the story that spawned the Terminator movies ("I have no mouth and I must scream!")
Right author, wrong story. It was mainly Harlan Ellison's "Soldier" and his Outer Limits episode "Demon With a Glass Hand" that inspired The Terminator. The connection between The Terminator and Ellison's "IHNM&IMS" is weaker -- see The Terminator FAQ
or a bazillion other
links.
This is a brilliant move by Red Hat to subvert this joke of a settlement offer. The existence of their counter-proposal helps show Microsoft's original proposal for the self-serving move it really is. It's nice to see Microsoft outmaneuvered here.
And it's good PR for Red Hat. Nobody will take them up on the offer (though it would mean serious money for Red Hat in the long run if they did), and they get to look like they're even more strongly "for the children" than Microsoft. Nicely played!
To all of those people - will you please not talk about things you don't understand? It's very easy to talk about freedom of speech whilst being very far away from the real issues, posting comfortably over your DSL link.
I grew up in the (American) South. I have seen racism up close and personal, probably more than you. I've thought a lot about what makes racists tick, and here's what I think:
The racist
memeplex
depends on co-opting existing feelings of disenfranchisement. They need to identify someone -- the blacks, the Jews, anybody -- who is to blame for the fact that you're living in a trailer park instead of a paradise. The larger and more powerful their enemy, the better (for them).
Because of this, the more official the opposition is, the better (for them). Their claim that group X is to blame for everything that's wrong in your life seems more plausible when the government allows group X to talk but not the racists.
Counterintuitively, therefore, banning their speech strengthens them, because it (seemingly) lends credence to their claims to own a suppressed truth. ("Here's what the liberal Jew-run media doesn't want you to know," and all that.) They will always say what they want to say and their views will always find adherents, but they will attract more adherents if they can truthfully claim that they're being officially held down.
In short, the worst thing you can do to them is let them publicly show themselves for the dribbling idiots they are, and that isn't different in Europe than it is here. This doesn't mean that you can't disagree with them just as publicly -- indeed, you should. It just means you shouldn't have the police do it for you.
Finally, letting these groups operate in the light of day has a practical advantage: it's easier to keep an eye on them. Drive them underground, and who knows what they're up to? At that point, they've already taken the first step towards lawlessness, and that makes the next step that much easier.
Genetics is a wonderful thing
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 1
[...] two Nigerian dwarf
goats [...] produce spider "silk".
... which the goats promptly spun into webs to catch tin cans.
Luciano Fadiga [...] measured the excitability of
particular muscles in the hand. He found that when the volunteers were
watching grasping actions, the very muscles that would be needed to
copy that movement seemed primed to act--as if they were preparing to
make the same movement themselves.
How exciting: they discovered body English. Their next experiment
will show that when your bowling ball is headed for the gutter, you
lean in the other direction and make encouraging noises.
1. Any Language. [...] I know the Java bytecode isn't tied to Java the language, but realistically, that's the way Sun as limited it.
I can refer you to
over 100 counterexamples.
I have personally done significant work with
Jython (back when it was JPython) and
Skij, a nice little Scheme implementation (sadly no longer supported, but SILK is one of several promising replacements).
The other purported advantages you list for C#/.NET/CLR/MSIL are similarly specious. Large-fraction-of-native-speed, cross-platform, secure distribution is already available with the Java-the-platform, and the other advantages you mention are at least as easy with Java (Java-the-language and Java-the-platform) as with.NET. Further, free Java/JVM implementations are mature and widely available (from, for example,
IBM,
Blackdown,
TransVirtual (Kaffe),
and
Sun, for varying definitions of "free").
.NET is not an example of Microsoft "getting it.".NET is an example of Microsoft continuing not to get it -- reinventing the wheel, rather than building on perfectly good existing systems.
Actually, Catch Me If You Can was written by someone pretending to be Frank Abagnale. The real Frank Abagnale would never have made the silly errors you caught in the book -- he was too clever an identity thief for that.
Remember, kids: the real Frank Abagnale has Slashdot ID number 6898. Anyone else is an imposter.
