Ever worked in a store? Your forgery does not have to be very convincing, as long as it's for a small amount. I once used a color copier to make bills with 50 Kr (the Norwegian currency) on one side, and 100 Kr on the other. Those bills have different size, and different color, and given that my forgery was printed on normal paper, it was certainly not very convincing. The clerk at the grocery store accepted it (the 50 kr side) as payment until I stopped and told him to look once more.
I laugh at the moronic masses who don't have a fucking clue what's going on inside their computers (or not going on as the case may be) and the companies who are screwing them.
Yeah, I guess that must make you feel pretty important. Wow! You actually understand something about computers! You must be my God! Please allow me to sacrifice this lamb for you... Seriously, get a life. Most people know something you don't care about, whether it's carpentry, ice climbing, knitting, or the political history of China around 600ad. That you happen to know computers doesn't make you any more interesting, but your superiority complex certainly makes you look like a big fucking idiot!
Oh well, my PC built from select components running Slackware 12.0 runs like a top. Any manufacturer who caves to the interests of big media and negatively impacts end users (their customers) will never see a dime of my money.
Any child can build a PC from components. It's as easy as assembling lego, the pieces are made to fit together, and if you are in doubt, the manual tells you everything you need to know. Many computers stores allow you to select components that fit together by choosing from a drop-down list at their web-page, so that doesn't impress me either. In 2008, computers are commonplace, and I expect them to work, whether they are assembled by a Taiwanese company, or some hobbyist nerd at home.
A little research goes a long way. Too bad Joe Six pack is an apathetic imbecile, otherwise we as customers could actually shift the power back into our hands before it's too late. I'm quite pessimistic however.
Actually, I find you to be the imbecile. Do you even know what apathetic means? Anyway, there are plenty of examples throughout history where history takes the wrong turn, despite people knowing better. And seriously, I'm not going to get worked up about a software configuration issue, even if some anonymous posters on the Internet claim it was done by RIAA. It could just as well be disabled because few people used it, and it complicated the mixer for those "imbeciles" you feel so superior to.
In reality parallelism is more likely going to be found by better compilers. Programmers will have to be more specific about the type of loops they want. Do you just need something to be performed on every item in an array or is order important? No more mindless for-loops for not inherently sequential processes.
I disagree. Having the compiler analyze loops to find out if they are trivially parallelizable is easy, there's little need to change the language.
On the other hand, a language that was really designed for kilocores or megacores would be radically different from most modern languages, adding a few extra (un)loop-statements wouldn't do. Functional languages are a good bet. When everything is side-effect-free, there's no good reason why all of it can't be executed in parallel.
But maybe we need even more abstraction. And more time. It took quite a while after the invention of the programmable computer for someone to invent FORTRAN. And we still program in something resembling FORTRAN. Maybe what we really need are actual many-core computers so that someone really smart will use them, and finally figure out a way to program them that's practical. That's where I'll put my money. Wait and see!
The problem is that (and I assume this is true of many single tech oriented men like myself) there are very few women I care to talk to.
Think of it as you do of work, you don't have to enjoy your work, you do it for the money. Similarly, you don't have to enjoy the conversation, you do it because it increases the chances of sex.
Most bad software is rushed, created by bored programmers, in a corporate decision to create another boring and faulty-by-design software system.
Most good software is written by a small team of very excited developers who love what they do, are given the resources to do so, and who couldn't even think of a more exciting system to build.
You can add all the modularity or simplicity or readability or whatever you need, but unless it is made with love, it won't be beautiful.
Frankly, the type of data the US Government works with is mostly public knowledge anyway.
Nope. It isn't. Sure, lots of it might be accessible in roundabout ways. Your phone-call history is stored at the phone company for billing reasons, but it's not public knowledge, because not everybody has access to the data. Your credit card purchases is stored at the credit card issuer for billing purposes, but that's not public knowledge either. And your foreign travel history might be available by accumulating data from several travel-companies and airlines, but it's certainly not public knowledge either. And neither are your SSN, your criminal record, your SAT scores, or the contents of your bank account.
But the main problem isn't that these data are stored somewhere. The problem is what they are used for. The data is used for profiling. Profiling is a way of detecting crime before it happens. It's pretty hard to defend oneself against something you haven't done. If you are stopped in extra "security checks" every time you travel by plane, because the computer has decided you are a "probable security risk", that would count as harassment in my book. Even more so, if you aren't even allowed to travel because of this "profiling". Legal restrictions will eventually be put on citizens who have done nothing wrong.
