Am I old, or is it really unprofessional to publish an API and have the 
official documentation for the function call be "go read this guy's blog 
from last June to see an example of how to use this API"? Even if the guy is 
the one that implemented it?

I mean, that's the crap I'd expect with like an OSS Drupal plug-in, not a 
supported product by someone like Microsoft.

Programming has really gone from "what you know" to "who you talk to" this 
last decade or so.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Programming has really gone from "what you know" to "who you talk to" this
> last decade or so.

indeed, programming today is a social network activity performed by drones
learning from stackoverflow.com...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Programming has really gone from "what you know" to "who you talk to" this 
> last decade or so.

  Some companies are not that lazy. For example Apple has very extensive and
ample documentation on their development environments (in the form of
tutorials and reference manuals).

  Of course then there are those who either have no documentation to
speak of, or just some lazy barely documented doxygen-generated listing
of classes (which is often a couple of versions older than the most recent
distribution of the library). Yes, I have concrete experience of exactly
this.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 4/13/2011 7:30 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Am I old, or is it really unprofessional to publish an API and have the
> official documentation for the function call be "go read this guy's blog
> from last June to see an example of how to use this API"? Even if the
> guy is the one that implemented it?
>
> I mean, that's the crap I'd expect with like an OSS Drupal plug-in, not
> a supported product by someone like Microsoft.
>
Oh, you mean like posting an API reference, which refers to a demo 
application, which isn't hosted on the site, and hasn't been available 
since 1992, or so, when the original book the article was copied out of 
was published (and it didn't occur to them to either a) use a different 
damn name for their demos, instead of the same one for *all* of them, or 
b) repost the source as part of the article? Nope, I expect literally 
nothing less from Microsoft than this sort of crap. lol

Post a reply to this message

On 4/13/2011 23:45, Warp wrote:
>    Some companies are not that lazy. For example Apple has very extensive and
> ample documentation on their development environments (in the form of
> tutorials and reference manuals).

MS didn't *used* to be that bad. The XNA stuff just seems particularly 
poorly documented, like it's not really strategic or something. The blog 
posting is great. Detailed, examples, etc. Why the heck not copy it into the 
documentation for the routine, instead of seeing "go see the blog post at 
the URL for details of how to use this call"? (Of course, the answer is 
probably that someone would have to translate it, get it approved by 
lawyers, etc.)

Most of the MS documentation is pretty good, really, but it has indeed been 
going downhill.

>    Of course then there are those who either have no documentation to
> speak of, or just some lazy barely documented doxygen-generated listing
> of classes (which is often a couple of versions older than the most recent
> distribution of the library). Yes, I have concrete experience of exactly
> this.

That's my complaint. Maybe it's just the XNA stuff, but most of it is 
doxygen not-very-commented stuff, with third-party forums and blogs filling 
in.  I think I just grew up in a time frame when learning about computers 
came from books, so surfing around the whole world trying to guess the right 
keywords to see who already solved your problem is annoying. I mean, I 
learned APL by sitting down and reading the manual for the APL interpreter. 
Are you really going to learn something like Ruby from scratch by reading 
nothing but the documentation that comes with the interpreter? Hell, even 
the "official" Ruby book has statements in it that say things like "It seems 
to work like this..."  (That's when I gave up on Ruby, incidentally - when I 
realized the guy writing the O'Reilly book was guessing how it actually worked.)

Especially when there's like 4 or 5 versions (and half a dozen CTP and RC 
versions) in the last 4 years, and all the old posts are still hanging 
around, most of which don't mention what version they're using.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On 14/04/2011 17:25, Darren New wrote:

> MS didn't *used* to be that bad. The XNA stuff just seems particularly
> poorly documented, like it's not really strategic or something.

> Most of the MS documentation is pretty good, really, but it has indeed
> been going downhill.

The thing that annoys me about MS products is that if one day somebody 
phones you up and says "when I try to open Outlook it says error 28123", 
there is *no way* of discovering WTF this code actually means. If you 
open the settings for a program and some option has an ambiguous name, 
you can't look up what the setting actually does. [Bonus points for 
inventing the "help button" which informs you "no help is available for 
this item".] If I see something in Task Manager called mdm.exe, there is 
no way of finding out what this is, what it actually does, or anything 
about it. "Cryptographic Services". Cryptography *for what*? So, do I 
need this? Is it safe to turn it off? Or is it vital?

In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely frustrating.

> I think I just grew up in a time frame when learning about
> computers came from books, so surfing around the whole world trying to
> guess the right keywords to see who already solved your problem is
> annoying. I mean, I learned APL by sitting down and reading the manual
> for the APL interpreter. Are you really going to learn something like
> Ruby from scratch by reading nothing but the documentation that comes
> with the interpreter? Hell, even the "official" Ruby book has statements
> in it that say things like "It seems to work like this..." (That's when
> I gave up on Ruby, incidentally - when I realized the guy writing the
> O'Reilly book was guessing how it actually worked.)
>
> Especially when there's like 4 or 5 versions (and half a dozen CTP and
> RC versions) in the last 4 years, and all the old posts are still
> hanging around, most of which don't mention what version they're using.

The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user 
manual which, as well as telling you how to wire up the device [which 
admittedly isn't that hard] and advertising all the addons you could buy 
[not many], also tells you everything there is to know about programming 
in BASIC. Well, except for the part about how to *design* a program. It 
tells you exactly what every single command and function in the language 
does. [Admittedly, there aren't that many to describe.]

The Sam Coupe had an excellent manual. Actually, it was excellent 
hardware. It's surprising that nobody's ever heard of it. If you imagine 
a C64 or a ZX Spectrum with a 6MHz CPU, 256KB RAM (upgradable to 4MB), 
128-colour graphics, stereo digital sound and an implementation of BASIC 
with primitives like drawing a curved line with one command, that's 
basically the Sam. The manual was extensive, assumed no prior experience 
with computers, and told you EVERYTHING.

Then again, back in the 1980s, how many home users had experience of 
computers?

Today, if you buy a new PC, you don't get a manual at all. Then again, 
it doesn't [usually] come with any software. Or if it does, it's just a 
copy of Windows. Windows sometimes has a small pamphlet to tell you how 
to work a mouse, and that's about it.

If you want to learn to program in Haskell... good luck. There's the 
official language specification - which is intended for compiler 
writers, and hence assumes that you already know the difference between 
the untyped lambda calculus and the simply-typed lambda calculus, and 
why the fixed-point operator cannot exist in the latter. (Interestingly, 
the language spec is linked from the Haskell homepage. WTF?) If that 
doesn't do it for you, there's maybe three books you could buy, or it's 
blogs and wiki pages.

The Haskell compiler, GHC, has a number of Haskell extensions that you 
can switch on. The documentation for these is... minimal. Most of them 
say "for more information see this [blog | wiki page | mailing list 
email | PDF research paper]".

Of course, GHC is a product given away for free. Presumably we should be 
grateful that the developers wrote any documentation at all. They are 
rather busy trying to sort out the 468 open tickets on the bug tracker. 
(I didn't pluck that number out of the air. As of 11:55 BST on 
15-Apr-2011, there are 468 open tickets.)

