Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I have held the opinion that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is so much BS, and that within 6 months of forces leaving, Iraq will experience civil war and finally devolve into an Islamic republic which will not look favorably on the West.
I think this is a very sound response. I served in the industry from the early 70's, and retired in 2006. Learned many languages and wrote lots of code during those years. The poster already understands programming, so he is really looking for how to upgrade his language base. He does not need, in general, to go read a bunch of introductory books. He needs to have a problem to solve, choose an unfamiliar language to solve it in, and then dive in, consulting quick references and online tutorials when progress is blocked by lack of knowledge. That is how I learned C, Java, Perl, and PHP. (And HTML and Javascript.)
From what the poster says of his background, I think the biggest, most difficult challenge he has to face is learning about object-oriented programming languages and methodologies. I know when I was trying to get past Fortran, Algol, and such that was my biggest hurdle, and teaching myself was a real challenge. But once understood, the programming world becomes a brighter place. Good luck!
I was a faculty member of the University of Texas back in the early 70s, when the football team was consistently #1 or close to it. The university decided to build a big expansion of the stadium because of the huge interest from the public. I remember attending a large meeting of all the faculty at one point where the administration attempted to get the entire faculty to voluntary agree to a 10% pay cut to fund the stadium work -- surely we thought it would be the most worthwhile thing to do.
In the end, it did not happen, and the whole incident left me with a really foul outlook on the value of university-level football for the rest of my life.
I have this incredible vision of thieves grabbing honest people, throwing them flat on the ground, and then kneeling on their backs while the thieves then pay homage to whatever deity they believe in. Seems like the beginning of a movie plot...
Back in those days, most or all small computers required loading the OS from paper tape, sometimes even between jobs, not just at the bootup time. Shoot, even big computers did, too. I remember when I went to grad school in the mid 60s we used a CDC 1604 with no disk (or other random access storage). There was a tape drive permanently used to hold the boot tape containing the OS, and between each student job (typically compile, execute, and print for a single program) the OS was reloaded from the tape. That meant a LOT of the time taken to run small student jobs was spent rewinding the boot tape! A big reason why operation was done that way was there was no protection within the computer -- every program could diddle every word of memory. Student jobs could and did crash the OS. On the other hand we could also do some very interesting system-level programming projects.
And, to return to small computers, I remember using one (of which I no longer remember the name) where after loading the OS from paper tape, one then had to load the first pass of the FORTRAN compiler from tape, then feed in the FORTRAN program from paper tape. The compiler first pass processed the program and punched its results on paper tape and stopped. Then one loaded the second pass of the compiler from paper tape, which read the first-pass results from paper tape, finished the code generation and punched out a binary paper tape. Then you loaded the program loader from paper tape, which read the binary paper tape and then as many of the library paper tapes as needed. At that point an absolute binary paper tape could be punched that could be loaded and run in future. Pressing the appropriate switch would run the program, so you could find out that you had a bug.
Debugging and running programs is a bit easier than that today. It was a very cumbersome process, as you can surmise. Complicating it all was the fact that paper tape punching was mechanically very unreliable, and it was very hard to get through all those steps and end up with a tape that was useful at all. Yet, we persisted because we wanted to see the computer do what we wanted it to do by our own creativity!
The 5 standard defined character entities for XML work: & (= &) ' (=') " (=") < (=<) > (=>)
The ampersand, apostrophe, and quote work fine as themselves, but the angle brackets require using the encodings.
Em dash — works, as you can see: —
There is a list of defined character entities for HTML here: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html
Unfortunately, Slashdot does not seem to accommodate them very well. I tried μ for Greek mu, and that did not work at all.
For years in California, one could not buy more than 2 packages of NyQuil or anything containing pseudoephedrine at one time. In NZ, where I live now, purchase of such over the counter drugs requires photo id, and they record your details. If you look suitably stuffed up and miserable, you may be able to talk them into selling you 2 packages at the same time. Starting November 1, pseudoephedrine becomes a prescription-only drug. That is going to wreak havoc on me because I have never found another drug that handled cold symptoms for me anywhere near as well as pseudoephedrine.
