1. This third version, however, is a real compiler using descent recursion, not regular expressions

Hm, that is interesting to know, I've always seen people criticize parsing HTML by regular expressions, but I thought that meant «let a library use the regular expressions». I didn't knew there was a different way.

So, from what I can imagine this way of parsing starts on the first character and reads them while writing a tree in-memory? Something like the visual way we interpret a chart like this (from json.org)? (I don't know if I got the image syntax right so I hope it shows up)

So if something like this finds <![CDATA[ (in an HTML context) it would store all contents from that point verbatim while it awaits the presence of a ]]>, while doing this with regular expressions would be much harder (and slower), correct?

I guess I should make a parser someday… this looks fun.

1. Well, perhaps. I actually think that usability makes sense for office apps

Ah, not that I'm not trying to sell it to you. If you like MS Office < 2007, that's good. Switching tools when they are released is not very handy – I for one don't feel tempted to go beyond XP for the time being (even if the computer I had was fast). Simple things we like are the better.

1. Or better – install 2007 Compatibility Pack for Office < 2003 :)

Yes, I could – actually I tried, IIRC, and the installer crashed, also reading the format by hand was so much cooler.

1. But that way you can't use them to remember stuff!
2. What do you mean – remember stuff?

I have links about things that I would forget. For instance, arguments (because giving a link is easier online than starting a lenghty debate) (examples: piracy in the view of a filmmaker, Tesla vs. Edison).

1. Do you really need to have bookmarks for search queries – isn't it faster to type them in? O_o

No, I don't bookmark these :D It was just an example of what pattern I use to search. Also, a couple years ago merely typing the movie name on google gave pirate links on the first page – they seem to be getting tougher, by a small margin.

1. That's the point! Once they're out of your attention you feel free to forget about all of them and when later you open your «temporary folder» you wonder what's all this stuff in there. And, besides, you can't read all of them if they're too much…

What you say makes sense, but:

• I don't put them in one big folder, so they are more or less sorted by topic.
• Even if I kept them open, sometimes is something I'll fix only next week.
• If I really care, I put them into the bookmarks bar directly – out of order and bothering. Same effect minus the RAM.

1. Yes, and they also (most of the time) have such horrible desktops […]
2. Completely true! I believe that's the reason why even user-friendly Linux interface is worse than unfriendly Windows'. Most of the time, unless they hire a designer.

I wouldn't like this to be true – I believe a programmer is capable of having a sense of design – you and I have. And I like to see good-looking Linux projects, such as this one (I really want to try distro out some time in the future). Or even the somewhat heavy Plasma Desktop of KDE, or Ubuntu's Unity. I really believe we could be all using Linux if it was a bit better and a bit more compatible with Windows (even though it already is, a lot).

But then some applications are like FontForge. Not that FontForge is a bad program, it is excellent, and when I was fiddling with a Camilo Sans one year and a half ago, it was more featured than the commercial competition. However, it looks like utter crap! It looks completely out-of-place and from 20 years ago. Also, the source code is in C, and a very «Unixmen» C. For example things like guessing shapes of fonts are complicated math written in unmathful C, and not even properly-encapsulated. Even porting it to GTK+ would be too hard.

But I still have faith in open source taking over the home OS department.

1. I actually thought Facebook (Twitter, etc.) are made as simple as it can be.

They look like they are, to me. I still found the whole timeline thing unnecessary. I don't even know how my profile page looks now, lol.

1. When there's somebody who understands everything close by you can just ask him and have your head cool and quiet.

Yes, this is a problem with people knowing we're «good with computers». Also, it's funny how they suppose we know everything.

I mean, you call yourself a programmer and can't fix XYZ problem the person has on Facebook/Outlook/IE/CrappyAppYouNeverUsed?

It's also interesting how they attribute all woes to hackers and viruses. Complaints like «my computer has a virus» mean «I installed everything that had a button and now it's slow like a turtle». Or «My Facebook was hacked!» meaning «I gave my password to a random website with kittens».

1. I actually enjoy all this low-level stuff even if I can't put it into use today.

To be honest I'll be looking forward to writing horribly low-level things one day. It has a whole magic to it.

1. there are lots of cool words starting on «p»

I never thought about it, but you're right!

1. And «Oracle boys» as well although I'm yet to figure what they'll be promoting.

Oracle?? But… I thought Oracle just had insecure and sexually impotent mid-40ies people in suits that failed in everything else in life so now they use «executive» prefixes and business acronyms that are hard to figure out but would be easy to a 6-year-old if they were in plain English. *breathes*

1. «э» and «з» (yes, those two are actually different).

I can just imagine how bad these two (or… 3…) can get when hand-written… Also anything hand-written is hard for me. My hand-written notes are always in small-caps style (minus the i, which has a dot when not uppercase).

1. This makes me think that we mostly read with «brain» instead of eyes catching the general form and sequence of letters and then «lookin up» the vocabulary to recognize the exact word.

Yes, our thought process is weird, and very unconventional. For example: ([[image http://i.imgur.com/TnwtZ.png image]]). I guess that's the beauty of «artificial» intelligence algorithms – neural networks for example, just «work» somehow*.