I'm not against these data being available in a big database, as long as it requires a court order to review them, and you are notified when this happens, and why, and allowed to correct any wrong data about yourself (provided you are right about the correction of course). But the scenario where secret government agencies are sifting through data unknown to you, using criteria unknown to you, to decide whether you are a "likely offender", even before you've done anything wrong, and then you suddenly find yourself treated differently everywhere you go, without the ability to prove yourself innocent, that's already starting to happen.
Do you seriously believe that drivers who are used to automatic transmission are involved in more accidents? I've never heard of any such statistic, and it seems rather implausible to me. The main difficulty in driving safely is to (a) understand the rules of traffic (b) interpret what you see fast enough to be able react in time and drive safely (c) maintain awareness.
Being able to handle a manual transmission is mainly an automatic motor-skill, something that doesn't require thought; and if you can learn to walk, ride a bike, or play tennis; you can learn operate a manual transmission. Driving safely is an entirely different skill-set, and a lot more complex than merely training your cerebellum to do a simple skill without thinking.
Many people with severe brain damage who needs 24h supervision to handle daily life, can probably easily learn to operate a manual transmission, but I wouldn't let them loose in traffic.
The main problem with people not understanding computers is that they don't want to, and in an ideal world, they shouldn't have to. Many years ago you needed to be an auto-mechanic to drive. You don't need to anymore. Nor do you need to understand digital radio when using a cell-phone. Or scan-lines for watching "Big Brother" on TV. And there's no reason per se why people need to understand the difference between a CPU and a battery in order to shop at amazon.com.
Things will eventually get better, but it will probably take a long time until computers are as easy to use as they appear. Until then, accept that not everybody shares your interest in computers. And if they don't want to understand what a keylogger is, you are probably using far too technical language. Most people do not want criminals on the Internet to access their bank-accounts. Tell them what to look for, but not more than they want to know. Just like some drivers learn to watch for warning lights on their dashboard, even though they don't know the difference between "oil", "coil", or "blinker fluid". They simply don't want to learn more, and there's really nothing wrong with that. If you think about it, there's probably a lot of stuff you don't want to learn either. Do you even know what "deconstruction" means? Do you care? And no, being able to google it doesn't count...
AI's exist in a perfectly designed environment, they have humans feed them power & data and all they need to do is process.
I'm not arguing against this point, I just thought you had a silly example of the difficulties involved.
Imagine the size of big blue if it had to actually see the board and physically move the pieces.
Yeah, it would add another $139 to the cost, like this device. If you were thinking about a device that can recognize and move the pieces of any "normal" chess board, then it would be a bit harder, a robotic arm, a camera, and some image recognition software, but still probably at a cost below $1000000, including development. Most likely somebody has already built it as part of a thesis in robotics already.
If, on the other hand, you are thinking of a device that has to go the library/bookstore and borrow/buy books, and then read them, in order to extract and encode the knowledge in its database of opening moves and endgames, then it would be a tad more difficult. If it also had to learn the rules of chess this way (and how the chess-pieces looked), it would be even more difficult. And if it also had to go to the library to learn about alpha-beta-pruning to learn how computers efficiently play chess, and reprogram itself in this way, even more so. If it also had to design its own hardware for chess playing, even more so. All of these problems would probably require full AI capability/human-equivalent thought (something we do not know how to make)
On the other hand, it could also be the case that these problems eventually become "easy" when they are finally solved. Circuits that could add and multiply seemed pretty much like magic when they first appeared. Today they are viewed as "dumb". Face-recognition software is rapidly becoming mainstream, even though just a few years ago it was viewed as extremely difficult, and thirty years ago people like me would probably say it would require human-equivalent thought. Natural language processing and computer learning could take a similar leap, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that computers would be able to do everything else we do.
Because computers doesn't recognize faces like we do, they do it another way, but it still works. Similarly, a breakthrough in natural language processing or computer learning could mean that computers understood natural language (or learned) as well as we do (just like they currently recognize faces as well as we do), but still in a different way. Eventually the frontiers of AI move. When it's a solved engineering problem, it's no longer AI.
I don't know what the definition of AI is, but when humans are no longer needed, I guess we have it.
[Ruby] just seems like Java for people who hate Java from what little research I've done on it
Please. If you didn't do more than five seconds of "research", why spend almost five seconds to spew this nonsense out?
About the only thing Ruby has in common with Java is being a programming language. You are free to like or dislike either of them, but *please* don't speak about things you obviously have no knowledge of!
