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The same reasoning in civil engineering would translate to saying that you only need a shovel and a mason's trowel to build anything. Yes, you can, the "competitive features" like improved insulation or just fashionable architecture don't depend on how you put the parts in place. But more powerful tools allow you to do more things in limited time.

Having said that, building those tools is complicated enough so it takes too much time and isn't generally done, be it building languages, debuggers, or whatever tool you need, basically equally. You do correctly, if obliquely refer to a well-identified problem of insufficient tooling even in those languages that are generally considered sufficiently expressive to not require additional syntax or semantics. Interestingly, this is independent of whether you're working in a more specialized language that has the concepts in question embedded in its core primitives, or in a less specialized language that requires you to first build these higher concepts (of interest to you) out of its lower-level constructs. It would even appear that the problem is roughly of the same scope regardless of whether you're building a new language (in the traditional "lexical-syntactic" sense, not just in terms of new APIs) or not, with the "standard approach" you're mentioning involving using non-specific analysis and debugging tools that are all-too-often only of marginal benefit because they don't provide the views that a large system might require to be more easily comprehended or modified, for example, by a newcomer. Building improved tools unfortunately requires some kind of model regardless of whether the model is explicit in form of another language or merely implicit in the code of the tools and the patterns of use of some API you're building. But the designers of programming environments can't possibly anticipate all the domains you might want to use their environment for, so even if you decide not to use or develop another language for an application, unfortunately, not much changes, there are still tooling problems to be solved. You've merely shifted the burden from one kind of tools to another kind of tools, and one could successfully argue that accessible techniques for building better tools (to bring them into the realm of what Eric Raymond refers to as "casual programming" in TAoUP) are highly desirable for overall productivity.

Right; there are both positive and negative feedbacks.

If you really want to know about the various climate feedbacks, try the summary in section 8.6 ("Climate sensitivity and feedbacks") of the the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/... (the section starts on page 629)

As to the virtue of the green house effect studied on its own, the issue is that the atmosphere just might not work that way.

And that's why we have more detailed models.

But it ends up being a no-win situation, when the objective is to criticize rather than to understand. If the model is simple, they say "that model's too simple! The real world is complicated! You need to include X Y and Z!". And if the model is modified to include X, Y, and Z, they say "The model is too complicated! You can't believe any complicated models like that!"

The actual answer is, you start simple, understand the simple models, and progressively add complexity. This is the way science is done. Planets don't move in uniform elliptical orbits. Nevertheless, starting with Kepler's laws and then adding peturbations is a good way to analyze planetary motions.

As for comparing models to reality, and asking what we know and how we know it, there isn't really time for me to go through this model by model since 1967 (since I do have other things to do). I'll again suggest as a start reading the WG-1 summary report, it goes into detail on this (and has references for more details). The one I'm more familiar with is the fourth: https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/... (although there seems to be a more recent one, fifth, here:
http://www.climatechange2013.o... )

". To all you science people, correlation does not equal causation. "
no shit, Sherlock.

" How else do you explain the many periods of warming and cooling in the past long before humans even existed?"
There are different way the earth can warm. The effect of shoving more green house gasses into the atmosphere causes warming on top of other trends. There is no doubt about this at all.

https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publ...

" I rest my case"
You did not, in any way, 'make a case'. You might want to learn what the means.
If you want to make a case, you need to start by showing which one of these is false:

1) The Earth gets lots of light from the sun
2) Visible light emits IR when it strike something
3) CO2 absorbs energy from IR
4) Humans but more green house gasses into the air then can be absorbed.

The basic science on warming is trivial. Literally any of these can, nad have, been test by any decent College lab. Hell, even A good high school lab could do it. This is why deniers never talk about the actual science and only talk about cherry picked data points, or make ad homs.

So, the climate is warming due to more energy being trapped.
Climate Change is the impact AGW has on the climate. They are related but separate issues.
So, why would adding energy to a system not change it?
At this point, some knuckle head is about to slam his meat hooks onto his keyboard in what he thinks is a clever retort,. I will take this time to remind him the new equilibrium is only reach when the change in energy stops, and there is no rule saying the planet need to be livable when equilibrium is achieved.

