Oh, give me a break. What the hell does "Kids that age do not need to be asking" mean? If it means that parents aren't prepared to discuss the meaning of certain types of words with their children *at all*, then maybe they should have thought twice about having kids in a free society.
But really, the kind of justification above is dangerously vague, and is a great example of the type of legislative argument that's gotten us into this mess to begin with. At the risk of sounding like Eric Raymond, no, this particular ruling doesn't lead directly to censorship, but it's another un-asked-for edict by an un-elected committee in favor of a standard that they are unable to (and is most likely impossible to) formally and clearly define. Censorship lies a short distance down the road.
Okay, haven't read the book, and I guess dhweeler is distilling the rules down to a soundbyte, but isn't #1 the most important and difficult part of debugging? I mean, if I knew system Foo ver. Bar had such-and-such an idiosyncrasy, I could code around it, but Googling for hours to find the one message board post that lets you Understand The System can be aneurysm-inducing. It's not even always the idiosyncrasies of a system -- the sheer volume of stuff you have to learn about I/O conventions, operating systems, etc., in order to write a useful program in a non-toy language boggles the mind. I'm surprised people are able write programs in the first place.
Not to be confused with...
on
King Rat
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· Score: 1
Doctor Rat, by William Kotzwinkle. Also quite good.
Have you seen the actors for the BBC miniseries? Have you seen BBC Zaphod / his second head? The BBC Vogons? This casting will definitely be an improvement.
How long before some enterprising pre-teen turns that Microsoft Update Services nonsense into a tool for "managing and distributing critical Windows exploits?"
Re:This idea is genius.
on
MIT Everyware
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· Score: 1
The "value" in attending an institution of higher learning has never been in the "knowledge they are willing to put out there," which is usually available in the form of a used textbook on eBay for about $40, it's in the facilities and people that help you absorb said knowledge.
If you've got the sponge-like mind and steel-like self-discipline to learn and practice straight from the textbook, more power to you, but most people don't.
Actually, this already happens, though not quite the way you're describing.
For example, I don't believe Rockstar wrote the graphics/physics engine behind GTA:Vice City -- they licensed it from Sony.
It's probably a Good Thing if game companies can outsource or license the technical work required for their products and spend more time/money on the design. So nix on the out-of-house character modeling and artwork, double-plus-good on the out-of-house 3D engine design.
After all, I think we've all played games that looked great but just plain sucked to play, and as console hardware gets more sophisticated, we can expect to see more of them.
I haven't studied this particular problem much, but some theorems aren't susceptible to an elegant hand-proof -- one famous proof of graph 3- or 4-colorability (can't remember which) required the use of a computer to address thousands of cases and subcases.
I think I saw this one back when it was a movie called The Core (imdb.com).
Seriously, complaints about the spoilers aside, this book sounds like a real piece of bestseller-list crap. Though I haven't read it, I think the comparison to Stephenson is probably inappropriate; Snow Crash's exploration of Sumerian myth does not require any of it to be true -- it's a purely theoretical excursion.
Besides, even when it comes to pseudo-archaeology, Atlantis is yesterday's news, long past being insulting to real scientists or titillating to morons.
I was initially surprised at the price -- 50,000 yen didn't used to be worth terribly much -- but given current exchange rates, this thing is going for about $420 USD.
Nothing sexy about this, or even cryptographically interesting. They're just preying on one of the weak logistical links in a public key encryption scheme -- the way you keep your private key a secret.
I'm torn. On the one hand, comic strips like User Friendly always piss me off with references to "lusers" and equally obnoxious inside-jokes. People who write software might want to receive feedback from the people who use it, and especially those who are paid to support software should understand that not everybody knows or wants to know how things work under the hood. It took me several years to realize that computers are, in fact, deathly boring, and the root (pardon the pun) perversity of the geek community (which I adore) is its appetite for them.