I did not create the example myself. I read it somewhere. The only thing that is moving faster than light is the point where the blades meet, a non-physical object, while closing. The blades do not move faster than light in the example.
"Death panels" in the US have existed for a very long time. They are called "health insurance claims adjusters", who have long held sway over who gets what treatment. It's silly to think that things will get worse.
As this comment says, governments who run single-payer health systems frequently exercise judgment over whether treatment will be administered or not. Going on the waiting list for a procedure and being dropped from the list before treatment is very common.
Throughout history, more deaths were caused in the name of religion (pick one, well maybe not Buddhist) than any political philosophy. And they became especially deadly when they teamed up with politics. And that is a major reason, if not the ONLY reason for the American constitutional prohibition against the government "establishing" a religion. (And no, establishment in this sense does not mean creating one.)
Yes, you do. But for the purposes of TFA, the transmission of information occurs after the photon has been transmitted to separate it from its entangled partner. A major question here is "What is the information, and what does it mean to transmit it?"
Part of the issue is that the method involves state changes that occur between quantum entangled items that are separated. First the entangled items have to be created, then separated, then sent some distance away. Finally, the quantum "information" can be transmitted between them instantaneously. But the process of separating the entangled items cannot proceed faster than the speed of light. So, when does the transmission of information actually begin?
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, someone speaks the truth!
Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I have held the opinion that "bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" is so much BS, and that within 6 months of forces leaving, Iraq will experience civil war and finally devolve into an Islamic republic which will not look favorably on the West.
I think this is a very sound response. I served in the industry from the early 70's, and retired in 2006. Learned many languages and wrote lots of code during those years. The poster already understands programming, so he is really looking for how to upgrade his language base. He does not need, in general, to go read a bunch of introductory books. He needs to have a problem to solve, choose an unfamiliar language to solve it in, and then dive in, consulting quick references and online tutorials when progress is blocked by lack of knowledge. That is how I learned C, Java, Perl, and PHP. (And HTML and Javascript.)
From what the poster says of his background, I think the biggest, most difficult challenge he has to face is learning about object-oriented programming languages and methodologies. I know when I was trying to get past Fortran, Algol, and such that was my biggest hurdle, and teaching myself was a real challenge. But once understood, the programming world becomes a brighter place. Good luck!
I was a faculty member of the University of Texas back in the early 70s, when the football team was consistently #1 or close to it. The university decided to build a big expansion of the stadium because of the huge interest from the public. I remember attending a large meeting of all the faculty at one point where the administration attempted to get the entire faculty to voluntary agree to a 10% pay cut to fund the stadium work -- surely we thought it would be the most worthwhile thing to do.
In the end, it did not happen, and the whole incident left me with a really foul outlook on the value of university-level football for the rest of my life.
I have this incredible vision of thieves grabbing honest people, throwing them flat on the ground, and then kneeling on their backs while the thieves then pay homage to whatever deity they believe in. Seems like the beginning of a movie plot ...
Except that:
-- We fight
-- We pay
That is surely messed up.
This whole idea is so wrongheaded that it is unspeakable.
... and an amazingly large number of crackpots.
more likely to get vinegar, I think.
Back in those days, most or all small computers required loading the OS from paper tape, sometimes even between jobs, not just at the bootup time. Shoot, even big computers did, too. I remember when I went to grad school in the mid 60s we used a CDC 1604 with no disk (or other random access storage). There was a tape drive permanently used to hold the boot tape containing the OS, and between each student job (typically compile, execute, and print for a single program) the OS was reloaded from the tape. That meant a LOT of the time taken to run small student jobs was spent rewinding the boot tape! A big reason why operation was done that way was there was no protection within the computer -- every program could diddle every word of memory. Student jobs could and did crash the OS. On the other hand we could also do some very interesting system-level programming projects.
