Search Results

Search found 23323 results on 933 pages for 'worst is better'.

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

Page 2/933 | < Previous Page | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12  | Next Page >

  • HTG Explains: The Best and Worst Ways to Send a Resume

    - by Eric Z Goodnight
    With so many people looking for jobs, the slightest edge in your resume presentation has potential to make or break your chances. But not all filetypes or methods are created equal—read on to see the potential pitfalls your resume faces. In this article, we’ll explore what can go wrong in a resume submission, what can be done to counteract it, and also go into why a prospective employer might ignore your resume based on your method of sending a resume. Finally, we’ll cover the best filetypes and methods that can help get you that new job you’ve been looking for. What Sets Your Resume Apart? Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Anger is Illogical – Old School Style Instructional Video [Star Trek Mashup] Get the Old Microsoft Paint UI Back in Windows 7 Relax and Sleep Is a Soothing Sleep Timer Google Rolls Out Two-Factor Authentication

    Read the article

  • Worst practices in C++, common mistakes ...

    - by Felix Dombek
    After reading this famous rant by Linus Torvalds, I wondered what actually are all the bad things programmers might do in C++. I'm explicitly not referring to typography errors or bad program flow as treated in this question and answers, but to more high-level errors which are not detected by the compiler and do not result in obvious bugs at first run, complete design errors, things which are improbable in C but are likely to be done by newcomers who don't understand the full implications of their code. I also welcome answers pointing out a huge performance decrease where it would not usually be expected. An example of what one of my professors once told me: You have used somewhat too many instances of unneeded inheritance and virtuality. Inheritance makes a design much more complicated (and inefficient because of the RTTI (run-time type inference) subsystem), and it should therefore only be used where it makes sense, e.g. for the actions in the parse table." [I wrote an LR(1) parser generator.] "Because you make intensive use of templates, you practically don't need inheritance."

    Read the article

  • Worst code I've written in a while

    - by merrillaldrich
    Here's a nice, compact bit of WTF-ery I had to write for a prod issue today: Again: UPDATE TOP ( 1 ) dbo . someTable SET field3 = 'NEW' WHERE field2 = 'NEW' AND field3 = '' IF @@ROWCOUNT > 0 GOTO Again Can you guess from the code what awesomesauce issues I was working around? This was a reminder for me that sometimes there is time to do it right, but sometimes you just have to do it now. I need that lesson sometimes, as I tend to be a perfectionist. If you are trying to do it right , please don't...(read more)

    Read the article

  • What are your worst experiences with whitespace?

    - by CheeseConQueso
    What are some good examples of whitespace being the cause of any type of error and/or total disruption of scripts and/or markups? I am more interested in any accounts related to languages that are used commonly today, but I would like to hear about any cases in general. PS - This should be a wiki, but I don't know what happened to the "make this a wiki" check box. If someone comes across this with the rights to set it as a "wiki", please do so. If SO decided they wanted to keep away from wiki's altogether, please comment me about that. Thanks

    Read the article

  • What's your worst open source experience?

    - by Fanatic23
    I recently tried downloading a pretty popular open source project [its got 10+ tags of different kinds on SO] which in turn depends on another open source project. The 2 projects built fine, but when it came to linking these 2 with my final executable there are like loads of missing symbols. No mention of which version of project 1 is compatible with project 2 etc. What's been your's most difficult open source experience? Mind you, I am all for open source but documentation and examples seem to be a key missing area.

    Read the article

  • The Best And The Worst About Joomla!

    CMS softwares for the web or Web CMS (also known as WCMS) is one of the most popular forms of content management systems used in the market. Although there are other forms of CMS softwares in the mar... [Author: Margarette Mcbride - Web Design and Development - April 13, 2010]

    Read the article

  • The 5 Worst Days in a DBAs Life: Day 2

    Steve and the rest of the DBA Team are back for round two. In this episode they have to restore all of a business' data using nothing but a set of off-site backups, kanban, and witty repartee. "A real time saver" Andy Doyle, Head of IT ServicesAndy and his team saved time by automating backup and restores with SQL Backup Pro. Find out how much time you could save. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • What are the worst examples of moral failure in the history of software engineering?

