Two questions. First, what's the story on the plane of all the inner planets. Why are they all on the same plane. Seems to me that there should be some kind of random distribution of the orbits.
It's not just the orbit of the inner planets (which would be Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) on that plane. All planets except Pluto fit on there.
The Sun rotates. Furthermore, it rotates along the same plane as the planets' orbits. (Again, you can confirm this yourself if you have Celestia. Just go to the Sun, back up a bit, make sure the orbits are turned on and speed up time a bit.)
The theory I read in The Cartoon History of the Universe (great book) was that as the gases condensed to form the Sun they began to spin faster and faster. This scattered out debris that would orbit around the Sun along the same plane. It is that debris which condensed to form what I consider to be planets.
Second, what exactly is a "planet"?
Good question. I wonder if there is some exact set of rules that decides this. Even though it may not be the technical definition, I like the idea of the offspring of the Sun being the de facto planets in our Solar System.
I'm no astronomer, but it does certainly appear that Pluto got there late in the game. Just look at the orbits of the other eight planets. (Here having Celestia helps.) All nearly circular, none overlapping and all on the same plane. It's as if a bunch of space debris orbitting our sun condensed to form them.
Now look at Pluto's orbit. More elliptical. Obviously not on the same plane and criss-crossing with Neptune's orbit. Hell, Pluto's smaller than our own moon for Christ's sake.
I don't know why Pluto was ever considered a planet in the first place. It looks like some object that happened to get trapped by sun's gravity.
That's just my amateur opinion, anyways. Maybe some astronomer out there knows better?
seeing as how he was able to overtake a whole country and free 25 million people in less time than it took Janet Reno to overtake some relilgious nuts in a building in Texas.
And if trends continue in Iraq the way that they have been and it descends into civil war this will become completely irrelevant.
All we have left to do now is to help them put together enough police to let them take care of the suicide bomber problem that is killing Iraqs 10 to 1 over American troops.
If it was that easy it would have been done already.
I know that placation of Islamic Fascists is the preferred method of dealing with them by the left - but there's something to be said for makiung a stand.
Is your vision balck and white as well or do you just think that way?
If you're referring to Saddam as the "Islamic Fascist" then it's kinda dumb to play Savior of the World and try to remove him with little outside help when it drains military resources we could use against the actual terrorists that threaten us.
If you're referring to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda then I'm all for making a stand. But Iraq is just a colossal fuck-up that hurts the fight.
It's worthless pieces of shit such as yourself that frame any alternatives to your simplistic solutions as "placating" or "unpatriotic" that got us into this mess in the first place.
As far as Al Qaeda is concerned, wipe those fuckers off the face of the earth. Appeasement with them is not an option.
However, there are still occupations/actions done by Israel that are simply wrong and do nothing but give Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations an easy route to getting recruits.
For Israel to act more reasonably towards the Palestinians is not caving in to Osama and crew. Quite the opposite actually. It's whenever some kind of peace settlement is about to be made between Israel and Palestinians that the most terrorist attacks tend to occur. The terrorists fear peace more than anything. It robs them of power. I am so fucking sick of people claiming "We do not let terrorists control our actions", and then right when one of these bombings happen in response to peace talks demand going into "Fuck the general population and do whatever we need to weed out terrorists" mode. Well guess what Sparky, you did exactly what the terrorists wanted. Peace talks are caput, violence has escalated, and the conflict Al Qaeda is depending on to become a movement to shape the Middle East into what they want continues.
I hope you don't confuse what you label "Islamists" with the general Muslim population. Because that's just want the terrorists want us to think.
Why have hardware support that simply helps prevent buffer overflows when we can use hardware features that solve it? I believe that can be done with the NX bit in many modern processors. For more information, look in the Wikipedia entry for "buffer overflow". Getting all new machines to run with chips with this feature and operating systems to take advantage of it is the key to stopping the overflows, not new languages to generate low-level code.
The problem I have with the argument, "Sure the software checks in higher-level languages will slow things down significiantly, but computers are so much faster now," is simple. Ever notice how even as memory/video card frame-rates/hard-drive space increases exponentially it seems that the newest applications tend to still max them out to compete? Well the same thing applies to speed. It's tough to explain to your manager that you are going to purposefully use a language that cripples the efficiency of your newest application to anticiplate your own carelessness. (I'm not saying I'm any better than anyone else on this point. I've had my share of careless programming moments myself).