You realize that most CCTV systems don't have CCTV "operators". A small installation with 1-10 cameras, and a hard-disk based recording system is typically sold or rented to small businesses at costs comparable to those of a high-end gaming PC. These systems record everything, delete old content automatically, and require very little maintenance. The contents are only ever reviewed if anything interesting happens (such as burglary, shoplifting, vandalism, etc..). If you compare the cost of a hard-disk to the cost of a human operator, you will see that it makes absolutely no sense to not record everything. That being said, you are absolutely right about low frame-rates still being the norm.
Hiding local declarations in a nested scope is essentially encapsulation. Encapsulation is usually viewed as a GOOD THING among most programmers.
Now, I haven't worked much with Pascal, given that I'm probably much younger than you. But I have worked a lot with SML, and in SML nested functions are invaluable. In short, you can't get much work done without them, at least if you value somewhat clean and reusable code. Now, of course, you don't put big complicated things nesting inside each other there either, there's a module system to do that kind of encapsulation, but if you need one or two small helper functions inside a function body, local and let are your friends!
I have a hard time understanding your assertion that using nested functions as intended leads to maintenance nightmare. My experience is exactly the opposite. Failing to use nested functions lead to uglier code, putting huge declarations inside a function is not what's intended (use the module system for that), and lifting stuff out, and adding a paramater is usually easy. But then again, our perspectives might differ.
Yeah, but your logic sucks dude. Statistically, you are more likely to die from gun accidents than home---than from home robberies. You have given one concrete example where gun ownership helped. But that's an anecdote, not something that's statistically significant. In another situation, owning a gun and pointing it at the burglar, might get you killed. Or just about any other unlikely scenario could happen.
My point is, keeping a gun in the house, give you an increase in risk of gun accidents. Keeping a gun easily available, increases this risk a lot, as well as increasing the risk of the gun being stolen, etc... Home robberies are extremely rare. Home robberies stopped by gun owners even more rare. Is it worth the risk of keeping the gun at hand, when it happens this rarely?
There are lots of things you could worry about. Do you carry a life-vest in your car, in case a bridge should collapse while you were driving over it? It's probably a more common accident than home robberies, and unlike keeping a gun at home, doesn't carry any big disadvantages. Speaking of driving, I can't even believe you are willing to take such risks, but hey, that's you, the risktaker!
I take it for granted that you always carry an emergency adrenaline shot, which can be used in a number of unlikely scenarios, such as a poisoning from toxic gas, a heart attack, etc... And you probably also carry the more regular stuff, like bandages, and painkillers, as well as having tattooed your blood-type to your forehead. And I assume you are excessive about your workouts too, if shit hits the fans, you are more likely to survive if you are in excellent shape. But seriously, you should probably carry even more stuff, in case there is a sudden total societal breakdown. You probably need food and water, and lots of other items, in case world war three starts (and ends) while driving to work.
Also, have you reinforced you house to survive a direct collision with a passenger jet? In 2001 there was several collisions between passenger jets and buildings, which should make this a much bigger danger (statistically speaking) than home robberies. I suggest you take the appropriate actions. Also, fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, have you even made your disaster plans yet?
While I agree that nested functions were mostly of academic interest, and that that was probably an important reason why they were left out of C, I still disagree with the notion that nested functions are somehow more complicated. As a programmer, I'm pretty used to recursion, so a function inside a function inside a function is pretty easy to handle, thank you!
You complain that nesting "made it difficult to share values between functions", which is completely ridiculous. Nesting made that sharing possible, and the removal of nesting from e.g. C instead forced you to use hacks, such as passing struct-pointers around.
While I'm sure you're right about the possibility of abusing nesting (any programming feature can be abused), that doesn't make it a bad feature per se. And neither does the fact that C doesn't have it, make it a bad feature either. More to the point, most good programming language features ever invented, aren't in C!
Oh, and I fail to see what makes lambdas so different from nested functions. The only difference I can see, is that languages with lambdas are usually garbage collected, so that passing pointers to nested functions around is safer. But other than that, failing to give nested functions a name (in the local scope) is merely a matter of syntax, not of semantics.
So basically, what you are saying, is that it is possible for crime to happen somewhere you wouldn't expect? Congratulations dude, if you are willing to look into the dictionary at the word "risk", you might learn what it means. To "avoid" or "reduce" risk isn't the same as "guarantee safety". There's always the risk that you will die tomorrow, no matter what you do!
Meanwhile, there are lots of other things to worry about. It would certainly be much wiser for you to worry about sugar and cholesterol-levels than 18 year old crimes in Plano. Because that's a much more likely killer!