When you *buy* an expensive commercial product, you expect better than 
this. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 11:55 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Then again, back in the 1980s, how many home users had experience of
> computers?
>

All of them or they wouldn't be users :-P

Most people I knew who bought a home computer then had experience of 
them from work.
A question I was often asked was "Why do you want an computer and what 
can you do with it?"

> Today, if you buy a new PC, you don't get a manual at all.

Every laptop I have bought has come with either a CD/DVD manual or a 
manual installed on the HDD.

> Then again,
> it doesn't [usually] come with any software. Or if it does, it's just a
> copy of Windows. Windows sometimes has a small pamphlet to tell you how
> to work a mouse, and that's about it.

You don't get a manual with a toaster or an electric kettle and that's 
what home computers are now a days, white goods.
Outside of this group* I don't know anyone who uses a computer at home 
for anything other than email, Skype, browsing the internet or 
downloading books, films, music, or porn.


* And we are special (I know because I went to a special school) ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 13:34, Stephen wrote:
> On 15/04/2011 11:55 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Then again, back in the 1980s, how many home users had experience of
>> computers?
>
> All of them or they wouldn't be users :-P
>
> Most people I knew who bought a home computer then had experience of
> them from work.

Really? Interesting... I'm not old enough to know, but I didn't think 
that was actually the case in the 80s.

> A question I was often asked was "Why do you want an computer and what
> can you do with it?"

Now *that* is a question worth asking!

The possible answers include:
- Play video games.
- Type letters without having to retype the entire thing if you make one 
tiny mistake.
- Store large amounts of information without filling your filling 
cabinet. [Assuming you write the software to load and store this stuff 
and don't mind waiting 2 hours for it to load off cassette tape.]

>> Today, if you buy a new PC, you don't get a manual at all.
>
> Every laptop I have bought has come with either a CD/DVD manual or a
> manual installed on the HDD.

Really?

> You don't get a manual with a toaster or an electric kettle and that's
> what home computers are now a days, white goods.

Actually, usually you *do* get a manual with toasters and kettles, even 
though you don't need one! o_O

> Outside of this group* I don't know anyone who uses a computer at home
> for anything other than email, Skype, browsing the internet or
> downloading books, films, music, or porn.

What, you don't know any gamers? ;-)

> * And we are special (I know because I went to a special school) ;-)

Vehraaay thpesshul. :-P

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 1:51 PM, Invisible wrote:
> On 15/04/2011 13:34, Stephen wrote:
>> On 15/04/2011 11:55 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Then again, back in the 1980s, how many home users had experience of
>>> computers?
>>
>> All of them or they wouldn't be users :-P
>>
>> Most people I knew who bought a home computer then had experience of
>> them from work.
>
> Really? Interesting... I'm not old enough to know, but I didn't think
> that was actually the case in the 80s.

 From my memory. The very first time I heard anyone outside of work 
talking "computer speak" was in 1996 when I overheard two women talking 
about a C:\ drive, in the street. Slatterns! ;-)

>
>> A question I was often asked was "Why do you want an computer and what
>> can you do with it?"
>
> Now *that* is a question worth asking!
>
> The possible answers include:
> - Play video games.

There weren't any then. Text games or wireline graphics.

> - Type letters without having to retype the entire thing if you make one
> tiny mistake.

Most people used pen and paper. Most people could not type and the ones 
that could probable learned how to at commercial lessons or typing classes.

> - Store large amounts of information without filling your filling
> cabinet. [Assuming you write the software to load and store this stuff
> and don't mind waiting 2 hours for it to load off cassette tape.]
>
I don't think that there was any need back then. Paper ruled!


You probably don't realise how much things have changed just in my 
lifetime.
Cars were for the rich, children could play in the street without fear 
of getting knocked down. But collecting number plates (I don't mean 
ripping them off cars) had just gone out of fashion but adults thought 
that it was a suitable hobby. Ballpoint pens were banned in schools, we 
used dip pens. (That changed when I went to high school). The first 
check book I got cost 1/2d per check for stamp duty. People used to go 
out to the airport to see planes taking off and landing for 
entertainment. Foreign holidays were unheard of for most people.
Now if Larry Hudson is about I'd like to hear how things have changed in 
his lifetime.

>>> Today, if you buy a new PC, you don't get a manual at all.
>>
>> Every laptop I have bought has come with either a CD/DVD manual or a
>> manual installed on the HDD.
>
> Really?

Yes, the ones I've bought. This one is number six. My first was bought 
around 1997.

>
>> You don't get a manual with a toaster or an electric kettle and that's
>> what home computers are now a days, white goods.
>
> Actually, usually you *do* get a manual with toasters and kettles, even
> though you don't need one! o_O
>

Yes, plug it in and clean with a damp cloth but not at the same time.

>> Outside of this group* I don't know anyone who uses a computer at home
>> for anything other than email, Skype, browsing the internet or
>> downloading books, films, music, or porn.
>
> What, you don't know any gamers? ;-)
>

Only you. My brother-in-law plays some sort of fantasy football game but 
that is a solo thing, I think. I don't play games myself I'm not any 
good at them.

>> * And we are special (I know because I went to a special school) ;-)
>
> Vehraaay thpesshul. :-P

You got the reference (I thought that the language may have changed).

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>>> Most people I knew who bought a home computer then had experience of
>>> them from work.
>>
>> Really? Interesting... I'm not old enough to know, but I didn't think
>> that was actually the case in the 80s.
>
> From my memory.

That's not how I remember it, but hey, OK...

>> The possible answers include:
>> - Play video games.
>
> There weren't any then. Text games or wireline graphics.

I certainly remember knowing several people who owned a C64 or a ZX 
Spectrum or something similar exclusively so they could play games on it.

>> - Type letters without having to retype the entire thing if you make one
>> tiny mistake.
>
> Most people used pen and paper. Most people could not type and the ones
> that could probable learned how to at commercial lessons or typing classes.

Again, I certainly remember us owning a typewriter. Me and my sister 
used to type stuff on it just for entertainment. Having a word processor 
made life so much easier. And then my parents got a dot matrix printer 
to go with it...

As late as 1995, one of the people at school paid hundreds of pounds for 
an "electronic type writer" that was basically a computer keyboard, dot 
matrix printer and a tiny LCD all in one unit. So, like a real 
typewriter, but computerised. (I don't think you could even turn it off 
without losing your work, mind you...)

>> - Store large amounts of information without filling your filling
>> cabinet. [Assuming you write the software to load and store this stuff
>> and don't mind waiting 2 hours for it to load off cassette tape.]
>>
> I don't think that there was any need back then. Paper ruled!

Yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of any large volume of information 
that you'd actually bother keeping that would be too large to hold on 
paper... The contents of your filofax maybe.

> You probably don't realise how much things have changed just in my
> lifetime.

