In yet another critical test case, prosecutors say that anything less than a prison sentence would make future prosecutions of people exceeding the speed limit by 16 km/h(10mph) unlikely.
Well, in fact that is the case. You'll get a ticket if you're actually caught right when you're doing it, but there's not going to be any investigation and prosecution in a court based on an allegiation that you broke the speed limit recently. It's just not serious enough for a full-blown prosecution.
The prosecutor is saying he's trying to find out how seriously the judge believes copyright infringement should be taken, I think.
It allows me to listen to the file on all my audio listening hardware, and transfer the file freely between them.
It allows me to listen to the file on any operating system of my own choosing, if I want to listen to it on a computer, even ones that don't exist yet (i.e., the spec for listening to it must be open).
It allows me to do all of those things forever, without extra payments, and even if the company selling it to me ceases to exist. Any ability on their part to stop me accessing the file is unacceptable.
I can share the file with other people within reason (like let some individual copy the file once every few months).
It's quite possible that those are incompatible. Well, then don't use DRM if you want to sell to me, Ogg or mp3 are fine. Note that iTunes (with its ability to burn to CD) comes close enough, but iTunes isn't available in my country.
Precisely. There are two big movements in new laws at the moment.
ONE: more possibilities for law enforcement, less privacy, harsher penalties, everything allowed if you mention terrorism. This is no problem at all if you're innocent.
TWO: Nobody is innocent. Ever downloaded an unlicensed mp3? Used unlicensed software? Copied a CD? Had an idea that happened to be patented? Taped a TV show? Drank alcohol before 21? Drove faster than the speed limit?
"That's ok if you're innocent" is only relevant for the 2 or so people who are completely innocent.
Lots of managers don't value well written code. Get it done and get it done fast is the rule they enforce. Maybe a segment where you give them two different scripts, one with traditional spaghetti code/long functions/poor naming, etc. and one with well written and documented code. Then ask them to fix certain bugs in the scripts or add certain features.
Have them implement something individually, then give their code to someone else and vice versa, and totally change the requirements on them at the last minute so they have to do impossible changes to the other guy's unreadable code.
Afterwards review the code, show how it should have been setup so that it would be comprehensible to someone else, and easier to change. That should drive the point home.
Heck, that's not for managers, that's something to do to 1st year computer science students.
For small programs, Java can get very wordy and very verbose, especially if you coming directly from C/C++, or from a language like Perl or Python. [...] However, once you start making larger programs, Java isn't that bad, and all of those words are there for a reason.
Exactly. Java is for large programs. Who cares how many lines Hello World is.
And the cool thing is, if you want to write short maintenance/testing scripts that use your huge Java library, or you want to manually call some functions from an interactive interpreter prompt, you can do that with Jython. I love the combination of Java and Jython.
It does not mean the same thing everywhere. A "liberal" here in the Netherlands would be someone who wants free markets, less government regulation. What you describe is called a "progressive".
Typically, left wing parties are progressive but want government control of markets, while right wing parties are economocially liberal but may be more authoritorian or conservative.
Which is why in Europe one thinks of right wing parties as liberal, while it's the "left" (slight less right) party in the US that's liberal.
Once you become a grand master at chess, does it help or hurt your chances with women when you tell them?
I guess it helps with chess playing women. There are some who have been known to "Elo-hop", i.e. there is a Dutch woman who's had four or five chess playing boyfriends, each time she dumped the one she had for one with a higher rating...
How did you get laid before you got interested in things outside of chess? =)
Ahum... I present to thee The 1st World Chess Beauty Contest. Unfortunately you need to register before you can vote on photos. Chessbase has some examples. The first picture isn't really the best, but well, at least it shows that several people in the chess world have their priorities straight, while still interested in "things" inside of chess:-)
(In general, over the last year it has become a huge trend in chess magazines etc to concentrate on pictures of chess playing girls... apparently it sells).
Hi Ced! Yes, the problem was that when I played, during those three or four years my study came to a complete standstill, but in the meantime I was telling my parents fantasy stories about how well I was doing. To escape from the guilt over that, I played more MUD. The pressure of that is what cost me.
And after MUDding, I still had to finish that study (computer science). Never managed to get back to a decent speed, no self confidence, always pressure in my mind that I built up during mudding (have to work on your study!).
Few years ago I found a programming job, part time, found out I was actually quite good, regained self confidence, found a good psychologist, and managed to finish it all. Graduated in september'04, after 12 years. Have a good job now.
On the positive side, I am a very good programmer compared to my colleagues, and I'm positive it was those years of hacking LPC that did that, much more than the computer science:-)
Unfortunately, Kasparov in real life is also into history, and rather close to crackpot science. For instance, he doesn't believe there was 1000 years between the Roman empire and Newton, he thinks history has been artificially expanded by 1000 years.
I also vaguely remember that he tried to form a political party after the fall of the USSR, and was voted down as chairman on the first day of his own party! Add to that all the political problems that always surrounded him in the chess world (PCA, FIDE, etc), and I think he's not all that much better than them at politics.