Does anyone know of any disadvantages to the NX bit that I don't know about? (Like significant slow-down worse than software checks or possible overflows that it would miss).
Granted, the only Doctors I know very well are Tom Baker and Christopher Eccleston, but didn't Colin Baker beat out the-actor-you-dare-not-name as the worst Doctor ever?
The only thing separating a democracy from a tyranny of the majority (and a thin majority electing Bush - in this case) are rights granted its citizens by the Constitution. That these rights continue to be upheld is the responsibility of the Supreme Court.
That being the case, the Democrats should use any legal means within their power to prevent a questionable individual appointed to the Supreme Court. If they simply step back and let someone who will evenutally overturn Roe v. Wade get appointed then they'll have a lot of explaining to do to the people who elected them. And it looks like 2 more Justices might step down other than O'Connor.
It would be a damn shame if the rights of individuals take a hit just because the population at large had a temporary case of irrational reactions to fear after the attacks on 9/11. The population at large is already beginning to see a big mistake in the power-sapping debacle that is the war in Iraq.
1. How does the complex algorithmic machine become conscious (therefore more than "just" algorithmic) simply by "interacting with the environment",
In the same manner that the combined biological machinery of cells began to manifest consciousness by interaction with the environment through evolution. A lot of people seem to think that if you just get together enough speed, circuitry and memory
together the computer will automatically get a consciousness. I think it would more likely need to be forced to adapt to a chaotic environment as well for this to happen.
and in what *non-algorithmic* terms can you characterize this interaction?
I don't know what you mean by this. If it were possible to characterize an interaction enough you'd have an algorithm. I don't think this can be done in this case.
Do you believe that we'll have to find new, non-algorithmic laws of nature simply to resolve the problem of consciousness?
I don't think consciousness can be fully modeled in terms of neatly-defined laws of nature. I'm not saying that consciousness is supernatural, just that any attempt at a rigorous description misses the point. It is impossible for mechanical descriptions to explain experience.
The best resolution I think there would be to the problem of consciousness would be, "Given an algorithm with properties a, b, c and such-and-such tasks for it to perform in so-and-so environment, consciousness is likely to occur.
2. About the engineers being the victors because they alone possess consciousness - what if the designers simply designed some sort of genetic algorithm where the computer in fact figured out a near optimal algorithm on its own? What if they had just set up a net of some sort and trained it? Does 'who won' in this instance depend upon what precise method the programmers used?
Hmmmmmmmmm. A fiendishly good question as this concerns a question of degree. In both your examples I would say we are moving more towards the computer winning than the engineers. (Which is probably what the original poster was getting at). So it would be a continuum with the computer following a database of moves at one extreme to a conscious computer figuring out chess strategy at the other. I would definitely say that the methods the programmers used matters.
I believe that a series of silicon chips can become conscious. However, I don't think consciousness can ever be completely defined by an algorithm. Probably a complex enough computer can be given a learning algorithm and then by interacting with the environment it becomes conscious on its own.
The whole argument is about who is really the victor - the engineers who created the algorithm or the computer that performs it. The original poster was arguing that it is the engineers, and because the engineers were the ones with consciousness I believe he is right.
1. If the capability is all in the engineers, why don't they beat grandmasters ? (FWIW they don't, but you can go do your own digging if you want to reassure yourself that this is the case). The machine is even capable of correctly playing a (winning) ending where real grandmasters OR engineers would agree a draw. They can't see the way out but the machine can.
No because they can't memorize and evaluate their created algorithms like the computer can. The computer is perfect at the mindless aspects of playing chess. The important part, the creation of the algorithm, is completely in control of the human engineers.
2. If I teach a child to play chess very well, is it really -me- who is defeating the child's opponents?
Because you simply start off teaching the child basic strategies while the child figures out the rest himself. In contrast, the computer's actions are dictated completely by the algorithm.
3. Why are you so sure that you are not just an expensive chemical heater which happens to peform calculations fixed by someone else? Just because the illusion is convincing to you doesn't mean anyone else should believe you.
Because we possess consciousness. It is meaningless to say that the experience of consciousness is a "lie". You need to assume consciousness exists in the first place for there to be something to be lied to.