1. Hmm, it seems that there are actually no «native Brazillian» names?

Actually, yes we do. As you might know there were a lot of native tribes in all of America at the time of colonization. Most were brutally massacred, but even a few still exist and have their cultures, and are protected by the state to live in their ways in their shares of land. They live as if it was 1500 sometimes (while others have laptops with wi-fi in their villages, thanks to state initiatives and funding).

However most of Brazil is from other parts of the world. There are Portuguese (believe it or not, not many!), Spanish, Japanese, Italian, German, African and even Russian people living here. Sometimes with their own cultures preserved to a point. In the part where I was born, there is a great diversity (and unfortunately miscegenation), but, where my girlfriend was born for example, they are mostly of German origin, and people seem to be used to keep their «unconventional German» dialect (which is not pure German). So there, names are mostly German. Same goes for Japanese – and Japanese cities here have a lot of Japanese culture like foods and festivals, and so the list goes.

But the actual «Brazillian» names still were used as city names for example, so we have a lot of them, since the beginning. Google tells me:

* Tupi has given Brazilian Portuguese a few thousand words (some of them hybrids or corrupted) for animals, plants, fruit and cultural entities. * About 40% of the Brazilian municipalities have Tupi names.

For example:

• Ipanema (one of Rio's main beaches, «Great River»)
• Pindorama (a city, but this name was used by the natives to refer to where they lived, means «palm tree country»)

And of course I googled these, but there are a lot of fruit/animal names, which come from Tupi. So for example we know that natives would call us Karaíbas (which I thought it meant «pale skinned», but it means «spirit of a dead person»…) , and that Kurumin is «child» (also a local Linux distro). And I know how to count to 10 in Tupi, hehe.

Some person names exist, but they aren't as many. Examples:

• Araci (female): «mother of the day»
• Bartira, Potira (female): «flower»
• Iara (female): «lady of the lake»
• Jaci (both): the moon
• Janaína (female): a type of black bird
• Ubirajara (male): «lord of the trees/lance»
• Ubiratan (male): «hard wood»

By the way, you managed to make the reply smaller (~6k vs ~16k rendered characters, 63% decrease)! Congrats!

Altough It feels like some side topics were left out, but rather that than losing hope, lol. In contrast, this reply is something like 32% bigger. :D

1. (Oh dear, your comment looks so natural… heaven knows, I have almost lost all the hope that there are people apart from me and my other friend who are able to use wiki markup in the sensible way… Good job!)

Thanks, but that's you making an excellent engine which has a nice syntax! And the styling made it even better. I like the fact that it's an expressive markup. Maybe StackOverflow doesn't let you do things like center text because «The implementation was fragile», or «It was slow and lead to bugs». Yours, however, is very good!

1. I don't actually see why office software (no, office software) has to be glamorous.

Not glamorous, but some features are nice. Like having styles easily composable and selectable, and stored in the document, or being able to apply some effect to an image. I know it's silly for a word document (hah, I used that with my girlfriend anyway), but PowerPoint in particular enhanced a lot. I used it in school :D

1. it must work on 100% of hardware and under any software, require no installation, be easily deployable, self-contained and work with lighting speed.

Ok, if I wanted something horrible-looking but with all the features you mention I'd go for OpenOffice, not the old MS Office. Both hurt my eyes but at least they bleed in PDF (and it runs on Linux).

1. It certainly speaks for the best of software when you have to open its internal (!) format with an archiver to do some stuff )

I didn't have to, but I wanted to read a .docx and the machine didn't have Word (this also motivated me to make portable Word). Solution: open the file in 7z and read the XML «by hand».

1. I have completely flattened out my bookmarks
2. I can (and did) throw all the sites I'm visiting, give them sensible names and simply type in to go.

But that way you can't use them to remember stuff! I use them for that sometimes.

1. Just like old times with that black window…

What, the command line?

1. Resources

Ok, just to clarify, there are some 40 items here, but it's not like I need most. For example a nice font, a site that has some sort of search I found interesting, things like that. Example: StillTasty: Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide – Save Money, Eat Better, Help The Environment

How I search…

Anime:

AniDB «AnimeName», Google «AnimeName FansubName mediafire».

Software:

Google «SoftwareName thepiratebay»

Music:

Grooveshark, Newgrounds, or Google «AlbumName mediafire»

E-Books:

Google «EBookName e-book pdf»

Manga:

Yes, mango is a tasty fruit! Had one yesterday.

1. So now I simply leave 2-4 tabs always open in the Firefox session so they nag my eyes.

I did that but then they start to accumulate, and just dumping them in a folder is easy.

1. Social
2. I run away from these with all my speed :)

Me too, the folder is really seldom used has links for copying, like my dA profile.

1. …even if I haven't read it, it's somewhere waiting.
2. This approach has led me to the situation when I didn't even know what I had and where. It's quite silly to have bookmarks you don't know about -_-'

I do know later, since I give them names when the title is obscure. But for example sometimes I don't want to look at somethings, so I leave it there for when I care. I happen to care about one of these links in a future situation, sometimes.

1. I can review an English book each few days so it's not really a problem.

*ENVY*

1. And they also say that if you read before sleep it'll add to your resolution :)

No wonder your monitor is bigger.

