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I would not say easy... You have to read a lot of documentation and try to find information...
The good thing is that the format is based on XML and that it can be split in multiple files which is good for source control and history.
The bad things is that it seems that are not many good tools to help creating those files nor much good tutorials on how to do things.
Philippe Mori
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I use Nullsoft Installer[^] - it's definitely not an advanced solution, but it's free, and I feel that I have more control over what's actually happening when I write the script myself. Many of the advanced GUIS (like InstallShield) have so many options, that they're hard to customize because you can't figure out how and where to do it.
Alse, I've had a lot of problems with the installation localization (even for installations where I don't even have localization). Suddenly - without notice - InstallShield will start to claim that it can't locate certain strings - without telling you exactly what strings it is...
And InstallShield is of course WAAAAAY too expensive...
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant Anonymous
- The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine Winston Churchill, 1944
- I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy. Me, all the time
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My experience with InstallShield was a nightmare! And it is ridiculously expensive.
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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we use Advanced Installer for some of our stuff. it's pretty powerful and easy to use and we've never had any problems with it.
we probably haven't come close to using all of its features. but we have it hooked into our VS builds; it does code signing, and reads registry keys to see if certain things are already installed, etc..
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I've been using the free version for years and really like it.
/ravi
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We're using the InstallShield 'Limited Edition' in house to deploy our Windows Services (since OneClick doesn't support them,) and it works... well enough...
I ran into a funny little bug today though, as I built an installer for a service I just finished. The service is built for .NET 4.5, and the installer has an option to allow installation to proceed only if .NET 4.5 is already installed. So I install the service in our beta environment, it installs fine, but then fails to start. I check, and sure enough, .NET 4.5 wasn't installed...
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Hossein Alizadeh - Naghmeh[^]
After last weeks Song of the Week a fellow CP'ian of literary prowess shared some of his musical taste with me.
I think it's safe to say his musical taste isn't very common (at least not in the West), so I was surprised to hear some tones I don't hear very often, Persian!
After checking out some more songs on YouTube I ordered a CD on eBay (only sensible option to get his CD's for a reasonable price).
And his song Naghmeh is my song of the week!
And if Google Translate[^] is not mistaken Naghmeh actually means Song
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Thanks for that, something I need to hear more of.
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Nice
«Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.» Benjamin Franklin
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Kevin Marois wrote: It seems that I wouldn't be that difficult to write a rather small app that can compute this to infinity.
Something like this?
while (i <= infinity)
{
}
Don't wait for it to finish.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Message Removed
modified 21-Jan-16 16:09pm.
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Xaotiq wrote: MY GAWD that is huge!
A quick back of an envelope approximation suggests that it would take around a GB just to store the number let alone do any math with it.
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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Um... Why?
I'm pretty sure I could store it in 22Mb pretty easily, or 11Mb if I used BCD.
As a binary number, it would go under 10Mb easily.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: As a binary number, it would go under 10Mb easily.
Yup, you're right. I'd blame drunk arithmetic but I hadn't touched a drop, honest, guv. I just can't get used to this decimal money!
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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What's misleading? Discovery, is by definition, revealing things that are already there - literally taking away the cover from something. If the headline said 'invented' or 'created', fair enough, but it doesn't.
You also don't seem to have any grasp of the meaning of infinite. There are an infinite number of prime numbers which means no matter how fast your computer calculates (assuming that it can get past the problems of accurately calculating extremely large numbers at all), even trillions of times faster than our fastest super-computer arrays, it will take an infinite time to calculate.
If you wrote your app and transported it back in time to the very first second of the Universe's existence to start it there is every possibility that it would still be trailing in the race with the software in use to confirm the present record. For it is only possible to have reached the biggest prime to date by abandoning the search for all primes and checking only for Mersenne primes (for which there are only 74,207,281 candidates up to and including the present biggest as opposed to the 22.4 million digit number of candidates needing to be checked in the complete scan).
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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Kevin Marois wrote: It seems that I wouldn't be that difficult to write a rather small app that can compute this to infinity.
Absolutely. The problem is, how long it'll take that app to run and how much memory it would need. Computing prime numbers is a great illustration of the balance between time, space, and algorithm.
Marc
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See also: Halting Problem.
Turing has been working on it for decades now.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Turing has been working on it for decades now.
I'm pretty sure that's no longer the case.
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Sure, now that he has infinite time to do so.
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Kevin Marois wrote: The title seems a bit misleading In what way misleading? A very large number has been determined to be prime, thus discovering the largest prime number to date. The title accurately describes the article.
Kevin Marois wrote: It seems that I wouldn't be that difficult to write a rather small app that can compute this to infinity. I don't think you truly appreciate the scale or difficulty of the problem here. The number itself is over 22 million digits in length. Just let that sink in. In the .NET number type system a double is an 8 byte floating point number with an accuracy of 15 to 16 decimal places. The number described here is 22 million digits.
The algorithms for calculating prime are notoriously resource intensive. In fact one of the first applications of quantum computers is this very problem - determining prime.
If you truly think it a trivial problem, then go right ahead and see how far you get. Knock yourself out.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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Dominic Burford wrote: If you truly think it a trivial problem, then go right ahead and see how far you get. Knock yourself out. Years ago I gave this a go and as I watched the console output slow down after an hour, with a still quite small number, I realised why it is that finding new prime numbers is so difficult.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I too have written some very basic algorithms for finding prime numbers, and for any reasonably sized number, it takes an age to compute. To do this for a number of the size described here is a phenomenal achievement.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Kevin Marois wrote: It seems that I wouldn't be that difficult to write a rather small app that can compute this to infinity. In which case you could make yourself millions as discovering new prime number is worth a lot of money
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Yeah, I look forward to reading that CP article.
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