    - by Amanda S
    Many computer science curricula include a class or at least a lecture on disasters caused by software bugs, such as the Therac-25 incidents or Ariane 5 Flight 501. Indeed, Wikipedia has a list of software bugs with serious consequences, and a question on StackOverflow addresses some of them too. We study the failures of the past so that we don't repeat them, and I believe that rather than ignoring them or excusing them, it's important to look at these failures squarely and remind ourselves exactly how the mistakes made by people in our profession cost real money and real lives. By studying failures caused by uncaught bugs and bad process, we learn certain lessons about rigorous testing and accountability, and we make sure that our innocent mistakes are caught before they cause major problems. There are kinds of less innocent failure in software engineering, however, and I think it's just as important to study the serious consequences caused by programmers motivated by malice, greed, or just plain amorality. Thus we can learn about the ethical questions that arise in our profession, and how to respond when we are faced with them ourselves. Unfortunately, it's much harder to find lists of these failures--the only one I can come up with is that apocryphal "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run" story. What are the worst examples of moral failure in the history of software engineering?

    Read the article

  • Worst SysAdmin Accident

    - by Ward
    In line with the question about Best sysadmin accident, what's the worst accident you've been involved in? Unlike the previous question, I mean "worst" in the sense of most system damage or actual harm to people. I'll start with mine: We have two remote wiring closets that are at the end of a 100-foot corridor which has a metal grate for the floor. After we had Cat6 cable installed, the contractors cleaned up all the debris that dropped through the grating to the concrete 3 feet below. A co-worker and I entered the corridor to check on the progress one day but were distracted and didn't notice that a piece of grating had been moved aside. My buddy stepped into air and his chest slammed into the steel crossbar. He was winded and sore enough to take a couple days off, but luckily the steel beam had rounded edges and the size of the opening was such that he didn't smack his head into it or the floor below. Obviously we learned that areas where the floor is partially removed need to be flagged.

    Read the article

  • China’s Better Life Selects Oracle® Retail to Support Hypermarket Growth

    - by user801960
    On Monday, China’s first multi-format retailer, Better Life Commercial Chain Share Co. announced that it has selected a broad selection of Oracle solutions including specific Oracle Retail applications to support the growth of its hypermarket operations. Better Life currently operates 186 hypermarkets, department stores, consumer electronics stores, as well as entertainment and real estate operations across Southern China. The company’s expansion strategy for its hypermarket business is integral to its overall plan for rapid growth in an increasingly competitive market and after evaluating Oracle and SAP, Better Life identified a range of Oracle solutions including components of Oracle Retail Merchandising Operations Management, Oracle Retail Merchandise Planning and Optimization, and Oracle Retail In-Store Operations as key enablers to optimizing its operations. The Oracle Retail offering will help Better Life to create a consolidated view of product, price, inventory and associated back office information that facilitates improved fulfilment of customer demand.  These solutions will also provide a better understanding of inventory from buying through store transactions, delivering actionable insight with which it can make smarter, more profitable decisions around planning, forecasting and replenishment. You can read the full blog post here: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1680357

    Read the article

  • The best programmer is N times more effective than the worst? Who Cares?

    - by StevenWilkins
    There is a latent belief in programming that the best programmer is N times more effective than the worst. Where N is usually between 10 and 100. Here are some examples: http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity-factor/ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html http://haacked.com/archive/2007/06/25/understanding-productivity-differences-between-developers.aspx There is some debate as to whether or not it's been proven: http://morendil.github.com/folklore.html I'm confident in the accuracy of these statements: The best salesmen in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best drivers in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best soccer players in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst The best CEOs in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst In some cases, I'm sure the difference is greater. In fact, you could probably say that The best [insert any skilled profession here] in the world are probably 10-100 times better than the worst We don't know what N is for the rest of these professions, so why concern ourselves with what the actual number is for programming? Can we not just say that the number is large enough so that it's very important to hire the best people and move on already?

