The goods news is that most people do not agree with... the nonsensical notion of``intellectual property''.
The good news is that most people think that Slashdot user "gacp" has no idea what he's talking about.
See how easy it is to make unfounded, sweeping generalizations without bothering to provide any support for your claims? I would be surprised if most people had more than the slightest clue what copyright law means, let alone knew enough about it to form any kind of opinion about it.
Imagine a world with no intellectual property protection. No trademarks, no copyright, no patents. Every fast food joint names itself "McDonald's" and uses the Golden Arches to capitalize on the name recognition, but you have no idea what you're going to get when you order a Big Mac. Cheap publishing companies instantly put out their own versions of popular books. They're shoddily made, but half the price, and so these companies derive most of the profits even though they didn't provide the author with any compensation for his work. The same happens with movies, music, and so forth. It's not exactly a friendly world for content creators.
Now, presumably you feel that my vision of a world without IP law is wildly inaccurate. I hope you feel that it's inaccurate, at least, otherwise you'd be nuts for supporting the complete dissolution of IP law. I'd like to hear your reasoning on why this won't happen, keeping human nature in mind. Remember, Communism doesn't sound like a bad idea on paper, either.
It would be more efficient of you to tape a big sign to your forehead with the words "Look at me! I didn't read the article!" on it.
A) The scientists working on this are not idiots. There's a fairly good possibility that one of the thousands of people working in the field might have thought of that idea already.
B) The article might also have spelled that out, had you cared to read it.
C) A standard doesn't do any good if you have no way of measuring it. As soon as you have a way of accurately and reproducably counting 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, be sure to let us know.
RTFA. The standard kilogram appears to be losing mass relative to other reference weights. Because there is no independent physical definition of the kilogram, as with the other SI units, that is all we have to go on.
I have an awful lot of trouble crediting the idea of a Dyson sphere. If you have the technology to build a Dyson sphere (if such is even possible), then I can't imagine that you don't also have much better means of producing energy.
After all, a direct matter to energy conversion of even relatively small amounts of matter would give you far more energy than a star produces. I don't feel like running the calculations, but the water from a swimming pool or two probably contains enough power to fuel any conceivable level of energy expenditure for the rest of the human race's lifespan.
Now, what's the likelihood that it's possible to build a giant sphere completely encasing a star, but that it's not possible to produce sufficient energy via more straightforward means?
I thought the same thing, until I actually RTFA. This is blatant cheating. Everything looks fine until you take the camera off the rails, and then there are clipping and display problems galore.
Further, the problems change depending on which part of the demo you're in (for instance, the "background not being cleared" bug conveniently only shows up in the part of the space demo where a largely black sky is being displayed, and so no background clear is necessary). This is cheating, plain and simple.
If he has never managed anyone in his life, then yes, he sure as hell should be immediately ruled out on that fact alone. National Sales Manager is a high-ranking position, and no sane person would hire someone with no proven experience to a position like that.
Are you actually suggesting that a college senior with no work experience outside of being a cashier at a 7-11 is qualified to be a national sales manager?
Not to be rude, but for the sake of your company, I hope you don't make hiring decisions.
Re:Duh. Its called reflection
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 1
Well, sure. But you might as well say "Nuh-uh! System.exit(0) won't necessarily work if a security manager is installed!" I didn't bother to mention it because I consider it pretty obvious.
Re:Duh. Its called reflection
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I love it when a flat-out wrong post gets modded to 5. You most fucking certainly can access private methods and fields from within Java.
For instance, to set the private field "x" on a Component:
import java.awt.*; import java.lang.reflect.*;
public class YouAreWrong {
public static void main(String[] arg) throws Exception {
Button youAreWrong = new Button();
System.out.println("Button.getX() == " + youAreWrong.getX());// youAreWrong.x = 5; would result in a compile error, as x is a private field
Field x = Component.class.getDeclaredField("x");
x.setAccessible(true);
x.set(youAreWrong, new Integer(5));
System.out.println("Button.getX() == " + youAreWrong.getX());
} }
I'm only twenty-four and have good eyes (well, if you include the corrective lenses), and the color scheme drives me nuts. Humans visual acuity declines sharply in the violet end of the spectrum.
My country's constitution isn't the same as your's but it doesn't protect the right for other people to force their speech on me. If the US constitution is diferent you need a few more amendments.
I'm not sure how you downloading an MP3 and listening to it would count as them "forcing their speech" on you in any country in the world. I'm also not sure what you mean by "forcing" in the first place -- if somebody ties you up and forces you to listen to them, it's the tying up that's the problem, not the speaking. How do you force someone to listen to you, otherwise?