More to the point:
Why do you think there is a 97% consensus? Why do you think countries whose best interest would be that there is no AGW agree there is AGW?
Some people think there is a weird conspiracy. That would mean the China is in on it for no reason. Why?

Please look at that cartoon: it has a caption "start here", which points at the scientist's research.

The research we're talking about, the next IPCC WG1 report, will be published *NEXT WEEK*

So why are we reading the newspapers or watching the TV shows ALREADY? Wouldn't it be a bit ... saner ... to wait 1-2 weeks until we have (A) downloaded the actual damn WG1 report from here, and (B) your favourite (see cartoon) "local eyewitless news" interpretation of it?

Thank you. Apologies for shouting, fellow Slashdotters.

(same AC)

Good news; only 6 weeks to the next WG1 report: https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/

What is the *global* (not just Mauna-Loa) CO2 average? Is it rising precipitously? How fast? Its hard to get a straight answer for these questions from Google.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you never heard of the IPCC reports, or wikipedia.

No. http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/bereiter09grl.pdf [unibe.ch]

I'm not sure how this paper relates, would you mind explaining?

The first couple sentences in the results section should indicate what he's talking about (in that he disagrees with the value his parent post puts in ice cores). I haven't read enough to know whether I agree or not.

No. http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/bereiter09grl.pdf [unibe.ch]

I'm not sure how this paper relates, would you mind explaining?

At all other times in the planet's history when there have been periods of warming, it's taken orders of magnitude longer than the current period.

No.

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html

How do we know? Ice cores.

No.

http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~stocker/papers/bereiter09grl.pdf

If by "minimal warming affect" you mean a few degrees, then yes, that's what all the fuss is about. Well, the few degrees of world temperature, which is an average of more varying data from many locales. There are some predictions of what will happen. How minimal or horrific those are depend on your definition of "minimal" and "horror;" whether we're talking 20 or 200 years; and, for some, whether they live there or not.

The prediction states 0.2 - 0.5 per decade ... of course there's been 2 decades, not one ... how am I reading this wrong ?

I don't know how many times I have to say this. The prediction is for the 21st century AVERAGE. Because the warming accelerates over time, this means that early 21st century warming will be LESS than average (and late 21st century more than average). The prediction for 1990-2010 is therefore NOT 0.2-0.5 C/decade. To find out what it IS, you have to look at the transient warming curve, not the century average. That's Figure 6.11.

The chart is unreadable for the resolution required, reading off the exact number is not really doable. But I'm certain the gradient of the BaU scenario is far more than 0.2 degrees/decade

I came to a different conclusion. You're looking at the middle panel, right? And you're looking at the BaU curve, not the "BAU equilibrium" curve above it, right?

I had to eyeball it too, but I put a rectangular lasso around it with my PDF viewer selection tool to help. When I first did it it looked like about 0.25 C warming for the two decades 1990-2010. I did it again, and now it looks like about 0.35-0.4 C warming for 2 decades to me, so about 0.18-0.2 C/decade. I could be off, but it's definitely not 0.5 C/decade. However, their plot doesn't give error bands, so it's hard to say what the range of predicted warming for those decades is supposed to be.

The average rate given by the IPCC is 0.3 degrees.

This is the wrong number to use, for reasons I've explained three times now, so I'm going to ignore most of the rest of your argument. But one comment:

The chances of the first decade warming outside of the interval are 1/20, the chances of the first two intervals to both be below spec are in reality less than 1/400 (=(1-95%) * 5%))

This assumes the trend errors are independent, when temperatures in successive decades are rather autocorrelated. (And of course it's based on the wrong interval in the first place.)

I'm still curious, do the next reports have a better prediction?

