... (In fact, we actually invented moderation because the flames got so bad on usenet. But the web, when it came, had to re-learn all those lessons again.)
Isn't there some quote about "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" ?
There is a difference between free speech and careless speech.
The government cannot (technically) put you in prison or kill you for what you say. But if your neighbors don't bother to tell you a tornado is coming, maybe that is free speech, too.
Note that the internet is not really anonymous... 8-o
... , and serve as a simple buffer between the workers and upper management.
If all they did was be a buffer between the workers and "upper", that would be very important. It might be enough to justify their job. I have been caught there and I did not like it much.
As long as there were other people that could do the tech leading...
If this could be used for a larger system so that the car could go at a constant speed (even if lower than the speed limit) and catch all the lights green, I guess this might save a considerable amount of fuel and pollutants by avoiding the braking and acceleration....
I worked on a team installing just this kind of system, no wifi needed just sensors.... in 1968 ! And yes, it did save lives and gas and even noise levels.
I have seen lights in other cities that seemed to have it, but not many. And, some cities seem to intentionally cross-time the lights so all traffic has to stop at every light. (Stupid politicians!)
Beware of starting off instantly when the light turns green. In some places, like Puerto Rico, there is a law (or at least a custom), that when the light turns red up to three more cars can go through. Meet one of those drivers and you could be dead. I have seen both kinds of drivers in the north-east U.S.
But don't lag too much either, the number of people that you are pissing off behind you, could be almost as much as your facebook friends list! 8-P
Yes, "Blocking Traffic" is usually illegal in most states.
The way the left turns usually work is that the person can turn and get clear before the other light turns green. But that assumes the lights were set up right and there is no traffic jam.
Even if they are not set up correctly, most intersections allow the turning car to get clear before the other cars get to them. The turning car has to go at least one car length, but the approaching cars would have two car lengths before collision. So it is not so bad, assuming everyone is paying attention. (Of course that is a big assumption...)
Real programs sold for profit need a lot more error handling that that. About 60% of a business or industrial program is error handling, they are not allowed to ever crash. Of course some things you can't recover from, but you better hope the clients never see one.
So... leaving straight out of the current procedure/method on an error is not done. You must write code to clean up what can be cleaned, choose defaults when available, and return error codes to the calling procedure. Which does it's own cleanup and returning error codes, until the program gets to a place it can continue from.
Do you really think your program is less important than those? Do you really think it will be easier to debug your program that just says "GPF", than those?
To paraphrase an old saying: "Think twice, code once"
P.S., I make my living fixing such things. Frustrating, but pays good...;-)
In my experience, "if it's stupid but works it isn't stupid" usually has an implicit assumption that nothing else is working.
That's true.
But that can, of course, change with time. And that has happened in a lot of these old systems, where there are now other ways to do things.
The example above sounds like a system that had to be it's own database server and driver, before that sort of thing was available. When it was later updated, they divided the code in the wrong place. And left in operations that should have been rebuilt to use the standard database operations. Lazy is not always good...
If you can not at least -read- assembly code, then you are not really a programmer.
And before you answer violently, consider what you will say when, a few years from now, some ignorant kid tells you that knowing a 3rd gen language is not needed! 8-)
Actually, I have already heard that from people using Excel... 8-P
You keep comparing TCP/IP and Token Ring when they are different layers in the stack. Maybe you mean Ethernet rather than TCP/IP?
That depends on whether it is important that you can run Tcp/IP over Token Ring, and have a system that does not shut down every time the load gets high.
Token ring is like a train, everyone is the same speed but adding more cars does not usually cause a pileup, even in fog.
Ethernet is like a Highway with separate cars, when it is lightly loaded it is great and much more flexible. But when more cars come on or even worse a sudden fog shows up, people die and the highway shuts down for a long time. (That's why DDOS attacks work...)
The American voting system does not have any political parties, not officially. They are purely private clubs, with no legal connection to the voting system. Really!
We need an "approval voting" system, where each voter can vote for all of the candidates that they like. This "one voter one vote" system is screwing up the possibility of more candidates. And, it gives way to much power to the political parties.
