fingers at IE anymore.

What I think Microsoft needs to do is to have some kind of a fork from ie for community review. Whatever they call this product, this will completely for review only and will never see an official release. The product may only consist of the trident engine without any bells and whistles on it. That way Microsoft can get community reviews while contributing to the standardization process. Microsoft can even put a proof of concept on new suggestions there and noone will probably complains about it.

Sven Groot said:

punkouter said:

*snip*

For everything except your first requirement it doesn't really matter. The Japanese IME is in any language version, English versions of Office and Visual Studio run on any language version. I can't imagine using Japanese drivers on English Windows is going to be a problem (you might have trouble running the installer if your system code page is not set to Japanese, but you can change that regardless of the UI language and there's also AppLocale).

Your first requirement, having different UI languages for different user accounts, can only be achieved with Ultimate (and Enterprise, but individuals can't buy that). At least that was the case with Vista, I think it will be the same for 7.

My recommendation would be to get Windows 7 Ultimate in English, and then install the Japanese language pack from Windows Update. This will allow you to set up one account in English and another in Japanese. Or buy it in Japanese and install the English language pack from Windows Update, it makes little difference.

Don't mind Koogle, he makes little sense to anyone except himself.

thanks for your suggestions sven, W3bbo, bass and blowdart.

Ubuntu said:

stevo_ said:

*snip*

Bass was kind enough to answer that one for me.

i don't think this 'discussion' of who's doing what first is beneficial nor constructive or even worth the discussion altogether. innovations are built on other innovations. people compete on bringing the same feature so that they don't lose to other products. they create better features to establish strong points. its a natural thing to integrate new features to products eventhough they are based on the same ideas. ff, ie, safari, they all competing each other on performance, security, ease of use, etc.

i myself doesnt really care of whose doing what first, in the end its the users who decide on what to use. i use ie mainly because i trust its security policy and features is better. i could be wrong there, but thats how i feel. i use firefox if ie fails, eg: i cant get some site to work. if it still fails on ff, then i know that the site is broken.

Koogle said:

I don't really have a dilemma.. but I am waiting for an OS update that is actually worth moving onto since Windows XP..

my expectations are very reasonable..

-I don't settle for nub sh/t changes & lack of decent improvements when small third party developments offer better f#cking improvements visually/usability & customization wise than an OS that goes in development for years by developers who don't seem to have the slightest intention of making actual workflow improvements to the desktop...instead just make it worse and include any old sh/tty feature so long as it can made to look good to the nubs.
-Existing shell extensions must still work or become irrelevant because of better built in enhancements (fat chance)
-Hardware like audio cards must deliver at least the same level of performance and features without an increase in CPU usage when its only for pointless sh/t, if you're gonna make a fecking change then at least introduce it when you've worked on it and made it more worthwile!

-Aero sh/te Themes and that pile o'sh/t dwm.exe process needs a good kicking, with better control over it. ie disable thumbnail processing etc
-I'd like the 'Explorer' and everything assiociated with it to get an actual F#*^K!NG IMPROVEMENT! and out with the crap.
-I will not use  ugly as f#ck noob looking prompts like the replace file dialog, useless waste of space status bars etc etc
-Things like the task manager, file transfers, control panel, startmenu, should be more useful and better designed etc
-Easier tweakability/customization and options should be built in and provided for more things, as Windows default settings SUCK for just about everything!

It seems like I'm asking for sooo much already // and those where just some of my reasonable expectations, wasn't even a mention of better profile setup, control and security etc for those that don't want to go the full on system drive bitlocker route.

I tried to understand your post there, I really did (read it 3x). But just couldn't. So, which one are you suggesting?

I'm buying Win 7 because I think its time for me and my pc to move on. That's the main reason. The other reason is because my girlfriend hates PC, and electronic devices and reluctant to use them (except the washing machine, microwave and her cellphone, i guess). She's just like my mom. But since IT is where I make a living and I have passion for it, I want her to understand and at least know computers better. And that requires me to get a nice easy to use OS, which what i hope Windows 7 will be. On the other side, I need to work on that PC also. So, as you can see I need a Windows version that supports English and Japanese seamlessly (if possible, without much problem at least).