They have somewhat different predictions. It's hard to say whether they're better, because being newer, there are fewer data to validate their predictions. Also hard to compare directly to the first assessment report because they've changed their emissions scenarios from what they assumed in 1990 for BAU. (This also includes non-CO2 emissions; e.g., the newer IPCC reports include some cooling from industrial aerosols in the troposphere.)

The latest IPCC report projects about 0.2 C/decade for near term warming (so the next couple decades, not the 21st century average - and of course somewhat less than that for the last two decades). You can find plots of the projections if you dig around chapter 10; these plots also have error bands on them.

I really don't know why we should leave that sweat spot either 2 degrees Celsius down or up. According to the 4th assesment report of IPPC WG1 even the low scenario B1 has a best estimate of 1.8 degrees C warming till the end of this century (page 13 (PDF)). So atm we have a rise, let's keep that in check.

Here's a better translation (You were right about two or more years, or in the exact wording, "no less than two"): Swedish Constitution (You'll have to scroll down to chapter four article eight).

Untrue.

The next large reduction in northern summer insolation, similar to those that started past Ice Ages, is due to begin in 30,000 years.

That's according to IPCC Working Group 1

You're a law student, right? So when you come out of your cocoon and bloom into a full-fledged lawyer, will you explain every nuance of case research to your clients? Will you explain in excruciating detail the specifics of which laws apply? Will you explain the finest, tiniest aspect of how those laws are enforced? Will you, in short, force each and every one of your clients to have a law degree?

Or will you just give them an overview and expect that they rely on your expertise as a lawyer to cover the details, which is why they hired you?

Anyway, you can look at the evidence yourself. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report is freely available; you might want to start with Working Group 1's report and work your way onward from there. Your law school's library may have access to relevant papers as well, which are mentioned in the IPCC reports; if not, it can probably special order them for you. Further, there's a ton of blogs out there written by scientists that tend to discuss global warming if you look for them. Finally, I'm sure there's a climatology department somewhere near you; you can start e-mailing them (or go over there and talk to them!) if you have specific questions.

The freely available book "Reengineering Patterns" (http://scg.unibe.ch/download/oorp/) contains practical advice and shows systematic ways to tackle these situations froma variety of angles. Without knowing more details about your problem it is hard to recommend concrete steps, but _do_ read the book in any case.

I don't know the relationship between Ahmadinejad and the supreme council but I'm assuming he can't say too much they don't approve of.

From the Iranian Constitution (unofficial copy at http://www.servat.unibe.ch/law/icl/ir00000_.html

Article 60 [Executive]
The functions of the executive, except in the matters that are directly placed under the jurisdiction of the Leadership by the Constitution, are to be exercised by the President and the Ministers.

Article 110 [Leadership Duties and Powers]
(1) Following are the duties and powers of the Leadership:
1. Delineation of the general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran after consultation with the Nation's Exigency Council.
2. Supervision over the proper execution of the general policies of the system.
3. Issuing decrees for national referenda.
4. Assuming supreme command of the Armed Forces.
5. Declaration of war and peace and the mobilization of the Armed Forces.
6. Appointment, dismissal, and resignation of:
a. the religious men on the Guardian Council,
b. the supreme judicial authority of the country,
c. the head of the radio and television network of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
d. the chief of the joint staff,
e. the chief commander of the Isalmic Revolution Guards Corps, and
f. the supreme commanders of the Armed Forces.
7. Resolving differences between the three wings of the Armed Forces and regulation of their relations.
8. Resolving the problems which cannot be solved by conventional methods, through the Nation's Exigency Council.
9. Signing the decree formalizing the election of the President of the Republic by the people. The suitability of candidates for the Presidency of the Republic, with respect to the qualifications specified in the Constitution, must be confirmed before elections take place by the Guardian Council, and, in the case of the first term of a President, by the Leadership. 10. Dismissal of the President of the Republic, with due regard for the interests of the country, after the Supreme Court holds him guilty of the violation of his constitutional duties, or after a vote of the Islamic Consultative Assembly testifying to his incompetence on the basis of Article 89.
11. Pardoning or reducing the sentences of convicts, within the framework of Islamic criteria, on a recommendation from the Head of judicial power.
(2) The Leader may delegate part of his duties and powers to another person.