Wouldn't it make more sense to title it "How Chess Imitates Life"?
Not to chess players. Chess is a sort of mathematical construct, it's an idea that was discovered. Life has a starting date.
As I understand, he's trying to explain how you can turn a chess obsessed mind towards other things, something that he claims to have done. Personally the games in my dreams are about as bad as the ones I play, so I'd rather put the programming obsessed part of my brain to work, but he is Kasparov...
He's retiring because he's been the top player for the last 20 years, he is the best ever, last year he won the Russian championship for the first time so he's won everything there is to win, most of it many times, and he can't see any new challenges. The mess in FIDE and the constant mess around the world championships sucked a lot of his energy, he'll just play for fun from now on.
Politics is one of the things he's going to do in his newly found free time, but it's hardly the main story.
Speak for yourself. Back in the day when I was a MUD addict, it cost me about seven years of my life. About four years playing and doing nothing else, three more of depression when I had finally kicked it. Needed several psychologists to finally get back on my feet. It was a very big problem, I was aware of it and miserable, and unable to stop.
Everything is done by puzzles (e.g., advanced tetris-style games). A ship sails because the navigator plays the Navigation puzzle, using movement points created by people playing the Sailing puzzle, in ship vs ship battle people play the Gunnery puzzles to load guns, ships can grapple after which everyone fights each other hand to hand in Swordfighting puzzle games. That's different from yet another graphical MUD!
The deal is that in the 80's, when the GNU command line stuff was written, common Unix keyboards had the Control key on a better place, above the left shift (pic of some old Sun keyboard).
Nowadays there exists the "Happy Hacker Keyboard", see layout here, which seems sensible. Need to try one once.
Emacs commands? I thought ctrl+a, ctrl+e, ctrl+w, etc was standard *nix stuff. Those emacs people sure know how to influence people since bash, zsh, etc also use those.
Bash, and many Linux command line programs, use the readline(3) library, which is part of GNU. It was written by the same people who wrote GNU Emacs.
It is possible to switch it to vi key bindings (see the man page), but I have never tried that and never will (I'm an Emacs monkey).
Slashdot Mirror
In yet another critical test case, prosecutors say that anything less than a prison sentence would make future prosecutions of people exceeding the speed limit by 16 km/h(10mph) unlikely.
Well, in fact that is the case. You'll get a ticket if you're actually caught right when you're doing it, but there's not going to be any investigation and prosecution in a court based on an allegiation that you broke the speed limit recently. It's just not serious enough for a full-blown prosecution.
The prosecutor is saying he's trying to find out how seriously the judge believes copyright infringement should be taken, I think.
I'd accept DRM if (assuming an audio file):
It's quite possible that those are incompatible. Well, then don't use DRM if you want to sell to me, Ogg or mp3 are fine. Note that iTunes (with its ability to burn to CD) comes close enough, but iTunes isn't available in my country.
but it will almost always bring the spammer down as a (nice) side-effect.
No, it will bring whoever is in the From: address down. It's extremely rare that that is an address that the spammer has anything to do with.
If you're innocent, no problem.
Precisely. There are two big movements in new laws at the moment.
ONE: more possibilities for law enforcement, less privacy, harsher penalties, everything allowed if you mention terrorism. This is no problem at all if you're innocent.
TWO: Nobody is innocent. Ever downloaded an unlicensed mp3? Used unlicensed software? Copied a CD? Had an idea that happened to be patented? Taped a TV show? Drank alcohol before 21? Drove faster than the speed limit?
"That's ok if you're innocent" is only relevant for the 2 or so people who are completely innocent.
Lots of managers don't value well written code. Get it done and get it done fast is the rule they enforce. Maybe a segment where you give them two different scripts, one with traditional spaghetti code/long functions/poor naming, etc. and one with well written and documented code. Then ask them to fix certain bugs in the scripts or add certain features.
Have them implement something individually, then give their code to someone else and vice versa, and totally change the requirements on them at the last minute so they have to do impossible changes to the other guy's unreadable code.
Afterwards review the code, show how it should have been setup so that it would be comprehensible to someone else, and easier to change. That should drive the point home.
Heck, that's not for managers, that's something to do to 1st year computer science students.
The word is its. He wrote it correctly, why did you have to insert an error?
Swedx also make wooden housings, for TFT monitors, keyboards and mice. I want a block of wood as a wireless mouse one day.
Is it reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a license that is royalty free - or are people concerned about the cost here.
Remember that this is a punishment for a crime. It's supposed to hurt.
And Malta.
For small programs, Java can get very wordy and very verbose, especially if you coming directly from C/C++, or from a language like Perl or Python. [...] However, once you start making larger programs, Java isn't that bad, and all of those words are there for a reason.
Exactly. Java is for large programs. Who cares how many lines Hello World is.