And i don't get it, where does this 'every man for himself' culture come from?...
Most people that came to "America" were the ones that "had it" with the help from their homes, which mostly held them back. After all, people that are happy already don't go that far. So we got the ones that were ready to strike out into the wild on their own.
And the ones who had a suspicion of anyone offering to "take care of them forever", it always cost too much.
Resulting in citizens who often reject help, even when they need it. People are not really the same everywhere, some maybe but not completely.
But wasting a little money on some, to save others, is not a bad idea. "Perfect efficiancy is not efficient!" 8-)
The schools have changed, since thoise companies started. Not that I believe the companies, but when was the last time you saw a Calculus course in High School?
Even the colleges have been "dumbing down" the courses.
Or, the people they worked with before, get despirate and call them directly. Offering to hire them part time to fix or update stuff. And don't even blink when a three figue amount per hour is mentioned...
Just be careful working on 1099 forms, they don't take out taxes and you have to save it up yourself. Don't forget it, that can be a shock!
Slashdot Mirror
"...For how long has well crafted disinformation over some time been acted on by the US without been noticed..."
Since the first Iraq war? Earlier?
I believe George Washington was the first to include "spycraft" into the U.S. government. 8-)
Of course, we had a different government before that...
Well, that too.
... (In fact, we actually invented moderation because the flames got so bad on usenet. But the web, when it came, had to re-learn all those lessons again.)
Isn't there some quote about "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" ?
It's true in more ways than one... 8-}
There is a difference between free speech and careless speech.
The government cannot (technically) put you in prison or kill you for what you say. But if your neighbors don't bother to tell you a tornado is coming, maybe that is free speech, too.
Note that the internet is not really anonymous ... 8-o
... And if a twitter user doesn't want to be sucked into the troll's world, that user should consider the source of the tweet before engaging. ...
In other words, "Please don't feed the trolls." 8-)
But putting things in more descriptive wording does help sometimes...
... , and serve as a simple buffer between the workers and upper management.
If all they did was be a buffer between the workers and "upper", that would be very important. It might be enough to justify their job. I have been caught there and I did not like it much.
As long as there were other people that could do the tech leading...
01000110 01010101 01000011 01001011 00100000 01011001 01001111 01010101 00100001
And yourself, as well. 8-}
But that is ASCII coded Binary equivilent to ASCII. What I was talking about is a human-readable language with symbol names, as in:
MOV LocalCounter, CountArray[ThisIndex]
I think even you can maybe read that? But a lot of people act as though is was poison.
If this could be used for a larger system so that the car could go at a constant speed (even if lower than the speed limit) and catch all the lights green, I guess this might save a considerable amount of fuel and pollutants by avoiding the braking and acceleration. ...
I worked on a team installing just this kind of system, no wifi needed just sensors. ... in 1968 !
And yes, it did save lives and gas and even noise levels.
I have seen lights in other cities that seemed to have it, but not many. And, some cities seem to intentionally cross-time the lights so all traffic has to stop at every light. (Stupid politicians!)
Sure, but it's pretty clear that the guy who has the light is the one who's not the asshole.
That's true.
Of course, the other one is dead, too...
Beware of starting off instantly when the light turns green. In some places, like Puerto Rico, there is a law (or at least a custom), that when the light turns red up to three more cars can go through. Meet one of those drivers and you could be dead. I have seen both kinds of drivers in the north-east U.S.
But don't lag too much either, the number of people that you are pissing off behind you, could be almost as much as your facebook friends list! 8-P
Yes, "Blocking Traffic" is usually illegal in most states.
The way the left turns usually work is that the person can turn and get clear before the other light turns green. But that assumes the lights were set up right and there is no traffic jam.
Even if they are not set up correctly, most intersections allow the turning car to get clear before the other cars get to them. The turning car has to go at least one car length, but the approaching cars would have two car lengths before collision. So it is not so bad, assuming everyone is paying attention. (Of course that is a big assumption...)
There aren't any bad programming ideas that work.
"If Engineers built buildings the way Programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization!"