I never implied anything of the sort. Scary things can happen anywhere. For christs sake, you could get a fucking comet dropping down on your penis just this moment!
On the other hand, guns wouldn't necessarily have prevent the Wichita massacre, nor would it have prevented a comet from damaging your penis.
I know, the average human brains ability to distinguish between stuff that is statistically significant, and stuff that's very scary but only happens rarely, is low. That's why people are afraid of flying. Still, statistically speaking, flying is safer than driving, and owning a gun for "protection" is more risky than not owning a gun for "protection".
but you did not once even hint at how your friend could have solved that particular incident by possessing a gun. So, the are some criminals breaking in, and your friend has a gun in the cupboard in the living room, but the criminals break in at night and surprise him in bed. Or, he has a gun in the drawer next to his bed, but the criminals surprise him while he is in the living room.
And more to the point. If you are the type who keep your gun handy at all times, you significantly increase the risk of someone accidentally getting shot. It's simply safer to keep your gun locked up in your gun-locker, and avoid criminals by using common sense and avoid risks (e.g. move to a safer neighbourhood, don't flash your money, stay away from those dudes hiding in the corner of the dark parking space, etc...)
The problem with nested functions (as in Pascal's scoping) is that in many situations it made it difficult to share values between functions or procedures
Uh? Say again? What was the problem? Nested functions solve this problem. If the variable isn't local, it's in the containing lexical scope. This simplifies sharing of values.
One way to solve that problem is to push variables up in scope, which leads to all the familiar problems with global variables.
I'm not sure what you are suggesting here, but it sounds like a bad idea. Just use lexical scoping, like Pascal does.
The better option was to not nest your functions and procedures in the first place, so newer languages stopped supported that feature.
C had two goals: (1) to be almost as useful as assembly language for systems programming (2) writing a C compiler should be easy. Lexical scoping of nested functions is missing from C because it made the compiler more complicated, not for any esoteric philosophical reasons like you suggest.
Most notably, C didn't include it, and as a result it drastically simplified scoping rules to more or less what we're accustomed to now.
Well, if you are so retarded that you find nesting of variable-names within functions hard, I can understand why you prefer a system with only two levels of variable-names, local and global. On the other hand, just about any other modern language includes some form of nesting of scopes, in a way that's harder to understand than Pascals nesting of functions. But then again, Pascal was designed for teaching, so it's pretty clear why it's so easy to understand.
Depends on how much the power is needed, and how soon. The space elevator seems like it's a long time away, still in need of new materials to be invented, and so on. On the other hand, solar power in space is feasible now, at least technically.
Without power people die. So the risks of catastrophic failure of microwave power transmission from space, must be weighted against the possibility of many people not getting electricity. It might be safer to build powerplants now, than to wait for a hypothetical space elevator.
Look, I drive in a densely populated city center each night. I know that my ability to see pedestrians, pets, obstructions, etc, are severlely reduced when the streetlights are not functioning. I'm not here to get into a pissing contest about who has the seen most street-lights go out, or who has the most outrageous accident story to tell as anecdotical evidence. I'm here to point out that street lights are there for a reason, and that reason is to light things up. If people can't see because it's dark, they tend to get scared and/or bump into things, which cause accidents (regardless of whether it's a pedestrian run over by a car, or somebody bruising their knee as the fall on the pavement)
Whether streetlights reduces crime is in my opinion of little interest, unless you can show statistics that shows it clearly has any noticeable effect. It might do, and if so, that's great, but I will not fall into the trap of American thinking (TM) where everything you do, is motivated by fear. I like streetlights in densely populated areas because they allow me to see better, not because they reduce crime.
As for reduction of CO2 and light pollution, I'm all for it. I'm sure there are many places where street-lighting can be reduced or removed without noticeable effects, and as the fucking article tells, new technology can help even more. But the world is not black and white, and the benefits of having street-lights is also something worth caring for. This isn't a on-off issue, it's a tradeoff.
There's really no way you can argue that people expect to get a new web browser with an update of iTunes, though.
Why not? Everybody and their dog seems to include a browser with their software these days. Sure, windows may have started it all, but these days I expect to get a browser included whether I'm downloading porn, spyware, pirated software, or even music. Software to manage music should be no exception.
Anecdotical evidence about accidents isn't really much help. How often do you regularly and directly observe traffic accidents yourself? Do you really believe you see enough of them to make your observations statistically significant? Besides, traffic accidents doesn't necessarily mean collisions between cars. Most streetlights are there for the benefit of pedestrians, who aren't always responsible or sober, and doesn't always wear reflectors, and besides, black will never go out of fashion.