And the cool thing is, if you want to write short maintenance/testing scripts that use your huge Java library, or you want to manually call some functions from an interactive interpreter prompt, you can do that with Jython. I love the combination of Java and Jython.
Finally then, the Microsoft business plan:
(my first and last 1 2 3 post ever, I promise)
It does not mean the same thing everywhere. A "liberal" here in the Netherlands would be someone who wants free markets, less government regulation. What you describe is called a "progressive".
Typically, left wing parties are progressive but want government control of markets, while right wing parties are economocially liberal but may be more authoritorian or conservative.
Which is why in Europe one thinks of right wing parties as liberal, while it's the "left" (slight less right) party in the US that's liberal.
Once you become a grand master at chess, does it help or hurt your chances with women when you tell them?
I guess it helps with chess playing women. There are some who have been known to "Elo-hop", i.e. there is a Dutch woman who's had four or five chess playing boyfriends, each time she dumped the one she had for one with a higher rating...
How did you get laid before you got interested in things outside of chess? =)
Ahum... I present to thee The 1st World Chess Beauty Contest. Unfortunately you need to register before you can vote on photos. Chessbase has some examples. The first picture isn't really the best, but well, at least it shows that several people in the chess world have their priorities straight, while still interested in "things" inside of chess :-)
(In general, over the last year it has become a huge trend in chess magazines etc to concentrate on pictures of chess playing girls... apparently it sells).
I hadn't realised it hurt you that bad.
Hi Ced! Yes, the problem was that when I played, during those three or four years my study came to a complete standstill, but in the meantime I was telling my parents fantasy stories about how well I was doing. To escape from the guilt over that, I played more MUD. The pressure of that is what cost me.
And after MUDding, I still had to finish that study (computer science). Never managed to get back to a decent speed, no self confidence, always pressure in my mind that I built up during mudding (have to work on your study!).
Few years ago I found a programming job, part time, found out I was actually quite good, regained self confidence, found a good psychologist, and managed to finish it all. Graduated in september'04, after 12 years. Have a good job now.
On the positive side, I am a very good programmer compared to my colleagues, and I'm positive it was those years of hacking LPC that did that, much more than the computer science :-)
Unfortunately, Kasparov in real life is also into history, and rather close to crackpot science. For instance, he doesn't believe there was 1000 years between the Roman empire and Newton, he thinks history has been artificially expanded by 1000 years.
See e.g. http://www.world-mysteries.com/garrykasparov.htm.
I also vaguely remember that he tried to form a political party after the fall of the USSR, and was voted down as chairman on the first day of his own party! Add to that all the political problems that always surrounded him in the chess world (PCA, FIDE, etc), and I think he's not all that much better than them at politics.
Wouldn't it make more sense to title it "How Chess Imitates Life"?
Not to chess players. Chess is a sort of mathematical construct, it's an idea that was discovered. Life has a starting date.
As I understand, he's trying to explain how you can turn a chess obsessed mind towards other things, something that he claims to have done. Personally the games in my dreams are about as bad as the ones I play, so I'd rather put the programming obsessed part of my brain to work, but he is Kasparov...
The Week in Chess report on the press conference.
He's retiring because he's been the top player for the last 20 years, he is the best ever, last year he won the Russian championship for the first time so he's won everything there is to win, most of it many times, and he can't see any new challenges. The mess in FIDE and the constant mess around the world championships sucked a lot of his energy, he'll just play for fun from now on.
Politics is one of the things he's going to do in his newly found free time, but it's hardly the main story.
Speak for yourself. Back in the day when I was a MUD addict, it cost me about seven years of my life. About four years playing and doing nothing else, three more of depression when I had finally kicked it. Needed several psychologists to finally get back on my feet. It was a very big problem, I was aware of it and miserable, and unable to stop.
mmoarrrrpg
Everything is done by puzzles (e.g., advanced tetris-style games). A ship sails because the navigator plays the Navigation puzzle, using movement points created by people playing the Sailing puzzle, in ship vs ship battle people play the Gunnery puzzles to load guns, ships can grapple after which everyone fights each other hand to hand in Swordfighting puzzle games. That's different from yet another graphical MUD!
Reminds one of this anecdote.
For most office uses, current new computers are way overpowered. Simply underclock them and do without cooling.
"Maximum" is singular. "Maxima" is plural. Minima are similar.
So it's "two maxima and one minimum."
The deal is that in the 80's, when the GNU command line stuff was written, common Unix keyboards had the Control key on a better place, above the left shift (pic of some old Sun keyboard).
Nowadays there exists the "Happy Hacker Keyboard", see layout here, which seems sensible. Need to try one once.
Emacs commands? I thought ctrl+a, ctrl+e, ctrl+w, etc was standard *nix stuff. Those emacs people sure know how to influence people since bash, zsh, etc also use those.
Bash, and many Linux command line programs, use the readline(3) library, which is part of GNU. It was written by the same people who wrote GNU Emacs.
It is possible to switch it to vi key bindings (see the man page), but I have never tried that and never will (I'm an Emacs monkey).