I know how much they changed in *my* lifetime, but I'm not quite as old. ;-)

> Cars were for the rich, children could play in the street without fear
> of getting knocked down. But collecting number plates (I don't mean
> ripping them off cars) had just gone out of fashion but adults thought
> that it was a suitable hobby. Ballpoint pens were banned in schools, we
> used dip pens. (That changed when I went to high school). The first
> check book I got cost 1/2d per check for stamp duty. People used to go
> out to the airport to see planes taking off and landing for
> entertainment. Foreign holidays were unheard of for most people.

As I say, I'm younger.

When I was a kid, almost everyone had a TV, most people had a knackered 
old car that they spent months per year fixing, and some but not all 
families owned an 8-bit home computer of some sort. I can distinctly 
remember being utterly addicted to Space Invaders, so much so that I 
didn't want to leave my friend's room when mum said it was time to go home.

My parents bought a ZX Spectrum so they could run "educational" type 
games on it for me and my sister. Later my dad had a Commodore Plus4. 
That died spectacularly; left on his bed, the air vents apparently got 
blocked, and I came back to find that the tape hadn't finished loading. 
Instead, the screen was now pink with diagonal white stripes and random 
flashing glyphs. It never worked again, so we got a C64. Pitty; the 
Plus4 was better.

>>> Every laptop I have bought has come with either a CD/DVD manual or a
>>> manual installed on the HDD.
>>
>> Really?
>
> Yes, the ones I've bought. This one is number six. My first was bought
> around 1997.

I haven't seen that one yet. Then again, I've only really got experience 
of one brand - Acer.

Unless you count that IBM thing I was allowed to use, way back in 
1990-something. You know, when only business executives, accountants and 
professional programmers could such things. Cyan and magenta screen that 
rippled when you touched it. VGA graphics FTW! :-D

> Yes, plug it in and clean with a damp cloth but not at the same time.

During boiling, the outside of the kettle may become hot. This does not 
indicate a fault condition.

>> What, you don't know any gamers? ;-)
>
> Only you. My brother-in-law plays some sort of fantasy football game but
> that is a solo thing, I think. I don't play games myself I'm not any
> good at them.

Solo games are still games. ;-)

>>> * And we are special (I know because I went to a special school) ;-)
>>
>> Vehraaay thpesshul. :-P
>
> You got the reference (I thought that the language may have changed).

Oh, I'm sure it has. But what would I know about that? ;-)

Post a reply to this message

On 4/15/2011 3:55, Invisible wrote:
> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely frustrating.

It is all documented. It's just not documented in a place that it's easy for 
non-programmers to get to. Do you have an MSDN subscription, for example?

Basically, documentation of this type costs extra. :-)

> When you *buy* an expensive commercial product, you expect better than this.
> Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.

Yes, that's really my gripe. I'd be happy to pay $100 for a program I can 
get free elsewhere if it comes with good documentation. I'm still pissed 
that I bought a $300 modeler and they sent me the documentation from the 
version two generations back because they hadn't sold as many copies of the 
software as they expected and printed too many manuals 3 years ago.

The other problem is people are starting to write test-driven-design style 
documentation for products that have APIs. And that's just the *wrong* way 
to do things. You can't design a public API based on tests. Otherwise you 
wind up with crap like this:

this.Exit() will cause the game that's running ("this") to exit the next 
time it leaves the Update phase of the game loop. Unfortunately, you can't 
run two games in a row with the same process (say, for unit testing) because 
it also makes any subsequent games leave the update loop after the first 
time. Perfectly reasonable, as long as you never *tested* running two games 
in the same process and hence didn't design it to handle that.

There's like a dozen of these in XNA. There's an example of how to do 
things, and if you do things *differently* from the example, it screws you. 
Creating a new graphics device disposes of the old graphics device some time 
later in the initialization loop. You basically have
constructor->initialize()->update()->draw()->update()->draw()->...
If you reconfigure the graphics device in the constructor, the framework has 
apparently been holding onto the old one and disposes it for you. But if you 
load a texture in the constructor (instead of initialize), it uses the old 
graphics device (and stores it in the texture structure) even if you've 
already set up the new one. So when you later try to draw with the texture, 
it crashes out.  There are so many undocumented rules, you might as well 
just be as absolutely conservative as possible, because there's no 
documentation saying what you can't do, just examples of what you can.

Documentation by hypothesis and induction. The whole coding exercise turns 
into one giant cargo cult exercise. "I have to put this here and that there, 
because that's what the people before me did. I don't know why, but if I 
don't do what they did, the cargo won't come."

So there's an example of taking one model and drawing thousands of copies. I 
copy it and try to draw several different models using the same technique. 
OK, it works when I get my own bugs out. Then I add a model with two 
different textures, and even the ones that worked stop working now, except 
only on the xbox and not on the PC, so it's probably not my code at all. Now 
it only draws the first instance of each texture. But the example uses all 
kinds of routines that are documented with things like "Texture GetTexture() 
returns the texture."  Gee, thanks for that. Maybe the guy who writes the 
example in the documentation shouldn't be the guy who has access to the 
source code that actually describes what the crap does inside the library. 
Because there's no documentation about how to set any of that up or what it 
does beyond tracking through the type signatures of routines. And if you 
want to make a change, like use the *same* code to draw a *different* model, 
there's zero guidance, because your only documentation is how to do it with 
exactly the model that came with the sample code.

</rant>

I feel *much* bettahhhh...

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On 4/15/2011 5:34, Stephen wrote:
> anything other than email, Skype, browsing the internet or downloading
> books, films, music, or porn.

I think it's safe to say there are lots of *users* out there. They print 
flyers for their yard sale, they do their banking and taxes, etc. But they 
don't know what it's doing inside. They do more than that stuff, but it's 
all basically commercial software that keeps you from having to know how 
anything works.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:55:53 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>> Most of the MS documentation is pretty good, really, but it has indeed
>> been going downhill.
> 
> The thing that annoys me about MS products is that if one day somebody
> phones you up and says "when I try to open Outlook it says error 28123",
> there is *no way* of discovering WTF this code actually means. If you
> open the settings for a program and some option has an ambiguous name,
> you can't look up what the setting actually does. [Bonus points for
> inventing the "help button" which informs you "no help is available for
> this item".] If I see something in Task Manager called mdm.exe, there is
> no way of finding out what this is, what it actually does, or anything
> about it. "Cryptographic Services". Cryptography *for what*? So, do I
> need this? Is it safe to turn it off? Or is it vital?
> 
> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
> frustrating.

Now it's been years since I had to seriously look up a Windows error 
code, but it at least used to be that the MS Knowledgebase was pretty 
good about having the things I needed (usually STOP error codes).  Maybe 
that's changed since I switched to Linux; the last Windows thing I did 
was set up a 2008 server and XP clients for our mobile testing centre, 
but I don't use Windows if I don't have to (as you probably know by now).

> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
> manual which, as well as telling you how to wire up the device [which
> admittedly isn't that hard] and advertising all the addons you could buy
> [not many], also tells you everything there is to know about programming
> in BASIC. Well, except for the part about how to *design* a program. It
> tells you exactly what every single command and function in the language
> does. [Admittedly, there aren't that many to describe.]

