It was a welcome surprise to go to View->Other Windows and see this. I'll have to update soon to the new version to see the additional features it's gained.
Yes, but I've found it to be lacking usability-wise (e.g. it doesn't load the current project's dependencies, and it doesn't provide an easy way to load in dependencies from your project [someone please correct me if I'm wrong!]).
That's what Update 2 brings: "You can now initialize the C# Interactive Window with a project's context, allowing immediate access to types inside that project."
Immediate is AFAIK a limited subset available during debugging. C# Interactive is what F# has had for years (F# Interactive), and even Mono has had something like this for a while. You can enter snippets of C# and eval like a real REPL. Update 2 brings project context support so you can just open the REPL and do stuff like var x = new MyType().
scriptcs (http://scriptcs.net/) is another awesome REPL for C# that's built on top of Roslyn. I've found it to be extremely flexible and handy for writing quick tools.
It kind of sounded to me like the author was pointing out that, though O'Reilly sucks, the editors (including the acquisitions editor) were good. The author didn't seem to get personal in a bad way.
Not true. The part where he contacts Tim O'Reilly directly, he names the name of "the publisher who replaced him", and said they lacked "integrity and good business sense".
That's because the Kindle previewer uses one of the oldest Mobipocket/Kindle viewers to generate the preview.
I've worked a lot on trying to make the content look as good as possible on all possible Kindle versions, the later Kindle versions support HTML5/CSS3 which makes it very easy to make it look like the Print/PDF version.
On the Nexus 7 the formatting is good. Even on the smallest font, you can't get much code on the screen. But most of the code snippets are small and it works.
On the Kindle for PC app it looks great.
On the Cloud Reader (read.amazon.com) it is still awful.And maybe there is nothing you can do about that.
Anyway, thanks for all the hard work. Look forward to reading it.
Thank you! I hope you enjoy the read.
I'm glad to hear it looks good on Nexus 7!
Unfortunately there's not much to do about it, since it lacks support for a lot of things that is needed to make the typesetting for a programming book good.
The shame in it all is that you can't just use the computer you already have. iOS development requires a Mac and Windows RT development requires Windows. It sucks when any manufacturer locks you in and prevents you from using portable code. It ups the expense of developing a cross-platform application significantly.
I guess at least if you own a Mac, you're allowed to run Windows on the hardware as well. The same can't be said in reverse, due to software licensing restrictions.
They should have done the upgrade like Apple. Everyone gets the upgrade, but not everyone gets all of the features of the upgrade (e.g. I got iOS 5, but not Siri).
It sounds like they're doing just this in spirit by backporting some features to Windows 7, but calling it Windows 7.8 instead of Windows 8. Marketing mistake?
No, it is different. The 3GS still can run the apps designed for iOS6 because the OS support the new APIs. It just lacks of some functions compared to the newer devices. However, the WP7 devices can no more run the apps designed for WP8 which means that the WP7 platform has been abandoned.
AFAIK it's a different codebase altogether. One's based on WinCE and the other on Windows8, so it would be misleading to imply that upgrade to 7.5 was based on Win8.
Thank you for the suggestion and recommendation. Right now the application is broken up into decoupled modules pretty well (though it could certainly be improved).
I think I gave a pretty poor example in the question, not explaining exactly what I was confused about. Say I have an Auth module with a full suite of methods (login, logout, etc.). Supposed I had a client request a customization that not only requires a username/password for login, but also (as a contrived example) the user's employee number. I'm not sure how to setup the application architecture to (1) easily allow modification of the Users table to include an "employee_number" field (2) update the Auth module to check for employee number in the login function and (3) modify, say, the Login module to update the form that displays the username/password/employee number fields.
My ultimate goal is to work some system where the Auth module/Login module/database tables did not have to be directly changed, so software can still easily be updated.
Thanks for the suggestion. The system is already mostly module-ized with a few glaring exceptions that need to be fixed.
My big problem is how do I let customers modify the modules themselves, without actually modifying the module? E.g. I'd like to some how give them the ability to, say, add company specific fields to the pre-existing User module and database, without actually modifying the User module source. I'm not sure how to handle the database.
This is the goal for me so future updates can be seamless, no matter how extensively customized their actual version of the application is.
According to the readme, it's based on an open source engine called Voxlap, created by Ken Silverman (the guy that wrote the Duke3d engine). Here's a link:
Actually most modern munitions are guided by inertial navigation, mainly so targets can't jam them. Aircraft etc also have this capability. They have known about the risk of jamming since the beginning, so surely they've prepared for it.
Very true. My answer was a bit tounge-in-cheek, I just didn't get it across properly. While losing GPS would be a problem, it certainly wouldn't bring down our military.
This specific problem definitely wouldn't affect our aircraft simply because they would be at such a high altitude. Even if it was a problem, the military also has a some pretty impressive anti-jamming capability.
I'm not actually air force, but am a bit of an aviation buff with a private license. There would be backup nav systems in manned aircraft, but several popular modern munitions are GPS guided, and I would tend to think that modern battlespace information systems require it as well. Planes wouldn't fall out of the sky, but it would be a significant departure from the ideal state.
Of the munitions? I hear JSOWs and especially JDAMs are popular recently.
As far as BIS info, it's not something I've followed closely, but we're talking things like every plane, tank, and infantryman now (soon?) has gps and information on the ___location of all friendly forces is automatically shared so you cut down friendly fire.
Apparently caf has more info on milspec GPS than I do, I thought that it required the same main band as civilian, and just used additional military bands to increase precision, but apparently it can function fully independently (not really surprising when you think about it). At least that gives you a little info on some of the troubles of failure of military GPS, as unlikely as that is.
Why shouldn't this break military plane GPS as much as anything else. It will also remove the ability of USAF to GPS target missiles onto US population centres, which they have no need to do anyway. They can still bomb the rest of the world no problem.
Military GPS receivers operate on two carrier frequencies, only one of which is used by most civilian models. (And it's the shared military/civilian frequency which is adjacent to the spectrum in question.)
Using two frequencies makes the military receivers more robust, and also lets them do some clever ionospheric distortion cancellation that you can't do with one channel. (Basically they get the benefits of WAAS without actually needing to receive the WAAS signal.)
That said, neither the FAA or the military are going to tolerate any significant degradation of GPS, domestically or otherwise.
Yeah, I was joking a little. Most aircraft would still work pretty well off of inertial data. However there are quite a few weapons systems that just plain won't work without GPS.
BTW, I'm not a pilot, but I work for a government aerospace contractor, so I have some experience in this.
I thought the most common ones (JDAMs) still had an inertial navigation system cause GPS/INS is used nearly everywhere. It'll probably have horrible accuracy (I guess that depends on how the coordinates sent to the bomb are handled... if it can be calculated as an offset of what the INS thinks it is, then it wouldn't be that bad). But still better then unguided bombs.