So, again koogle, which one do you recommend? and why?

Anyone can give me an advice on which Windows 7 should I buy? (Especially, if I should buy Win 7 Jap or English?)
Thanks,.

Sven Groot said:

punkouter said:

*snip*

What benefit you get from a static analysis tool depends on the tool. Many of them, including FxCop, are simple best practices checkers: does your naming follow .Net convention, do you dispose every object that implements IDisposable, do objects that manage native resource implement the disposable pattern properly, do you use the recommended pattern for events, exceptions, etc., do you put the proper attributes on classes and methods, do you always specify a culture for culture-sensitive methods, that kind of thing. For most of these, only function-level analysis is needed so the effort is not too great.

 

sven, if those are the only reasons for doing static analysis, i will be pretty disappointed. most of the reasons you stated above can be achieved using code review, design patterns, and best practices, which are all conventions. i kind of expecting static code analysis is more a mathematical way of proving correctness. i guess what i'm expecting is some tool that take the whole set of formal method and prove code correctness using mathematical model. like AndyC pointed out up there, i guess the effort of doing static code analysis is too great to be practical right now. i don't know if fxcop doing something in line with formal method, but if it is a static code analysis tool, then it probably still lack the power and benefit of formal method (that is proving code correctness). would it be fair if i say that fxcop is a static code analysis tool in early stages?

on the other hand, with terminator, just looking at the introduction there i feel they are gearing towards formal method. but then again, there is still nothing solid yet. looking at wikipedia, it seems that some tools that do static analysis based on formal method, only implements parts of the formal method. i guess, the complexity is too great.

im wondering, have anyone does (or tried) static code analysis by hand?

blowdart said:

There's also CAT.NET (64bit / 32bit) which uses static code analysis to look for security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and XSS

 

So i guess you don't do static analysis by hand. I've never used fxcop or other static analysis tools before (or maybe I used it but just does not know that it is called a static analysis tool). But given the complexity of programs that are produced now, wouldn't that require a tremendous effort to do? It's like exploring every path on decission branches and loops. And even that doesn't work anymore right now, since threads and multicore processors are being used more and more everyday. Doing analysis on Java Byte Code or CIL seems to be simpler also rather than doing it on assembly codes. I can't imagine what kind of enormous effort that would be require to tackle this problem.

That said, thanks a lot guys for pointing me to some great static analysis tools out there. Most of the tools that I saw was based on .Net or Java, though. I worked a lot in C++ lately (sigh), want to know if there is such a tool for C++ that runs also on Linux (big financial company usually runs solaris or linux on their servers. so no choice for me there).

Charles, I looked at terminator. I admire the effort that they are putting on. I hope they can achieve the goal they set. However, I could not figure out what platform they are targetting. Are they targetting all platforms? The software seems to be written using a number of programming languages, which kind of interesting.

Overall, I guess my next question is what practically Static Analysis gives you? Zian pointed out it's one level up from syntax error. But, that's still pretty shallow. I would say Static Analysis should give us something significantly more than Unit Test, Code Coverage, and Code Contracts to be worth the effort.

PS: Channel 9 looks horrible on IE 6 v.6.0.2900.2180.xp_sp2...

What actually interests me is the Formal Methods that is being described there. It's quite extensive list and I would say that it will take quite a long time to perform all of that. I can't say I've done any of those kind of test to the degree described there.

So my question is, have anyone here done such analysis? tell me your experiences and how you did it.

Thanks.