1. I don't think you can link a DLL statically into a program

Yes, but in Linux you don't link a .SO to a program either. You need a .A file IIRC. Or maybe I'm wrong and you can. In any case compiling something in Linux sometimes is easy, the dependencies can be gotten by running sudo apt-get build-dep package-name, very simple.

1. Borland has made a system of packages […]

Hey, that looks sweet! .NET 4.0 (Mono already too) has a little thing called MEF which once set up allows you to just code DLLs, drop them in a directory your program is coded to check for, and your program will be able to simply have an array of objects.

This sounds confusing so let me put it into other terms:

• You set everything up, like writing the boilerplate.
• You write SomePlugin which implements IMyPlugin interface.
• You put that into a DLL which is shipped with your app.
• Your app populates a IMyPlugin array, and there is SomePlugin.

1. Static linking is supposed to be more reliable

I agree completely, and besides the core system, I'd like to install development versions of packages static-linked. So they are edge stuff but don't force me to install buggy libraries system-wide. But no-one provides these, so either I compile them or I put up with it…

1. On FreeBSD, when installing a port (read package) it sometimes has a «Static linking» checkbox.

Now that's nice.

1. This reminds me of a number of virtual machines I have ruined before I managed to set up FreeBSD and most of its stuff. This was long ago, romantic to remember now but back then it wasn't funny. Well, maybe just a little…

Save for the part that they weren't VMs, I feel the same :D

1. Lol, I guess that's called circular dependency :)

The official denomination is Charlie Foxtrot.

1. I'm glad that my server is still sane. Imagine how many of «evenrything» it had to do…

Yes, indeed. I was worried when I compiled stuff for the first time and saw the enormous outputs of commands with seemingly very random babble.

1. Like 220 or so

That's like a screenful of package NAMES :O

1. so at least that mess was automated :)

If only all mess was automated…

1. Frankly I also don't understand a little bit about makefiles – I have tried to read them once or twice but it's even worse than NSIS because it's on industrial scale.

Indeed, yet EVERY Linux project uses them! WHY??

How to compile ProjectName

shellgit clone git://git.ProjectName.org/git
cd ProjectName
./configure
make
sudo make install

1. unlike Microsoft who has to care about its users *nix guys pretend that everything is a piece of cake (as it is for themselves)

Yes, and they also (most of the time) have such horrible desktops that they forget what good taste is, so it's hard to make everything act welcomingly in Linux.

1. I can sorta understand how it feels because if someone asks me how to burn a CD I make round eyes and don't know what to reply.

Haha, excellent analogy! I can totally relate to that.

(By the way, it bugs me that some people don't even want to try. My father's girlfriend doesn't know how to download a picture from an e-mail (attachment or inline), and my father thinks Facebook is a modern tool which I should make easier for him to use (I tried teaching him twice, no success). The other day he told me an excellent business model would be to create a site that googles things for you, since it's «too hard for people». That said, my father has no problem «understanding» asynchronous cryptography and other things when I make analogies for him, then he goes to teach these analogies to someone else, but skewing the analogies so they are a complete mess, which he seems to be sure he understood clearly.)

1. So *nix guys must be those who can unscrew every bit, toss them and then put back and everything will work. We just don't belong to them, for good or worse :)

I actually can't understand how these people keep sanity.

1. I think PE structure is specifically designed so it's breakable.

I don't remember which (see, if I had into the «later» folder I would), but there's some virtualization technology that lets an app be transmitted from the server by code blocks, and executed much faster than a full download would require it to, so this allows a model where huge apps (think Visual Studio) are stored in a server, and the client runs them quickly without having them installed. Dunno if it really works, it had demos but I don't even remember the name of the thing.

1. Tell me the results when you've got them :)

I will, bragging and celebrating is utmost priority if it works.

1. To put you in context Windows NT works like this: […]

Thanks for the lecture, I like learning these things, and even if I don't use them now, it's nice to know them.

1. get your hands on it and soon you'll discover that all is the same and knowing one thing you have the notion of many others.

Well, I can't say that isn't how most stuff turned out to be – at first, I thought «wow, I'm compiling stuff, how cool!» and now it's so demystified*.

1. Wait, am talking like a… geek? :D

I don't use the G word anymore because way too many people call themselves «geeks». Most of the time these are either the ones who buy an iPhone as a social device or spend weeks on some silly MMORPG leveling up chicks with swords (or worse, leveling up an orc). For these, I have coined the terms «Shopping Mall Geek» and «Gamer Geek».

You're talking like a Programmer, with a P of Pride, Ponderation and Personality :)

1. Especially if they create a cult

Oh my… Google fanboys, didn't see that coming.

1. Normally I don't do anything really productive online.
2. Few people admit this and I'm glad you're one of them :D

What, somebody claimed to do productive things online? Of course there are even web IDEs, office suites, even «OS»s, but even if you try them out, at least for me it's a disappointing experience.

That said, of course it's not the same if I wasn't online, but from a personal experience, you can be offline for a whole month on a near-bare-bones linux LiveUSB with a few files and you'd have plenty of constructive stuff to do, all days long. But one day with a Chromebook, I'd finish the day having browsed a host of useless addictive entertainment pages and having learnt little or nothing.