Or was your post just an excuse for the standard Slashdot America-bashing?
Until it's declared otherwise I don't think I should have to deal with obscenities screamed at me by one group that doesn't like what I'm doing.
Ironic, isn't it, how quickly we forget about the First Amendment when it's somebody else's speech being protected instead of our own?
Asking somebody "What the fuck do you think are doing?" is not in any way, shape, or form illegal. So yes, you do have to deal with them saying that. Why is this country so hellbent on destroying the idea of free speech?
I bought that game based on sheer hype -- the concept behind it was revolutionary, and everything about it sounded amazing.
And then I played it.
Five levels. The game had only five levels. Five, in case you missed it the first two times.
The "Hollywood scriptwriter" they brought in to help with the script turned out to be a Speak & Spell with failing batteries.
The "200 side-quests" (I think that was how many they promised) turned out to be "Follow this stupid guy down the mountain. The only interesting part about this is the fact that if the controls didn't suck, it would be simple, but they do, so it's not." There were no "real" quests throughout the entire game.
The choice between good and evil turned out to be "You can either play as good, or win the game. Pick one."
In fact, I lied about that. As first shipped, the game was unwinnable.
The "drastic changes" to the landscape that occurred when I turned soul-suckingly evil turned out to be so subtle that I honestly thought the landscape morphing wasn't working at first.
Your stupendous, godly powers turned out to mainly involve throwing rocks. Oh, and you can make artifacts, too. Just make them out of rocks.
Never again. I will never buy another game by Lionhead Studios without playing it first. Fuckers.
Dear God, folks, the generics compiler (JSR-14) has been in beta for... what, TWO YEARS now? I have been using it in production code for over six months. Go download it and try it. It's stable and works great.
Nobody on these expert groups is stupid enough to want to break existing programs. Unconverted code works fine, with all of these new language features. Like I said, I'm actually using generics now, and they're great.
They still haven't explained how it's energy-efficient for humans to use fossil fuels. After all, it takes more energy to generate fossil fuels than is released in burning them.
So what?
The laws of thermodynamics guarantee that you're always going to put more energy into a machine than you're going to get back out. This can't be a surprise to anyone who has taken high school physics. Converting energy from, say, the chemical bond energy of the wood in a tree to another form, such as heat, is still a useful process, even though you're putting in far more energy than you're getting out.
What if, for instance, the machines are feeding us their waste products? And our metabolisms conveniently convert this waste into useful heat energy? As long as the process is efficient enough to be useful, it makes sense.
I don't know what kind of dream world you live in, but I have never in my life met a coder who could compose code faster than they could type it.
As someone who codes for a living, I'm not afraid to admit that I have often spent hours tracking down a bug which ends up being fixed with a one-line change. Typing speed isn't all that important unless you spend most of your day typing, and I've never met a coder who does.
Of course, I'm writing this comment on a Palm Tungsten C, which is pretty ironic (hint: tough to type fast on these itty-bitty keyboards).
I said that the advantages of Dvorak were "minimal". I consider a 5% increase in typing speed to be pretty damned minimal, personally, given the costs of switching.
Perhaps you feel differently, in which case you are certainly welcome to switch. I don't think the data supports anything approaching an industry-wide switch, however.
Ah so it comes out, in one post you admit this paper is your primary and I suspect only reference for this post. And you yourself admit it is a biased attempt to show qwerty is a good layout instead of an impartitial study on the matter that doesn't give a flying fsck who wins.
First, the paper itself cites numerous studies and other papers, so it's not as if it exists in an isolated sea of nothingness. Second, I never said that it was the only such paper I have read -- just that it seemed to be the best.
If you have studies that show other results, cough 'em up.
I almost believed you, until I looked for myself for the studies you refer to. While your comments on the subjectivity of his experiences are correct, your statements regarding the results from several major studies is biased. Do a google search for Dvorak vs qwerty and you can read a good subset of those results again, for yourself.
My primary reference on this subject is The Fable of the Keys, which seems to be a pretty comprehensive look at the entire debate. I have read other papers regarding the subject, and generally found the same facts.
f you agree that moving your hands a smaller distance is more efficient, than it follows that the Dvorak layout is more efficient.
The only statistic worth debating is typing speed. Not hand movement or anything else. You can debate numbers all you want, but unless you've done a study showing that Dvorak is faster, you're just engaging in mental masturbation.
This happens in damned near everything -- film vs. digital, MP3 vs. CD, CD vs. vinyl -- people make assertions about what is better without actually bothering to do a fair comparison. I'm tired of it. Point me to studies which show that Dvorak is better than QWERTY, or be quiet.