On the other hand, I've always thought of Linux as an anti-corporate entity -- you get it free, you figure out how to set it up, you reap the reward of a stabler, faster system, but at the same time, nobody's bottom line but yours is riding on the fact that you're satisfied. The open source community is doing YOU a favor by writing free, fast, and infinitely portable software, and anything more than that is a bigger favor. Businesses who need someone to blame if something goes wrong should not be running Linux. Microsoft has plenty of machinery set up if someone wants to blame them. Linux is a gift horse.
The fact that nobody can actually look it in the mouth may be the Linux-Killer as mentioned in the article, or maybe only a kind of paralysis. Linux will continue to run darkly on hidden computers on the dark side of the planet.
The idea of continents is inaccurate, since, as I believe someone mentioned, many net users move freely between communities, possessing multiple "citizenship." It's also disturbingly marketable.
I think a better way of describing the Internet (if such an undertaking is possible or worthwhile) might be to define categories for the character of the individuals who are part of it.
For example, there are users, like my 9 year-old sister, who don't really care what makes things go, who use the 'Net solely to exchange instant messages with their friends who live a block away.
A small gradation away might be the so-called "script kiddies," who giggle as they buy themselves a far-removed part of "hacker" culture in the form of destructive software.
On the other end of the spectrum are people who comprise the vast, dark, erudite (and sometimes vulgar) mob that allows the Internet to boast McDonald's-like statistics: Readers of Slashdot tend to be of this ilk, and so are the people who traded warez on dial-up BBSes or drew ANSI art or did things that no one knew about (and wouldn't ever care about, or so they thought).
Slashdot Mirror
Au contraire -- FileMaker "Pro" is worse than both put together.
What's the pro stand for? PRObably you should start looking for another job if your department wants you to implement anything in FileMaker.
Oh, give me a break. What the hell does "Kids that age do not need to be asking" mean? If it means that parents aren't prepared to discuss the meaning of certain types of words with their children *at all*, then maybe they should have thought twice about having kids in a free society.
But really, the kind of justification above is dangerously vague, and is a great example of the type of legislative argument that's gotten us into this mess to begin with. At the risk of sounding like Eric Raymond, no, this particular ruling doesn't lead directly to censorship, but it's another un-asked-for edict by an un-elected committee in favor of a standard that they are unable to (and is most likely impossible to) formally and clearly define. Censorship lies a short distance down the road.
"Not-Cs... I hate those guys."
- Indiana Jones
You know, I actually bought Disaster Report -- it was in the bargain bin at Gamestop -- and I'd like to report that it was a disaster.
Okay, haven't read the book, and I guess dhweeler is distilling the rules down to a soundbyte, but isn't #1 the most important and difficult part of debugging? I mean, if I knew system Foo ver. Bar had such-and-such an idiosyncrasy, I could code around it, but Googling for hours to find the one message board post that lets you Understand The System can be aneurysm-inducing. It's not even always the idiosyncrasies of a system -- the sheer volume of stuff you have to learn about I/O conventions, operating systems, etc., in order to write a useful program in a non-toy language boggles the mind. I'm surprised people are able write programs in the first place.
Doctor Rat, by William Kotzwinkle. Also quite good.
Have you seen the actors for the BBC miniseries? Have you seen BBC Zaphod / his second head? The BBC Vogons? This casting will definitely be an improvement.
Man, they were all straight out of the Big Book of British Character Actors...
For Christ's sake, please mod parent up.
If you have a working version, why do you need the debugger?
Yeah -- as I understand it, it's more like a bunch of protein that knows how to get itself replicated.
Wow, that looks pretty simple... BrainFuck back-end here I come!
...has some Fair And Balanced(tm) Phantom coverage over at their site. From their comic archives:
Dude, Woah
I Hate The Stupid Phantom
...they're both written in awful languages!
How long before some enterprising pre-teen turns that Microsoft Update Services nonsense into a tool for "managing and distributing critical Windows exploits?"