Yes, the C64, with only 64 KB of memory and a 1 Mhz (more or less) 
processor was a much simpler machine from a much simpler time.  
Similarly, the Model T Ford was a lot simpler than the hybrid Ford 
Focus.  That should really not be that surprising. ;)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 04:51 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/15/2011 3:55, Invisible wrote:
>> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
>> frustrating.
>
> It is all documented. It's just not documented in a place that it's easy
> for non-programmers to get to. Do you have an MSDN subscription, for
> example?
>
> Basically, documentation of this type costs extra. :-)

So I paid money for some software, but I need to pay more money to find 
out how to actually use it? WTF?

I find it really bizarre that if I want to look up the name of the Win32 
function call to open a new window, that's free, but if I want to find 
out what a particular configuration setting for MS Word does, I have to 
pay money for that. [Or at least, that's what your post implies. I'm not 
aware of this information being available *anywhere*, paid or not.]

>> When you *buy* an expensive commercial product, you expect better than
>> this. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.
>
> Yes, that's really my gripe. I'd be happy to pay $100 for a program I
> can get free elsewhere if it comes with good documentation. I'm still
> pissed that I bought a $300 modeler and they sent me the documentation
> from the version two generations back because they hadn't sold as many
> copies of the software as they expected and printed too many manuals 3
> years ago.

It's annoying when freebie stuff isn't very well tested, or doesn't do 
what the documentation says it does, or there's just no documentation. 
But when you pay money for it (and MS products are insanely expensive), 
you don't expect this kind of nonesense.

> The other problem is people are starting to write test-driven-design
> style documentation for products that have APIs. And that's just the
> *wrong* way to do things.

This is so very, very wrong.

> Documentation by hypothesis and induction. The whole coding exercise
> turns into one giant cargo cult exercise. "I have to put this here and
> that there, because that's what the people before me did. I don't know
> why, but if I don't do what they did, the cargo won't come."

So wrong.

> </rant>
>
> I feel *much* bettahhhh...

But do you? Do you *really*? You still have to figure this crap out, 
remember? ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Le 2011/04/15 06:55, Invisible a écrit :

> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
> manual which, as well as telling you how to wire up the device [which
> admittedly isn't that hard] and advertising all the addons you could buy
> [not many], also tells you everything there is to know about programming
> in BASIC. Well, except for the part about how to *design* a program. It
> tells you exactly what every single command and function in the language
> does. [Admittedly, there aren't that many to describe.]
>
> The Sam Coupe had an excellent manual. Actually, it was excellent
> hardware. It's surprising that nobody's ever heard of it. If you imagine
> a C64 or a ZX Spectrum with a 6MHz CPU, 256KB RAM (upgradable to 4MB),
> 128-colour graphics, stereo digital sound and an implementation of BASIC
> with primitives like drawing a curved line with one command, that's
> basically the Sam. The manual was extensive, assumed no prior experience
> with computers, and told you EVERYTHING.
>

I still have the documentation that came with my Apple ][+. It does 
include the full source code, in assembly, of the "system monitor" ROM 
code, or bios. It also included the electric scematics.
Add the documentation of 2 flavours of basics: integer only (integer 
basic) and floating point support (Applesoft basic, by Microsoft).



Alain

Post a reply to this message

On 4/15/2011 10:16, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> So I paid money for some software, but I need to pay more money to find out
> how to actually use it? WTF?

No. You have to pay money to learn how to fix it. "I paid all this money for 
my car, and when it breaks down I have to pay a mechanic to repair it too?"

> I find it really bizarre that if I want to look up the name of the Win32
> function call to open a new window, that's free, but if I want to find out
> what a particular configuration setting for MS Word does, I have to pay
> money for that. [Or at least, that's what your post implies. I'm not aware
> of this information being available *anywhere*, paid or not.]

Now you're changing what you're talking about again. What word configuration 
are you curious about.

> (and MS products are insanely expensive)

Generally not. Have you looked at the price of something like autocad or maya?

> But do you? Do you *really*? You still have to figure this crap out,
> remember? ;-)

Well, I just spent an hour putting my own 2-color trivial model in in place 
of the 1-color trivial model in the demo, and confirmed that it works in 
every configuration *except* the one I actually need to use.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 4:53 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/15/2011 5:34, Stephen wrote:
>> anything other than email, Skype, browsing the internet or downloading
>> books, films, music, or porn.
>
> I think it's safe to say there are lots of *users* out there. They print
> flyers for their yard sale, they do their banking and taxes, etc. But
> they don't know what it's doing inside. They do more than that stuff,
> but it's all basically commercial software that keeps you from having to
> know how anything works.
>
Yes there must be, I agree.
I’m probably in a strange position having worked in the computer/tech 
business for 40 years and not having any friends who use them for 
anything other than work or trivial entertainment.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 2:53 PM, Invisible wrote:

>> From my memory.
>
> That's not how I remember it, but hey, OK...

Yes everyone is different.
>
>>> The possible answers include:
>>> - Play video games.
>>
>> There weren't any then. Text games or wireline graphics.
>
> I certainly remember knowing several people who owned a C64 or a ZX
> Spectrum or something similar exclusively so they could play games on it.
>

Different peer groups then.


>>
>> Most people used pen and paper. Most people could not type and the ones
>> that could probable learned how to at commercial lessons or typing
>> classes.
>
> Again, I certainly remember us owning a typewriter. Me and my sister
> used to type stuff on it just for entertainment. Having a word processor
> made life so much easier. And then my parents got a dot matrix printer
> to go with it...
>
> As late as 1995, one of the people at school paid hundreds of pounds for
> an "electronic type writer" that was basically a computer keyboard, dot
> matrix printer and a tiny LCD all in one unit. So, like a real
> typewriter, but computerised. (I don't think you could even turn it off
> without losing your work, mind you...)
>

My father had one of them. IIRC it was a Starwriter, a typewriter style 
keyboard, a 4 or 6 line LCD display and a printer all in the cace of a 
portable typewriter.


> Yeah, I'm having trouble thinking of any large volume of information
> that you'd actually bother keeping that would be too large to hold on
> paper... The contents of your filofax maybe.
>

Since all official communication was by paper it built up. Some people 
keep every thing.

>> You probably don't realise how much things have changed just in my
>> lifetime.
>
> I know how much they changed in *my* lifetime, but I'm not quite as old.
> ;-)
>
Not quite, indeed. :-D

>> Cars were for the rich, children could play in the street without fear
>> of getting knocked down. But collecting number plates (I don't mean
>> ripping them off cars) had just gone out of fashion but adults thought
>> that it was a suitable hobby. Ballpoint pens were banned in schools, we
>> used dip pens. (That changed when I went to high school). The first
>> check book I got cost 1/2d per check for stamp duty. People used to go
>> out to the airport to see planes taking off and landing for
>> entertainment. Foreign holidays were unheard of for most people.
>
> As I say, I'm younger.

And live in a new town.
>
> When I was a kid, almost everyone had a TV, most people had a knackered
> old car that they spent months per year fixing,

Sometimes when out for a drive.

