(Don't feed trolls, etc, but the blurb talks about "chilling" too, so...)
Please explain how making sure that you get a chance to respond to any unfair, incomplete or in your eyes otherwise faulty publication, in a way that guarantees the response will be read by the public originally subject to the wrong-saying, stiffles free speech ?
As others have said, this also is a fairly good thing if you are the poster, not the subject : if anyone disagrees with what I say, the fact that I (am forced to) offer them a forum to respond kindof takes the wind out of their sails to hammer me with baseless libel threats.
* for loops do not create a new scope (resulting in error messages if you reuse/redeclare for loop counters). I believe this is fixable with compiler flags in Visual Studio.NET. (Technically it's fixable with compiler flags in Visual C++ 6, but the header files won't compile if you try it.)
In Belgium. The problem has mostly been Belgian subscribers who roam to Germany, France and Italy -- it seems to be very difficult to get an SMS through in either direction, regardless of operator:\ Interesting report though, maybe it's time to start complaining:)
1. International (roaming) messaging is a disaster. You're lucky if anything arrives, and if it does, it can easily be delayed a few days. Once it gets through, you're likely to get the message several times - people reported up to seven times. Can you say ACK ?:)
2. During peak loads, it looks like the (Belgian) operators give priority to packets originating from subscribers -- ie people who are not using a GSM-version of a calling card containing n minutes / m messages. This was especially obvious at new years' eve -- everyone I know with a subscription got through with every single SMS; people with a card got exactly zero messages through the stampede. If delivery fails, you get a notice though, and afaik you're not billed.
Strange that you mention this.. The first thing I did after installing.Net was testing its debugger by writing a C# Forms program that would simply hook up a paint event handler, and go deliberately out of bounds. I got a break alright, but with some sort of gigantic stacktrace that dumped me somewhere in a bunch of assembler/IL. About all that told me was that something went wrong, somewhere, during CLR's handling of WM_PAINT. I can't imagine debugging a complicated modern GUI app with only that kind of info, so I kinda gave up.. Sounds like something could be wrong with my setup then.
But if you're really worried about appearances, write Ducky an email about the problem. If by the end of the email you still are mystified, you can always send the email to a colleague.
Or try the Magic Mailing List trick : describe the problem and send it to a mailing list for which it is appropriate. The mailing list software will then telepathically send you a fix so that 5 seconds after you hit Send, you already go "Oh shit, DUH, that's it" and you can try covering up your stupidity by replying to yourself and trying to make the one-line fix sound really complicated, "from an architectural point of view".
Well I don't know about "not that good" -- I found it +1 Entertaining and +1 Insightful, and I've never seen any Bebop episode.. So by itself it's pretty good, and if the series is that massive that it renders this movie "not that good", well then I'm very curious as to what the heck that will all be about:)
Though I admit the second half of the movie seemed a little less polished than the first half.. Or maybe it was just the shift of pace.
Hmmm well I'm not saying that, given the stories, your theory is impossible... but I still doubt if they originally wanted to conceive it that way. The itch is with "that concept spread to the rest" : "the rest" implies a group, but there is no group, there is only a single mind, running on hardware that used to be a group of individuals, but which is now reduced to just a group of living, breathing, but mindless synapses. Ie it's the wrong mindset (no pun) to say "They aren't dumb" instead of "It isn't dumb". I agree that (at least on the surface) it's a much more simpler construct than your family-analogy though, which is why I suspect the writers of realizing this and secretly switching gears:)
Then again, that's how I used to think about it, but looking back with your reading in mind, you may have a point that this is how the writers always pictured Borg. But it's more scary as a mind that is so massive that, in comparison, my mind/individuality is only a single synapse. Your interpretation reduces it/them to The Corleone Family XXL:]
Tape to tape copiers ?? Back in the ZX Spectrum days, there was a pirate radiostation that would play tapes with software on the air ! So every week you'd have a few thousand geeks ready with their tape recorder hooked up to their FM receiver to "warez" the latest rally game or whatever. Try beating that for bandwidth:)
I think you're making the same mistake as the writers did -- that is, no longer being able to understand or "feel" their own creation. They come up with the ultimate distributed mind, it has no single point of "thinking power", and chopped into pieces, it is dumb, as Hugh showed. Only when all (or a lot of) the pieces are brought together does an intelligence emerge that is larger than the sum of the parts. This is probably a very difficult concept, if you try to really grasp it (witness the century old debate over mind vs soul vs set of synapses when it comes to our own intelligence), so they probably just borked it, perhaps by accident, perhaps also because they suddenly realized that such a lifeform is so alien that they cannot effectively develop it as a character or even as a plot device.