Quantum computers could make breaking our current methods of encryptoin easy, so we need to start now with methods of encrytption that would not be so easy.
We could start by misspelling everything, thus making our communications harder to understand. Slashdot has employed this encryption method for years.
(Disclaimer: IANAPOOG (I Am Not A Player Of Online Games). But if ignorance stopped posters, Slashdot would be a barren place indeed.:-)
Maybe the server could estimate the skill of individual players (tracking them over time) and assign each player a rank. The idea is that you'd be allowed to play only other players in the same rank as yourself. This would pretty quickly put all the cheaters into the same (high) rank, possibly along with a few genuinely great players.
This solution has a few problems of its own:
It only works for games where players have persistent identities. I don't know how to fix this one.
Some players would cheat just enough to stay at the top of their own ranks (but long-term standing at the top of rank N could promote you to rank N+1).
Cheaters would still be able to claim that they're better at the game than they really are (but that's a minor problem by comparison).
As soon as one identity was promoted "too far" (that is, too far for them to be able to reliably beat the other players in their rank), some cheaters would just create a new identity and start over. If promotions come relatively soon after sufficient skill has been demonstrated, this trick can easily be made more hassle than it's worth to the cheater.
Still, I think those drawbacks are minor compared to the current situation, which a lot of people are clearly unhappy with. It does help solve the problem as I see it, that of lamers who just want to beat whomever they play against, by making it much more likely that if X and Y are playing each other at all, they will be playing with more or less equal skill.
This tactic is dear to the heart of Microsoft VP Steve Ballmer: crowd the other guy off the shelves. Seriously. As an article in Forbes put it in 1997:
On graduation, Ballmer took a job as an assistant product manager with Procter & Gamble. There he learned about elbowing for shelf space. Ballmer and his P&G colleagues came up with the horizontal brownie mix box, printed so that it took up a few more inches of width on the shelf and left less room for Duncan Hines competitors.
Evidently, he's still pulling the same trick at Microsoft today.
The article mentioned the GTE unit Genuity as one of the big providers. Genuity? Would that be the opposite of ingenuity? That would be consistent with what I hear about GTE....
(Obligatory cheap shot: in the same vein, maybe Microsoft should rename itself "Novation.":-)
In reading the article, I kept thinking I should compose a full reply -- until I realized it would be at least twice as long as the original (I guess half-truths only take half as long to state), and what's the use? Halfway through, I think, is where we get to the real issue:
Recently... we have had to cancel one major project, and reengineer a product completely, after wasting many person-months and disappointing customers, because of the deficiencies of two separate GNU products (the GCC compiler for Windows and the editor under GTK). In both cases the scenario was the same: fixes to well-known bugs being promised and promised again; everyone waiting for months and months, until it becomes clear that nothing will happen; in the end, having to write off all the affected developments. Since no one is in charge, and you didn't pay for the products, there is no one to blame.
So Meyer doesn't get it: if you want a specific feature in free software, you can implement it yourself or pay someone to implement it for you. (And if you want it on a schedule, you're going to have to do it that way -- after all, you didn't pay for the product, Bertrand (and would your experience really have been different if you had?). Admittedly, the developers shouldn't have promised what they wouldn't deliver -- but then again, we currently have only his side of the story, and he doesn't show himself in this article to be all that concerned with the truth. Wonderful irony, for an article on ethics.)
But Meyer did neither, and now the poor fellow feels embarrassed, and rather than admit he made a mistake or didn't understand free software, he painstakingly composes a learned-sounding but thoroughly misleading and unfair article attacking thousands of his fellow software developers. What a disappointment.
This is yet another case of Red Hat doing the Right Thing: investing in the community, and the cause, that supports them. It's good PR, and it's damn smart in the long term (and long-term thinking in the business world is rare enough).
Red Hat gets a lot of flak sometimes, but ask yourself: what could you possibly want from a free software-based company, that Red Hat isn't doing? Red Hat has been awfully good for free software, and projects like this and RHAD show that they're also being awfully good to free software.