1. The most productive activity I do in the Internet is googling and talking with fella like you.

For me is the same :)

1. The first happens each minute while the second is like a good wine – rarely comes and too runs out too quickly.

This makes me happy twofold:

1. I'm not the only one who googles like it was funny,
2. We both feel the same about these intercourses!

1. Well, the last phrase was actually a cliche cause I think everything related to alcohol is a bad bad bad thing. Really bad.

For a moment I thought , Oh man, YES! As a raw foodist (someday…) I'll still be able to drink wine once in a (long*) while.

But… really? My girlfriend likes wine more than I do… and it's so fun! D:

1. so far the only consistent technology is Flash.

Didn't want to admit but you're right*. And Flash is horrible. I mean, the other day I downloaded Adobe Flash CS5.5 portable to check it out, and man, what is that supposed to be? Movie Maker meets Dreamweaver meets Eclipse?

1. HTML5's Canvas and Offline storage.

The first works, the second so-so. Sometimes you don't even have a function to know how much space you have left.

1. For example, Zooming user interface has no desktop concept but is still quite interesting.
2. What do you mean? Google Earth is a prime example of ZUI on the desktop.
3. I mean that in ZUI there's no «wallpaper» or something similar AFAIK. All space is taken by frames.

I 'm still completely lost, even more now. Wallpaper? If that's about it, on KDE's Plasma Desktop you can even scale and rotate the file's icons.

1. That's a motto! «Nitro Smile» – that's definitely something. Gotta remember.

Heh, Nitro Smile, soon I'll be called Oxide Grin or something.

1. where «п» is «p» and «р» is «r», for instance. But it reads very similar.

When I see Russian, first thing that happens is that my brain tries to read it with Latin characters. For you it may be common to see English and distinguish contexts, but my brain gets confused that «p» is «r», a backwards N is not an error, etc.

1. Funny though how project names and similar usually come to me – they just pop into my mind and then I'm thinking how to explain them, usually with some success. So «proger» = «prog-ramm-er», pretty neat :)

Interesting, does that happen when you want to or all of a sudden? Good project names appear to me when I don't need/want them, so sometimes I write them, for possible future use. For example I thought of «Indirection» for a mail/messaging/etc program, and «Allegrissimo» for a music-related one.

1. the combination my first/last names and even patronymic is pretty common in Russia so I'm sure I can find several people with exactly the same names.

Well, think about it for the bright side, that's good for anonymity.

1. Speaking of which, «Jéssica» doesn't look like a Brazilian name?

Yes it, I looked it up, and it was the second most common name for babies here from 1990 to 1999 (She's from 1992).

But family names from where she comes are all weird: Jöner, Schabarum, Reisdörfer…

However one must take into account names in all americas are from (mostly) european origin, in this state where we live there are also many Japanese, too. The three most popular baby names in 2011 seem to indicate there is a preference for girl names whose origins are from your side of the world: Julia, Sophia and Isabella.

Now, why the heck am I looking that stuff up, I don't know.

1. I was talking about commonuser part of the market – desktops, laptops, handhelds, tablets, cellphones, etc.

Even there I'm not so sure, tablets came out of the blue for many, and in the middle of 00's I wouldn't expect them to get so popular, so quickly. But in any case, this won't stop people from coming up with new stuff. Especially Microsoft, they love selling half-baked or over-baked products.

But all in all I'd love to see everything consolidate and stuff finally get to a «final version» where stuff just improves instead of change and change for no reason.

1. However, I've got a hunch that by time it will be very inefficient to run because they are aimed at heavily industrial scales – lots of high-qualified staff that can make sense of all those #include and #define in most spaghetti C programs.

What do you mean, inefficient as in «not a good business model for them (Microsoft/Google)»?

1. […] in other words, by using Google Disk […]

Hah, to think I just mentioned it earlier in an e-mail. Yes, I may however use it to store encrypted files just to troll Googlebot.

1. On this wave imagine a system that is so scalable that it can run on virtually any machine (given present excess powers) and so simple that any system administrator can work with it. Will it conquer small and middle organizations who want to distribute their office while having centralized data storage under their control? It's got a chance, I think.

I think this has a lot of chance, and open-source projects which turned out good (like Firefox) gained enormous user bases just because they were/are good. OpenOffice is used in a lot of government/police/schools here, AFAIK. Many public services run Linux as a desktop. Even our last president made a speech on how he liked Linux better! So here at least these things catch on. But most businesses just pirate Windows, either because they know and don't care or because they even don't know (they just call the technician and have him «format the machines»).

1. Still, making this system on Windows and Linux might require too much effort.

Not if you're writing for Mono/.NET ;) Really, .NET is like Java, except it's good.

1. And then they say what healthy people should do/not do based on the studyings of unhealthy subjects. Makes sense?

The whole idea of making health by killing unhealthiness is just… you know.

1. …when I hover over the paragraph links, they aren't clickable?
2. Notice how the small input above the post changes

The problem is that it doesn't, try it in Chrome. In Firefox it does work as you say.

Man, this comment is huge already.

1. Speaking of which, I wonder how many features Office has acquired after XP?

Well, for me Office prior to 2007 looked a bit lacklustre, and from 2007 onwards everything looks the same so I stick with 2007 (also I like that I can open the file format on 7z…). I think I just got used to the way stuff is laid out. But probably if I upgrade to another version it would be purely for gratuitous vanity of using the next version (which I'll torrent so I don't care it's basically the same thing).

