You say 'heresy' on the idea of coding style standard to the guy responsible probably for one of the most used computer languages in history? I wonder.
Also from my personal perspective, when you open a brace on its own line, at least bother to indent the code in the braces by one more tab or something, it looks like a mad man wrote it otherwise.
I am not justifying it, I am saying you are mistaken that this is the case in the first place and also that there are ways of fixing the problem without getting into a civil war of some sort as you seem to propose. Cheers anyway, I wish your country the best.
Their heads are built lighter than mammal skulls because they sit way out at the end of very long necks,' Brooks Britt, a BYU paleontologist said in a news release. 'Instead of thick bones fused together, sauropod skulls are made of thin bones bound together by soft tissue.'
- damn, even dinosaurs are smarter Sarah Palin. Guess they are not retards. They also had backbone, unlike any democrats, were actually honest in what they did, unlike any politician, and they most likely did not take shit from nobody, unlike the US voters.
The notion that anyone can arbitrarily impose a "correct" way of doing something simply because they have power, influence and authority went out with the Victorians.
I read the spec, I noticed that Ken Thompson is one of the designers and this:
This approach makes for clean-looking, semicolon-free code. The one surprise is that it's important to put the opening brace of a construct such as an if statement on the same line as the if; if you don't, there are situations that may not compile or may give the wrong result. The language forces the brace style to some extent.
- if this is not done on purpose, I'll eat my hat (which by coincidence is currently made of some eatable stuff I think).
I know why there is this new language now, forget about everything else, Ken just wanted to make a point of the correct style of opening braces and he came up with a language that does not allow you to do any different!
Looks like for the software that you are maintaining the question is different: how do you train the users to do what they do without getting the errors?
I am working on a system that is very new to its users and some of the functionality is much too complex for them to understand intrinsically (actually it requires them to use some simplified form of a regular expression for searching of data they need.) This wouldn't work for internet search for 99% of population, so it's not done that way, but in a corporate setup, sometimes specialized functionality is needed.
So, I put in enough logging and monitored the users actually try to search for various items in real time. It did 2 things for me: 1. I called a user when I saw that he/she was trying to search for something, but they clearly misunderstood how to do it. I called them and immediately explained what they needed, before they became frustrated and gave up or maybe worse, accepted the wrong results as if they were correct.
2. I added these types of errors that I detected users doing to a manual page explaining how to use the search.
Now, obviously it is still a useless page if nobody reads it, but it is part of the manual and for power use of this application a little manual should be read, otherwise the user will not know what to do at all.
Logging + preventive work, calling them as you observe them trying to do something that will not actually generate an error (in my case) but give them incorrect/incomplete results, because what they do is not the correct way of using the application.
Later it became obvious that more functionality needed to be added - certain types of search are a bit too complex, so adding a screen with different types of searches being named and the appropriate search expression right there, to be used, instead of typing it by hand.
Just 'reading errors' may not really be the right question, why are these errors happening? Are these system errors (runtime errors, network failures, something a user is not responsible for) or are these user generated errors (input errors, incorrect sequence of actions and such.)
For the first problem you will just have to do more logging and save information to check on it later, and provide users with very generic 'system error, please contact help desk' or some such. For the second problem it maybe that you need to produce a manual and do training, some business software really cannot be used without training, it's not software for everyone to use at home, so it's not built for people with no knowledge of the business domain and processes in the first place. As part of their jobs they probably are expected to understand how to use their software correctly and effectively.
Ok, so if your voting process is corrupt to the point that your voting machines record non-existing votes and skip real ones, you have different issues. This may just mean that your government stopped being representative of your people so much, it makes no sense bothering with the voting and then it does warrant violent removal.
However I don't think in the case of US it is that terrible, yes stories come up one after another about all of the voting problems, but you also have people from various parties as well as independents checking that voting is not rigged but more promising is the mere fact that this information comes out, there is a way to do verification if you stopped using the faulty machines. So is it so difficult to use pen and paper that it would take a 1000 years as you suggested? Many other countries do it that way, you know.
Underbidding a contract and working for free is not the only way, also it is impossible. One thing is your own time, another altogether the fact that you'd have to produce some results in a reasonable amount of time - can you buy equipment and hire people to do the work for free for you? Besides, if you know that this work is useless in the first place, that would be a gigantic waste of time.