    Read the article

  • which is better to send mail on google-app-engine..

    - by zjm1126
    this: http://code.google.com/intl/en/appengine/docs/python/tools/devserver.html The web server can use an SMTP server, or it can use a local installation of Sendmail. i download the Sendmail lib,and find it is so big, and so many doc, i want to know which way is better, and if the Sendmail way is better, how to use it simplely, thanks

    Read the article

  • Google music search: a better way to listen.

    - by anirudha
    somebody who want to listen music  pay much more to some online music store for online listening. otherwise they experience bad or low quality on YouTube. who is illegal  because uploader not have a permission or right to upload the document and their is no guarantee that they not put their ads or quality as same. now forget YouTube and all other because Google music search is much better just go their search the song by movies name or song and just click and listen. the quality is much better then other but it is not Google. the result they put comes from other website. i feel a thing goes wrong in Google music  search  that if i search “sajda” they never show me result about “sadka” because the word in common life use as same both. but the song may be starting from  “sajda” or “sadka”. i thing that they put the link that Do you means “Sadka” when i search sajda that it is better thing just like many online book store show the different keyword related to your keyword when you search their. like you search for a book on online book store they show you some different keyword when they serve the result and show related product or books when you go to a product page. after thinking all it is a better option for user to feel a better quality music without search hassle.

    Read the article

  • What do you consider your "worst" hack?

    - by magcius
    What is the worst hack you've ever written? This is different from What is the worst code you've ever written?, because that, as I understand it, revolves around code later called worst because of ignorance. hack: code written, knowing it is horrible code, for the sake of convenience, deadlines, working around another broken system or bug, etc., but not ignorance. If you want, you can describe your co-workers' reaction, how bad your hospital bill was after showing them the code, if you felt disappointed in yourself for coming up with it or proud of yourself for coming up with a creative and clever solution. This doesn't have to be shipped code, this could also be code written for personal purposes.