If we have to choose between streetlights in populated areas, and light pollution, the choice has already been made for you, a long time ago. Just go into the woods and put up your telescope there. Then again, pruce made a good point regarding choice of lighting when it comes to reducing light pollution.
In the latter case it's used as the wedge [wedge document that is] to try to confuse the layman into thinking that evolution is by definition atheistic in nature.
And this is exactly what confuses me about the creationist/intelligent design movement. The people behind it are obviously well educated. Why deliberately lie about evolution just to get people to believe in creationism? Maybe they aren't really interested in christianity, but only want to push their own theory? Maybe they use christians to make believers in creationism/ID, instead of appealing to creationism/ID-believers to make christians feel better. Is it that much money to be made from selling "educational" material?
Slashdot Mirror
Ever worked in a store? Your forgery does not have to be very convincing, as long as it's for a small amount. I once used a color copier to make bills with 50 Kr (the Norwegian currency) on one side, and 100 Kr on the other. Those bills have different size, and different color, and given that my forgery was printed on normal paper, it was certainly not very convincing. The clerk at the grocery store accepted it (the 50 kr side) as payment until I stopped and told him to look once more.
Yeah, I guess that must make you feel pretty important. Wow! You actually understand something about computers! You must be my God! Please allow me to sacrifice this lamb for you... Seriously, get a life. Most people know something you don't care about, whether it's carpentry, ice climbing, knitting, or the political history of China around 600ad. That you happen to know computers doesn't make you any more interesting, but your superiority complex certainly makes you look like a big fucking idiot!
Any child can build a PC from components. It's as easy as assembling lego, the pieces are made to fit together, and if you are in doubt, the manual tells you everything you need to know. Many computers stores allow you to select components that fit together by choosing from a drop-down list at their web-page, so that doesn't impress me either. In 2008, computers are commonplace, and I expect them to work, whether they are assembled by a Taiwanese company, or some hobbyist nerd at home.
Actually, I find you to be the imbecile. Do you even know what apathetic means? Anyway, there are plenty of examples throughout history where history takes the wrong turn, despite people knowing better. And seriously, I'm not going to get worked up about a software configuration issue, even if some anonymous posters on the Internet claim it was done by RIAA. It could just as well be disabled because few people used it, and it complicated the mixer for those "imbeciles" you feel so superior to.
I disagree. Having the compiler analyze loops to find out if they are trivially parallelizable is easy, there's little need to change the language.
On the other hand, a language that was really designed for kilocores or megacores would be radically different from most modern languages, adding a few extra (un)loop-statements wouldn't do. Functional languages are a good bet. When everything is side-effect-free, there's no good reason why all of it can't be executed in parallel.
But maybe we need even more abstraction. And more time. It took quite a while after the invention of the programmable computer for someone to invent FORTRAN. And we still program in something resembling FORTRAN. Maybe what we really need are actual many-core computers so that someone really smart will use them, and finally figure out a way to program them that's practical. That's where I'll put my money. Wait and see!
Think of it as you do of work, you don't have to enjoy your work, you do it for the money. Similarly, you don't have to enjoy the conversation, you do it because it increases the chances of sex.
You know, before they made it into a book, it was a perfectly good movie.
It's called humor. See this and this for an explanation.
Most bad software is rushed, created by bored programmers, in a corporate decision to create another boring and faulty-by-design software system.
Most good software is written by a small team of very excited developers who love what they do, are given the resources to do so, and who couldn't even think of a more exciting system to build.
You can add all the modularity or simplicity or readability or whatever you need, but unless it is made with love, it won't be beautiful.
Nope. It isn't. Sure, lots of it might be accessible in roundabout ways. Your phone-call history is stored at the phone company for billing reasons, but it's not public knowledge, because not everybody has access to the data. Your credit card purchases is stored at the credit card issuer for billing purposes, but that's not public knowledge either. And your foreign travel history might be available by accumulating data from several travel-companies and airlines, but it's certainly not public knowledge either. And neither are your SSN, your criminal record, your SAT scores, or the contents of your bank account.
But the main problem isn't that these data are stored somewhere. The problem is what they are used for. The data is used for profiling. Profiling is a way of detecting crime before it happens. It's pretty hard to defend oneself against something you haven't done. If you are stopped in extra "security checks" every time you travel by plane, because the computer has decided you are a "probable security risk", that would count as harassment in my book. Even more so, if you aren't even allowed to travel because of this "profiling". Legal restrictions will eventually be put on citizens who have done nothing wrong.