More productive way is to expose the people in the system for who they are - corrupt corporation whores and in no way your representatives. A more productive way is to form opposition to the establishment and fight it politically by attempting to get elected without being corrupt, at least in this case you would not occupy yourself with a pointless and impossible task, while maybe actually achieving something. You are oblivious to the reality and history - this has been done many times before, it definitely makes more sense that what you are proposing.
Your last argument: 'if pork spending and corruption can be stopped in a very short time as you suggest, then why hasn't it been stopped?' - this is a good question, but it is not a negation of what I am saying. Pork spending is not stopped because so many people in power push for it, because it is profitable to them so much. I answer this in exactly the same manner: the people in the US are voting for the establishment and not paying attention.
I do however think, that latest losses of elections by Democrats to republicans are a display of people tired of the same game. People stop coming out to vote for their Democrat candidate because specifically they don't like that after the promise of change it's business as usual. I don't believe that people vote for Republicans more (and my assertion is supported by many polls) so people are becoming very disappointed with who they chose. In this political environment it maybe is becoming a real possibility for someone who is not with the establishment to be elected because they are not with the establishment and they push that button, even though they will not have the kind of money that gets one elected, because they will not have any corporate sponsors at all.
There is another possibility, which is much faster than waiting 1000 years: reform the process of getting elected, so that the people, who have enough votes will not be allowed to take corporate money and will be provided some campaign money from the government. Millions of dollars spent on campaigns - that's a huge issue, remove this problem and you are on the way to a solution.
First, you brought up the voting machines and you continue with that theme, I don't know why.
Second, there is a way to stop pork spending and corruption in a very short time, don't need 1000 years, vote out the establishment people and vote in totally new people, who are not corrupted by the system.
I do hope that while you are still learning the language's grammar, you also are developing a better, keener sense of humor, as the GP made it clear by the abundance of grammatical errors put together into a somewhat coherent message, that he was, without any doubt, making a mockery, a grotesque sneer if you will of the GGP post. You missed it on many more levels than one, only picking up on a single grammatical error and completely letting go of the actual context of the message. I sincerely wish you to grow in all your future endeavors, however I do suggest not to jump to foregone conclusions in such a haste as to make a fool of oneself.
in SciFi it's called stasis as in 'stasis field' for example. Some form of energy that makes everything stop.
If the atoms stop oscillating, if the electrons stop moving, if the photons stop moving (by the way, photon mass of rest is 0 or otherwise our physics is screwed up, right?) if everything stops moving, that means there is no entropy, no change of state. Obviously there is no time.
Imagine that every atom, electron, molecule, cell in your body stopped doing anything, metabolism stopped, heat exchange stopped, nothing was happening. Well then, no time would pass for you in that state. You'd be in that state but not aging, not changing. You would not be thinking. You would not exist. For us to exist, physics and chemistry have to work, have to move all the particles around us, so time for us is life and because of entropy it is also death.
What happens when you go back in time to kill your father is an interesting question, but not one that the article actually addresses in any way that actual addresses physics of the subject.
- I tell you what happens, you go to jail, that's what happens.
However more to the point, if you go back in time and prevent yourself from being born, you will not be born and will not exist to go back in time. This means that anyone who has ever done it has never actually existed, because he/she was prevented from being born, and anyone who exists will not do it.
Oynk, oynk. Joe Lieberman - the corporatist. Is his wife getting any money from insurance industry? Is he getting money from insurance industry? Yes they do, but obviously that became not enough. Now he also wants to force the secret service to build some ridiculous and most likely not needed IT systems in his state, I am sure, that is the only real reason for any of US politicians to come out with statements like that: we want pork.
Certainly he will pillage the system some more and then again before he goes away.
Democrats, Republicans, they are bought long time ago by the corporations. Get rid of them, vote for someone who is not with the establishment, someone who is not bought by the corporations yet.
it has nothing to do with voting machines, it has everything to do with the corporations giving money to candidates from either political party, who are then given to you to vote for. Doesn't matter who you vote in, almost any politician from any side (R/D) is already a tool of the corporations.