    Read the article

  • Nagging As A Strategy For Better Linking: -z guidance

    - by user9154181
    The link-editor (ld) in Solaris 11 has a new feature that we call guidance that is intended to help you build better objects. The basic idea behind guidance is that if (and only if) you request it, the link-editor will issue messages suggesting better options and other changes you might make to your ld command to get better results. You can choose to take the advice, or you can disable specific types of guidance while acting on others. In some ways, this works like an experienced friend leaning over your shoulder and giving you advice — you're free to take it or leave it as you see fit, but you get nudged to do a better job than you might have otherwise. We use guidance to build the core Solaris OS, and it has proven to be useful, both in improving our objects, and in making sure that regressions don't creep back in later. In this article, I'm going to describe the evolution in thinking and design that led to the implementation of the -z guidance option, as well as give a brief description of how it works. The guidance feature issues non-fatal warnings. However, experience shows that once developers get used to ignoring warnings, it is inevitable that real problems will be lost in the noise and ignored or missed. This is why we have a zero tolerance policy against build noise in the core Solaris OS. In order to get maximum benefit from -z guidance while maintaining this policy, I added the -z fatal-warnings option at the same time. Much of the material presented here is adapted from the arc case: PSARC 2010/312 Link-editor guidance The History Of Unfortunate Link-Editor Defaults The Solaris link-editor is one of the oldest Unix commands. It stands to reason that this would be true — in order to write an operating system, you need the ability to compile and link code. The original link-editor (ld) had defaults that made sense at the time. As new features were needed, command line option switches were added to let the user use them, while maintaining backward compatibility for those who didn't. Backward compatibility is always a concern in system design, but is particularly important in the case of the tool chain (compilers, linker, and related tools), since it is a basic building block for the entire system. Over the years, applications have grown in size and complexity. Important concepts like dynamic linking that didn't exist in the original Unix system were invented. Object file formats changed. In the case of System V Release 4 Unix derivatives like Solaris, the ELF (Extensible Linking Format) was adopted. Since then, the ELF system has evolved to provide tools needed to manage today's larger and more complex environments. Features such as lazy loading, and direct bindings have been added. In an ideal world, many of these options would be defaults, with rarely used options that allow the user to turn them off. However, the reality is exactly the reverse: For backward compatibility, these features are all options that must be explicitly turned on by the user. This has led to a situation in which most applications do not take advantage of the many improvements that have been made in linking over the last 20 years. If their code seems to link and run without issue, what motivation does a developer have to read a complex manpage, absorb the information provided, choose the features that matter for their application, and apply them? Experience shows that only the most motivated and diligent programmers will make that effort. We know that most programs would be improved if we could just get you to use the various whizzy features that we provide, but the defaults conspire against us. We have long wanted to do something to make it easier for our users to use the linkers more effectively. There have been many conversations over the years regarding this issue, and how to address it. They always break down along the following lines: Change ld Defaults Since the world would be a better place the newer ld features were the defaults, why not change things to make it so? This idea is simple, elegant, and impossible. Doing so would break a large number of existing applications, including those of ISVs, big customers, and a plethora of existing open source packages. In each case, the owner of that code may choose to follow our lead and fix their code, or they may view it as an invitation to reconsider their commitment to our platform. Backward compatibility, and our installed base of working software, is one of our greatest assets, and not something to be lightly put at risk. Breaking backward compatibility at this level of the system is likely to do more harm than good. But, it sure is tempting. New Link-Editor One might create a new linker command, not called 'ld', leaving the old command as it is. The new one could use the same code as ld, but would offer only modern options, with the proper defaults for features such as direct binding. The resulting link-editor would be a pleasure to use. However, the approach is doomed to niche status. There is a vast pile of exiting code in the world built around the existing ld command, that reaches back to the 1970's. ld use is embedded in large and unknown numbers of makefiles, and is used by name by compilers that execute it. A Unix link-editor that is not named ld will not find a majority audience no matter how good it might be. Finally, a new linker command will eventually cease to be new, and will accumulate its own burden of backward compatibility issues. An Option To Make ld Do The Right Things Automatically This line of reasoning is best summarized by a CR filed in 2005, entitled 6239804 make it easier for ld(1) to do what's best The idea is to have a '-z best' option that unchains ld from its backward compatibility commitment, and allows it to turn on the "best" set of features, as determined by the authors of ld. The specific set of features enabled by -z best would be subject to change over time, as requirements change. This idea is more realistic than the other two, but was never implemented because it has some important issues that we could never answer to our satisfaction: The -z best proposal assumes that the user can turn it on, and trust it to select good options without the user needing to be aware of the options being applied. This is a fallacy. Features such as direct bindings require the user to do some analysis to ensure that the resulting program will still operate properly. A user who is willing to do the work to verify