But you've got a point, I'll quote Joel Spolsky:

Now the trouble comes when you can't think of any new features, so you put in the paperclip, and then you take out the paperclip, and you try to charge people both times, and they aren't falling for it. Once people got used to the idea that you «own» the software that you bought, and you don't have to upgrade if you don't want the new features, that can be a big problem for the software company which is trying to sell a product that is already feature complete.

1. For some reason bookmarks just don't work for me

They also don't work for me, but I keep bookmarking anyway. Most of the times I change browsers and start over. Let me see, now I have folders:

• Tools: On-line tools such as JsFiddle.
• Bookmarklets: Things like «upload this to Imgur»
• Resources: Repositories of various stuff, like sites to get icons, animes, etc.
• Later: Stuff I found interesting but that I don't have time for, now. Also things like the list of animes to watch.
• Social: Least used folder. Created because stuff like about.me doesn't fit elsewhere.
• Download: Stuff I should download, such as the links list for the next anime.
• Projects: Contains subfolders for projects I'm working on.
• Other bookmarks: Whatever I didn't bother sorting out, and used as a bookmark dump.

I think I feel a bit better if I bookmark something interesting, because that way even if I haven't read it, it's somewhere waiting. The Bookmark Limbo.

1. Oh, thanks! More of reading before my sleep.

Lol, I sure make you read a lot. The difference being that you probably already read a lot.

1. I believe other *nix systems have this mode too.

Yes, in Linux (actually, I think everywhere?) it's possible to statically link libraries, but seemingly nobody does that. Also, I still have no clue on how to do it. Another thing: compiling stuff is usually much harder than people claim it to be, unless that's because I usually compiled on non-Ubuntu Linux. So in the end I've broken a few systems before seeing the thing done. Maybe that's just me being stupid, but for example development versions would benefit from statically-linked binaries, IMO. Gimp 2.8 is only avaliable to Ubuntu 12.04 (latest stable), and using a PPA (the private repository of one GIMP developer, and it would break any non-Ubuntu-12.04 system).

1. But overall I agree with you – shared linking in *nix is a mess

I'm glad it's not just me being retarded. Isn't this «.so Hell» (In comparison to ".dll Hell")?

Also, sometimes even package managers won't save you. In the case of APT, I thought it made sure stuff won't break before installing, it doesn't! At all. You can easily make the Gnome desktop fail to load just by installing packages (I did, on Linux Mint). OpenSuSe's YAST, by contrast, is very cautious and didn't let me break the system even after installing 5 different versions of the same libraries. But then, there were very stupid stuff:

And then I gave up.

1. just recently I had to rebuild my entire server's environment to get rid of those segfaults in Apache…

Oh my goodness! Glad you're still sane. Rebuilding a whole server environment? I can't even imagine how many packages that must be.

1. 8 hours to recompile every single library from sources.

To be honest, that is what I would expect, due to past experience. However I'm at loss in how to explain it. It can't be that GCC alone takes even a quarter of that. It must be something else, like the configure scripts, makefiles, etc (which I've never understood, since everything I've ever compiled didn't need to be «configured», but maybe it's a C thing).

1. At least on Windows there's a built-in Side-by-side assembly

I was thinking about a similar solution for Unix, what I thought revolves around ideas which I'm not sure of:

• Install an application in its directory. This means make the binaries rest in a folder just for them, not /urs/bin or whatever. Optionally make a symlink to common binary holder directories (such as /usr/bin).
• Make it look for libraries in a folder just for him. I don't know how this would work, but it would mean every binary would look for libraries in a folder just for itself.
• The libraries on those folders are actually symlinks to the real libraries, installed in a similar fashion, and meant to look for other libraries from symlinks too.
• Many versions of a binary can be installed. Dependencies for older binaries can be kept while updating everything that can be updated.

I don't know if this makes sense, it's a thought I've had. :P

1. It can be paged out but it can't be unloaded – see the difference?

Ah, now I see it, I wasn't aware windows could do such things as removing unused code. Nice to know :D

1. Well, I might be wrong in my knowledge but I think such programs are pretty heavy when compared to «broken down» versions.

I plan to «portablize» VS2010, and it's pretty effing bloated already, so if it has even a tiny difference I'll notice. That would be a nice test actually. I might even upload it somewhere if it works.

1. I think that it's always more efficient to rely on system ability to manage individual EXE and DLL files than to write some homemade substitution for that kind of thing.

Well, in that regard, I plan to use some pre-made solution, not create my own virtualization technology, that would be overkill actually.

1. For example, you know that there's no official API function to load DLL from memory instead of file? The one that is used by rootkits and things of that sort is an undocumented function belonging to the NT core

Didn't know about that. Wouldn't that actually be useful? Because I remember seeing a lot of threads about «how do I load a .dll from an application resource». I also didn't knew about ZwProtectVirtualMemory. Seems like too obscure for me :D

1. I doubt they will give up on the cloud OS idea so easily.

Me too, but I wonder if it will catch on.