Additionally, I usually work at home, on the couch, with my kids - it's a majority of my worktime. I get a successful career, I get to fly around to visit with clients with whom I have a good, close, friendly relationship, and I do it armed with my laptop and my (digital) cell phone.
So you give one example of a person who is able to use technology to get more quality time with his family and friends and that's supposed to apply to everybody?
Many (if not most) people have trouble finding the time to spend with their families (or just getting a family) while maitaining a decent-paying job in today's world. That's probably why divorce rates are so high, causing another host of problems.
I don't know if the causes are technology, how it's used or whatever. But you'd have to be willfully obtuse to deny that the issues are there. Everyone just assumes that if we keep working harder and harder we'll be getting some reward that will be worth what we're losing to get it.
Jet: The house specialty is sea rat. Used to be a staple food harvested in the Ganymede sea. After the gates stabilized food wasn't scarce anymore and people stopped eating it. So they ran some fancy ad campaigns and claimed it was a delicacy.
Spike: And...? Is it tasty?
Jet: It's totally discusting. But people eat it anyway for status - it's in.
Spike: Well in that case I'm out. Lobster Miso Stew please.
----------
Good old Cowboy Bebop. Probably off-topic, but it was the first thing I thought of after seeing this.
Typical lone geek programmer response. You have clearly never had to maintain a program written by someone whose idea of "clear" is significantly different from your own.
I have had to maintain programs and expanded on code written by someone else in many languages. If the programmmer is good the code is clear, otherwise it is not. The language used has nothing to do with it.
The "simplistic" OS you refer to, of course, is UNIX. The simple design was so forward-thinking that more than thirty years later it is *the* OS to study for simplicity, consistency, extendability and elegance.
Very few kernels are written in anything but C even with the advances in hardware, and there's a good reason for that. Don't believe me? Then I encourage you to write a decent kernel in the langauage-of-the-hour of your choosing and prove me wrong.
Very very few projects of any interest today are written in anything but C/C++. The only exceptions I can think of are Azereus(Java), Bittorrent(Python), and Eclipse(Java). Everything else is a barren wasteland of simple IT automation, business enterprise applications or glue to piece together the interesting parts. *YAAAAAWWWWWNNN*
I mean, I see the point that C/C++ is used in many projects it shouldn't be. It's just that most of those project tend to bore the living shit out of me.
No flame. There are problems with C, I'll grant that. I don't know if the problem with the pre-processor is that it's too powerful or by convention it is depended on too much. Unfortunately, in some places it requres #defines where a const variable would be better. That and macros for functions where a simple inline keyword would help tremedously. Of course, these have been addresses in C++ and (I think) C99.
I'm not sure about strings. With the really low level stuff like OS development, I can see the case for just contiguous characters terminated by a NULL character. Otherwise it's not so hot.
But I still maintain that C works extremely well for what it was created for. I mean, how long did it take before it needed to change as opposed to C++ that becomes more complex by the hour? (I really have a love/hate attitude towards C++. I think it's a horrible language to match the needs of a horrible world. Then again, I should look more into Objective C.)
C99 addresses a lot of valid concerns with the language, though. That and D sounds promising.
A picky compiler is a blessing, not a curse. It's much easier to identify and fix compile errors than run-time errors.
difficult to convert to better languages (thank you preprocessor)
Meaningless troll.
encourages obfuscation
Unless the compiler is literally holding a gun to your head, this is meaningless. In C you have nearly limitless control to write your code the way you feel is clearest. If it came out obfuscated then you have nobody to blame but yourself.
some constructs are clearly tacked on and/or poorly implemented (switch), arbitrary nonorthogonality (struct, parens and brace usage, pointer/array declaration), shitty strings.
Tacked on? If you don't like the way constructs are set up then fine, that's your opinion. But if you read The C Programming Language you can tell that every single construct was scrutinized over for the proper balance of efficiency (why it makes sense to pass array parameters as pointers and structs as copies) and consistency (why data types are declared the way they are. Declaration and use of data is made to match.) Do you honestly believe the creators/first users of C, some of the greatest programmers who ever lived, really said, "Ahhh, fuck it. Let's just throw something together," when designing their own programming tools?
Most people who don't like C are really just saying they don't like low-level programming because that's what it was designed for, and that's what it's perfect for. Too many newbie programmers get used to some modern, flash-in-the-pan, all-things-to-all-people languages and when they are faced with the challenges of low-level languages rashly conclude that it's the language's fault they're having problems.