Wow, a book I wrote got reviewed on Slashdot! What's the Slashdot purity test say about that?
Y'all might be interested in LCKC's home page, which includes links to other reviews, an errata list, and an improved index donated by a generous reader. You can also email me about the book.
My quesion is will the MPAA sue/. for linking to a story that links to a site that links to sites that have the program??
Don't be silly. However, the MPAA will sue me for linking to Yahoo!, which links to slashdot, which links to the NYTimes, which links to 2600, which links to DeCSS mirror sites, which live in the house that Jack built.
I'd be OK with companies collecting any personal data of mine they wanted, on one condition: I'd like to see a law requiring that if company X directly or indirectly collects or uses information Y about me, and if information Y can in principle be traced to me (i.e., it's not strictly anonymous), then company X is required to tell me the equivalent information about their top executives. So if Budweiser wants to know which TV shows I watch, fine -- as long as I learn the same information about Budweiser's top executives. If they want my home phone number, fine -- as long as I get their top executives' home phone numbers.
Given appropriate definitions, I expect this one simple law would do everything that needs to be done in order to ensure consumer privacy.
For the love of [insert deity name(s) here], please do not encourage people to redistribute these films by email -- do not encourage people to redistribute anything by email, especially large binaries. Am I the only one who expects to get about 500 copies of the damn things at 5MB apiece? This is what mirror sites are for.
Next thing you know, they'll release an animation of Craig Shergold taking a date rape drug and waking up in a bathtub full of ice -- MISSING A KIDNEY -- and comforting himself with cookies made from his $250 Nieman Marcus recipe while he sends a message to the FCC protesting their impending modem tax....
When accessing the nytimes site, you can use this username/password combination, which was posted to Slashdot by someone else several months ago (searching didn't turn up the responsible individual, so I can't give credit where due, sorry):
User: wheredoyou Password: wanttogotoday
Let 'em save this info with a cookie, and you don't need to log in any more -- it's as transparent for you as using partners.nytimes.com is, but it keeps nytimes happy. And since there are lots of us using the same username/password combination, they don't really know who's who.
--
Re:Everybody take a breather
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
> You want to run Linux, that?s fine. I like running Windows 2000. You wanna use Netscape fine. I like running IE 5 - it has a tendency not to crash my system like Netscape. We both have a choice.
My system (Linux) has a tendency not to crash at all, no matter what Web browser I happen to be running. It also has a tendency not to litter the Web with broken HTML. (By contrast, your broken browser/OS, which you used to post your comments, gives the rest of us the gift of non-standard "smart quote" codes every time you use quotes or apostrophes.)
Such considerations might prove helpful in our rational thinking about what would happen if Microsoft were shut down.
>Personally, I can't imagine how AMD can success with this.
What matters to the market is speed and compatibility, not elegant design. (Otherwise, the x86 would be long dead.) Therefore, AMD can succeed, at least in the short and medium term, by selling a CPU that runs existing code faster than Intel's new CPUs. Even if the x86 market shrinks once IA-64 appears (and that's not a given), AMD can win big simply by claiming all of a smaller market, rather than part of a larger market.
Was there no way to avoid having private members (data and methods) of a class in the main definition of a class?
I don't want to drag the discussion off-topic, but you might want to know of a technique that partially addresses this:
// In Foo.h: class Foo { struct FooRep * const rep; public: //... The public interface.... }
Then define struct FooRep in Foo.cc (not Foo.h), and allocate the FooRep object dynamically (in Foo's ctor, obviously). Client code that #includes Foo.h won't see (most of) class Foo's real representation -- clients only see one pointer, and not the data it points to.
That addresses private data members, and the judicious use of a friend class (which you also define only in Foo.cc) can extend the technique to private member functions.
Not a perfect solution, but it solves most of the problem.
> "Our goal for the next release of Windows 2000 is to have zero bugs."
(Where the next release is just six months away.) Makes you wonder why their customers don't just say, "OK, when the one with zero bugs comes out, then I'll buy it."