I'm not against these data being available in a big database, as long as it requires a court order to review them, and you are notified when this happens, and why, and allowed to correct any wrong data about yourself (provided you are right about the correction of course). But the scenario where secret government agencies are sifting through data unknown to you, using criteria unknown to you, to decide whether you are a "likely offender", even before you've done anything wrong, and then you suddenly find yourself treated differently everywhere you go, without the ability to prove yourself innocent, that's already starting to happen.
Do you seriously believe that drivers who are used to automatic transmission are involved in more accidents? I've never heard of any such statistic, and it seems rather implausible to me. The main difficulty in driving safely is to (a) understand the rules of traffic (b) interpret what you see fast enough to be able react in time and drive safely (c) maintain awareness.
Being able to handle a manual transmission is mainly an automatic motor-skill, something that doesn't require thought; and if you can learn to walk, ride a bike, or play tennis; you can learn operate a manual transmission. Driving safely is an entirely different skill-set, and a lot more complex than merely training your cerebellum to do a simple skill without thinking. Many people with severe brain damage who needs 24h supervision to handle daily life, can probably easily learn to operate a manual transmission, but I wouldn't let them loose in traffic.
The main problem with people not understanding computers is that they don't want to, and in an ideal world, they shouldn't have to. Many years ago you needed to be an auto-mechanic to drive. You don't need to anymore. Nor do you need to understand digital radio when using a cell-phone. Or scan-lines for watching "Big Brother" on TV. And there's no reason per se why people need to understand the difference between a CPU and a battery in order to shop at amazon.com.
Things will eventually get better, but it will probably take a long time until computers are as easy to use as they appear. Until then, accept that not everybody shares your interest in computers. And if they don't want to understand what a keylogger is, you are probably using far too technical language. Most people do not want criminals on the Internet to access their bank-accounts. Tell them what to look for, but not more than they want to know. Just like some drivers learn to watch for warning lights on their dashboard, even though they don't know the difference between "oil", "coil", or "blinker fluid". They simply don't want to learn more, and there's really nothing wrong with that. If you think about it, there's probably a lot of stuff you don't want to learn either. Do you even know what "deconstruction" means? Do you care? And no, being able to google it doesn't count...
I'm not arguing against this point, I just thought you had a silly example of the difficulties involved.
Yeah, it would add another $139 to the cost, like this device. If you were thinking about a device that can recognize and move the pieces of any "normal" chess board, then it would be a bit harder, a robotic arm, a camera, and some image recognition software, but still probably at a cost below $1000000, including development. Most likely somebody has already built it as part of a thesis in robotics already.
If, on the other hand, you are thinking of a device that has to go the library/bookstore and borrow/buy books, and then read them, in order to extract and encode the knowledge in its database of opening moves and endgames, then it would be a tad more difficult. If it also had to learn the rules of chess this way (and how the chess-pieces looked), it would be even more difficult. And if it also had to go to the library to learn about alpha-beta-pruning to learn how computers efficiently play chess, and reprogram itself in this way, even more so. If it also had to design its own hardware for chess playing, even more so. All of these problems would probably require full AI capability/human-equivalent thought (something we do not know how to make)
On the other hand, it could also be the case that these problems eventually become "easy" when they are finally solved. Circuits that could add and multiply seemed pretty much like magic when they first appeared. Today they are viewed as "dumb". Face-recognition software is rapidly becoming mainstream, even though just a few years ago it was viewed as extremely difficult, and thirty years ago people like me would probably say it would require human-equivalent thought. Natural language processing and computer learning could take a similar leap, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that computers would be able to do everything else we do.
Because computers doesn't recognize faces like we do, they do it another way, but it still works. Similarly, a breakthrough in natural language processing or computer learning could mean that computers understood natural language (or learned) as well as we do (just like they currently recognize faces as well as we do), but still in a different way. Eventually the frontiers of AI move. When it's a solved engineering problem, it's no longer AI.
I don't know what the definition of AI is, but when humans are no longer needed, I guess we have it.
Please. If you didn't do more than five seconds of "research", why spend almost five seconds to spew this nonsense out?
About the only thing Ruby has in common with Java is being a programming language. You are free to like or dislike either of them, but *please* don't speak about things you obviously have no knowledge of!