We are sure, eh?

I know that's the point you are unable to accept, but yes, we are as certain as it is possible to be about physical events as complex as these. Hopefully our certainty will prove ill founded, but unfortunately that seems extremely unlikely. The science is here. You can read what has been established (and to what level of certitude) for yourself. But you are not even going to read the summary, are you?

Go read 'Red Hot Lies', or watch 'Great Global Warming Swindle'.

That sums it up really. The authoritative science you won't trust, but debunked denialist propaganda you swallow with the credulity of a small child. I find it incredible that people can be gullable enough to be taken in by this kind of nonesense. But like they say there's a sucker born every minute, and I suppose it's no surprise you have been played for a fool, after all you actually want to be deceived, don't you?

This is in Sweden, not the USA. The US constitution does not apply.

But we do have all the content in First Amendment to the United States Constitution in our own constitution: semi-official translation of The Swedish Constitution (another easier to navigate translation), including a Freedom of The Press Act. It was not just the French Revolution you inspired in the 18th century, there was a lot of European countries that started to evolve their own parliamentarism(*).

These kind of texts are pretty impossible to translate perfectly from Swedish to English, unfortunatly it get even more tedious in the translation, but you get the general idea.

(*) We actually never had it as bad as the French, we have never ever had feudalism (the closest thing we had was the thrall system, it was graduatelly outlawed until 1335 and was never as bad as the continental feudal system). With the exception of a few short lived (literally) despots we had an almost-democracy with elected kings and queens (it was kind of like the US Presidency, but they usually had less power, was not elected for a specific period, had to have their own private army (or be buddies with people who had one) and only landowners could vote) until Christian the Tyrant 1520-21. A weaker kind of parliamentarism continued to exist even under the new era of hereditary monarcy (that was actually instituted by the man who defeatad Christian the Tyrant, Gustav Vasa). Oh, and every free man had the right to say whatever he wanted (freedom of speak), at least at the Ting (Tingsfrid), he could get killed afterwards though.

Quoted in entirety because it is informative, insightful, and the reason "countless news agencies" don't have anything to worry from profiting from the work they do. Be they Swedish or USA.

This is in Sweden, not the USA. The US constitution does not apply.

But we do have all the content in First Amendment to the United States Constitution in our own constitution: semi-official translation of The Swedish Constitution (another easier to navigate translation), including a Freedom of The Press Act. It was not just the French Revolution you inspired in the 18th century, there was a lot of European countries that started to evolve their own parliamentarism(*).

These kind of texts are pretty impossible to translate perfectly from Swedish to English, unfortunatly it get even more tedious in the translation, but you get the general idea.

(*) We actually never had it as bad as the French, we have never ever had feudalism (the closest thing we had was the thrall system, it was graduatelly outlawed until 1335 and was never as bad as the continental feudal system). With the exception of a few short lived (literally) despots we had an almost-democracy with elected kings and queens (it was kind of like the US Presidency, but they usually had less power, was not elected for a specific period, had to have their own private army (or be buddies with people who had one) and only landowners could vote) until Christian the Tyrant 1520-21. A weaker kind of parliamentarism continued to exist even under the new era of hereditary monarcy (that was actually instituted by the man who defeatad Christian the Tyrant, Gustav Vasa). Oh, and every free man had the right to say whatever he wanted (freedom of speak), at least at the Ting (Tingsfrid), he could get killed afterwards though.

[Where] has a major application of Philosophy developed in Computer Science in the last 2.5 years?

Sometimes I like to think of roles (or Smalltalk traits) as an exploration of Platonic ideals and Kantian noumena, in the idea that our means of interaction between objects depends solely on our understanding of their phenomena.

- Do you think the government has a real, and appropriate, interest in knowing who and what is coming in and out of the country?

- If so, why is it inappropriate to check at the borders (or at the nearest available transit points) that those crossing have their citizenship documentation or passport and visa documentation, as they are required to carry by law for all cross-border travel?