("Meanwhile, I'll try this Linux thing I've been hearing so much about....")
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they should interview him again when he's not so hungry.
Uh, as an advanced society, do we really wish to cripple scientific progress for the sake of ignorant superstition?
Right author, wrong story. It was mainly Harlan Ellison's "Soldier" and his Outer Limits episode "Demon With a Glass Hand" that inspired The Terminator. The connection between The Terminator and Ellison's "IHNM&IMS" is weaker -- see The Terminator FAQ or a bazillion other links.
Just wanted to set the record straight.
And it's good PR for Red Hat. Nobody will take them up on the offer (though it would mean serious money for Red Hat in the long run if they did), and they get to look like they're even more strongly "for the children" than Microsoft. Nicely played!
I grew up in the (American) South. I have seen racism up close and personal, probably more than you. I've thought a lot about what makes racists tick, and here's what I think:
The racist memeplex depends on co-opting existing feelings of disenfranchisement. They need to identify someone -- the blacks, the Jews, anybody -- who is to blame for the fact that you're living in a trailer park instead of a paradise. The larger and more powerful their enemy, the better (for them).
Because of this, the more official the opposition is, the better (for them). Their claim that group X is to blame for everything that's wrong in your life seems more plausible when the government allows group X to talk but not the racists.
Counterintuitively, therefore, banning their speech strengthens them, because it (seemingly) lends credence to their claims to own a suppressed truth. ("Here's what the liberal Jew-run media doesn't want you to know," and all that.) They will always say what they want to say and their views will always find adherents, but they will attract more adherents if they can truthfully claim that they're being officially held down.
In short, the worst thing you can do to them is let them publicly show themselves for the dribbling idiots they are, and that isn't different in Europe than it is here. This doesn't mean that you can't disagree with them just as publicly -- indeed, you should. It just means you shouldn't have the police do it for you.
Finally, letting these groups operate in the light of day has a practical advantage: it's easier to keep an eye on them. Drive them underground, and who knows what they're up to? At that point, they've already taken the first step towards lawlessness, and that makes the next step that much easier.
... which the goats promptly spun into webs to catch tin cans.
--
How exciting: they discovered body English. Their next experiment will show that when your bowling ball is headed for the gutter, you lean in the other direction and make encouraging noises.
;-)
--
The other purported advantages you list for C#/.NET/CLR/MSIL are similarly specious. Large-fraction-of-native-speed, cross-platform, secure distribution is already available with the Java-the-platform, and the other advantages you mention are at least as easy with Java (Java-the-language and Java-the-platform) as with .NET. Further, free Java/JVM implementations are mature and widely available (from, for example,
IBM,
Blackdown,
TransVirtual (Kaffe),
and
Sun, for varying definitions of "free").
.NET is not an example of Microsoft "getting it." .NET is an example of Microsoft continuing not to get it -- reinventing the wheel, rather than building on perfectly good existing systems.
--
Remember, kids: the real Frank Abagnale has Slashdot ID number 6898. Anyone else is an imposter.
--
We could start by misspelling everything, thus making our communications harder to understand. Slashdot has employed this encryption method for years.
--
Maybe the server could estimate the skill of individual players (tracking them over time) and assign each player a rank. The idea is that you'd be allowed to play only other players in the same rank as yourself. This would pretty quickly put all the cheaters into the same (high) rank, possibly along with a few genuinely great players.
This solution has a few problems of its own:
Still, I think those drawbacks are minor compared to the current situation, which a lot of people are clearly unhappy with. It does help solve the problem as I see it, that of lamers who just want to beat whomever they play against, by making it much more likely that if X and Y are playing each other at all, they will be playing with more or less equal skill.
--
Evidently, he's still pulling the same trick at Microsoft today.
--
(Obligatory cheap shot: in the same vein, maybe Microsoft should rename itself "Novation." :-)
--
Recently ... we have had to cancel one major project, and reengineer a product completely, after wasting many person-months and disappointing customers, because of the deficiencies of two separate GNU products (the GCC compiler for Windows and the editor under GTK). In both cases the scenario was the same: fixes to well-known bugs being promised and promised again; everyone waiting for months and months, until it becomes clear that nothing will happen; in the end, having to write off all the affected developments. Since no one is in charge, and you didn't pay for the products, there is no one to blame.
