Comments for chrishowie.com

Comment on OpenVP has landed by Chris

Chris — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:21:02 +0000

@Neil: You’ll have to compile and install the package using the standard “./configure && make && su -c ‘make install’” idiom.

Comment on OpenVP has landed by Neil Myrick

Neil Myrick — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:13:42 +0000

I clicked on the OpenVP link above and downloaded the bz2 package, now how do i install it? The Readme file gives no info about installation process.

Is it just a matter of extracting the folder to a certain location? If so, where? I have Ubuntu 10.04 and Banshee 2.0.1

Comment on What I dislike about C++, part 1: References by Ed Avis

Ed Avis — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:34:08 +0000

The worst thing is that the one place where a reference would really have made sense – ‘this’ – it isn’t used and we have pointer syntax instead, even though ‘this’ cannot be assigned to and is never null. (References were added to the language after instance functions, but a new keyword ‘self’ would be great.)

Comment on What I dislike about C++, part 1: References by Chris

Chris — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:52:15 +0000

I can understand that point. My counter-argument is that this feature causes obfuscation of every function call everywhere since one can no longer be certain when things are being passed by reference.

Comment on What I dislike about C++, part 1: References by Ed Avis

Ed Avis — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:36:34 +0000

I guess one argument in favour is that it lets you optimize by taking parameters by reference when possible, without the caller having to know about the optimization.

The first version of your library might have bar(Foo f). Later you find a better algorithm that can work with an immutable Foo object so you change your library function to bar(const Foo& f). Now the code runs faster (if Foo is a big object) but the caller doesn’t have to care.

When you get into non-const references, such that a function call may sneakily modify the object you passed it, it does get a little confusing. swap(a, b) is nice syntax but that’s not enough justification.

Comment on Bitcoin for Humans series by Anna J. Stites

Anna J. Stites — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:09:21 +0000

This is going to be the start of a whole new understanding of our finance system. A great bottom-up experiment.thumbs up for the creators!

Comment on Banshee, meet OpenVP by Scott

Scott — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:12:55 +0000

I was wondering what it would take to convert .milk files (winamp milkdrop presets) to your presets? I would be willing to do the work if i could get a guide.

Comment on Linux “Jailer” by Chris

Chris — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:38:27 +0000

@bill, chroot is only a filesystem jail. This project (in its currently-existing form) allows jailing of, for example, network resources as well, so that each DNS lookup or connection attempt by the process must be authorized by the user.

Comment on Linux “Jailer” by bill

bill — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:31:19 +0000

it’s called chroot … see the man page

Comment on When FarmVille == Productivity by Chris

Chris — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:03:56 +0000

@Eric: The project is still being maintained from time to time, but I haven’t yet decided on a release plan. I want to monetize the project somehow since it’s taken many, many hours of my life to produce, but I’m still trying to figure out the best way to do that.