This paper basically attempts to prove that QWERTY vs. Dvorak was not an example of market failure -- in other words, that the best keyboard really did win and it wasn't because QWERTY was an entrenched standard that nobody was brave enough to challenge (which is the typical argument that the losers in any such fight give).
A) Actual research does not support the efficiency gains of the Dvorak layout. The most-commonly-cited study in favor of the Dvorak layout was published by... guess who... Mr. Dvorak himself, and the science behind that study is deeply questionable.
The data entry industry did their own studies, which do not support the claimed efficiency boost of the Dvorak keyboard. Since they make more money if their data entry personnel type faster, they had every reason to conduct a fair and honest study of the two formats. They stuck with QWERTY.
B) QWERTY is actually pretty damned good. The common urban legend about QWERTY being designed to slow typists down is just that, an urban legend. It is true that QWERTY was designed to reduce jamming on mechanical typewriters, but it did not do this by intentionally slowing typists down, as the legend claims.
Instead, it does this by ensuring that commonly-pressed pairs of keys are not next to one another (and in the days of mechanical hammers, this would also mean that the hammers were not next to one another). Conveniently, this means that successive keystrokes are likely to be pressed by alternate hands, which actually makes typing faster instead of slower.
C) Your own anecdotal stories are, I'm sorry to say, worthless.
This is for two reasons: first, you probably didn't do a formal study of your typing speed before and after the test, and you also didn't have a control group of people who remained with the QWERTY layout but put an equal amount of effort into attempting to improve their speed.
Second, even if it is true that you really do type faster with Dvorak, that's not conclusive. Some people can do math faster with an abacus than they can with a calculator, but that doesn't conclusively prove that the abacus is a better tool. It just proves that there are some people for whom the abacus is a better tool. Unless you do a large-scale test and find both the positive cases (you) as well as the negatives (people who tried the Dvorak layout and don't like it), you really have no clue which is better.
Again, these sorts of studies have been done. Every one I am familiar with concluded that the benefits of the Dvorak layout were minimal at best.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure I will. Please, go right ahead.
The goods news is that most people do not agree with ... the nonsensical notion of``intellectual property''.
The good news is that most people think that Slashdot user "gacp" has no idea what he's talking about.
See how easy it is to make unfounded, sweeping generalizations without bothering to provide any support for your claims? I would be surprised if most people had more than the slightest clue what copyright law means, let alone knew enough about it to form any kind of opinion about it.
Imagine a world with no intellectual property protection. No trademarks, no copyright, no patents. Every fast food joint names itself "McDonald's" and uses the Golden Arches to capitalize on the name recognition, but you have no idea what you're going to get when you order a Big Mac. Cheap publishing companies instantly put out their own versions of popular books. They're shoddily made, but half the price, and so these companies derive most of the profits even though they didn't provide the author with any compensation for his work. The same happens with movies, music, and so forth. It's not exactly a friendly world for content creators.
Now, presumably you feel that my vision of a world without IP law is wildly inaccurate. I hope you feel that it's inaccurate, at least, otherwise you'd be nuts for supporting the complete dissolution of IP law. I'd like to hear your reasoning on why this won't happen, keeping human nature in mind. Remember, Communism doesn't sound like a bad idea on paper, either.
Haven't you ever used a balance scale? Yes, it requires some gravity to operate, but it gives the same results whether you're on Earth or the moon.
It would be more efficient of you to tape a big sign to your forehead with the words "Look at me! I didn't read the article!" on it.
A) The scientists working on this are not idiots. There's a fairly good possibility that one of the thousands of people working in the field might have thought of that idea already.
B) The article might also have spelled that out, had you cared to read it.
C) A standard doesn't do any good if you have no way of measuring it. As soon as you have a way of accurately and reproducably counting 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, be sure to let us know.
RTFA. The standard kilogram appears to be losing mass relative to other reference weights. Because there is no independent physical definition of the kilogram, as with the other SI units, that is all we have to go on.
I have an awful lot of trouble crediting the idea of a Dyson sphere. If you have the technology to build a Dyson sphere (if such is even possible), then I can't imagine that you don't also have much better means of producing energy.
After all, a direct matter to energy conversion of even relatively small amounts of matter would give you far more energy than a star produces. I don't feel like running the calculations, but the water from a swimming pool or two probably contains enough power to fuel any conceivable level of energy expenditure for the rest of the human race's lifespan.
Now, what's the likelihood that it's possible to build a giant sphere completely encasing a star, but that it's not possible to produce sufficient energy via more straightforward means?