You realize that most CCTV systems don't have CCTV "operators". A small installation with 1-10 cameras, and a hard-disk based recording system is typically sold or rented to small businesses at costs comparable to those of a high-end gaming PC. These systems record everything, delete old content automatically, and require very little maintenance. The contents are only ever reviewed if anything interesting happens (such as burglary, shoplifting, vandalism, etc..). If you compare the cost of a hard-disk to the cost of a human operator, you will see that it makes absolutely no sense to not record everything. That being said, you are absolutely right about low frame-rates still being the norm.
Hiding local declarations in a nested scope is essentially encapsulation. Encapsulation is usually viewed as a GOOD THING among most programmers.
Now, I haven't worked much with Pascal, given that I'm probably much younger than you. But I have worked a lot with SML, and in SML nested functions are invaluable. In short, you can't get much work done without them, at least if you value somewhat clean and reusable code. Now, of course, you don't put big complicated things nesting inside each other there either, there's a module system to do that kind of encapsulation, but if you need one or two small helper functions inside a function body, local and let are your friends!
I have a hard time understanding your assertion that using nested functions as intended leads to maintenance nightmare. My experience is exactly the opposite. Failing to use nested functions lead to uglier code, putting huge declarations inside a function is not what's intended (use the module system for that), and lifting stuff out, and adding a paramater is usually easy. But then again, our perspectives might differ.
Yeah, but your logic sucks dude. Statistically, you are more likely to die from gun accidents than home---than from home robberies. You have given one concrete example where gun ownership helped. But that's an anecdote, not something that's statistically significant. In another situation, owning a gun and pointing it at the burglar, might get you killed. Or just about any other unlikely scenario could happen.
My point is, keeping a gun in the house, give you an increase in risk of gun accidents. Keeping a gun easily available, increases this risk a lot, as well as increasing the risk of the gun being stolen, etc... Home robberies are extremely rare. Home robberies stopped by gun owners even more rare. Is it worth the risk of keeping the gun at hand, when it happens this rarely?
There are lots of things you could worry about. Do you carry a life-vest in your car, in case a bridge should collapse while you were driving over it? It's probably a more common accident than home robberies, and unlike keeping a gun at home, doesn't carry any big disadvantages. Speaking of driving, I can't even believe you are willing to take such risks, but hey, that's you, the risktaker!
I take it for granted that you always carry an emergency adrenaline shot, which can be used in a number of unlikely scenarios, such as a poisoning from toxic gas, a heart attack, etc... And you probably also carry the more regular stuff, like bandages, and painkillers, as well as having tattooed your blood-type to your forehead. And I assume you are excessive about your workouts too, if shit hits the fans, you are more likely to survive if you are in excellent shape. But seriously, you should probably carry even more stuff, in case there is a sudden total societal breakdown. You probably need food and water, and lots of other items, in case world war three starts (and ends) while driving to work.
Also, have you reinforced you house to survive a direct collision with a passenger jet? In 2001 there was several collisions between passenger jets and buildings, which should make this a much bigger danger (statistically speaking) than home robberies. I suggest you take the appropriate actions. Also, fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, have you even made your disaster plans yet?
While I agree that nested functions were mostly of academic interest, and that that was probably an important reason why they were left out of C, I still disagree with the notion that nested functions are somehow more complicated. As a programmer, I'm pretty used to recursion, so a function inside a function inside a function is pretty easy to handle, thank you!
You complain that nesting "made it difficult to share values between functions", which is completely ridiculous. Nesting made that sharing possible, and the removal of nesting from e.g. C instead forced you to use hacks, such as passing struct-pointers around.
While I'm sure you're right about the possibility of abusing nesting (any programming feature can be abused), that doesn't make it a bad feature per se. And neither does the fact that C doesn't have it, make it a bad feature either. More to the point, most good programming language features ever invented, aren't in C!
Oh, and I fail to see what makes lambdas so different from nested functions. The only difference I can see, is that languages with lambdas are usually garbage collected, so that passing pointers to nested functions around is safer. But other than that, failing to give nested functions a name (in the local scope) is merely a matter of syntax, not of semantics.
So basically, what you are saying, is that it is possible for crime to happen somewhere you wouldn't expect? Congratulations dude, if you are willing to look into the dictionary at the word "risk", you might learn what it means. To "avoid" or "reduce" risk isn't the same as "guarantee safety". There's always the risk that you will die tomorrow, no matter what you do!
Meanwhile, there are lots of other things to worry about. It would certainly be much wiser for you to worry about sugar and cholesterol-levels than 18 year old crimes in Plano. Because that's a much more likely killer!