So Meyer doesn't get it: if you want a specific feature in free software, you can implement it yourself or pay someone to implement it for you. (And if you want it on a schedule, you're going to have to do it that way -- after all, you didn't pay for the product, Bertrand (and would your experience really have been different if you had?). Admittedly, the developers shouldn't have promised what they wouldn't deliver -- but then again, we currently have only his side of the story, and he doesn't show himself in this article to be all that concerned with the truth. Wonderful irony, for an article on ethics.)
But Meyer did neither, and now the poor fellow feels embarrassed, and rather than admit he made a mistake or didn't understand free software, he painstakingly composes a learned-sounding but thoroughly misleading and unfair article attacking thousands of his fellow software developers. What a disappointment.
--
Red Hat gets a lot of flak sometimes, but ask yourself: what could you possibly want from a free software-based company, that Red Hat isn't doing? Red Hat has been awfully good for free software, and projects like this and RHAD show that they're also being awfully good to free software.
--
Y'all might be interested in LCKC's home page, which includes links to other reviews, an errata list, and an improved index donated by a generous reader. You can also email me about the book.
--
Don't be silly. However, the MPAA will sue me for linking to Yahoo!, which links to slashdot, which links to the NYTimes, which links to 2600, which links to DeCSS mirror sites, which live in the house that Jack built.
--
Given appropriate definitions, I expect this one simple law would do everything that needs to be done in order to ensure consumer privacy.
--
Next thing you know, they'll release an animation of Craig Shergold taking a date rape drug and waking up in a bathtub full of ice -- MISSING A KIDNEY -- and comforting himself with cookies made from his $250 Nieman Marcus recipe while he sends a message to the FCC protesting their impending modem tax ....
--
User: wheredoyou
Password: wanttogotoday
Let 'em save this info with a cookie, and you don't need to log in any more -- it's as transparent for you as using partners.nytimes.com is, but it keeps nytimes happy. And since there are lots of us using the same username/password combination, they don't really know who's who.
--
My system (Linux) has a tendency not to crash at all, no matter what Web browser I happen to be running. It also has a tendency not to litter the Web with broken HTML. (By contrast, your broken browser/OS, which you used to post your comments, gives the rest of us the gift of non-standard "smart quote" codes every time you use quotes or apostrophes.)
Such considerations might prove helpful in our rational thinking about what would happen if Microsoft were shut down.
--
What matters to the market is speed and compatibility, not elegant design. (Otherwise, the x86 would be long dead.) Therefore, AMD can succeed, at least in the short and medium term, by selling a CPU that runs existing code faster than Intel's new CPUs. Even if the x86 market shrinks once IA-64 appears (and that's not a given), AMD can win big simply by claiming all of a smaller market, rather than part of a larger market.
I don't want to drag the discussion off-topic, but you might want to know of a technique that partially addresses this:
class Foo
{
struct FooRep * const rep;
public:
}
Then define struct FooRep in Foo.cc (not Foo.h), and allocate the FooRep object dynamically (in Foo's ctor, obviously). Client code that #includes Foo.h won't see (most of) class Foo's real representation -- clients only see one pointer, and not the data it points to.
That addresses private data members, and the judicious use of a friend class (which you also define only in Foo.cc) can extend the technique to private member functions.
Not a perfect solution, but it solves most of the problem.
Ask AskJeeves "What is the population of Holland, Michigan?" and you get this result. Short version: 30,745 in 1990.
(Strangely enough, if you ask them "Where can I find chocolate chip cookie recipes?", you get back a bunch of porno links. What's up with that?! ;-)
(Where the next release is just six months away.) Makes you wonder why their customers don't just say, "OK, when the one with zero bugs comes out, then I'll buy it."
("Meanwhile, I'll try this Linux thing I've been hearing so much about ....")