1. It might be you current habits speaking :)

What, you'd actually use a computer that's just Chrome? Normally I don't do anything really productive online. I've seen word processors, IDEs, etc. online, but these are always below the desktop bar for me (and even below the limits of what browsers have to offer IMHO).

1. For example, Zooming user interface has no desktop concept but is still quite interesting.

What do you mean? Google Earth is a prime example of ZUI on the desktop.

1. That's a great misspelling then because I like «Momenti» more :D

That's nice to know! Actually, it looks like some Greek plural or something. Like Momenti being the plural of Momentum (but the actual plural is momenta, go figure these greeks).

1. «Nitro Slime Coding» :D

Funny, because for a moment I've read it as «Nitro Smile Coding» :)

1. In Russian «programming» is pronounced (and spelled) the same way as in English because it's a foreign word.

With latin or cyrillic?

1. «Proger» is just made of «prog» as a short form of «programming» and «-er» as the English suffix that turns «install» into «installer», «employ» into «employer», etc.

Nice, I'm excited to finally knowing the true meaning. >:) Actually, it makes sense, as an abbreviation of programmer. but cooler and less verbose, «programmer» is a long word for someone lazy like me.

1. I think I'm not new with this word – pretty much most places where I have registered an account had «proger» login already taken.

Lol, I was lucky to have gotten the «Camilo Martin» or «CamiloMM» (used when spaces aren't allowed, instead of just using an underscore) login everywhere, because there are actually Camilo Martins everywhere. Such as this guy: Camilo Martin works in fiction – YouTube At least there's no one where I log in to. But Camilo is normally taken, JsFiddle being an exception.

In the case of my girlfriend, when I met her, I looked up about her, and managed to find another «Jéssica Hanauer», in her same small countryside city, just one year older (17 vs 16 at the time). Actually it was a bit surprising, because Hanauer doesn't sound like a common family name either.

1. Currently I think that Windows is done, as is Linux

Sorry, I have to disagree there. If you mean desktop distros, maybe so (I still think there will be desktops for a long time), but I see a lot of places where the Linux kernel may go, such as tablets, servers and the like, where they actually already have a huge market share. For example, go here, and change «category» to «Operating System Family». (Note that this chart would indicate BSD is seldom used, but I believe that's more people's ignorance than actual capability, while in the case of Linux vs Windows, it is clearly superior server-side.) Also: [i.imgur.com]

I mean, most people forget that Linux is just the kernel (I must admit I spent a lot of time thinking bash was part of Linux), and my guess is that they'll keep forgetting, and that no newer kernel will replace it, in such a scenario, Linux will live a long, long time.

Maybe Windows 9 will have a Linux kernel, who knows, lol. Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft (updated)

1. Thanks Camilo, I wish you to experience this too some day :)

Wow, I like how my name sounds in bold typeface. Yes, Proger my friend, I'm probably as nuts as you are and likely to make my own stuff from scratch too, I will however consult you more than once :D

1. But you're attentive despite your talks about Aspie and such :P

Supposedly, people with Asperger's get focused on a single small thing too much, and distracted by the rest. I don't know if I'm an aspie, or something else, actually I believe all humans are too different to generalize even the effects of a flu. But I am distracted with many common things, interfaces are just not one of them I guess.

1. To-Do (код, R359) (Page 1) / Швак (Swack) / Кузница

(By the way, is it just me, or when I hover over the paragraph links, they aren't clickable? It's weird because the anchor is there, just not clickable. Google Chrome.)

1. Well, maybe I'm just oldschool.

We all get used to one tool or another and it's fine, but I only think the ribbon makes sense because it's really filled with menus. I find it that it occupies the same screen real-estate as the toolbars occupied, but with a bit more elegance. The ribbon in explorer, however, I find sickening.

1. > appstract
2. Wow, nice work. And it has a thesis doc.

Indeed, there's a lot of these that are like finding gold in a mine. I love it when I find one and sometimes I bookmark or save them because they are indeed interesting.

1. I think I'll get it and read one day, thanks.

You're welcome, and by the way, if what made you want to read it was the registry in particular, I've once got really interested in it (I still am), so here's some documents I've saved for further reading if they happen to spark your interest or if you have a use for tinkering with such things: [goo.gl]

1. and if you're saying your PS Portable is just 3 executables than all those 155 MiB

Actually the Office portable was 3 exes plus a data file (and, since I forgot when I packaged it, one DLL had to be registered before it could be used… lol). And the exes are less than a MB combined, I think.

It's crappy as fuck, but here it is: http://goo.gl/NzDDT

Also, some portable applications seem to use a folder. They sometimes create one at first use, even, and then they store some things there. Maybe this could be used to share memory space, but then again, normally on Windows every app uses it's copy of everything, unlike in Unix where stuff is all shared. (Also, I have some considerations about this aspect of Unix… mainly from my failure to compile Gimp 2.8)

1. Unused parts of the code can't be dropped and then reloaded

But can't every part of the memory be paged out? That was what I thought.

1. > But the 150MB data file is not loaded at once, only parts of it are read.
2. How do you know that?

I dunno, but it would be a poor design choice and it's not even a library or something so I supposed it was read by parts. It is locked there while the program runs, IIRC.