MasterPie said:

Bass said:

*snip*

The analogy fails such that all low level details (oven making, cow butchering, etc) are static and are set in place to allow you to make a burger. This is akin to just subscribing to a blog service (with all the plumbing and low level stuff done) and then customizing the blog to your needs (like the ingredients of a burger).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you're talking about custom development...a user being able to tell a program what he wants and that program will simply develop the software for him.

again this is just a matter of managing complexities by using contexes. in Bass example he has a big overarching context which is 'making burgers' which is still ambiguous, and that context needs to be broke down to smaller ones 'cow raising', 'cow butchering', 'oven making'... etc.. given small enough contexes, then the problem will be easy enough to understand and to do. divide et impera. isn't that the most useful tool that a programmer have.

i would say that it is doable, but i wont expect anything anytime soon. there are still too much things todo. plus, when we can produce a software that can make burgers like bass said, we'll probably have terminators guarding those burgers anyway,,,

longnightmoon said:

I worked with something like that in the dark ages, when it was all said and done it just went ahead and compiled itself and ran on the fly.

I think what you’re looking for would turn out to be something that can make it easy to find the free source that’s already available that the programmer is looking for, and perhaps convert it to the desired language and os.

I would say CASE tools might be one example that might fit in, or pretty close, for practical use. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if the OMG people that wrote UML specs are actually targetting on UML that can produce real applications rather than just codes. 'UML compiler'... how does that sounds?

In order for software to produce codes by itself, the software must understand what the instruction means exactly. That is by far the most important thing and the most problematic thing. English, for example, have lots and lots of ambiguities. I guess, advancement in natural language processing and machine learning abillities would be needed before we can see any software that wrote codes given a specification. That's from the usage side.

From the programming world side, I guess UML, XML, OSLO, etc are efforts to get machines be more humane. UML talks by diagrams which (if modeled correctly) may produce codes, XML brings structure and information to data that they are describing (which, if you ever use VS or other tools) can be converted to codes representing entities,... OSLO... is fun. OSLO in my perspective is an effort for reducing ambiguities by context limitations. So, even though some sentences or words have ambigue meanings in a global context, in a particular context this have an exact meanings. Those contexes are named DSL (Domain Specific Languages).

Speaking of DSL and making machines more humane, I guess all programming languages have that goal in mind, right? Leveraging machine power by making languages that are easy to understand (to machines) and maintain. So, like Charles said above, we are writing software that produce software. But probably what Bass  wants is something like in Star Trek; "Computer, write a program that can beat Mr. Data..."

Edit: sorry wrong name, it:s not longnightmoon, but Bass

Dexter said:

evildictaitor said:

*snip*

cout is itself part of a runtime, the C/C++ runtime (also known as CRT in the Microsoft world). If you were to actually write low level code in C/C++ you'd have to use WriteFile(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE, ...) on Windows and write(1, ...) on Unix.

Anyway it's just a matter of defaults. gcc does line buffering by default (as far as I remember) while VC++ does not. You can always add something like this to your main funtion to change the default stdout buffering:

char buf[1024];
setvbuf(stdout, buf, _IOLBF, 1024);

amit_trehan wrote:



littleguru wrote: So you have a work to do and you give it to other (unpayed) people to do it for you? Nice way to get stuff done Should we then implement the ASP.NET application for you too?

Before coming to this forum, I had collected ample information. I just wanted to validate the info or get some new points.

And about implementation, people do that too. People who doesn't want to share information this is not the place for them.

Shining Arcanine wrote:

1. I have a copy of The C Programming Language, by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie. Will I need any other reference materials or should this be sufficient?

Shining Arcanine wrote:

1. Will I be violating Brian W. Kernighan's and Dennis M. Ritchie's vision for the scanf(), sscanf() and fscanf() functions if I make whitespace matter inside square brackets?

Shining Arcanine wrote:

1. Is it possible to do things in such a way that I could divert all function calls to scanf(), sscanf() and fscanf() to my own custom functions without affecting the other stdio.h functions or will I have to use different function names?
   

Shining Arcanine wrote:

1. If I manage to make robust implementations of scanf(), sscanf() and fscanf(), what will be my options for giving back to the community?