But that's the issue: the checkpoints are not at the border. They are well within the country, long after people have completed all necessary customs and immigration formalities and been lawfully granted entry to the country. They may have never left the country at all.

The U.S. Constitution sounds really good on paper, but it's the application that is failing here. These are the principles on which your country was founded (good ones, IMHO), and it's high time people stood up to them. You might try reading the constitution of the former Soviet Union as an example of what's on paper and how it's actually applied. Article 29 is particularly amusing in retrospect.

Here in Canada our Constitution has an explicit opt-out clause (Section 33, commonly known as the Notwithstanding Clause), that allows governments to pass legislation that violates certain sections of the Charter, but only for a limited time, and only certain sections. Quebec used it when their French-language sign law was challenged in court. Alberta have threatened to use it to block gay marriage.

What are the equivalent U.S. provisions?

...laura

"it is dissapointing from my point of view!"

I'm not surprised. Check out the kernel it's running on.

guest@goosh.org:/web> uname -r
    1) uname
The uname() function shall return a string naming the current system in the character array sysname. Similarly, nodename shall contain the name of this node ...
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/uname.html

    2) uname 1

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=uname&sektion=1

    3) uname function.
uname is NOT in the ANSII library but is handy for getting system information. It will return handy things like:. System type (name). Host name (Nodename). ...
http://www.space.unibe.ch/comp_doc/c_manual/C/FUNCTIONS/uname.html

    4) Unix man pages: uname (2)
UNAME(2) Linux Programmer's Manual UNAME(2) NAME uname - get name and information about current kernel SYNOPSIS #include int uname(struct ...
http://www.rt.com/man/uname.2.html

Interesting question. have you read the constitution?
http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/af00000_.html
Constitutions are only useful if the government uses it as more than a wall decoration. (yes, I know we are also on that slippery slope).
Claiming to be a constitutional republic and acting like a constitutional republic are two different things.
When your constitution claims liberty, but follows it with "no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam", true liberty can not be achieved.

If you're not only looking for tools but rather systematic approaches, then the book "Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns" http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/OORP/ is highly recommended, even for non-OO projects. Understanding code does not get you very far if you try to understand the wrong parts, in the wrong order, for the wrong purposes.

nope. according to the decision of the german federal constitutional court only the third stanza is considered as the anthem of federal republic of germany.

• Smalltalk - The original OO language and programming environment
• • The Smalltalk Portal
  • For a bit Free of fun and games
  • Gratis Very Fast - Recommended
  • Gratis non-commercial version of the top-shelf product
  • The online Smalltalk library - gratis
• Ruby - OO in a sane file oriented environment
• • The Ruby Portal
  • Buy the best of the books. Only $25 for a pdf download.
  • The gratis first edition as a WWW site
• SQL - You'll need to store your data somehow
• • PostgreSQL - The Free Relational Database off the top-shelf
  • MySQL - The fast, and most popular, one for Web use
  • Gratis book - PostgreSQL Introduction and Concepts as a WWW site
• C and C++ - Get these downloadable books FAQ & Tutorial.
• • The New C Standard - A huge well written book
  • comp.lang.c FAQ'
  • My own modest contribution

Ok, so a lot of the Democrats are fascists who would betray the Constitution too. Not suprising; They and the Republicans are both sides of the same, rotten-to-the-core coin IMO. That doesn't change the fact that no new arguments are being put forward in support of the warrantless surveillance program.

If the people using the cell phones are in other countries, then the CIA is free to tap away, infiltrate, and pattern-recognize to their heart's content. Since the calls are not between American citizens, the Fourth Amendment is not in effect and I never claimed otherwise. But then you go on to claim that the only phones being tapped include those known to have ties to terrorists, and that the FBI goes and gets a warrant within the US. You may recall that no one not in the US spy agencies knows which calls are being tapped, as senior Bush administration officials made quite a show of claiming that such knowledge (or even knowledge that it happens) would endanger national security. And why are you claiming that the FBI goes and gets a warrant, when the article that nucleated this thread is titled "warrantless surveillance?" If the calls in question involve terminals within United States, the call may be tapped at the remote terminus or it may be tapped in the US terminus with a warrant.