1. libraries are shared based on full path name

Really? I thought it would be possible to share any code on-memory if both applications agree that the code is there (and the by-path sharing being done as a system-wide measure).

1. Right, right :D Eventually it will become «AdobOS» and «OffiSe» and

Well to my surprise there was a «Corel Linux» distribution [(http://en.wiki…]). Considering how bloated their software feels, I wouldn't trust them a computer.

1. «Chrome OS»… the latter is already on its way.

On it's way to meet up with Google Wave I suppose, because after the Chromebook hype, I haven't heard of its whereabouts. Also, it would frustrate me immensely to work in a computer where I can't minimize the browser and actually use the system. I'd get «screen claustrophobia» instantly.

1. > Makes them feel safe?

With that I mean that maybe corporate people feel more safe if installing an office suite is a lenghty procedure, it must make them feel that it was more of an investment for the company if the sysadmins had to take time to get it in-place.

1. Now that I think about it I've probably heard «Momenti» as a surname

Wow, I wonder where. It was actually a registration misspelling of «Manenti» when one of my ancestors migrated from Italy to Argentina, I'm told. How lame.

1. > Olimac Itnemo Nitram
2. I've read it as «Slime Items Nitro» so better not O_o

Lol, I imagined a racing car powered by slime fluid. It sounds weird, but who knows, maybe I name something with that. A piece of code or something.

1. > I could have thought Proger could be a given name
2. Seriosuly?!

Yeah, I've seen so many weird names already that it wouldn't surprise me. Plus, Proger sounds somewhat german or something.

1. I just came up with «Proger» because that's my primary interest

But, what is Proger? I google it but it doesn't reveal much. Maybe Russian spelling of Programming?

1. my nick will get outdated in a few years at best but look where they are now… It was a kind of my prevision, no less :)

Indeed, and you can always say it reflects your earned eXPerience. Also it's funny how XP really was THE Windows OS. I mean unless Windows 7 gets as far (I doubt a bit, really), XP will probably the most long-lived Windows.

1. I think now one can find some of my detailed personal data but 2-3 years before you couldn't find even my name :)

And that scares me a bit, so I'm not the first one to jump on bandwagons. I wouldn't even have touched facebook if it wasn't because I wanted to find out what school friends became.

1. I might have little finished apps but those which are are customizable like madness.

Customizability, extensibility, modularity, encapsulation… I guess we both like those things. Congratulations on making a very good engine, it is much more significant to have a blog if you made the engine, this is really your blog. Your blog, Your kitchen ™.

By the way just wanted to point out that the paragraph links on every line of every comment are all numbers, and they repeat, so they wouldn't be of use that way (but besides that, having links to lines, and suggesting them like that was a cool idea).

1. Who needs that mess, I'm still using Word XP

But still, I do like the ribbon, Office is the only place where I actually think it makes a lot of sense. Also, even if I used Word 2003 (and some below that but don't remember which), I didn't really became friends with it. Office 2007 is still fast enough, and was easy to get used to.

1. And your pack was probably compressed?

Ah, yes, that's in the 7z file that holds it. When you unpack it, it's 150mb IIRC, but still a lot less than what it takes up in disk actually. It's composed of one data file and three executables.

1. I don't really know, though.

Me neither, I just skimmed this and others: [appstract.googlecode.com] (project is hosted at appstract – Portable Application Virtualization System – Google Project Hosting)

1. Prefetch won't work for files that «don't exist».

Sure, but I only leave boot prefetch enabled anyway… With the amount of different apps I run, I don't know how prefetch can make choices. In any case, prefetch only works for executables and libraries, and some apps have many non-executable files, such as originally Linux apps ported to Windows.

1. Plus you can't share the libraries […] they all load those 50 MiB of DLLs into the memory twice.

Yeah, didn't think about that. But the 150MB data file is not loaded at once, only parts of it are read. And it wouldn't be impossible to share the libraries in-memory (I suppose), so maybe, just maybe, these virtualization layers are capable of that.

For me virtualizers are a very advanced kind of app, like an anti-virus. Maybe these guys are smart enough and figured a way.

1. You're reading my mind! I believe while powerful machines are professional powerful installers mean that the company pays too few to its programmers so they can't even create a complex installer. Duh.

Also, these apps are designed to own a whole system. Why not make an application self-contained, easily xcopyable? Probably because that way it would look so unprofessional.

Because it's not just a bunch of executables and libraries in folders with other files… It can't be just that. It must be the «Microsoft Office Suite», the «Adobe Creative Suite».

Also from talking to some people I feel there are persons who think all of this bureaucracy is even something desireable to them somehow. Makes them feel safe?

1. Now we know why programs these days are so slow :D

Yeah, and it's up to us to come up with programs that aren't dumb. Not that it's too hard, computers are getting faster and common «professional» apps slower, great for indie developers. :D

1. Before switching to this box (2×2.66 i5) I didn't know it was even possible without terrible lags but I don't see much a difference now.

Ah, I gotta get myself a good machine. That motivates me to code more so I get there.

1. Oh my, I could mistake both «Camilo» and «Momenti» as your nicks.

Nice, now I can use Momenti somewhere as a nick, lol. Or something skewed like Olimac Itnemo Nitram (reversed, minus last letter, last two swiched places). Somehow that sounded native central american (Aztec, Mayan) or something.

