Posted on 03/08/2005 12:06:04 PM PST by r5boston
Nearly a decade ago, just a few months after Microsoft shipped Windows 95, I asked Bill Gates if it was a conscious decision in the development of that product to give Windows more of a Mac look and feel. Of course I knew he'd say it wasn't, but I couldn't resist asking. "There was no goal even to compete with Macintosh," Gates proclaimed. "We don't even think of Macintosh as a competitor."
That was a crock, so I pressed the issue a little. I asked him how he accounted for the widespread perception that Windows 95 looked a lot like Mac 88, and whether the similarity was just a coincidence. I didn't expect a sobbing confession of mimicry, but I thought it would be cool to see how he'd respond. Surprisingly enough, Gates shifted gears and became more forthcoming.
(Excerpt) Read more at macworld.com ...
That's me. I was actually trained in proofreading, with 400 hours of English instruction to go with it.
Here's a trick for proofreading your own writing. When you proofread, you may see the words on the paper, but your mind will often see that as what you meant to write instead of what's actually written. This is because you're following your train of thought. That's why a couple month's wait will help, because you no longer have that same train of thought.
So break the train of thought -- proofread backwards, paragraph by paragraph is usually enough, or sentence by sentence if you only have a couple of paragraphs. We have spell checkers these days, but the best way to manually spell check is to read backwards word by word.
I remember a calculating competition, a guy with an abacus vs. a guy with an electronic 10-key business calculator. The abacus guy won.
Don't knock old technology just because it's old. :^)
Some people don't know when to quit
Guess we will have to persevere throug it.
Now we've established that he knows nothing about English, *ROMs, object-oriented programming, and economics. Is there anything else?
That acronym defines usage very well. The other acronyms are actually misnomers, since none of the others are read-only.
heh heh heh
Don't forget the iPod...
You might want to do a quick search on the use of "'s" in acronyms to show it is plural. It is done for a very good reason - when you slap an "s" on the end of an acronym how can you tell if the "s" is part of the acronym or not? Capitalization may work but there are many examples in computer technology of mixed case acronyms.
This is a very common issue:
Use of plurals is another area of confusion to authors and editors. As with everything, Chicago/Turabian style takes precedence in this project. One area of specific confusion when it comes to computer terms is with acronyms. Most people mistakenly add an apostrophe and letter 's' to make an acronym plural. The major proponent of this incorrect method is "The New York Times," even though all publishing houses and computer magazines agree that it is wrong.
source
The point is the "'s" is used to avoid confusion though technically it is wrong usage (what was that you said about dictionaries lagging?). As noted, even The New York Time uses this method. I think you understand this but you just enjoy making personal attacks.
EPROMs is correct but somewhat ambiguous as compared to EPROM's.
The use of an apostrophe to show plural is not alway wrong. The following show correct usage of the apostrophe to show plural:
CVS's
M.B.A.'s
The usage rule from Stanford states "If the abbreviation uses periods or other internal punctuation to separate its letters, or if the use of s alone is likely to create confusion, use ’s to form both the plural and possessive."
Many argue that placing an "s" on the end of an acronym always creates confusion.
So, your reaction is very much overblown.
Try a google search on "EPROM's"
Your first statement is clearly not true - there is nothing in the acronym ROM that relates how it implements Read-Only Memory and there many methods to implement Read-Only Memory but it is still ROM.
I agree with your second point. Acronyms like EERROM are really confusing because EEPROM is not really Read-Only - except that it functions LIKE ROM within the computer architecture.
Someone just doesn't know when to quit.
heh heh heh
Oh, OK, no more logs...
In a taxi company management application, an object of the the Taxi class would be representing a physical taxi. Duh.
Guess what, in the application here we have a Person class to represent people, and a (believe it or not) Vehicle class to represent vehicles. In our case we don't extend Vehicle because we only need a small set of information that's generalized to all vehicles on the road, like what model it is. However, if we were told to specifically track, say, government-owned vehicles, we would extend the Vehicle class to handle all the extra information and processes associated with a government-owned vehicle.
So you would make a Vehicle class that had loads of properties and methods not used in most of the instantiated objects of class Vehicle. A motorcycle is going to have an unused method "RaiseBed" because you put that into Vehicle to handle dump trucks. Just unbelievable.
If you are indeed employed as a programmer, do not let your employer see your posts if you value your job.
Ah yes, the victory dance. How predictable. If you can't win the debate, you can always do a little victory dance.
You've never heard of object-oriented modelling. This is sad. What's in a process? Things that move through a system, and they are defined by abstract classes, instantiated into concrete objects to represent the physical objects moving through the system. This is EXACTLY what my programming team is doing, so don't tell me that you can't model the real-world in OO.
You claimed it was hardware and that position has been shown to be false.
We've been over this already, give it up.
We are not talking about a software application - we are talking real-world implementation. DUH!
We are not talking about an abstract representation of a Taxi, we were talking about a real Taxi.
You can not apply OO concepts to the real-world - you CAN represent abstractions of the real world with OO concepts but that was not what you were trying to do.
Oh, you mean like your personal opinion that the iPod is overpriced, although it is at the perfect price as set by the market and not factually overpriced?
I can accept and respect a person saying "To me, the iPod is overpriced." That is a valid personal value judgement based most likely on your love for spec sheets rather than the whole of the experience of owning an MP3 player. That's fine. But you cannot say it's overpriced in general when the market determines the price, and that price is always correct (well, absent a monopoly or government price controls or subsidies, none of which exist in this case).
Do you understand what the term "modelling" means?
In the real-world a taxi is a vehicle, it does not inherit from the class vehicle. In an abstract model of a taxi, one can claim it is derived from the class vehicle.
OO concepts do not work where you tried to apply them. One cannot run a football team my claiming the Quarterback inherits from class Player but you can use this concept to create an abstract model.
OO is conceptual, not real.
Well, he is right that the batteries are not meant to be user-replaceable, but blew it on the whole warranty thing. My wife bought a computer that had a seal on the back, stating no user-replaceable parts inside, and opening it invalidates the warranty. Guess how long it took me to open it? First day for a new modem and more RAM.
At least with the iPod, there's no reason to open it until after the warranty expires.
I know you like to endlessly change the subject so you can confuse the issue to the point that nothing makes any sense which clears the way for you to do your little victory - but that was the topic of the debate.
I also notice your source said that most consider it to be wrong, which it is.
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