I never implied anything of the sort. Scary things can happen anywhere. For christs sake, you could get a fucking comet dropping down on your penis just this moment!
On the other hand, guns wouldn't necessarily have prevent the Wichita massacre, nor would it have prevented a comet from damaging your penis.
I know, the average human brains ability to distinguish between stuff that is statistically significant, and stuff that's very scary but only happens rarely, is low. That's why people are afraid of flying. Still, statistically speaking, flying is safer than driving, and owning a gun for "protection" is more risky than not owning a gun for "protection".
And more to the point. If you are the type who keep your gun handy at all times, you significantly increase the risk of someone accidentally getting shot. It's simply safer to keep your gun locked up in your gun-locker, and avoid criminals by using common sense and avoid risks (e.g. move to a safer neighbourhood, don't flash your money, stay away from those dudes hiding in the corner of the dark parking space, etc...)
Uh? Say again? What was the problem? Nested functions solve this problem. If the variable isn't local, it's in the containing lexical scope. This simplifies sharing of values.
I'm not sure what you are suggesting here, but it sounds like a bad idea. Just use lexical scoping, like Pascal does.
C had two goals: (1) to be almost as useful as assembly language for systems programming (2) writing a C compiler should be easy. Lexical scoping of nested functions is missing from C because it made the compiler more complicated, not for any esoteric philosophical reasons like you suggest.
Well, if you are so retarded that you find nesting of variable-names within functions hard, I can understand why you prefer a system with only two levels of variable-names, local and global. On the other hand, just about any other modern language includes some form of nesting of scopes, in a way that's harder to understand than Pascals nesting of functions. But then again, Pascal was designed for teaching, so it's pretty clear why it's so easy to understand.
Depends on how much the power is needed, and how soon. The space elevator seems like it's a long time away, still in need of new materials to be invented, and so on. On the other hand, solar power in space is feasible now, at least technically.
Without power people die. So the risks of catastrophic failure of microwave power transmission from space, must be weighted against the possibility of many people not getting electricity. It might be safer to build powerplants now, than to wait for a hypothetical space elevator.
Look, I drive in a densely populated city center each night. I know that my ability to see pedestrians, pets, obstructions, etc, are severlely reduced when the streetlights are not functioning. I'm not here to get into a pissing contest about who has the seen most street-lights go out, or who has the most outrageous accident story to tell as anecdotical evidence. I'm here to point out that street lights are there for a reason, and that reason is to light things up. If people can't see because it's dark, they tend to get scared and/or bump into things, which cause accidents (regardless of whether it's a pedestrian run over by a car, or somebody bruising their knee as the fall on the pavement)
Whether streetlights reduces crime is in my opinion of little interest, unless you can show statistics that shows it clearly has any noticeable effect. It might do, and if so, that's great, but I will not fall into the trap of American thinking (TM) where everything you do, is motivated by fear. I like streetlights in densely populated areas because they allow me to see better, not because they reduce crime.
As for reduction of CO2 and light pollution, I'm all for it. I'm sure there are many places where street-lighting can be reduced or removed without noticeable effects, and as the fucking article tells, new technology can help even more. But the world is not black and white, and the benefits of having street-lights is also something worth caring for. This isn't a on-off issue, it's a tradeoff.
Huh? Buying DRMified music? Customer fucked? You must be kidding!
Why not? Everybody and their dog seems to include a browser with their software these days. Sure, windows may have started it all, but these days I expect to get a browser included whether I'm downloading porn, spyware, pirated software, or even music. Software to manage music should be no exception.
Anecdotical evidence about accidents isn't really much help. How often do you regularly and directly observe traffic accidents yourself? Do you really believe you see enough of them to make your observations statistically significant? Besides, traffic accidents doesn't necessarily mean collisions between cars. Most streetlights are there for the benefit of pedestrians, who aren't always responsible or sober, and doesn't always wear reflectors, and besides, black will never go out of fashion.
If we have to choose between streetlights in populated areas, and light pollution, the choice has already been made for you, a long time ago. Just go into the woods and put up your telescope there. Then again, pruce made a good point regarding choice of lighting when it comes to reducing light pollution.
And this is exactly what confuses me about the creationist/intelligent design movement. The people behind it are obviously well educated. Why deliberately lie about evolution just to get people to believe in creationism? Maybe they aren't really interested in christianity, but only want to push their own theory? Maybe they use christians to make believers in creationism/ID, instead of appealing to creationism/ID-believers to make christians feel better. Is it that much money to be made from selling "educational" material?