Posts by jpb421

Re: Borland's OWL was a much sensible approach than MFC

The one thing I remember about OWL is Borland changed everything between a particular pair of versions (was it 1.0 to 2.0?) They basically told developers to rewrite all their code and provided tools that did a rather bad job of automatically converting it.

In my book, if you're providing API you should keep the interface to it backwardly compatible - we felt betrayed by Borland and our small company shifted to plain Windows with MFC after that since we were going to have to rewrite our code anyway. Prior to that we'd used Borland from the days of Turbo C.

Re: Just maybe.... (Ageism)

As someone over 50 who is currently job hunting I think that there is ageism but it is perhaps not conscious but more subtle. With software/technology generally the general process is that people move over into management as they get older. If you stay in technical roles then you start to look out-of-place. Additionally you gain a lot of irrelevant experience which employers don't want to pay for but feel that you will expect to be paid for - it is much simpler to employ a new graduate.

Also the corporate culture of a lot of software houses is aimed at the young (single) worker - an older family person won't feel the same degree of excitement at the sort of corporate outings that new graduates enjoy. Chilling out on bean bags becomes less attractive when you have dodgy knees and probably won't be able to get back up off them! :)

Re: Eyes drawn to movement

Thanks for the link. I'm listening to it now - very good.

Re: Me Confused

I was slightly confused as well. I think the answer is that when the iphone6 was released the shares dropped from $17 to $14 and then when they filed for chapter 11 they plunged more than 90% from $14 to 80c.

Reduce

Things started well with Reduce and I think Maple was initially a free package (though I may be wrong on that) but I agree that there has not been much progress in the last 20 years.

Re: Apple NFC

According to MacRumors NFC will only be for Apple Pay initially:

http://www.macrumors.com

though it may change in future.

Re: Turn them upside down and shake them

If you're looking for apt Biblical quotes surely the parable of the lost coin is most apt?

Luke 15 vs 8 and 9:

Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’

NIV

Re: Oooo, the shiny!

It is very hard to compare the new Mac Pro to Windows Workstations because the "FirePro" cards supplied with it are unique to it and under Windows are closer to being consumer cards in terms of drivers and lacking ECC. They are good for compute but then so are the AMD high end consumer cards. But they also have more memory and perhaps are more robust.

There has been a lot of discussion, and benchmarking, on macrumors.com.

Re: If it's made of sapphire, it ain't a glass

glass is a state not a material. Having said that, Sapphire generally forms a crystal so isn't a glass - but most watch manufacturers describe it as sapphire crystal glass!

Re: so everyone will get to pay then

They don't make it clear where the liability lies prior to the 'phone being reported stolen, that is how far back you can claim calls were made by the thief rather than the owner.

With credit cards the cc companies, because they are liable, are hyper-sensitive. Quite a few times I've had my card bounce because the banks anti-fraud software considers a purchase to be unusual. I then have to ring them up, get it cleared and then do the purchase all over again.

If the mobile 'phone operators take the same approach they'll randomly block "unusual" calls until the caller can convince them that it is not a stolen 'phone!

The simplest way to limit liability on mobile 'phones is to use pay-as-you-go. If someone nicks my 'phone (unlikely as it is about 12 years old so no self-respecting thief would want it) then they'll only be able to have £20 to £30 worth of calls.

Re: Once upon a time

Borland used to have those licence conditions for Turbo C (and their other products such as Turbo Pascal) - that is going back to 1988 or earlier!