that what -z best does will be OK for their application is capable of turning on those features directly, and therefore gains little added benefit from -z best. The intent is that when a user opts into -z best, that they understand that z best is subject to sometimes incompatible evolution. Experience teaches us that this won't work. People will use this feature, the meaning of -z best will change, code that used to build will fail, and then there will be complaints and demands to retract the change. When (not if) this occurs, we will of course defend our actions, and point at the disclaimer. We'll win some of those debates, and lose others. Ultimately, we'll end up with -z best2 (-z better), or other compromises, and our goal of simplifying the world will have failed. The -z best idea rolls up a set of features that may or may not be related to each other into a unit that must be taken wholesale, or not at all. It could be that only a subset of what it does is compatible with a given application, in which case the user is expected to abandon -z best and instead set the options that apply to their application directly. In doing so, they lose one of the benefits of -z best, that if you use it, future versions of ld may choose a different set of options, and automatically improve the object through the act of rebuilding it. I drew two conclusions from the above history: For a link-editor, backward compatibility is vital. If a given command line linked your application 10 years ago, you have every reason to expect that it will link today, assuming that the libraries you're linking against are still available and compatible with their previous interfaces. For an application of any size or complexity, there is no substitute for the work involved in examining the code and determining which linker options apply and which do not. These options are largely orthogonal to each other, and it can be reasonable not to use any or all of them, depending on the situation, even in modern applications. It is a mistake to tie them together. The idea for -z guidance came from consideration of these points. By decoupling the advice from the act of taking the advice, we can retain the good aspects of -z best while avoiding its pitfalls: -z guidance gives advice, but the decision to take that advice remains with the user who must evaluate its merit and make a decision to take it or not. As such, we are free to change the specific guidance given in future releases of ld, without breaking existing applications. The only fallout from this will be some new warnings in the build output, which can be ignored or dealt with at the user's convenience. It does not couple the various features given into a single "take it or leave it" option, meaning that there will never be a need to offer "-zguidance2", or other such variants as things change over time. Guidance has the potential to be our final word on this subject. The user is given the flexibility to disable specific categories of guidance without losing the benefit of others, including those that might be added to future versions of the system. Although -z fatal-warnings stands on its own as a useful feature, it is of particular interest in combination with -z guidance. Used together, the guidance turns from advice to hard requirement: The user must either make the suggested change, or explicitly reject the advice by specifying a guidance exception token, in order to get a build. This is valuable in environments with high coding standards. ld Command Line Options The guidance effort resulted in new link-editor options for guidance and for turning warnings into fatal errors. Before I reproduce that text here, I'd like to highlight the strategic decisions embedded in the guidance feature: In order to get guidance, you have to opt in. We hope you will opt in, and believe you'll get better objects if you do, but our default mode of operation will continue as it always has, with full backward compatibility, and without judgement. Guidance suggestions always offers specific advice, and not vague generalizations. You can disable some guidance without turning off the entire feature. When you get guidance warnings, you can choose to take the advice, or you can specify a keyword to disable guidance for just that category. This allows you to get guidance for things that are useful to you, without being bothered about things that you've already considered and dismissed. As the world changes, we will add new guidance to steer you in the right direction. All such new guidance will come with a keyword that let's you turn it off. In order to facilitate building your code on different versions of Solaris, we quietly ignore any guidance keywords we don't recognize, assuming that they are intended for newer versions of the link-editor. If you want to see what guidance tokens ld does and does not recognize on your system, you can use the ld debugging feature as follows: % ld -Dargs -z guidance=foo,nodefs debug: debug: Solaris Linkers: 5.11-1.2275 debug: debug: arg[1] option=-D: option-argument: args debug: arg[2] option=-z: option-argument: guidance=foo,nodefs debug: warning: unrecognized -z guidance item: foo The -z fatal-warning option is straightforward, and generally useful in environments with strict coding standards. Note that the GNU ld already had this feature, and we accept their option names as synonyms: -z fatal-warnings | nofatal-warnings --fatal-warnings | --no-fatal-warnings The -z fatal-warnings and the --fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as fatal errors. The -z nofatal-warnings and the --no-fatal-warnings option cause the link-editor to treat warnings as non-fatal. This is the default behavior. The -z guidance option is defined as follows: -z guidance[=item1,item2,...] Provide guidance messages to suggest ld options that can improve the quality of the resulting object, or which are otherwise considered to be beneficial. The specific guidance offered is subject to change over time as the system evolves. Obsolete guidance offered by older versions of ld may be dropped in new versions. Similarly, new guidance may be added to new versions of ld. Guidance therefore always represents current best practices. It is possible to enable guidance, while preventing specific guidance messages, by providing a list of item tokens, representing the class of guidance to be suppressed. In this way, unwanted advice can be suppressed without losing the benefit of other guidance. Unrecognized item tokens are quietly ignored by ld, allowing a given ld command line to be executed on a variety of older or newer versions of Solaris. The guidance offered by the current version of ld, and the item tokens used to disable these messages, are as follows. Specify Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should explicitly define all of the dependencies they require. Guidance recommends the use of the -z defs option, should any symbol references remain unsatisfied when building dynamic objects. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodefs. Do Not Specify Non-Required Dependencies Dynamic executables and shared objects should not define any dependencies that do not satisfy the symbol references made by the dynamic object. Guidance recommends that unused dependencies be removed. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nounused. Lazy Loading Dependencies should be identified for lazy loading. Guidance recommends the use of the -z lazyload option should any dependency be processed before either a -z lazyload or -z nolazyload option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolazyload. Direct Bindings Dependencies should be referenced with direct bindings. Guidance recommends the use of the -B direct, or -z direct options should any dependency be processed before either of these options, or the -z nodirect option is encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nodirect. Pure Text Segment Dynamic objects should not contain relocations to non-writable, allocable sections. Guidance recommends compiling objects with Position Independent Code (PIC) should any relocations against the text segment remain, and neither the -z textwarn or -z textoff options are encountered. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=notext. Mapfile Syntax All mapfiles should use the version 2 mapfile syntax. Guidance recommends the use of the version 2 syntax should any mapfiles be encountered that use the version 1 syntax. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nomapfile. Library Search Path Inappropriate dependencies that are encountered by ld are quietly ignored. For example, a 32-bit dependency that is encountered when generating a 64-bit object is ignored. These dependencies can result from incorrect search path settings, such as supplying an incorrect -L option. Although benign, this dependency processing is wasteful, and might hide a build problem that should be solved. Guidance recommends the removal of any inappropriate dependencies. This guidance can be disabled with -z guidance=nolibpath. In addition, -z guidance=noall can be used to entirely disable the guidance feature. See Chapter 7, Link-Editor Quick Reference, in the Linker and Libraries Guide for more information on guidance and advice for building better objects. Example The following example demonstrates how the guidance feature is intended to work. We will build a shared object that has a variety of shortcomings: Does not specify all it's dependencies Specifies dependencies it does not use Does not use direct bindings Uses a version 1 mapfile Contains relocations to the readonly allocable text (not PIC) This scenario is sadly very common — many shared objects have one or more of these issues. % cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> void hello(void) { printf("hello user %d\n", getpid()); } % cat mapfile.v1 # This version 1 mapfile will trigger a guidance message % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf As you can see, the operation completes without error, resulting in a usable object. However, turning on guidance reveals a number of things that could be better: % cc hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v1 -lelf -zguidance ld: guidance: version 2 mapfile syntax recommended: mapfile.v1 ld: guidance: -z lazyload option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency Undefined first referenced symbol in file getpid hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) printf hello.o (symbol belongs to implicit dependency /lib/libc.so.1) ld: warning: symbol referencing errors ld: guidance: -z defs option recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: removal of unused dependency recommended: libelf.so.1 warning: Text relocation remains referenced against symbol offset in file .rodata1 (section) 0xa hello.o getpid 0x4 hello.o printf 0xf hello.o ld: guidance: position independent (PIC) code recommended for shared objects ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information Given the explicit advice in the above guidance messages, it is relatively easy to modify the example to do the right things: % cat mapfile.v2 # This version 2 mapfile will not trigger a guidance message $mapfile_version 2 % cc hello.c -o hello.so -Kpic -G -Bdirect -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance There are situations in which the guidance does not fit the object being built. For instance, you want to build an object without direct bindings: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance ld: guidance: -B direct or -z direct option recommended before first dependency ld: guidance: see ld(1) -z guidance for more information It is easy to disable that specific guidance warning without losing the overall benefit from allowing the remainder of the guidance feature to operate: % cc -Kpic hello.c -o hello.so -G -M mapfile.v2 -lc -zguidance=nodirect Conclusions The linking guidelines enforced by the ld guidance feature correspond rather directly to our standards for building the core Solaris OS. I'm sure that comes as no surprise. It only makes sense that we would want to build our own product as well as we know how. Solaris is usually the first significant test for any new linker feature. We now enable guidance by default for all builds, and the effect has been very positive. Guidance helps us find suboptimal objects more quickly. Programmers get concrete advice for what to change instead of vague generalities. Even in the cases where we override the guidance, the makefile rules to do so serve as documentation of the fact. Deciding to use guidance is likely to cause some up front work for most code, as it forces you to consider using new features such as direct bindings. Such investigation is worthwhile, but does not come for free. However, the guidance suggestions offer a structured and straightforward way to tackle modernizing your objects, and once that work is done, for keeping them that way. The investment is often worth it, and will replay you in terms of better performance and fewer problems. I hope that you find guidance to be as useful as we have.