> and some but not all
> families owned an 8-bit home computer of some sort. I can distinctly
> remember being utterly addicted to Space Invaders, so much so that I
> didn't want to leave my friend's room when mum said it was time to go home.
>

I forgot, you live in the affluent south. (As I do now.)

> My parents bought a ZX Spectrum so they could run "educational" type
> games on it for me and my sister. Later my dad had a Commodore Plus4.
> That died spectacularly; left on his bed, the air vents apparently got
> blocked, and I came back to find that the tape hadn't finished loading.
> Instead, the screen was now pink with diagonal white stripes and random
> flashing glyphs. It never worked again, so we got a C64. Pitty; the
> Plus4 was better.
>

I had rubber bands to play with and marbles. ;-)

> I haven't seen that one yet. Then again, I've only really got experience
> of one brand - Acer.
>

My old Acer laptop came with a manual on the HDD.

> Unless you count that IBM thing I was allowed to use, way back in
> 1990-something. You know, when only business executives, accountants and
> professional programmers could such things. Cyan and magenta screen that
> rippled when you touched it. VGA graphics FTW! :-D
>

A tad more people than than that but I worked in industry then so there 
was more need for things like spreadsheets etc.

>> Yes, plug it in and clean with a damp cloth but not at the same time.
>
> During boiling, the outside of the kettle may become hot. This does not
> indicate a fault condition.
>

LOL

>>> What, you don't know any gamers? ;-)
>>
>> Only you. My brother-in-law plays some sort of fantasy football game but
>> that is a solo thing, I think. I don't play games myself I'm not any
>> good at them.
>
> Solo games are still games. ;-)
>

I was thinking of people like your clan.



-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 15/04/2011 07:42 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/15/2011 10:16, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> So I paid money for some software, but I need to pay more money to
>> find out how to actually use it? WTF?
>
> No. You have to pay money to learn how to fix it. "I paid all this money
> for my car, and when it breaks down I have to pay a mechanic to repair
> it too?"

OK. So if I wanted to do something crazy like make it so that when a 
user drag-and-drops a file onto my program's icon, it loads up Excel, my 
program fires a bunch of data to it, and Excel generates a graph and 
pastes it into the email I'm writing, *that* I would expect to have to 
pay money for. Trying to figure out what the options in the settings 
dialog do? *That* I would expect to be part of the product documentation.

> Now you're changing what you're talking about again. What word
> configuration are you curious about.

Right now I don't need to look anything up. My point is that every time 
I've needed to find something out, I haven't been able to.

>> (and MS products are insanely expensive)
>
> Generally not. Have you looked at the price of something like autocad or
> maya?

That's like saying "housing isn't overpriced at all; have you seen the 
price of buying Buckingham Palace?!"

>> But do you? Do you *really*? You still have to figure this crap out,
>> remember? ;-)
>
> Well, I just spent an hour putting my own 2-color trivial model in in
> place of the 1-color trivial model in the demo, and confirmed that it
> works in every configuration *except* the one I actually need to use.

WIN!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On 4/16/2011 3:18, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OK. So if I wanted to do something crazy like make it so that when a user
> drag-and-drops a file onto my program's icon, it loads up Excel, my program
> fires a bunch of data to it, and Excel generates a graph and pastes it into
> the email I'm writing, *that* I would expect to have to pay money for.

Except you don't.

> Trying to figure out what the options in the settings dialog do? *That* I
> would expect to be part of the product documentation.

What option are you talking about that isn't sufficiently documented?

>> Now you're changing what you're talking about again. What word
>> configuration are you curious about.
>
> Right now I don't need to look anything up. My point is that every time I've
> needed to find something out, I haven't been able to.

I don't mean to offend, but you've demonstrated many times here that you 
aren't really very good at looking things up. Maybe it's not the product's 
fault? (Maybe it is, sure, but without a specific example, I'm actually 
going to err on the side of my own experience.)

> That's like saying "housing isn't overpriced at all; have you seen the price
> of buying Buckingham Palace?!"

"Overpriced" and "insanely expensive" are different things. You just seem to 
never have gotten used to the fact that commercial software costs money. 
$200 for a commercial program isn't expensive.  $20,000 is expensive.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

>> Right now I don't need to look anything up. My point is that every
>> time I've
>> needed to find something out, I haven't been able to.
>
> I don't mean to offend, but you've demonstrated many times here that you
> aren't really very good at looking things up. Maybe it's not the
> product's fault? (Maybe it is, sure, but without a specific example, I'm
> actually going to err on the side of my own experience.)

Obviously I don't happen to have a specific item to hand for the 
purposes of this argument. But there's been plenty of times when I've 
wondered "where the hell is the button for X?" or "what does this option 
mean?"

As I say, I especially like how in Windows 2000 (I think) they added a 
new UI element: a little "?" button next to the close button. The idea 
being that you click this button, and then click anything in the window, 
and it brings up a description for the thing you just clicked. 
Apparently the description for every such thing is "no help found". 
Gotta love that, eh?

>> That's like saying "housing isn't overpriced at all; have you seen the
>> price
>> of buying Buckingham Palace?!"
>
> "Overpriced" and "insanely expensive" are different things. You just
> seem to never have gotten used to the fact that commercial software
> costs money. $200 for a commercial program isn't expensive. $20,000 is
> expensive.

Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money 
for it! :-P

$20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On 4/17/2011 7:50, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Obviously I don't happen to have a specific item to hand for the purposes of
> this argument. But there's been plenty of times when I've wondered "where
> the hell is the button for X?" or "what does this option mean?"

My memory is that when you ask, most people can find an answer for you in 
the docs with a tiny bit of searching.

> Apparently the
> description for every such thing is "no help found". Gotta love that, eh?

I had indeed noticed that. Note that the same UI element carries over in the 
libraries to this day, in the form of a Help URL on every widget. :-)

> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.

I think it depends on what the word processor does. There are free ones, 
there are inexpensive ones, and there are expensive ones. So use the free one.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

>>> From my memory.
>>
>> That's not how I remember it, but hey, OK...
>
> Yes everyone is different.

Fair enough.

>> As late as 1995, one of the people at school paid hundreds of pounds for
>> an "electronic type writer" that was basically a computer keyboard, dot
>> matrix printer and a tiny LCD all in one unit. So, like a real
>> typewriter, but computerised. (I don't think you could even turn it off
>> without losing your work, mind you...)
>
> My father had one of them. IIRC it was a Starwriter, a typewriter style
> keyboard, a 4 or 6 line LCD display and a printer all in the cace of a
> portable typewriter.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing. The one I saw was light brown. ;-)

>> When I was a kid, almost everyone had a TV, most people had a knackered
>> old car that they spent months per year fixing,
>
> Sometimes when out for a drive.

Oh hell yeah... I'll never forget the time one of the pistols LEFT THE 
ENGINE BLOCK while we were driving back to the camp site one time while 
on holiday. o_O

>> and some but not all
>> families owned an 8-bit home computer of some sort.
>
> I forgot, you live in the affluent south. (As I do now.)

Is there actually a difference?