Point taken:) There are still a few things in your point of view which I find most peculiar... but I already feel too guilty for typing such short blurbs in response to your lengthy expose, so I won't evoke more and just shut up instead:) Thanks for the insights !
Thanks for the examples, quite educational -- I see where you're coming from. I also agree with the first part, that the actual value of _art_ pretty much exists independent of our appreciation.
But about the medium or way of presentation... I'm just a little blurry on how you distinguish between an unintentional barrier, and the imaginary glass-guy, who also seems to be only citing his vision as a justification for the barrier. Can you call unorthodox use of a medium unintentional if it goes back to the artist's vision ? I'm not denying that all those undertones of being deliberately impopular might be there, camouflaged as "vision" -- but I still don't find much of a reasonably objective method to draw this decisive line between "It's ok, I just reject it" versus "This is an abuse of the medium / exhibition process". I mean, how do you separate someone who's just flat out wrong, inexperienced or overreaching, from someone with the guts to ignore all (or at least, your) conventions, especially when it comes to the way the medium is used and not the art or technique itself ? (Or did you imply that on a computer, presentation _is_ part of the technique).
Excellent points, but there may be a category you're missing -- the artists who want to open a dialogue and "exchange", but with noone willing to listen. It's possible ofcourse that all of the people you lash out against figure themselves in this category. But even then, I can imagine how some people are trying to make this connection, they just don't want to lower the quality or topic of the conversation to a level that is sure to draw many participants. The question is, when does positive elitism end and narcism begin ?
Also, I'm not sure you can completely justify a blame on the artist for being self-righteous, while at the same time reserving the right to disregard an artist because the presentation "annoys" you, ie, because he's not entirely up to _your_ non-artistic standards. That's just a recipe for populism.
It needs to be prefixed by an underscore because those are the only names in the global namespace that are reserved for the implementor ? I'd rather they conform to C++ than to "other systems":\
~Companies do not exist to make traditions. Companies do not exist in order to secure basic technological research. Companies do not exist in order to provide decade long careers.~
His point is that due to short term thinking, companies do not / no longer exist, period. It's not about who does the best job, cronyisms or meritocracies, but what the job is. If you agree that regardless of what a company is supposed to deliver (value ? paychecks ? etc), it should first of all continue to exist, then he is right that management has been wrong lately in prioritizing personal profit over company lifespan.
You are in an extremely unique situation. I've tried all company scales -- dot com, medium sized, and multinational. None of them "got it".
I'm not sure the article claimed there was no difference -- if they did, I agree with you -- as I'm still digesting it:) But it looks more like they say that as far as practical matters go, CS doesn't "exist" in the wild. It is an artificial construct only kept alive at academia, which has given us a few good algorithms that everyone now has in their stock libraries, but that is past its useful life.
Well, here is a simple example of a reporter that is being prosecuted for crossing into secure areas. A few years ago a TV crew wanted to make a point about the extremely bad security at the Belgian national airport. They simply took their camera, started filming and showed how they walked pretty much unharassed from the parking lot up to the nearest plane that was being refueled. If they were carrying a bomb instead of a camera, there might be a problem. If the officials' response is to heavily smack down on the journalists so that nobody would ever dare embarras them again like that, rather than fixing the problem, then the country is clearly worse off.
Now, I'm not saying that violating security regulations should be a routine matter for journalists, but you seem to imply that there can never be a valid reason for journalists to do so. The above is just one recent example.
Why challenge something when you have no constructive alternative approach to suggest?
Because "do nothing until we have a better idea" in itself can be considered a constructive alternative. I may not have a suggestion on how to build their bridge, but I may have enough insight to realize that the way they're going about it is far from optimal, or even dangerous. If the problem is not urgent enough, you can challenge their "attack" on the problem and suggest they wait. Result, extreme programming : challenge everything, thereby postponing it until it is really urgent, or we know enough (or at least more) about the problem.
It's not that CS class is boring, it's that it is teaching values which have been declared by the industry as irrelevant. Remember "MATURE" software ? Maintainable, Adaptable, Transparent, User Friendly, Reliable, Efficient. Say that to a manager and you get "BWAHAHA".