I thought the same thing, until I actually RTFA. This is blatant cheating. Everything looks fine until you take the camera off the rails, and then there are clipping and display problems galore.
Further, the problems change depending on which part of the demo you're in (for instance, the "background not being cleared" bug conveniently only shows up in the part of the space demo where a largely black sky is being displayed, and so no background clear is necessary). This is cheating, plain and simple.
If he has never managed anyone in his life, then yes, he sure as hell should be immediately ruled out on that fact alone. National Sales Manager is a high-ranking position, and no sane person would hire someone with no proven experience to a position like that.
Are you actually suggesting that a college senior with no work experience outside of being a cashier at a 7-11 is qualified to be a national sales manager?
Not to be rude, but for the sake of your company, I hope you don't make hiring decisions.
Well, sure. But you might as well say "Nuh-uh! System.exit(0) won't necessarily work if a security manager is installed!" I didn't bother to mention it because I consider it pretty obvious.
I love it when a flat-out wrong post gets modded to 5. You most fucking certainly can access private methods and fields from within Java.
// youAreWrong.x = 5; would result in a compile error, as x is a private field
For instance, to set the private field "x" on a Component:
import java.awt.*;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
public class YouAreWrong {
public static void main(String[] arg) throws Exception {
Button youAreWrong = new Button();
System.out.println("Button.getX() == " + youAreWrong.getX());
Field x = Component.class.getDeclaredField("x");
x.setAccessible(true);
x.set(youAreWrong, new Integer(5));
System.out.println("Button.getX() == " + youAreWrong.getX());
}
}
Go try it and see what happens.
Standard Creationist bullshit. Let me ask you a question -- if English evolved from German, why is the German language still around?
I hate it too.
I'm only twenty-four and have good eyes (well, if you include the corrective lenses), and the color scheme drives me nuts. Humans visual acuity declines sharply in the violet end of the spectrum.
My country's constitution isn't the same as your's but it doesn't protect the right for other people to force their speech on me. If the US constitution is diferent you need a few more amendments.
I'm not sure how you downloading an MP3 and listening to it would count as them "forcing their speech" on you in any country in the world. I'm also not sure what you mean by "forcing" in the first place -- if somebody ties you up and forces you to listen to them, it's the tying up that's the problem, not the speaking. How do you force someone to listen to you, otherwise?
Or was your post just an excuse for the standard Slashdot America-bashing?
Until it's declared otherwise I don't think I should have to deal with obscenities screamed at me by one group that doesn't like what I'm doing.
Ironic, isn't it, how quickly we forget about the First Amendment when it's somebody else's speech being protected instead of our own?
Asking somebody "What the fuck do you think are doing?" is not in any way, shape, or form illegal. So yes, you do have to deal with them saying that. Why is this country so hellbent on destroying the idea of free speech?
I bought that game based on sheer hype -- the concept behind it was revolutionary, and everything about it sounded amazing.
And then I played it.
Five levels. The game had only five levels. Five, in case you missed it the first two times.
The "Hollywood scriptwriter" they brought in to help with the script turned out to be a Speak & Spell with failing batteries.
The "200 side-quests" (I think that was how many they promised) turned out to be "Follow this stupid guy down the mountain. The only interesting part about this is the fact that if the controls didn't suck, it would be simple, but they do, so it's not." There were no "real" quests throughout the entire game.
The choice between good and evil turned out to be "You can either play as good, or win the game. Pick one."
In fact, I lied about that. As first shipped, the game was unwinnable.
The "drastic changes" to the landscape that occurred when I turned soul-suckingly evil turned out to be so subtle that I honestly thought the landscape morphing wasn't working at first.
Your stupendous, godly powers turned out to mainly involve throwing rocks. Oh, and you can make artifacts, too. Just make them out of rocks.
Never again. I will never buy another game by Lionhead Studios without playing it first. Fuckers.
Dear God, folks, the generics compiler (JSR-14) has been in beta for ... what, TWO YEARS now? I have been using it in production code for over six months. Go download it and try it. It's stable and works great.
Nobody on these expert groups is stupid enough to want to break existing programs. Unconverted code works fine, with all of these new language features. Like I said, I'm actually using generics now, and they're great.
They still haven't explained how it's energy-efficient for humans to use fossil fuels. After all, it takes more energy to generate fossil fuels than is released in burning them.
So what?
The laws of thermodynamics guarantee that you're always going to put more energy into a machine than you're going to get back out. This can't be a surprise to anyone who has taken high school physics. Converting energy from, say, the chemical bond energy of the wood in a tree to another form, such as heat, is still a useful process, even though you're putting in far more energy than you're getting out.