C is the perfect language for the job it was designed for. The same cannot be said for most more modern languages.
How soon until various nations around the world start using technology such as this during attacks on other sovereign nations? Something like this could come in very handy when struggling against freedom fighters who employ roadside explosives and other such guerilla tactics.
How? The only things I can think of that help against such guerilla tactics are good armor and staying alert. Anyhow, who needs super strength when you have good ol' firepower?
You must be kidding. Why right off the bat you have Azureus and Eclipse written in Java.
Yup 2 whole cool apps written in Java. Other than that? Well, err... let's see. Oh, I got it! Business Enterprise applications!
Whoo boy what fun! Hundreds of different ways to move large quantities of money from point A to point B for corporations providing services of questionable benefit to mankind. Just thinking of developing one of these suckers makes me want to kill myself with joy.
You C/C++ lusers can take your embedded software, operating systems, video games and such and stick them where the sun don't shine.
Being a Howard Stern fan myself, I have to disagree. It seems that what's really making Stern sick of broadcasting is the FCC with its increasing demands/pressure considering what is "decent" enough to broadcast. The only reason he's on terrestrial radio now is to fulfill his contract, and he often openly begs Viacom to just fire him already.
Since he doesn't have to deal with the FCC on Sirius, he may have a whole new attitude. For fans of Howard Stern it might be worth listening to, especially when he's just starting out on Sirius.
You make the same mistake I've seen from a lot of other reviewers regarding Fight Club. The movie is not pro everything that Tyler stands for. As a matter of fact, the movie makes the point that Tyler and his entire Project Mayhem outfit is insane. We're supposed to identify with him in the beginning and see the social attitudes he's rebelling against, but that's it. It's meant to show that if we're not careful about how we react against materialsitic drudgery then what we end up with might be much worse than what we started with. Tyler feels he is promoting freedom, but the participants in Operation Mayhem end up much less free than they were before.
I don't know what you mean about "dismantling Tyler's lack of an id." In both book and film, Tyler always seemed to me to be id incarnate. The book is better than the movie. Especidally the ending. I don't think the book ending would have worked in a movie though.
Secondly, I never defended the prequels, did I? There is not one point where I defended them. I said that it was Lucas's perogative to do with the material as he pleases, not that the material was good.
Bullshit. Your whole argument is that Lucas made the prequels the way he wanted to, and is therefore above scrutiny. Well, seeing as how he released the movies for the public, and I'm a part of the public, I stated that none of the movies were that strong and argued why I thought this was the case. Instead of responding to my specific criticisms you argue that I had no right to even make my criticisms in the first place. That's insane.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just the orbit of the inner planets (which would be Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) on that plane. All planets except Pluto fit on there.
The Sun rotates. Furthermore, it rotates along the same plane as the planets' orbits. (Again, you can confirm this yourself if you have Celestia. Just go to the Sun, back up a bit, make sure the orbits are turned on and speed up time a bit.)
The theory I read in The Cartoon History of the Universe (great book) was that as the gases condensed to form the Sun they began to spin faster and faster. This scattered out debris that would orbit around the Sun along the same plane. It is that debris which condensed to form what I consider to be planets.
Second, what exactly is a "planet"?
Good question. I wonder if there is some exact set of rules that decides this. Even though it may not be the technical definition, I like the idea of the offspring of the Sun being the de facto planets in our Solar System.
Thanks for the info. What's a KBO?
I'm no astronomer, but it does certainly appear that Pluto got there late in the game. Just look at the orbits of the other eight planets. (Here having Celestia helps.) All nearly circular, none overlapping and all on the same plane. It's as if a bunch of space debris orbitting our sun condensed to form them.
Now look at Pluto's orbit. More elliptical. Obviously not on the same plane and criss-crossing with Neptune's orbit. Hell, Pluto's smaller than our own moon for Christ's sake.
I don't know why Pluto was ever considered a planet in the first place. It looks like some object that happened to get trapped by sun's gravity.
That's just my amateur opinion, anyways. Maybe some astronomer out there knows better?
And if trends continue in Iraq the way that they have been and it descends into civil war this will become completely irrelevant.
All we have left to do now is to help them put together enough police to let them take care of the suicide bomber problem that is killing Iraqs 10 to 1 over American troops.