Programming has been deconstructed de facto to a bunch of hacking that only needs to get the job done; anything CS has to say about the process has been declared by the industry as irrelevant. Sounds very postmodern to me.
Although I'd like to agree with you, it's interesting that the mindset the paper puts forward is what you often find in the industry... I mean, it's quite clear to many CSers that roll out of college that in the Real World, software seems to be built in a slightly less "optimal" way than they were taught. It _does_ come down to, everything is as good as anything else, no principles or higher ideals matter, the only thing that matters at the end of the day is how well the problem has been solved, not how Truthful you did it.
You can clearly see this in terms of the way managers push for the cheapest solution, ignoring all the protest or advice from their more wised-up seniors... But also in eg the way that Win32 programming has devolved into using google/codeguru/codeproject to look up a piece of source that comes close to the sort of thing you're trying to do, then fix it up... in that respect, the prime number example isn't all that nutty..
I like it:) This postmodern idea looks like a good summary of what programming is _really_ about out there (unfortunately, I might add). It's probably also why so many people do things The Right Way after hours in their hobby/opensource project, because the postmodern thing just clashes too heavily with their idea of Truth (ie clean programming).
Heh, yeah. I'm running the Ad-version of Eudora, which is free but shows a small, tolerable ad in the lower left corner. One day I got an error that basically came down to Eudora thinking I was trying to get rid of the ad by displaying an Always On Top window over it ! Which was nice, I mean, someone over there has to be smart enough to anticipate that hack, and then do something about it as well (I'm not sure how I'd go about detecting that, other than doing ugly desktop DC grabs or so). Too bad I was _not_ covering up the window, maybe my Hauppauge confused them:) But the techs definitely have some freedom there.
Slashdot Mirror
What a stupid name. Can't they call it AllPerens instead ? :\
You just invented eXtreme Cleaning
(Don't feed trolls, etc, but the blurb talks about "chilling" too, so...)
Please explain how making sure that you get a chance to respond to any unfair, incomplete or in your eyes otherwise faulty publication, in a way that guarantees the response will be read by the public originally subject to the wrong-saying, stiffles free speech ?
As others have said, this also is a fairly good thing if you are the poster, not the subject : if anyone disagrees with what I say, the fact that I (am forced to) offer them a forum to respond kindof takes the wind out of their sails to hammer me with baseless libel threats.
* for loops do not create a new scope (resulting in error messages if you reuse/redeclare for loop counters). I believe this is fixable with compiler flags in Visual Studio.NET. (Technically it's fixable with compiler flags in Visual C++ 6, but the header files won't compile if you try it.)
:)
stdafx.h
#define for if (0) ; else for
weeee
In Belgium. The problem has mostly been Belgian subscribers who roam to Germany, France and Italy -- it seems to be very difficult to get an SMS through in either direction, regardless of operator :\ Interesting report though, maybe it's time to start complaining :)
Is this report consistent with your experience?
:)
Well for what it's worth,
1. International (roaming) messaging is a disaster. You're lucky if anything arrives, and if it does, it can easily be delayed a few days. Once it gets through, you're likely to get the message several times - people reported up to seven times. Can you say ACK ?
2. During peak loads, it looks like the (Belgian) operators give priority to packets originating from subscribers -- ie people who are not using a GSM-version of a calling card containing n minutes / m messages. This was especially obvious at new years' eve -- everyone I know with a subscription got through with every single SMS; people with a card got exactly zero messages through the stampede. If delivery fails, you get a notice though, and afaik you're not billed.
Strange that you mention this.. The first thing I did after installing .Net was testing its debugger by writing a C# Forms program that would simply hook up a paint event handler, and go deliberately out of bounds. I got a break alright, but with some sort of gigantic stacktrace that dumped me somewhere in a bunch of assembler/IL. About all that told me was that something went wrong, somewhere, during CLR's handling of WM_PAINT. I can't imagine debugging a complicated modern GUI app with only that kind of info, so I kinda gave up.. Sounds like something could be wrong with my setup then.
Or try the Magic Mailing List trick : describe the problem and send it to a mailing list for which it is appropriate. The mailing list software will then telepathically send you a fix so that 5 seconds after you hit Send, you already go "Oh shit, DUH, that's it" and you can try covering up your stupidity by replying to yourself and trying to make the one-line fix sound really complicated, "from an architectural point of view".
Though I admit the second half of the movie seemed a little less polished than the first half.. Or maybe it was just the shift of pace.