The only right way to go is to vote for the non-establishment people, those who are not yet real politicians, those who have not being bought yet. You have some people like that on both sides: Ron Paul and Alan Grayson come to mind first.
Ok, let's do it again, and then later on we can do it once more.
Joe Lieberman is a lying bag of excrement, most likely is doing this as a pork project for his state and probably the underlying story is that there is no need to update the secrete service computer systems, at least no more than building that new F22, which politicians want to see built in their states anyway.
Money, it's about the money. Lieberman is a pig and people who don't see it are blind.
Underbid someone at 0 dollars for a contract and deliver what with that 0?
Lucky for US I am not it's citizen? As far as I am concerned - lucky for me.
what if the voting system itself is just as failed as the institution that implemented it?
- voting system will remain a failure as long as the people who vote do not care about understanding what they vote on. A system that implements voting in the first place is better than a system that has no voting at all, so there must have been something there in the beginning, but obviously over time money became the deciding factor for winning almost any vote, that's the failure.
I'll repost the same message again, later, when the moderators are tired of voting it down: this is another pork program, Joe Lieberman is a thief, a liar and a traitor.
So by your logic, someone should take much less money and then do what? If the contract is for 100,000,000 for example, you underbid and take 50,000,000 and if that's definitely not enough, then what?
i suppose you believe the moral thing to do in that case is overthrow the government?
- oh, the government that US has right now is a failed institution. Should it be overthrown? Definitely. By voting. However if the people just keep voting in the same people, well, they deserve it then, don't they?
Lucky for me I am not a US citizen and I never lived there, so it's really a question that US citizens should ask themselves.
Liberman wants pork money, that's obvious, he probably wants a few hundred million dollars to go to his state for this 'program'. Question is, is this complete BS or is there something there about the 60% nonsense and all that jazz? I bet there is very little truth to any of these statements, that the secret service runs on these old computers and that they really need any upgrade.
Sounds to me exactly like that F22 BS, where the military says "we don't need it" and politicians say "yes, we need it, let's spend money".
It's about the money.
Oh, and Joe Lieberman - I cannot believe he is still alive, I mean better people in history died for less transgressions against their countrymen, and this piece of shit still walks the earth. Unimaginable.
Well, that should have been addressed with the 'public option' idea, after all, in many parts of the world government insurance has extremely low overhead, because they are not in this to make money (not supposed to be) and it is good for creating competition to the rest of the insurance firms.
You won't get your public option in the US though, O'Bama:) is now preparing for the new election campaign (he is now the president 'reelect'). So good luck with him, he never wanted the public option in the first place, cut deals with all of the insurance and drug manufacturers, did everything every single republican wanted from him, would not allow you to import cheap drugs from Canada or other countries, and now, in the reelection mode, where do you think he'll go for the new campaign donations? Insurance companies of-course. You're done, son.
This is an obvious move by the large software manufacturers to keep their monopoly, that's how large corporations create unbearable situation for anyone who maybe able to compete, they create enormous barriers of entry.
Large corporations lobby the government to get what they want, be it bailout money, interest rate free money, laws that discourage competition, unfair advantage for taxation etc. It's the same old 'struggle of the classes', just moved to a slightly different plane - keeping your tools of production away from you, so that you would be forced to go work at the factory. Marx was wrong about what capitalism is, he mixed the term with mercantilism, but he was right in some principle things: those who have capital want to be the only ones with it, to make sure that it is so, they will do their darnest to be the only ones who have means of production so that the rest are forced to work for them and be paid a wage. Wage slaves.
I work as a contractor since 15th of January 2001, never looked back (worked in Toronto most of the time), the laws in Canada are better for this than in the US. US definitely sucks balls in this particular instance. Tomorrow maybe my last day with a company I worked with for 4.5 years, that's my longest contract yet.
Slashdot Mirror
You say 'heresy' on the idea of coding style standard to the guy responsible probably for one of the most used computer languages in history? I wonder.
Also from my personal perspective, when you open a brace on its own line, at least bother to indent the code in the braces by one more tab or something, it looks like a mad man wrote it otherwise.
I am not justifying it, I am saying you are mistaken that this is the case in the first place and also that there are ways of fixing the problem without getting into a civil war of some sort as you seem to propose. Cheers anyway, I wish your country the best.