But again, this is moot. If FISA doesn't help with shifting networks of one-time phones or other technologies, too bad. Unlike the Soviet Constitution, the US Constitution does not have an article 121, line 15 that lets the President suspend the Constitution "in the interests of defence." Either the government can get a 3/4 majority and revoke the Fourth Amendment (in which case the United States is dead anyway) or accept the rule of law.

You missed some important clauses in the Chinese constitution... such as:

Article 1 describes China as "a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship" (emphasis mine)

Also, according to the NYT (quoting "Chinese legal experts"), in China "courts... usually do not test laws and government decisions for fidelity to the Constitution."

In China, the following are illegal: "to speak out freely, air views fully, hold great debates, and write big-character posters."

(All of this from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Constitution)

And then there is the very broad Article 51: "The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society, and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens."

http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/ch00000_.html

In my opinion the Chinese constitution is not a significant document, as it does not really guarantee any freedoms or rights to the Chinese people.

(Disclaimer/FYI: I'm American, my GF is Chinese. She and I have had some discussions of our political/legal systems, but she really has no interest in politics at all - AFAICT that is a result of her being raised in a state where it can be dangerous to have an interest in politics.)

I noted in my article Boxing in the LLRing, which despite positive responses Slashdot rejected in favor of Roland Piquepaille's daily column and various political commentary, that Squeak has an amazing debugger (I am not going to call it a full-blown analyzer) that allows you to debug applications as they are running on the very interesting Seaside application server.

As described in this paper (pdf), Seaside provides multiple control flows and a high level of abstraction that is very useful to web app developers.

The 4500 word article is coverage of a 300 developer "Lightweight Languages" all-day seminar held in a real boxing ring in Tokyo, covering 30 languages and frameworks including Perl, Python, Ruby, Haskell, OCaml, Squeak, and many others.

• Squeak Toys
• More Squeaking
• Very fast implementation
• For grownups
• The Smalltalk Portal

• Postgresql RDBMS

• Free Smalltalk Library
• PostgreSQL Book

From the Chinese Constitution to 2004 here we have some selected excerpts.
(Try to imagine this being read aloud to you through a megaphone.)

Article 28 [Public Order] The State maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other criminal activities that endanger State security; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.

Article 40 [Correspondence] The freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People's Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon the freedom and privacy of citizens' correspondence except in cases where, to meet the needs of state security or of investigation into criminal offenses, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with procedures prescribed by law.

Article 41 [Freedom of Speech] (1) Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, any state organ or functionary for violation of the law or dereliction of duty; but fabrication or distortion of facts for the purpose of libel or frame-up is prohibited. (2) The state organ concerned must deal with complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposure, or retaliate against the citizens making them. (3) Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civic rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.

Article 53 [Obedience to the Constitution] Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the Constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property, and observe labor discipline and public order and respect social ethics.

Article 54 [Integrity of the Motherland] It is the duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to safeguard the security, honor, and interests of the motherland; they must not commit acts detrimental to the security, honor and interests of the motherland.

Smalltalk, because you are completely isolated from the boring mechanics of programming. Nasty things like files, editors, compilers, linkers.
http://www.smalltalk.org/main/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

Smalltalk, because there are 2 very good free (gratis),
http://www.exept.de/exept/english/Smalltalk/frame_ uebersicht.html
http://smalltalk.cincom.com/index.ssp

and at least 2 Free ( Libre ) implementations.
http://www.squeak.org/
http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/smalltalk.ht ml

Smalltalk, because is was deliberately designed for small people to have fun,
yet you can grow-up with it.
http://www.squeakland.org/

Smalltalk, because it is well documented.
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html
http://www.whysmalltalk.com/tutorials/visualworks. htm

In a couple of words, it Just Works, and your sanity will not be harmed.