Then again, that's how I used to think about it, but looking back with your reading in mind, you may have a point that this is how the writers always pictured Borg. But it's more scary as a mind that is so massive that, in comparison, my mind/individuality is only a single synapse. Your interpretation reduces it/them to The Corleone Family XXL
I don't think it was totally legal though
I think you're making the same mistake as the writers did -- that is, no longer being able to understand or "feel" their own creation. They come up with the ultimate distributed mind, it has no single point of "thinking power", and chopped into pieces, it is dumb, as Hugh showed. Only when all (or a lot of) the pieces are brought together does an intelligence emerge that is larger than the sum of the parts. This is probably a very difficult concept, if you try to really grasp it (witness the century old debate over mind vs soul vs set of synapses when it comes to our own intelligence), so they probably just borked it, perhaps by accident, perhaps also because they suddenly realized that such a lifeform is so alien that they cannot effectively develop it as a character or even as a plot device.
Point taken :) There are still a few things in your point of view which I find most peculiar... but I already feel too guilty for typing such short blurbs in response to your lengthy expose, so I won't evoke more and just shut up instead :) Thanks for the insights !
But about the medium or way of presentation... I'm just a little blurry on how you distinguish between an unintentional barrier, and the imaginary glass-guy, who also seems to be only citing his vision as a justification for the barrier. Can you call unorthodox use of a medium unintentional if it goes back to the artist's vision ? I'm not denying that all those undertones of being deliberately impopular might be there, camouflaged as "vision" -- but I still don't find much of a reasonably objective method to draw this decisive line between "It's ok, I just reject it" versus "This is an abuse of the medium / exhibition process". I mean, how do you separate someone who's just flat out wrong, inexperienced or overreaching, from someone with the guts to ignore all (or at least, your) conventions, especially when it comes to the way the medium is used and not the art or technique itself ? (Or did you imply that on a computer, presentation _is_ part of the technique).
Also, I'm not sure you can completely justify a blame on the artist for being self-righteous, while at the same time reserving the right to disregard an artist because the presentation "annoys" you, ie, because he's not entirely up to _your_ non-artistic standards. That's just a recipe for populism.
This is when you realize how scary it is that i and o are right next to eachother on the keyboard =)
It needs to be prefixed by an underscore because those are the only names in the global namespace that are reserved for the implementor ? I'd rather they conform to C++ than to "other systems" :\
Kinda like putting a modchip in the XBox you mean ? :)
His point is that due to short term thinking, companies do not / no longer exist, period. It's not about who does the best job, cronyisms or meritocracies, but what the job is. If you agree that regardless of what a company is supposed to deliver (value ? paychecks ? etc), it should first of all continue to exist, then he is right that management has been wrong lately in prioritizing personal profit over company lifespan.
I'm not sure the article claimed there was no difference -- if they did, I agree with you -- as I'm still digesting it
Now, I'm not saying that violating security regulations should be a routine matter for journalists, but you seem to imply that there can never be a valid reason for journalists to do so. The above is just one recent example.
Because "do nothing until we have a better idea" in itself can be considered a constructive alternative. I may not have a suggestion on how to build their bridge, but I may have enough insight to realize that the way they're going about it is far from optimal, or even dangerous. If the problem is not urgent enough, you can challenge their "attack" on the problem and suggest they wait. Result, extreme programming : challenge everything, thereby postponing it until it is really urgent, or we know enough (or at least more) about the problem.
Programming has been deconstructed de facto to a bunch of hacking that only needs to get the job done; anything CS has to say about the process has been declared by the industry as irrelevant. Sounds very postmodern to me.
You can clearly see this in terms of the way managers push for the cheapest solution, ignoring all the protest or advice from their more wised-up seniors... But also in eg the way that Win32 programming has devolved into using google/codeguru/codeproject to look up a piece of source that comes close to the sort of thing you're trying to do, then fix it up... in that respect, the prime number example isn't all that nutty..
I like it
Heh, yeah. I'm running the Ad-version of Eudora, which is free but shows a small, tolerable ad in the lower left corner. One day I got an error that basically came down to Eudora thinking I was trying to get rid of the ad by displaying an Always On Top window over it ! Which was nice, I mean, someone over there has to be smart enough to anticipate that hack, and then do something about it as well (I'm not sure how I'd go about detecting that, other than doing ugly desktop DC grabs or so). Too bad I was _not_ covering up the window, maybe my Hauppauge confused them :) But the techs definitely have some freedom there.