>> My parents bought a ZX Spectrum so they could run "educational" type
>> games on it for me and my sister.
>
> I had rubber bands to play with and marbles. ;-)

I remember my sister collecting marbles. All sorts of different colours. 
Other than looking at them, we could never figure out anything 
interesting to do with 'em though.

>> I haven't seen that one yet. Then again, I've only really got experience
>> of one brand - Acer.
>
> My old Acer laptop came with a manual on the HDD.

Really? I haven't seen that on any of the ones I've bought or used.

>> Unless you count that IBM thing I was allowed to use, way back in
>> 1990-something. You know, when only business executives, accountants and
>> professional programmers could such things.
>
> A tad more people than than that but I worked in industry then so there
> was more need for things like spreadsheets etc.

I imagine most people who had a laptop actually had "the company's 
laptop", not one of their own.

>> During boiling, the outside of the kettle may become hot. This does not
>> indicate a fault condition.
>
> LOL

No kidding, the manual for our tap says that shortly after use, it may 
dribble water, and this is not a fault. (It's a swan-neck tap.)

>> Solo games are still games. ;-)
>
> I was thinking of people like your clan.

Sure. But even if you only play Freecell, that's still a "use" for a 
computer, as such...

Post a reply to this message

On 17/04/2011 17:14, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/17/2011 7:50, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Obviously I don't happen to have a specific item to hand for the
>> purposes of
>> this argument. But there's been plenty of times when I've wondered "where
>> the hell is the button for X?" or "what does this option mean?"
>
> My memory is that when you ask, most people can find an answer for you
> in the docs with a tiny bit of searching.

There was a time when searching the manual meant, you know, actually 
turning pages. I think back when MS used to *print* the manual, they 
perhaps put more effort into making it worth the paper it's printed on. 
 From what I've seen, today if you ask for help in the latest version of 
Office, it just takes you to a publicly editable wiki. Great...

>> Apparently the
>> description for every such thing is "no help found". Gotta love that, eh?
>
> I had indeed noticed that. Note that the same UI element carries over in
> the libraries to this day, in the form of a Help URL on every widget. :-)

Most dialogue boxes have a "help" button right next to "OK" and 
"cancel". Rarely does it actually /help/ you though...

>> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
>
> I think it depends on what the word processor does. There are free ones,
> there are inexpensive ones, and there are expensive ones. So use the
> free one.

In reality, MS Word is /the only/ word processor that anybody ever uses. 
I tiny few people might use OpenOffice these days, but most people have 
never heard of it. To them, a word processor = MS Word.

Post a reply to this message

>> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
>> frustrating.
>
> Now it's been years since I had to seriously look up a Windows error
> code, but it at least used to be that the MS Knowledgebase was pretty
> good about having the things I needed (usually STOP error codes).  Maybe
> that's changed since I switched to Linux; the last Windows thing I did
> was set up a 2008 server and XP clients for our mobile testing centre,
> but I don't use Windows if I don't have to (as you probably know by now).

STOP messages you can usually look up. (Almost all of them mean 
"something happened which is never supposed to happen. Go check your 
hardware and device drivers." But then, I guess that's the nature of a 
kernel failure...)

>> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
>> manual
>
> Yes, the C64, with only 64 KB of memory and a 1 Mhz (more or less)
> processor was a much simpler machine from a much simpler time.
> Similarly, the Model T Ford was a lot simpler than the hybrid Ford
> Focus.  That should really not be that surprising. ;)

By contrast, the GHC user manual expects you to already know Haskell, 
and its description of the non-standard language features you can enable 
is "go read this PDF research paper describing the theoretical 
motivation and technical underpinnings of this feature". Still, GHC 
doesn't cost money...

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:08:55 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
>>> frustrating.
>>
>> Now it's been years since I had to seriously look up a Windows error
>> code, but it at least used to be that the MS Knowledgebase was pretty
>> good about having the things I needed (usually STOP error codes). 
>> Maybe that's changed since I switched to Linux; the last Windows thing
>> I did was set up a 2008 server and XP clients for our mobile testing
>> centre, but I don't use Windows if I don't have to (as you probably
>> know by now).
> 
> STOP messages you can usually look up. (Almost all of them mean
> "something happened which is never supposed to happen. Go check your
> hardware and device drivers." But then, I guess that's the nature of a
> kernel failure...)

Um, yes, STOP messages are a type of ABEND (ie, Abnormal End) of the 
kernel.

But those aren't the only error messages I ever had to look up, and I 
never really had a problem finding *something* about the error I was 
running into, that was my point.

>>> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
>>> manual
>>
>> Yes, the C64, with only 64 KB of memory and a 1 Mhz (more or less)
>> processor was a much simpler machine from a much simpler time.
>> Similarly, the Model T Ford was a lot simpler than the hybrid Ford
>> Focus.  That should really not be that surprising. ;)
> 
> By contrast, the GHC user manual expects you to already know Haskell,
> and its description of the non-standard language features you can enable
> is "go read this PDF research paper describing the theoretical
> motivation and technical underpinnings of this feature". Still, GHC
> doesn't cost money...

I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I was saying....

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:50:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money
> for it! :-P
> 
> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.

Then you must be older than you claim, because freeware has been around 
nearly as long as computing has been.

$200 isn't very much money if you have it.  We've been over that before.

But as Darren said, if you don't want to pay $200 for it, don't - use a 
free alternative.  But don't be surprised if you discover that the free 
version doesn't have the same features as the $200 one does or can't read 
the files that people send you.

Though with openoffice/libreoffice, my experience has been good, some 
people haven't had similar experiences.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:02:19 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> In reality, MS Word is /the only/ word processor that anybody ever uses.
> I tiny few people might use OpenOffice these days, but most people have
> never heard of it. To them, a word processor = MS Word.

So, where did you pull the statistics for the number of people who use 
OpenOffice?  Did you just invent that statistic, or do you have a 
citation?

Most of the people I deal with use OpenOffice and prefer it to Word.  So 
if you're just going with anecdotal evidence based on your own 
experiences, that's fine, but don't cite that as if it's fact.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 4/18/2011 1:02, Invisible wrote:
> There was a time when searching the manual meant, you know, actually turning
> pages. I think back when MS used to *print* the manual, they perhaps put
> more effort into making it worth the paper it's printed on. From what I've
> seen, today if you ask for help in the latest version of Office, it just
> takes you to a publicly editable wiki. Great...

Yeah. MS and everyone else seems to have been going downhill in this regard. 
Is Apple as bad, or is their documentation (for programmers) actually useful 
and all?

I think programming has turned into a social endeavor, where who you follow 
on twitter is as important as having read the manuals.

>> I think it depends on what the word processor does. There are free ones,
>> there are inexpensive ones, and there are expensive ones. So use the
>> free one.
>
> In reality, MS Word is /the only/ word processor that anybody ever uses. I
> tiny few people might use OpenOffice these days, but most people have never
> heard of it. To them, a word processor = MS Word.

So, then, obviously not too expensive.   If the only car out there cost 
$100,000, you'd find people finding alternatives.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On 4/18/2011 1:08, Invisible wrote:
> But then, I guess that's the nature of a kernel failure...)