If it was that easy it would have been done already.
I know that placation of Islamic Fascists is the preferred method of dealing with them by the left - but there's something to be said for makiung a stand.
Is your vision balck and white as well or do you just think that way?
If you're referring to Saddam as the "Islamic Fascist" then it's kinda dumb to play Savior of the World and try to remove him with little outside help when it drains military resources we could use against the actual terrorists that threaten us.
If you're referring to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda then I'm all for making a stand. But Iraq is just a colossal fuck-up that hurts the fight.
It's worthless pieces of shit such as yourself that frame any alternatives to your simplistic solutions as "placating" or "unpatriotic" that got us into this mess in the first place.
successful successful successful successful successful successful successful successful successful successful
Please keep reading that over until it looks correct to you.
Just had to get that off my chest.
Amen brother.
Well I guess 2 out of 6 ain't bad. Oh wait... it is.
As far as Al Qaeda is concerned, wipe those fuckers off the face of the earth. Appeasement with them is not an option.
However, there are still occupations/actions done by Israel that are simply wrong and do nothing but give Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations an easy route to getting recruits.
For Israel to act more reasonably towards the Palestinians is not caving in to Osama and crew. Quite the opposite actually. It's whenever some kind of peace settlement is about to be made between Israel and Palestinians that the most terrorist attacks tend to occur. The terrorists fear peace more than anything. It robs them of power. I am so fucking sick of people claiming "We do not let terrorists control our actions", and then right when one of these bombings happen in response to peace talks demand going into "Fuck the general population and do whatever we need to weed out terrorists" mode. Well guess what Sparky, you did exactly what the terrorists wanted. Peace talks are caput, violence has escalated, and the conflict Al Qaeda is depending on to become a movement to shape the Middle East into what they want continues.
I hope you don't confuse what you label "Islamists" with the general Muslim population. Because that's just want the terrorists want us to think.
How does it feel to be Osama's bitch?
...instead of looking for information on the NX bit from the buffer overflow page in Wikipedia, look up the thing specifically here. Yeah.
Why have hardware support that simply helps prevent buffer overflows when we can use hardware features that solve it? I believe that can be done with the NX bit in many modern processors. For more information, look in the Wikipedia entry for "buffer overflow". Getting all new machines to run with chips with this feature and operating systems to take advantage of it is the key to stopping the overflows, not new languages to generate low-level code.
The problem I have with the argument, "Sure the software checks in higher-level languages will slow things down significiantly, but computers are so much faster now," is simple. Ever notice how even as memory/video card frame-rates/hard-drive space increases exponentially it seems that the newest applications tend to still max them out to compete? Well the same thing applies to speed. It's tough to explain to your manager that you are going to purposefully use a language that cripples the efficiency of your newest application to anticiplate your own carelessness. (I'm not saying I'm any better than anyone else on this point. I've had my share of careless programming moments myself).
Does anyone know of any disadvantages to the NX bit that I don't know about? (Like significant slow-down worse than software checks or possible overflows that it would miss).
Granted, the only Doctors I know very well are Tom Baker and Christopher Eccleston, but didn't Colin Baker beat out the-actor-you-dare-not-name as the worst Doctor ever?
That being the case, the Democrats should use any legal means within their power to prevent a questionable individual appointed to the Supreme Court. If they simply step back and let someone who will evenutally overturn Roe v. Wade get appointed then they'll have a lot of explaining to do to the people who elected them. And it looks like 2 more Justices might step down other than O'Connor.
It would be a damn shame if the rights of individuals take a hit just because the population at large had a temporary case of irrational reactions to fear after the attacks on 9/11. The population at large is already beginning to see a big mistake in the power-sapping debacle that is the war in Iraq.
In the same manner that the combined biological machinery of cells began to manifest consciousness by interaction with the environment through evolution. A lot of people seem to think that if you just get together enough speed, circuitry and memory together the computer will automatically get a consciousness. I think it would more likely need to be forced to adapt to a chaotic environment as well for this to happen.
and in what *non-algorithmic* terms can you characterize this interaction?
I don't know what you mean by this. If it were possible to characterize an interaction enough you'd have an algorithm. I don't think this can be done in this case.
Do you believe that we'll have to find new, non-algorithmic laws of nature simply to resolve the problem of consciousness?