Their heads are built lighter than mammal skulls because they sit way out at the end of very long necks,' Brooks Britt, a BYU paleontologist said in a news release. 'Instead of thick bones fused together, sauropod skulls are made of thin bones bound together by soft tissue.'
- damn, even dinosaurs are smarter Sarah Palin. Guess they are not retards. They also had backbone, unlike any democrats, were actually honest in what they did, unlike any politician, and they most likely did not take shit from nobody, unlike the US voters.
The notion that anyone can arbitrarily impose a "correct" way of doing something simply because they have power, influence and authority went out with the Victorians.
- pffft, wrong, Ken just proved you wrong.
you don't think Go will go well? :)
I read the spec, I noticed that Ken Thompson is one of the designers and this:
This approach makes for clean-looking, semicolon-free code. The one surprise is that it's important to put the opening brace of a construct such as an if statement on the same line as the if; if you don't, there are situations that may not compile or may give the wrong result. The language forces the brace style to some extent.
- if this is not done on purpose, I'll eat my hat (which by coincidence is currently made of some eatable stuff I think).
I know why there is this new language now, forget about everything else, Ken just wanted to make a point of the correct style of opening braces and he came up with a language that does not allow you to do any different!
how do you get users to read?
Looks like for the software that you are maintaining the question is different: how do you train the users to do what they do without getting the errors?
I am working on a system that is very new to its users and some of the functionality is much too complex for them to understand intrinsically (actually it requires them to use some simplified form of a regular expression for searching of data they need.) This wouldn't work for internet search for 99% of population, so it's not done that way, but in a corporate setup, sometimes specialized functionality is needed.
So, I put in enough logging and monitored the users actually try to search for various items in real time. It did 2 things for me: 1. I called a user when I saw that he/she was trying to search for something, but they clearly misunderstood how to do it. I called them and immediately explained what they needed, before they became frustrated and gave up or maybe worse, accepted the wrong results as if they were correct.
2. I added these types of errors that I detected users doing to a manual page explaining how to use the search.
Now, obviously it is still a useless page if nobody reads it, but it is part of the manual and for power use of this application a little manual should be read, otherwise the user will not know what to do at all.
Logging + preventive work, calling them as you observe them trying to do something that will not actually generate an error (in my case) but give them incorrect/incomplete results, because what they do is not the correct way of using the application.
Later it became obvious that more functionality needed to be added - certain types of search are a bit too complex, so adding a screen with different types of searches being named and the appropriate search expression right there, to be used, instead of typing it by hand.
Just 'reading errors' may not really be the right question, why are these errors happening? Are these system errors (runtime errors, network failures, something a user is not responsible for) or are these user generated errors (input errors, incorrect sequence of actions and such.)
For the first problem you will just have to do more logging and save information to check on it later, and provide users with very generic 'system error, please contact help desk' or some such. For the second problem it maybe that you need to produce a manual and do training, some business software really cannot be used without training, it's not software for everyone to use at home, so it's not built for people with no knowledge of the business domain and processes in the first place. As part of their jobs they probably are expected to understand how to use their software correctly and effectively.
Ok, so if your voting process is corrupt to the point that your voting machines record non-existing votes and skip real ones, you have different issues. This may just mean that your government stopped being representative of your people so much, it makes no sense bothering with the voting and then it does warrant violent removal.
However I don't think in the case of US it is that terrible, yes stories come up one after another about all of the voting problems, but you also have people from various parties as well as independents checking that voting is not rigged but more promising is the mere fact that this information comes out, there is a way to do verification if you stopped using the faulty machines. So is it so difficult to use pen and paper that it would take a 1000 years as you suggested? Many other countries do it that way, you know.
Underbidding a contract and working for free is not the only way, also it is impossible. One thing is your own time, another altogether the fact that you'd have to produce some results in a reasonable amount of time - can you buy equipment and hire people to do the work for free for you? Besides, if you know that this work is useless in the first place, that would be a gigantic waste of time.