And, to return to small computers, I remember using one (of which I no longer remember the name) where after loading the OS from paper tape, one then had to load the first pass of the FORTRAN compiler from tape, then feed in the FORTRAN program from paper tape. The compiler first pass processed the program and punched its results on paper tape and stopped. Then one loaded the second pass of the compiler from paper tape, which read the first-pass results from paper tape, finished the code generation and punched out a binary paper tape. Then you loaded the program loader from paper tape, which read the binary paper tape and then as many of the library paper tapes as needed. At that point an absolute binary paper tape could be punched that could be loaded and run in future. Pressing the appropriate switch would run the program, so you could find out that you had a bug.
Debugging and running programs is a bit easier than that today. It was a very cumbersome process, as you can surmise. Complicating it all was the fact that paper tape punching was mechanically very unreliable, and it was very hard to get through all those steps and end up with a tape that was useful at all. Yet, we persisted because we wanted to see the computer do what we wanted it to do by our own creativity!
The 5 standard defined character entities for XML work: & (= &) ' (=') " (=") < (=<) > (=>) The ampersand, apostrophe, and quote work fine as themselves, but the angle brackets require using the encodings. Em dash — works, as you can see: —
There is a list of defined character entities for HTML here: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html Unfortunately, Slashdot does not seem to accommodate them very well. I tried μ for Greek mu, and that did not work at all.
Ummm. How about the Preview function when entering a comment.
Yes, according to Wikipedia. And according to what I learned when first studying the metric system about 50 years ago.
The chances are still close to zero, your examples really just prove the point. So few make earth-shattering discoveries out of the many who dabble.
Consider getting involved in a FOSS project. You can do that from home with the equipment you already have, probably.
For years in California, one could not buy more than 2 packages of NyQuil or anything containing pseudoephedrine at one time. In NZ, where I live now, purchase of such over the counter drugs requires photo id, and they record your details. If you look suitably stuffed up and miserable, you may be able to talk them into selling you 2 packages at the same time. Starting November 1, pseudoephedrine becomes a prescription-only drug. That is going to wreak havoc on me because I have never found another drug that handled cold symptoms for me anywhere near as well as pseudoephedrine.
I did not create the example myself. I read it somewhere. The only thing that is moving faster than light is the point where the blades meet, a non-physical object, while closing. The blades do not move faster than light in the example.
"Death panels" in the US have existed for a very long time. They are called "health insurance claims adjusters", who have long held sway over who gets what treatment. It's silly to think that things will get worse.
As this comment says, governments who run single-payer health systems frequently exercise judgment over whether treatment will be administered or not. Going on the waiting list for a procedure and being dropped from the list before treatment is very common.
Throughout history, more deaths were caused in the name of religion (pick one, well maybe not Buddhist) than any political philosophy. And they became especially deadly when they teamed up with politics. And that is a major reason, if not the ONLY reason for the American constitutional prohibition against the government "establishing" a religion. (And no, establishment in this sense does not mean creating one.)
How on Earth can you say that?
I agree. The typical American really has no idea what "socialism" is. "Fascism" also is not comprehended by most.
My 0.02 in whatever currency you care to choose.
Yes, you do. But for the purposes of TFA, the transmission of information occurs after the photon has been transmitted to separate it from its entangled partner. A major question here is "What is the information, and what does it mean to transmit it?"
Part of the issue is that the method involves state changes that occur between quantum entangled items that are separated. First the entangled items have to be created, then separated, then sent some distance away. Finally, the quantum "information" can be transmitted between them instantaneously. But the process of separating the entangled items cannot proceed faster than the speed of light. So, when does the transmission of information actually begin?
What is hard is believing that a Slashdot reader does not know what an ansible is. Surely you jest when pretending to not know.