Real programs sold for profit need a lot more error handling that that. About 60% of a business or industrial program is error handling, they are not allowed to ever crash. Of course some things you can't recover from, but you better hope the clients never see one.
So... leaving straight out of the current procedure/method on an error is not done. You must write code to clean up what can be cleaned, choose defaults when available, and return error codes to the calling procedure. Which does it's own cleanup and returning error codes, until the program gets to a place it can continue from.
Do you really think your program is less important than those? Do you really think it will be easier to debug your program that just says "GPF", than those?
To paraphrase an old saying: "Think twice, code once"
P.S., I make my living fixing such things. Frustrating, but pays good... ;-)
In my experience, "if it's stupid but works it isn't stupid" usually has an implicit assumption that nothing else is working.
That's true.
But that can, of course, change with time. And that has happened in a lot of these old systems, where there are now other ways to do things.
The example above sounds like a system that had to be it's own database server and driver, before that sort of thing was available. When it was later updated, they divided the code in the wrong place. And left in operations that should have been rebuilt to use the standard database operations. Lazy is not always good...
If you can not at least -read- assembly code, then you are not really a programmer.
And before you answer violently, consider what you will say when, a few years from now, some ignorant kid tells you that knowing a 3rd gen language is not needed! 8-)
Actually, I have already heard that from people using Excel... 8-P
Sometimes, columns that have the same name in diferent tables do not have the same data. Trying to over-normalize something like that is a disaster...
You keep comparing TCP/IP and Token Ring when they are different layers in the stack. Maybe you mean Ethernet rather than TCP/IP?
That depends on whether it is important that you can run Tcp/IP over Token Ring, and have a system that does not shut down every time the load gets high.
Token ring is like a train, everyone is the same speed but adding more cars does not usually cause a pileup, even in fog.
Ethernet is like a Highway with separate cars, when it is lightly loaded it is great and much more flexible. But when more cars come on or even worse a sudden fog shows up, people die and the highway shuts down for a long time. (That's why DDOS attacks work...)
... It's just a shame that so much of the demand for bandwidth (and computational power) is driven by the videos and ads we don't want.
You remember the old saying about beauracracies: "Work expands to fill the time alotted" ?
Well, data load expands to fill the bandwidth available!
It's a "law of nature". The only way to avoid waste of resources, it to charge for them by usage. So blame all of the "no limit" IP connections.
My grandma is Grace Murray Hopper, you insensitive clod
Err ... she didn't have any children.
That's a shame. Really. We need her DNA. 8-)
The American voting system does not have any political parties, not officially. They are purely private clubs, with no legal connection to the voting system. Really!
We need an "approval voting" system, where each voter can vote for all of the candidates that they like. This "one voter one vote" system is screwing up the possibility of more candidates. And, it gives way to much power to the political parties.
And i don't get it, where does this 'every man for himself' culture come from? ...
Most people that came to "America" were the ones that "had it" with the help from their homes, which mostly held them back. After all, people that are happy already don't go that far. So we got the ones that were ready to strike out into the wild on their own.
And the ones who had a suspicion of anyone offering to "take care of them forever", it always cost too much.
Resulting in citizens who often reject help, even when they need it. People are not really the same everywhere, some maybe but not completely.
But wasting a little money on some, to save others, is not a bad idea. "Perfect efficiancy is not efficient!" 8-)
The schools have changed, since thoise companies started. Not that I believe the companies, but when was the last time you saw a Calculus course in High School?
Even the colleges have been "dumbing down" the courses.
Or, the people they worked with before, get despirate and call them directly. Offering to hire them part time to fix or update stuff. And don't even blink when a three figue amount per hour is mentioned...
Just be careful working on 1099 forms, they don't take out taxes and you have to save it up yourself. Don't forget it, that can be a shock!
They are faking the data, to cover up the fact that they don't know.
That is never the right thing to do...
Point a gun at -anyone- and they might kill you.
And it would be justified, it is a very dangerous thing to do. Many people get shot by "unloaded" guns, by "accident".
Don't be cutting the fool with dangerous machinery that you don't understand! 8-{