Should operator overload methods be virtual?

[retard]

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:15:33 -0500, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

> I don't know what typical users you know, but the typical users I know
> do not reboot their computer unless it requires it.  Most of the people
> I know have installed so much bloatware on their system that it takes 20
> minutes to boot their system, so they only reboot when necessary.

Ok, if they accept those long boot times, you can waste even more memory 
since they would probably accept disk cache trashing, too. Nowadays 
laptops have 640 GB hard drives, so basically a taskbar applet could 
easily use 100 GB of virtual RAM without the stupid user noticing 
anything.

> Your idea of "x amount of leakage is OK" where x > 0 is exactly the
> developer mindset I was talking about.

It's not my idea :D I guess even if I was badly drunk, I couldn't make my 
code leak as much as those taskbar application developers do. I don't 
encourage writing bloaty crap applications. It's just the general trend. 
Applications get larger and slower. Wirth's law.

If I recall correctly, my old postscript printer only needed a ppd driver 
file (< 100 kB). Nowadays even the cheapest printers with very modest 
features come with 500+ megabytes of "drivers". Since there is no good 
package manager on Windows, each vendor implements their own, poorly. The 
high end printers still use light weight drivers. What does this tell?

If the printer costs $40, a webcam $15, and a network card $5..10, how 
can you expect extremely high quality drivers? They hire those worst off-
shore coders to do the job, the cheapest artists draw the 16 color 
installer backgrounds (saved in 24-bit BMP format of course to waste more 
space) etc.