I don't think consciousness can be fully modeled in terms of neatly-defined laws of nature. I'm not saying that consciousness is supernatural, just that any attempt at a rigorous description misses the point. It is impossible for mechanical descriptions to explain experience.
The best resolution I think there would be to the problem of consciousness would be, "Given an algorithm with properties a, b, c and such-and-such tasks for it to perform in so-and-so environment, consciousness is likely to occur.
2. About the engineers being the victors because they alone possess consciousness - what if the designers simply designed some sort of genetic algorithm where the computer in fact figured out a near optimal algorithm on its own? What if they had just set up a net of some sort and trained it? Does 'who won' in this instance depend upon what precise method the programmers used?
Hmmmmmmmmm. A fiendishly good question as this concerns a question of degree. In both your examples I would say we are moving more towards the computer winning than the engineers. (Which is probably what the original poster was getting at). So it would be a continuum with the computer following a database of moves at one extreme to a conscious computer figuring out chess strategy at the other. I would definitely say that the methods the programmers used matters.
My brain hurts.
What are you talking about?
I believe that a series of silicon chips can become conscious. However, I don't think consciousness can ever be completely defined by an algorithm. Probably a complex enough computer can be given a learning algorithm and then by interacting with the environment it becomes conscious on its own.
The whole argument is about who is really the victor - the engineers who created the algorithm or the computer that performs it. The original poster was arguing that it is the engineers, and because the engineers were the ones with consciousness I believe he is right.
No because they can't memorize and evaluate their created algorithms like the computer can. The computer is perfect at the mindless aspects of playing chess. The important part, the creation of the algorithm, is completely in control of the human engineers.
2. If I teach a child to play chess very well, is it really -me- who is defeating the child's opponents?
Because you simply start off teaching the child basic strategies while the child figures out the rest himself. In contrast, the computer's actions are dictated completely by the algorithm.
3. Why are you so sure that you are not just an expensive chemical heater which happens to peform calculations fixed by someone else? Just because the illusion is convincing to you doesn't mean anyone else should believe you.
Because we possess consciousness. It is meaningless to say that the experience of consciousness is a "lie". You need to assume consciousness exists in the first place for there to be something to be lied to.
How does technology solve racism?
Additionally, I usually work at home, on the couch, with my kids - it's a majority of my worktime. I get a successful career, I get to fly around to visit with clients with whom I have a good, close, friendly relationship, and I do it armed with my laptop and my (digital) cell phone.
So you give one example of a person who is able to use technology to get more quality time with his family and friends and that's supposed to apply to everybody?
Many (if not most) people have trouble finding the time to spend with their families (or just getting a family) while maitaining a decent-paying job in today's world. That's probably why divorce rates are so high, causing another host of problems.
I don't know if the causes are technology, how it's used or whatever. But you'd have to be willfully obtuse to deny that the issues are there. Everyone just assumes that if we keep working harder and harder we'll be getting some reward that will be worth what we're losing to get it.
Jet: The house specialty is sea rat. Used to be a staple food harvested in the Ganymede sea. After the gates stabilized food wasn't scarce anymore and people stopped eating it. So they ran some fancy ad campaigns and claimed it was a delicacy.
Spike: And...? Is it tasty?
Jet: It's totally discusting. But people eat it anyway for status - it's in.
Spike: Well in that case I'm out. Lobster Miso Stew please.
----------
Good old Cowboy Bebop. Probably off-topic, but it was the first thing I thought of after seeing this.
Actually, no. It's coincidental, not ironic. George Carlin brought up the disctinction in one of his books. (I forget which.)
I have had to maintain programs and expanded on code written by someone else in many languages. If the programmmer is good the code is clear, otherwise it is not. The language used has nothing to do with it.
The "simplistic" OS you refer to, of course, is UNIX. The simple design was so forward-thinking that more than thirty years later it is *the* OS to study for simplicity, consistency, extendability and elegance.
Very few kernels are written in anything but C even with the advances in hardware, and there's a good reason for that. Don't believe me? Then I encourage you to write a decent kernel in the langauage-of-the-hour of your choosing and prove me wrong.
Very very few projects of any interest today are written in anything but C/C++. The only exceptions I can think of are Azereus(Java), Bittorrent(Python), and Eclipse(Java). Everything else is a barren wasteland of simple IT automation, business enterprise applications or glue to piece together the interesting parts. *YAAAAAWWWWWNNN*
I mean, I see the point that C/C++ is used in many projects it shouldn't be. It's just that most of those project tend to bore the living shit out of me.