My favorite was always "floating point underflow in kernel mode" message the 
mainframe I worked on had.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On 18/04/2011 8:58 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Oh hell yeah... I'll never forget the time one of the pistols LEFT THE
> ENGINE BLOCK while we were driving back to the camp site one time while
> on holiday. o_O
>

Pissed and broke, been there done that ;-)

>>> and some but not all
>>> families owned an 8-bit home computer of some sort.
>>
>> I forgot, you live in the affluent south. (As I do now.)
>
> Is there actually a difference?
>

Seriously, yes.


>
> I remember my sister collecting marbles. All sorts of different colours.
> Other than looking at them, we could never figure out anything
> interesting to do with 'em though.
>

You need someone to play with. The most prized ones, where I was dragged 
up, were steelies, large ball bearings.


>>
>> My old Acer laptop came with a manual on the HDD.
>
> Really? I haven't seen that on any of the ones I've bought or used.
>
Search for manual.

>> A tad more people than than that but I worked in industry then so there
>> was more need for things like spreadsheets etc.
>
> I imagine most people who had a laptop actually had "the company's
> laptop", not one of their own.
>

Yeah! I would say so, too.

>>> During boiling, the outside of the kettle may become hot. This does not
>>> indicate a fault condition.
>>
>> LOL
>
> No kidding, the manual for our tap says that shortly after use, it may
> dribble water, and this is not a fault. (It's a swan-neck tap.)
>

I've seen signs like that too.

>>> Solo games are still games. ;-)
>>
>> I was thinking of people like your clan.
>
> Sure. But even if you only play Freecell, that's still a "use" for a
> computer, as such...

Okay, okay, I was wrong. (Put it in your diary, in 2011 Stephen was 
wrong.) ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>> There was a time when searching the manual meant, you know, actually
>> turning
>> pages. I think back when MS used to *print* the manual, they perhaps put
>> more effort into making it worth the paper it's printed on. From what
>> I've
>> seen, today if you ask for help in the latest version of Office, it just
>> takes you to a publicly editable wiki. Great...
>
> Yeah. MS and everyone else seems to have been going downhill in this
> regard. Is Apple as bad, or is their documentation (for programmers)
> actually useful and all?

I couldn't say. It just seems that everybody is putting less effort into 
documentation these days.

> I think programming has turned into a social endeavor, where who you
> follow on twitter is as important as having read the manuals.

There was a time when learning to program meant, you know, learning your 
complexity classes and stuff, not just knowing what the command syntax is...

>> In reality, MS Word is /the only/ word processor that anybody ever
>> uses.
>
> So, then, obviously not too expensive.

I guess that's why so many people steal it, yes...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On 4/18/2011 11:26, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I guess that's why so many people steal it, yes...

And people steal movies they can rent for a dollar. That doesn't say much.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

Post a reply to this message

On 18/04/2011 07:40 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/18/2011 11:26, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> I guess that's why so many people steal it, yes...
>
> And people steal movies they can rent for a dollar. That doesn't say much.

Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:08:59 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> On 18/04/2011 07:40 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> On 4/18/2011 11:26, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> I guess that's why so many people steal it, yes...
>>
>> And people steal movies they can rent for a dollar. That doesn't say
>> much.
> 
> Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?

http://tinyurl.com/3q2n7c9

Tell me you didn't expect this answer.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3q2n7c9
>
> Tell me you didn't expect this answer.

How bizare... This really exists?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:41:52 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/3q2n7c9
>>
>> Tell me you didn't expect this answer.
> 
> How bizare... This really exists?

No, I had a free hour and decided to mock up a website just so I could 
provide that answer to you.  It's completely a fantasy made up just so I 
could answer this question in this way.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 4/18/2011 12:08, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?

http://www.redbox.com/


Blu-ray is $1.50 a night.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:30:04 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 4/18/2011 12:08, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?
> 
> http://www.redbox.com/
> 
> 
> Blu-ray is $1.50 a night.

I'm glad I put that into that site as well, just to make the illusion 
complete. ;)

Along with the dispenser locator.  ;)

Jim

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On 19/04/2011 00:35, Jim Henderson wrote:

> I'm glad I put that into that site as well, just to make the illusion
> complete. ;)
>
> Along with the dispenser locator.  ;)

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1144

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>>>> Where the hell rents movies for a dollar?
>>>
>>> http://tinyurl.com/3q2n7c9
>>>
>>> Tell me you didn't expect this answer.
>>
>> How bizare... This really exists?
>
> No, I had a free hour and decided to mock up a website just so I could
> provide that answer to you.  It's completely a fantasy made up just so I
> could answer this question in this way.

I love the way it says "why pay $4 or $5 to buy a movie when you can 
rent one?"

You know, given that movies /actually/ cost about £15 or so, not $4 
[which is apparently about £2.50 at present].

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On 18/04/2011 17:09, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:02:19 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>
>> In reality, MS Word is /the only/ word processor that anybody ever uses.
>> I tiny few people might use OpenOffice these days, but most people have
>> never heard of it. To them, a word processor = MS Word.
>
> So, where did you pull the statistics for the number of people who use
> OpenOffice?  Did you just invent that statistic, or do you have a
> citation?
>
> Most of the people I deal with use OpenOffice and prefer it to Word.  So
> if you're just going with anecdotal evidence based on your own
> experiences, that's fine, but don't cite that as if it's fact.

Admittedly I don't know hundreds of thousands of people. Still, the vast 
majority of people I know IRL don't know what Linux is, have never heard 
of Firefox, and think MS Office is the only "proper" office suite. You 
know, as if anything you can download for free off the Internet is 
either an illegal pirate copy or a shoddy imitation.

If you're going to tell me that among computer experts the picture is 
different, then sure. But how many people are computer experts?

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On 18/04/2011 17:07, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:50:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money
>> for it! :-P
>>
>> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
>
> Then you must be older than you claim, because freeware has been around
> nearly as long as computing has been.

I don't know about freeware. When I was a kid, "shareware" was very 
popular. Every issue of Amiga Format would come loaded down with useful 
little utilities that people had written, which you were /supposed/ to 
send money for if you use it regularly. I don't personally know of 
anybody who actually sent a cheque for 4 CHF or whatever to the remote 
country where the author lived.

Of course, back then distribution was kind of a problem. It costs money 
to mail 3" disks around the place. Not to mention that the disks 
themselves used to cost actual money. (By contrast, today you can buy a 
blank CD for literally pence.)

The Internet transformed all of that, of course. It wouldn't surprise me 
if that's why Linux happened when it did. What would have been one 
student's toy proof-of-concept OS kernel became an international 
phenomenon. I suspect without the net it would have been infeasible.

> $200 isn't very much money if you have it.  We've been over that before.

OK, so apparently $200 is currently roughly £120. (Which still doesn't 
take into account average incomes, average cost of living, etc., which 
presumably also differs between the UK and the US.) Even so, it still 
seems like a hell of a lot of money for a program that doesn't even *do* 
very much and isn't especially complicated.