More productive way is to expose the people in the system for who they are - corrupt corporation whores and in no way your representatives. A more productive way is to form opposition to the establishment and fight it politically by attempting to get elected without being corrupt, at least in this case you would not occupy yourself with a pointless and impossible task, while maybe actually achieving something. You are oblivious to the reality and history - this has been done many times before, it definitely makes more sense that what you are proposing.
Your last argument: 'if pork spending and corruption can be stopped in a very short time as you suggest, then why hasn't it been stopped?' - this is a good question, but it is not a negation of what I am saying. Pork spending is not stopped because so many people in power push for it, because it is profitable to them so much. I answer this in exactly the same manner: the people in the US are voting for the establishment and not paying attention.
I do however think, that latest losses of elections by Democrats to republicans are a display of people tired of the same game. People stop coming out to vote for their Democrat candidate because specifically they don't like that after the promise of change it's business as usual. I don't believe that people vote for Republicans more (and my assertion is supported by many polls) so people are becoming very disappointed with who they chose. In this political environment it maybe is becoming a real possibility for someone who is not with the establishment to be elected because they are not with the establishment and they push that button, even though they will not have the kind of money that gets one elected, because they will not have any corporate sponsors at all.
There is another possibility, which is much faster than waiting 1000 years: reform the process of getting elected, so that the people, who have enough votes will not be allowed to take corporate money and will be provided some campaign money from the government. Millions of dollars spent on campaigns - that's a huge issue, remove this problem and you are on the way to a solution.
First, you brought up the voting machines and you continue with that theme, I don't know why.
Second, there is a way to stop pork spending and corruption in a very short time, don't need 1000 years, vote out the establishment people and vote in totally new people, who are not corrupted by the system.
I do hope that while you are still learning the language's grammar, you also are developing a better, keener sense of humor, as the GP made it clear by the abundance of grammatical errors put together into a somewhat coherent message, that he was, without any doubt, making a mockery, a grotesque sneer if you will of the GGP post. You missed it on many more levels than one, only picking up on a single grammatical error and completely letting go of the actual context of the message. I sincerely wish you to grow in all your future endeavors, however I do suggest not to jump to foregone conclusions in such a haste as to make a fool of oneself.
in SciFi it's called stasis as in 'stasis field' for example. Some form of energy that makes everything stop.
If the atoms stop oscillating, if the electrons stop moving, if the photons stop moving (by the way, photon mass of rest is 0 or otherwise our physics is screwed up, right?) if everything stops moving, that means there is no entropy, no change of state. Obviously there is no time.
Imagine that every atom, electron, molecule, cell in your body stopped doing anything, metabolism stopped, heat exchange stopped, nothing was happening. Well then, no time would pass for you in that state. You'd be in that state but not aging, not changing. You would not be thinking. You would not exist. For us to exist, physics and chemistry have to work, have to move all the particles around us, so time for us is life and because of entropy it is also death.
What happens when you go back in time to kill your father is an interesting question, but not one that the article actually addresses in any way that actual addresses physics of the subject.
- I tell you what happens, you go to jail, that's what happens.
However more to the point, if you go back in time and prevent yourself from being born, you will not be born and will not exist to go back in time. This means that anyone who has ever done it has never actually existed, because he/she was prevented from being born, and anyone who exists will not do it.
there you go.
My wife dropped her Blackberry Pearl into water twice. The first time, it was the the toilet.
- mine did that too. Is it anger in women, that makes them throw their phones into the toilet bowl? I don't know.
But what is with the 'the the toilet'? Do you have 'the toilet' and some other toilet, which is subordinate to the first one?
Oynk, oynk. Joe Lieberman - the corporatist. Is his wife getting any money from insurance industry? Is he getting money from insurance industry? Yes they do, but obviously that became not enough. Now he also wants to force the secret service to build some ridiculous and most likely not needed IT systems in his state, I am sure, that is the only real reason for any of US politicians to come out with statements like that: we want pork.
Certainly he will pillage the system some more and then again before he goes away.
Democrats, Republicans, they are bought long time ago by the corporations. Get rid of them, vote for someone who is not with the establishment, someone who is not bought by the corporations yet.
it has nothing to do with voting machines, it has everything to do with the corporations giving money to candidates from either political party, who are then given to you to vote for. Doesn't matter who you vote in, almost any politician from any side (R/D) is already a tool of the corporations.