    Read the article

  • Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

    - by andrewbrust
    Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

    Read the article

  • Better Embedded 2013

    - by Valter Minute
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2013/07/30/better-embedded-2013.aspx On July 8th and 9th I had a chance to attend and speak at the Better Embedded 2013 conference in Florence. Visiting Florence is always a pleasure, but having a chance to attend to such an interesting conference and to meet Marco Dal Pino, Paolo Patierno, Mirco Vanini and many other embedded developers made those two days an experience to be remembered. I did two sessions, one on Windows Embedded Standard and “PCs” usage in the embedded world and another one on Android for Embedded devices, you can find the slides on the better embedded website: www.betterembedded.it. You can also find slides for many other interesting session, ranging from the .NET microframework to Linux Embedded, from QT Quick to software licenses. Packing many different resources about embedded systems in a conference was not easy but the result is a very nice mix of contents ranging from firmware development to cloud-based systems. This is a great way to have an overview of what’s new or interesting in embedded systems and to get great ideas about how to build your new device. Don’t forget to follow @Better_Embedded on twitter to not miss next year conference! Thanks to the better embedded team for having allowed me to use some of the official pictures in this blog post. You can find a good selection of those pictures (just to experience the atmosphere of the conference) on its Facebook page: http://dvlr.it/DHDB

    Read the article

  • Oversizing images to produce better looking pages?

    - by Joannes Vermorel
    In the past, improper image resizing used to be a big no-no of web design (not mentioning improper compression format). Hence, for years I have been sticking to the policy where images (PNG or JPG) are resized on the server to match the resolution pixel-wise they will have with the rendered page. Now, recently, I hastily designed a HTML draft with oversized images, using inline CSS style such as width:123px and height:123px to resize the images. To my (slight) surprise, the page turned out to look much better that way. Indeed, with better screen resolution, some people (like me), tend to browse with some level of zoom (aka 125% or even 150% zoom), otherwise fonts are just too small on-screen. Then, if the image is strictly sized, the enlarged image appears blurry (pixel interpolation effect), but if the image is oversized the results is much better. Obviously, oversizing images is not an acceptable pattern if your website is intended for mobile browsing, but is there case where it would be considered as acceptable? Especially if the extra page weight is small anyway.

    Read the article

  • A Better Way To Extract Date From DateTime Columns [SQL Server]

    - by Gopinath
    Quite a long ago I wrote about a SQL Server programming tip on how to extract date part from a DATETIME column. The post discusses about using of T SQL function convert() to get date part. One of the readers of the post, tipped me about a better way of extracting date part and here is the SQL query he sent to us SELECT DateAdd(day, DateDiff(day, 0, getdate()), 0); In clean way this query trims off time part from the DATETIME value. I rate this solution better than the one I wrote long ago as this one does not depend on any string operations. According the commenter, this method is faster compared to the other. What do you say? Thanks Yamo This article titled,A Better Way To Extract Date From DateTime Columns [SQL Server], was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

    Read the article

  • Which one is better to get started? [closed]

    - by vanangamudi
    Which one of the open-source game engine is better to get started? I read several threads over several forums and found that it is better to write own game engine specific to application. But I need to know the requirements of a game engine, other than Graphics, Physics and AI... Many people suggested Unity, But I need open-source version so that I can have a look at implementation... so I google rigorously and found some unknown game engines(at least to me) Unvanquished Cube Spring Pyrogenesis Torque3D CrystalSpace Panda3D Delta3D Irrichlt OpenArena AlienArena (please list others if I missed anything....) FYI: my present focus is on FPS/TPS. Can you tell me which one is better at performance if possible? Torque3D claims to be the best opensource engine - is that true, and if so to what extent?

    Read the article

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

< Previous Page | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12  | Next Page >