No flame. There are problems with C, I'll grant that. I don't know if the problem with the pre-processor is that it's too powerful or by convention it is depended on too much. Unfortunately, in some places it requres #defines where a const variable would be better. That and macros for functions where a simple inline keyword would help tremedously. Of course, these have been addresses in C++ and (I think) C99.
I'm not sure about strings. With the really low level stuff like OS development, I can see the case for just contiguous characters terminated by a NULL character. Otherwise it's not so hot.
But I still maintain that C works extremely well for what it was created for. I mean, how long did it take before it needed to change as opposed to C++ that becomes more complex by the hour? (I really have a love/hate attitude towards C++. I think it's a horrible language to match the needs of a horrible world. Then again, I should look more into Objective C.)
C99 addresses a lot of valid concerns with the language, though. That and D sounds promising.
A picky compiler is a blessing, not a curse. It's much easier to identify and fix compile errors than run-time errors.
difficult to convert to better languages (thank you preprocessor)
Meaningless troll.
encourages obfuscation
Unless the compiler is literally holding a gun to your head, this is meaningless. In C you have nearly limitless control to write your code the way you feel is clearest. If it came out obfuscated then you have nobody to blame but yourself.
some constructs are clearly tacked on and/or poorly implemented (switch), arbitrary nonorthogonality (struct, parens and brace usage, pointer/array declaration), shitty strings.
Tacked on? If you don't like the way constructs are set up then fine, that's your opinion. But if you read The C Programming Language you can tell that every single construct was scrutinized over for the proper balance of efficiency (why it makes sense to pass array parameters as pointers and structs as copies) and consistency (why data types are declared the way they are. Declaration and use of data is made to match.) Do you honestly believe the creators/first users of C, some of the greatest programmers who ever lived, really said, "Ahhh, fuck it. Let's just throw something together," when designing their own programming tools?
Most people who don't like C are really just saying they don't like low-level programming because that's what it was designed for, and that's what it's perfect for. Too many newbie programmers get used to some modern, flash-in-the-pan, all-things-to-all-people languages and when they are faced with the challenges of low-level languages rashly conclude that it's the language's fault they're having problems.
C is the perfect language for the job it was designed for. The same cannot be said for most more modern languages.
How? The only things I can think of that help against such guerilla tactics are good armor and staying alert. Anyhow, who needs super strength when you have good ol' firepower?
What's cool and written in Java or .NET?
You must be kidding. Why right off the bat you have Azureus and Eclipse written in Java.
Yup 2 whole cool apps written in Java. Other than that? Well, err... let's see. Oh, I got it! Business Enterprise applications!
Whoo boy what fun! Hundreds of different ways to move large quantities of money from point A to point B for corporations providing services of questionable benefit to mankind. Just thinking of developing one of these suckers makes me want to kill myself with joy.
You C/C++ lusers can take your embedded software, operating systems, video games and such and stick them where the sun don't shine.
So what's Hindi for "Dere takin' arr jooooooobbs!"?
Being a Howard Stern fan myself, I have to disagree. It seems that what's really making Stern sick of broadcasting is the FCC with its increasing demands/pressure considering what is "decent" enough to broadcast. The only reason he's on terrestrial radio now is to fulfill his contract, and he often openly begs Viacom to just fire him already.
Since he doesn't have to deal with the FCC on Sirius, he may have a whole new attitude. For fans of Howard Stern it might be worth listening to, especially when he's just starting out on Sirius.
I don't know what you mean about "dismantling Tyler's lack of an id." In both book and film, Tyler always seemed to me to be id incarnate. The book is better than the movie. Especidally the ending. I don't think the book ending would have worked in a movie though.
Secondly, I never defended the prequels, did I? There is not one point where I defended them. I said that it was Lucas's perogative to do with the material as he pleases, not that the material was good.
Bullshit. Your whole argument is that Lucas made the prequels the way he wanted to, and is therefore above scrutiny. Well, seeing as how he released the movies for the public, and I'm a part of the public, I stated that none of the movies were that strong and argued why I thought this was the case. Instead of responding to my specific criticisms you argue that I had no right to even make my criticisms in the first place. That's insane.