The only right way to go is to vote for the non-establishment people, those who are not yet real politicians, those who have not being bought yet. You have some people like that on both sides: Ron Paul and Alan Grayson come to mind first.
Ok, let's do it again, and then later on we can do it once more.
Joe Lieberman is a lying bag of excrement, most likely is doing this as a pork project for his state and probably the underlying story is that there is no need to update the secrete service computer systems, at least no more than building that new F22, which politicians want to see built in their states anyway.
Money, it's about the money. Lieberman is a pig and people who don't see it are blind.
Underbid someone at 0 dollars for a contract and deliver what with that 0?
Lucky for US I am not it's citizen? As far as I am concerned - lucky for me.
what if the voting system itself is just as failed as the institution that implemented it?
- voting system will remain a failure as long as the people who vote do not care about understanding what they vote on. A system that implements voting in the first place is better than a system that has no voting at all, so there must have been something there in the beginning, but obviously over time money became the deciding factor for winning almost any vote, that's the failure.
I'll repost the same message again, later, when the moderators are tired of voting it down: this is another pork program, Joe Lieberman is a thief, a liar and a traitor.
So by your logic, someone should take much less money and then do what? If the contract is for 100,000,000 for example, you underbid and take 50,000,000 and if that's definitely not enough, then what?
i suppose you believe the moral thing to do in that case is overthrow the government?
- oh, the government that US has right now is a failed institution. Should it be overthrown? Definitely. By voting. However if the people just keep voting in the same people, well, they deserve it then, don't they?
Lucky for me I am not a US citizen and I never lived there, so it's really a question that US citizens should ask themselves.
certainly, the moral thing when no taxpayer money needs to be spend is to take it anyway?
Oynk, oynk.
Liberman wants pork money, that's obvious, he probably wants a few hundred million dollars to go to his state for this 'program'. Question is, is this complete BS or is there something there about the 60% nonsense and all that jazz? I bet there is very little truth to any of these statements, that the secret service runs on these old computers and that they really need any upgrade.
Sounds to me exactly like that F22 BS, where the military says "we don't need it" and politicians say "yes, we need it, let's spend money".
It's about the money.
Oh, and Joe Lieberman - I cannot believe he is still alive, I mean better people in history died for less transgressions against their countrymen, and this piece of shit still walks the earth. Unimaginable.
We will continue to seek effective means to block 'filth' (his word) from entering our country any way we can.
= oh, he is about 240 years too late.
Sure, that's what they do to sell it to the public. So called Weapons of Mass Delusion.
Well, that should have been addressed with the 'public option' idea, after all, in many parts of the world government insurance has extremely low overhead, because they are not in this to make money (not supposed to be) and it is good for creating competition to the rest of the insurance firms.
You won't get your public option in the US though, O'Bama :) is now preparing for the new election campaign (he is now the president 'reelect'). So good luck with him, he never wanted the public option in the first place, cut deals with all of the insurance and drug manufacturers, did everything every single republican wanted from him, would not allow you to import cheap drugs from Canada or other countries, and now, in the reelection mode, where do you think he'll go for the new campaign donations? Insurance companies of-course. You're done, son.
This is an obvious move by the large software manufacturers to keep their monopoly, that's how large corporations create unbearable situation for anyone who maybe able to compete, they create enormous barriers of entry.
Large corporations lobby the government to get what they want, be it bailout money, interest rate free money, laws that discourage competition, unfair advantage for taxation etc. It's the same old 'struggle of the classes', just moved to a slightly different plane - keeping your tools of production away from you, so that you would be forced to go work at the factory. Marx was wrong about what capitalism is, he mixed the term with mercantilism, but he was right in some principle things: those who have capital want to be the only ones with it, to make sure that it is so, they will do their darnest to be the only ones who have means of production so that the rest are forced to work for them and be paid a wage. Wage slaves.
I work as a contractor since 15th of January 2001, never looked back (worked in Toronto most of the time), the laws in Canada are better for this than in the US. US definitely sucks balls in this particular instance. Tomorrow maybe my last day with a company I worked with for 4.5 years, that's my longest contract yet.
You know, you are right, maybe those spammers should bring up a law suit against MS for doing this, you know, on the human rights reasons.