If you can't drop the "program in a file" paradigm, then checkout
http://www.ruby-lang.org/
http://www.python.org/

Don't even dream about anything BASIC because your dreams will turn into really horrendous nightmares before you can even turn around twice.

I'd bet the censored material was a clear violation of article 51 of the constitution.

You may laugh, but consider this; The Netherlands, the pesky little country I'm from actually has secret treaties with the US. These supercede our own constitution.

Do you have any citation for that? I'm Dutch and I've never heard of anything like this. In any case it sounds like it would be quite unconstitutional:

Article 91
(1) The Kingdom shall not be bound by treaties, nor shall such treaties be denounced without the prior approval of the Parliament. The cases in which approval is not required shall be specified by Act of Parliament.
(...)
(3) Any provisions of a treaty that conflict with the Constitution or which lead to conflicts with it may be approved by the Chambers of the Parliament only if at least two-thirds of the votes cast are in favor. (...)

Please don't perpetuate urban legends without providing proof.

We already have something called transcranial magnetic stimulation. See:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumb er=1300793
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/vision/medical-vision/ surgery/tms.html -- most relevant to discussion, has section on visual signal injection
http://www.biomag.hus.fi/tms/
http://www.mp.uni-tuebingen.de/mp/index.php?id=94
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic _stimulation
http://pni.unibe.ch/TMS.htm

I applaud your professor or thesis advisor or whoever for this real-world task. Here's a few resources which I wouldn't do without:
Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns
Reading Computer Programs: Instructor's Guide and Exercise
Tips for Reading Code

C++ long => 32 Bit
Java long => 64 Bit

So you are comparing Apples with Melons ;)

Using my mighty +1 Karma Bonus Power...

Can somebody please mod the parent up?? The grandparent poster is apparently too clueless to create Java vs. C++ benchmarks.

Java primitives:

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/nutsa ndbolts/datatypes.html

C primitives:

http://www.phim.unibe.ch/comp_doc/c_manual/C/CONCE PT/data_types.html

Let's see the benchmark with either int vs. long or long vs., er, long long (or __int64 or whatever).

And then, can't we all just get along? /me ducks

Which begs an even bigger question - should us humans change the entire planet's ecosphere as we see fit, or instead should we work within constraints to minimize our overall impact on the ecosphere?

Anyway, warmer temperatures might provide more arable land in climes that are colder now, but could also create more arid land in currently fertile areas. Plus, the melting of polar caps would change sea-water salinity, which affects the thermohaline circulation, which affects local temperatures.

See this site, for example. Note that towards the end when they discuss effects of global warming it's still very parameter dependent, so the exact effects are difficult to predict.

Most century scale carbon cycle analyses I've seen don't even mention the volcanic component.

Here's a link which doesn't agree with your claim http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html . In fact it has it the other way around - 150 years of volcanic emissions are roughly equal to one year of human emissions.

Also, if you're right, exactly where is the huge spike in atmospheric carbon coming from, anyway? See http://www.climate.unibe.ch/clim_recon/co2.html. See that orange spike on the right? That look natural to you?

Note that this data is directly measured from well-dated bubbles trapped in ice cores. This is not a speculative reconstruction. It's observational data.

You'd think you could google.

NATO document affect on local climate human impact reference ref ref ref ref ref ref ref

Here's the very first hit I got on Google when I searched for "c switch case break"

Oh, yes I did. Try searching for "nordic heat pump" and "climate change", and read some of the many peer-reviewed climatology publications validating the model. Your ignorance of them doesn't stop the climate from changing.

By the way, any particular reason your post is between /* and */ ?

He's making a comment.

Of course, there is transcranial magnetic stimulation.

cam

Good point inheritance and class hierarchies must serve some psychological need among OO professors and authors. They're certainly not the end goal of good design.

Since you bring up Smalltalk, you might like Traits in Smalltalk, research on alternate mechanisms of polymorphism, behavior, and code reuse.