What if, for instance, the machines are feeding us their waste products? And our metabolisms conveniently convert this waste into useful heat energy? As long as the process is efficient enough to be useful, it makes sense.
Oh, bullshit.
I don't know what kind of dream world you live in, but I have never in my life met a coder who could compose code faster than they could type it.
As someone who codes for a living, I'm not afraid to admit that I have often spent hours tracking down a bug which ends up being fixed with a one-line change. Typing speed isn't all that important unless you spend most of your day typing, and I've never met a coder who does.
Of course, I'm writing this comment on a Palm Tungsten C, which is pretty ironic (hint: tough to type fast on these itty-bitty keyboards).
I said that the advantages of Dvorak were "minimal". I consider a 5% increase in typing speed to be pretty damned minimal, personally, given the costs of switching.
Perhaps you feel differently, in which case you are certainly welcome to switch. I don't think the data supports anything approaching an industry-wide switch, however.
Ah so it comes out, in one post you admit this paper is your primary and I suspect only reference for this post. And you yourself admit it is a biased attempt to show qwerty is a good layout instead of an impartitial study on the matter that doesn't give a flying fsck who wins.
First, the paper itself cites numerous studies and other papers, so it's not as if it exists in an isolated sea of nothingness. Second, I never said that it was the only such paper I have read -- just that it seemed to be the best.
If you have studies that show other results, cough 'em up.
I almost believed you, until I looked for myself for the studies you refer to. While your comments on the subjectivity of his experiences are correct, your statements regarding the results from several major studies is biased. Do a google search for Dvorak vs qwerty and you can read a good subset of those results again, for yourself.
My primary reference on this subject is The Fable of the Keys, which seems to be a pretty comprehensive look at the entire debate. I have read other papers regarding the subject, and generally found the same facts.
f you agree that moving your hands a smaller distance is more efficient, than it follows that the Dvorak layout is more efficient.
The only statistic worth debating is typing speed. Not hand movement or anything else. You can debate numbers all you want, but unless you've done a study showing that Dvorak is faster, you're just engaging in mental masturbation.
This happens in damned near everything -- film vs. digital, MP3 vs. CD, CD vs. vinyl -- people make assertions about what is better without actually bothering to do a fair comparison. I'm tired of it. Point me to studies which show that Dvorak is better than QWERTY, or be quiet.
The best reference I have found on the subject is The Fable of the Keys.
This paper basically attempts to prove that QWERTY vs. Dvorak was not an example of market failure -- in other words, that the best keyboard really did win and it wasn't because QWERTY was an entrenched standard that nobody was brave enough to challenge (which is the typical argument that the losers in any such fight give).
A) Actual research does not support the efficiency gains of the Dvorak layout. The most-commonly-cited study in favor of the Dvorak layout was published by ... guess who ... Mr. Dvorak himself, and the science behind that study is deeply questionable.
The data entry industry did their own studies, which do not support the claimed efficiency boost of the Dvorak keyboard. Since they make more money if their data entry personnel type faster, they had every reason to conduct a fair and honest study of the two formats. They stuck with QWERTY.
B) QWERTY is actually pretty damned good. The common urban legend about QWERTY being designed to slow typists down is just that, an urban legend. It is true that QWERTY was designed to reduce jamming on mechanical typewriters, but it did not do this by intentionally slowing typists down, as the legend claims.
Instead, it does this by ensuring that commonly-pressed pairs of keys are not next to one another (and in the days of mechanical hammers, this would also mean that the hammers were not next to one another). Conveniently, this means that successive keystrokes are likely to be pressed by alternate hands, which actually makes typing faster instead of slower.
C) Your own anecdotal stories are, I'm sorry to say, worthless.
This is for two reasons: first, you probably didn't do a formal study of your typing speed before and after the test, and you also didn't have a control group of people who remained with the QWERTY layout but put an equal amount of effort into attempting to improve their speed.
Second, even if it is true that you really do type faster with Dvorak, that's not conclusive. Some people can do math faster with an abacus than they can with a calculator, but that doesn't conclusively prove that the abacus is a better tool. It just proves that there are some people for whom the abacus is a better tool. Unless you do a large-scale test and find both the positive cases (you) as well as the negatives (people who tried the Dvorak layout and don't like it), you really have no clue which is better.
Again, these sorts of studies have been done. Every one I am familiar with concluded that the benefits of the Dvorak layout were minimal at best.
The Helix boasts twice the color palate of the Game Boy and nearly 16 times that of the N-Gage.
... the roof of its mouth is twice as big?
Ummm