1. That's an interesting internationalization bit.

To be honest I could have thought Proger could be a given name, but since it doesn't sound Russian and there's an _XP I supposed it was a nick. Does it mean something?

1. Perhaps it's inherited communistic conspiration but I avoid using my real credentials outside my social group and friends :)

Not like it's impossible to find out sometimes, Mr. Pavel. This country also had a bit of a dark past in the 60's to 80's, but everyone seems to forget easily. We're all living in CocaColand I guess.

1. But I love the way it's going :P

Me too :D

By the way thanks for the avatar, that was cool :)

(golly gee willikers, can't I even make a short goddamn comment)

1. Portable applications usually use a single, big file as filesystem, registry, etc.
2. You gotta be kidding?

Well, some do use them. For example thinstall, I used that to make a portable Office 2007 (you wouldn't believe how MANY useless files it has, my portable'd version has Word, PowerPoint and Picture Manager on under 50MB (and most of the files are common to all of the suite, so fitting Excel for example would amount to 10 MB more, I think).

Also, in Photoshop's case it's useful to see these folders to be able to fit plugins in there. (but you can also do this in the case of single-file portables, you'd just have to re-create the folders so that the program sees it.)

1. portable apps (Thinstall'ed, etc.) are generally slower and tend to pollute the registry

No, I'm almost sure they do not write to the registry… I don't remember where, but I saw a paper about application portabilization and one of the things was emulating the registry… And the registry is, as far as I know, the crappiest thing ever. Plus (I don't know how) NTFS is slower than Ext4. So if a single file was used instead of a crapload of small files (some apps do that), maybe it's also faster. In my experience they run just as fast, only taking sometimes a little more to start.

1. They might be as well attempting to download the entire distribution using hidden dial up connection.

I can confirm that Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and MS Office 2007 do not do that. I checked during and after the install with a network sniffer :D Maybe they put sleep calls here and there to make it take longer so it looks more professional and corporate (read: bureaucracy).

1. The only problem is that I don't have a dial up modem since '07.

Indeed. If you just hadn't that problem…

Reminds of a lucky nerd I've met that had 16 GB of RAM and an 8-core processor as a desktop machine, he mentioned that some things are so fast that «it's not even funny anymore».

1. Oh, and it's funny to see that while current computer powers grow like after a good rain installers manage to become slower and slower at the same time.

Not only the installers. I have a gif program, very old thing, it runs like a breeze, and consumes little ram, while Ps (if the gif is large (>100 frames) and has a moderate resolution) takes a millenium and hogs the machine to pop an error message saying it ran out of virtual memory.

Photoshop was probably programmed to run on a phyton VM implemented in a javascript engine by microsoft which is loaded from XML files in base64 with rot13 applied.

1. Oh, this is cool, really!

Lol, I thought you'd know, hehe. But Camilo is not very common here either, so my full name sometimes gets mistaken in documents. Not that I care a lot, most of the time xD

My given name is Camilo Martin, my family name is Momenti, so I guess that's another uncommonness (first time I use that word, three two-letter repetitions!).

Now that I think about it. I don't even have a nickname.

1. I always wondered if it's a good or bad when your name sounds like a nickname on the internets.

Please tell me what your conclusion is!

1. Lol, inserting analytics right on the e-mail.
2. Covert ops, you see. You're my target >:D

If you see an invisible 1px display:none gif in the next e-mail, that's me. Grin when you look at it. I'll make sure to position it somewhere visible.

1. even if once installed PS will start up a bit faster.

I'm not sure, for a few reasons. Portable applications usually use a single, big file as filesystem, registry, etc. and I think maybe, just maybe, that can be faster. Also on the long run that means less pollution of the registry, and a smaller registry has less chance of being paged up completely. Windows XP's registry has some 20 MB of registry after install. After installing some applications (especially from Adobe, Microsoft and such…) that starts to grow up.

1. but looking at all kind of stuff the PS installer had inside itself I couldn't be sure they don't install system rootkits just in case. Since when copying a gig of data started to take up to eternity?

Lol, I also wonder. Because as much as one can think of it, even if the data was uncompressed, patched with slipstreamed updates, checked against hashes (before and after), etc… still it makes no sense. I mean, the bottleneck is disk I/O (supposedly), but it looks as if some installers ran at less than 1 MB/s or something.

1. > cameyo.com
2. It sorta sounds alike to your nick :D

But… Camilo is my actual name, not a nick xD

1. Simply because you hardly could find this article while browsing and I remember that I've posted the link somewhere down half the road. Just logics :)

Lol, inserting analytics right on the e-mail.

1. I have once risked setting up PS CS5 from an official DVD and their piece of installer has almost ruined my system after trying to do I-don't-want-to-know-what for several hours.

It's not just me then! And Visual Studio 2010 ultimate gets done with its thing by the end of the week maybe. But it installs! The adobe suit, no go.

But for Photoshop, I have an actual repackaged installer. So it installs, but without playing tenga with my patience.

Regarding portabilization, the only thing that can't be portable'd is drivers, services and networking stuff, as I'm aware.

Here's a free solution (haven't tried it but plan to): http://cameyo.com/

Hah, how did you know I was half through the mail at the time of that comment?