Silly me, I'm thinking that prices have something to do with what it 
costs to produce something. This is the 21st century. Prices are driven 
by how much you can rip people off and get away with it...

> But as Darren said, if you don't want to pay $200 for it, don't - use a
> free alternative.  But don't be surprised if you discover that the free
> version doesn't have the same features as the $200 one does or can't read
> the files that people send you.

I *do* use one of the free alternatives. At home, anyway. At work, I use 
what my employer provides. More to the point, I have to *support* what 
my employer provides, which is why it's so infuriating that there's no 
documentation. [Which is how this discussion started in the first place.]

Of course, OpenOffice has no documentation either. But then you're just 
grateful to be getting a reasonably good bit of software for free...

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>> STOP messages you can usually look up. (Almost all of them mean
>> "something happened which is never supposed to happen. Go check your
>> hardware and device drivers." But then, I guess that's the nature of a
>> kernel failure...)
>
> Um, yes, STOP messages are a type of ABEND (ie, Abnormal End) of the
> kernel.

Usually "unhandled kernel-mode exception" or "page fault in non-paged 
area". Fortunately, I haven't seen one of these for years now. I used to 
see them almost daily.

> But those aren't the only error messages I ever had to look up, and I
> never really had a problem finding *something* about the error I was
> running into, that was my point.

Perhaps you can tell me what event #3019 from MRxSmb means then, because 
the description merely says "the redirector failed to determine the 
connection type". (WHAT redirector? WHAT connection? WTF?)

> I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I was saying....

Once upon a time, a compiler or interpreter would have come with an 
extensive user manual. Today you get far less.

Then again, GHC costs nothing. The Pascal compiler I used to use cost me 
£80. (!!)

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On 4/19/2011 2:45, Invisible wrote:
> I don't personally know of anybody who actually sent a cheque

AFAIK, I'm the only person in the entire world that ever paid for WinZip.

> without the net it would have been infeasible.

Yep. And without Windows it would have been infeasible too, because there 
wouldn't be enough people with compatible hardware to have a hope in hell of 
getting it working on enough varieties of machines to make it worthwhile.

> of a lot of money for a program that doesn't even *do* very much and isn't
> especially complicated.

This coming from the guy who can't find the documentation on how to make it 
do stuff? :-) Granted, most people don't use most of its sophisticated 
features, but saying Word doesn't do much is like saying LaTeX just 
translates one text file into another format, no biggie.

> Silly me, I'm thinking that prices have something to do with what it costs
> to produce something. This is the 21st century. Prices are driven by how
> much you can rip people off and get away with it...

They always have been.

> I *do* use one of the free alternatives. At home, anyway. At work, I use
> what my employer provides. More to the point, I have to *support* what my
> employer provides, which is why it's so infuriating that there's no
> documentation. [Which is how this discussion started in the first place.]

Next time you have a problem, I'll show you how to find the answer. It's 
generally not difficult, altho sometimes it can be ugly. Especially if 
they've rearranged their site and you start getting 404's.  Really, 
Microsoft? You run Bing but you haven't figured out how to not have internal 
links to broken pages?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/19/2011 2:56, Invisible wrote:
> Perhaps you can tell me what event #3019 from MRxSmb means then, because the
> description merely says "the redirector failed to determine the connection
> type". (WHAT redirector? WHAT connection? WTF?)

Type "smb redirector connector" into google. Hit #1 or #2:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315244

which does a fine job of explaining the problem and what to do about it 
(i.e., nothing).



For more background, just type in "smb redirector" to google, and one of the 
first hits is

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff686200%28WS.10%29.aspx

"SMB2 Client Redirector Caches Explained"


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 19/04/2011 16:50, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/19/2011 2:56, Invisible wrote:
>> Perhaps you can tell me what event #3019 from MRxSmb means then,
>> because the
>> description merely says "the redirector failed to determine the
>> connection
>> type". (WHAT redirector? WHAT connection? WTF?)
>
> Type "smb redirector connector" into google. Hit #1 or #2:
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315244
>
> which does a fine job of explaining the problem and what to do about it
> (i.e., nothing).

How did you know it's something to do with SMB?

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On 4/19/2011 8:55, Invisible wrote:
> How did you know it's something to do with SMB?

MRxSmb

Plus, "redirector" and "connector" are terms that SMB uses to describe the 
different parts of the stack. The "redirector" is the part that takes the 
request to X:\... and turns it into a request to \\server\share\... by 
intercepting the request and redirecting it to the appropriate networking 
layers.

The connector is, I think, the part that actually transports the SMB 
protocol over an underlying protocol.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On 4/19/2011 9:13, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/19/2011 8:55, Invisible wrote:
>> How did you know it's something to do with SMB?
>
> MRxSmb

Note, btw, that I didn't even need to put in the error number.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Coding without comments is like
    driving without turn signals."

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On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:45:36 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> On 18/04/2011 17:07, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:50:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>
>>> Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money
>>> for it! :-P
>>>
>>> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
>>
>> Then you must be older than you claim, because freeware has been around
>> nearly as long as computing has been.
> 
> I don't know about freeware. When I was a kid, "shareware" was very
> popular. Every issue of Amiga Format would come loaded down with useful
> little utilities that people had written, which you were /supposed/ to
> send money for if you use it regularly. I don't personally know of
> anybody who actually sent a cheque for 4 CHF or whatever to the remote
> country where the author lived.

Most of the magazines I entered code in had no such request.  But 
freeware was all the rage (along with shareware) back then.

>> $200 isn't very much money if you have it.  We've been over that
>> before.
> 
> OK, so apparently $200 is currently roughly £120. (Which still doesn't
> take into account average incomes, average cost of living, etc., which
> presumably also differs between the UK and the US.) Even so, it still
> seems like a hell of a lot of money for a program that doesn't even *do*
> very much and isn't especially complicated.

If it isn't especially complicated, then why do you have problems 
understanding what some of the options do or are for?

> Silly me, I'm thinking that prices have something to do with what it
> costs to produce something. This is the 21st century. Prices are driven
> by how much you can rip people off and get away with it...

Have you written a word processor?  Do you know how much work and testing 
goes into creating something like MS Word or OpenOffice Writer?

You are making the mistake of assuming it *must* be easy.

>> But as Darren said, if you don't want to pay $200 for it, don't - use a
>> free alternative.  But don't be surprised if you discover that the free
>> version doesn't have the same features as the $200 one does or can't
>> read the files that people send you.
> 
> I *do* use one of the free alternatives. At home, anyway. At work, I use
> what my employer provides. More to the point, I have to *support* what
> my employer provides, which is why it's so infuriating that there's no
> documentation. [Which is how this discussion started in the first
> place.]

But Andy, it's just a simple word processor.  Nothing goes into it, 
remember?  $200 is too expensive, so clearly it must be easy to use.

(Yes, I'm using sarcasm again)

> Of course, OpenOffice has no documentation either. But then you're just
> grateful to be getting a reasonably good bit of software for free...

I find the built-in help to be pretty useful myself.

Jim

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