The "value" in attending an institution of higher learning has never been in the "knowledge they are willing to put out there," which is usually available in the form of a used textbook on eBay for about $40, it's in the facilities and people that help you absorb said knowledge.
If you've got the sponge-like mind and steel-like self-discipline to learn and practice straight from the textbook, more power to you, but most people don't.
Actually, this already happens, though not quite the way you're describing.
For example, I don't believe Rockstar wrote the graphics/physics engine behind GTA:Vice City -- they licensed it from Sony.
It's probably a Good Thing if game companies can outsource or license the technical work required for their products and spend more time/money on the design. So nix on the out-of-house character modeling and artwork, double-plus-good on the out-of-house 3D engine design.
After all, I think we've all played games that looked great but just plain sucked to play, and as console hardware gets more sophisticated, we can expect to see more of them.
I haven't studied this particular problem much, but some theorems aren't susceptible to an elegant hand-proof -- one famous proof of graph 3- or 4-colorability (can't remember which) required the use of a computer to address thousands of cases and subcases.
I wish they'd just yelled and grounded me. Their being disappointed just makes me feel so much sorrier...
I think I saw this one back when it was a movie called The Core (imdb.com).
Seriously, complaints about the spoilers aside, this book sounds like a real piece of bestseller-list crap. Though I haven't read it, I think the comparison to Stephenson is probably inappropriate; Snow Crash's exploration of Sumerian myth does not require any of it to be true -- it's a purely theoretical excursion.
Besides, even when it comes to pseudo-archaeology, Atlantis is yesterday's news, long past being insulting to real scientists or titillating to morons.
Forget barratry -- if we're pirates, shouldn't we try a little parlay?
"Barratry"'s enough to give even the most articulate pirate nightmares, anyway.
I was initially surprised at the price -- 50,000 yen didn't used to be worth terribly much -- but given current exchange rates, this thing is going for about $420 USD.
Nothing sexy about this, or even cryptographically interesting. They're just preying on one of the weak logistical links in a public key encryption scheme -- the way you keep your private key a secret.
On the one hand, comic strips like User Friendly always piss me off with references to "lusers" and equally obnoxious inside-jokes. People who write software might want to receive feedback from the people who use it, and especially those who are paid to support software should understand that not everybody knows or wants to know how things work under the hood. It took me several years to realize that computers are, in fact, deathly boring, and the root (pardon the pun) perversity of the geek community (which I adore) is its appetite for them.
On the other hand, I've always thought of Linux as an anti-corporate entity -- you get it free, you figure out how to set it up, you reap the reward of a stabler, faster system, but at the same time, nobody's bottom line but yours is riding on the fact that you're satisfied. The open source community is doing YOU a favor by writing free, fast, and infinitely portable software, and anything more than that is a bigger favor. Businesses who need someone to blame if something goes wrong should not be running Linux. Microsoft has plenty of machinery set up if someone wants to blame them. Linux is a gift horse.
The fact that nobody can actually look it in the mouth may be the Linux-Killer as mentioned in the article, or maybe only a kind of paralysis. Linux will continue to run darkly on hidden computers on the dark side of the planet.
I think a better way of describing the Internet (if such an undertaking is possible or worthwhile) might be to define categories for the character of the individuals who are part of it.
For example, there are users, like my 9 year-old sister, who don't really care what makes things go, who use the 'Net solely to exchange instant messages with their friends who live a block away.
A small gradation away might be the so-called "script kiddies," who giggle as they buy themselves a far-removed part of "hacker" culture in the form of destructive software.
On the other end of the spectrum are people who comprise the vast, dark, erudite (and sometimes vulgar) mob that allows the Internet to boast McDonald's-like statistics: Readers of Slashdot tend to be of this ilk, and so are the people who traded warez on dial-up BBSes or drew ANSI art or did things that no one knew about (and wouldn't ever care about, or so they thought).