Peacefully marching for a political statement is NEVER illegal
Make that "Peacefully marching for a political statement SHOULD NEVER BE illegal." Unfortunately, it is. Both parties have systemicly dismantalled the Constitution to the point where it's meaningless anymore.
Try getting a group together in a major city and march down the street, or gather together in a public park WITHOUT a permit and see what happens. Try carrying an anti-Bush sign outside of an "approved free-speech zone" during the Republican National Convention and see how long it takes you to get arrested.
Re:playing the lottery is not stupid
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Odds-on Science
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The problem of that logic is that the subjective value of $1 is variable. It would be more accurate to view the lottery looking at the cost of a ticket as a percentage of the person's disposable income. For someone with say $250/week in disposable income, an expense of $1/week is virtually unnoticable. For this person, the lottery is a harmless amusement. On the other hand, the person who has $20/week in disposable income and spends ten of it on lottery tickets is being foolish.
"What does Star Wars have to do with science fiction?"
Mod parent up!!!
(so we can all point and laugh...)
Laugh at you, maybe. Star Wars isn't science fiction - it's space fantasy.
Yes, it's entertaining. Yes, it is (or was, before Lucas dorked it up) a fun movie to watch. The point the grandparent was trying to make is that, strictly speaking, it's not really SCIENCE fiction because there's no science. Read some real science fiction(*) and compare it to Star Wars and you'll see the only thing they have in common is that they're set in space.
(*) Some real Sci-Fi titles to check out:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (or any of his short story collections)
The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (or any of Niven's short story collections)
Stanley Kubrick's films are very different than typical Hollywood fare -- you may not like them, appreciate them, or even get them, but you can't deny that they're art. But hey, tastes differ; that's why Baskin-Robbins makes 31 flavors of ice cream. Just because YOU don't like mint chocolate chip doesn't mean that it sucks.
Because there's a moral imperitive to oppose unjust laws.
Freedom of speech, assembly, and association are fundimental human rights according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, of which France is a signatory. Banning political parties and political speech, no matter how pure your motives or how objectionable the group being suppressed, is fundimentally wrong no matter how you cut it.
You don't have to like Nazis to respect their right to be idiots; and suppressing them only forces them to go underground, making it harder to keep an eye on them.
Patriotism is [...] being willing to defend your country from threat of harm. Even... no, especially, if that harm comes from it's government.
Mod parent up.
I do solemnly swear to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic
These words should be familiar to anyone who's served this country. Unfortunately, right now the biggest enemy of the Constitution is the commander in chief whose orders you are supposed to obey, if you took this oath. The way to resolve this apparant conflict is to look at the oath to see which duty comes first -- your duty to defend the Constitution, or your duty to obey orders.
But some fluke electrical event fries the mainframe, you're totally fsck'ed.
If it's a mission critical system, you don't just buy one -- you buy two and (preferably) have them installed in geographically seperated areas.
If one does buy the farm through some freak catastrophy, you're not the one who's fsck'ed -- the vendor and/or your insurance company is.
If you rely on a multi-million dollar piece of equipment to run your business and don't have redundancy, insurance, and service contracts, you deserve whatever happens to you.
[N]one of the source forge crowd's top 3 languages are open source
Can I have some of what you're smoking? C and C++ are ANSI- and ISO-standard languages with multiple independent fully open-source toolchains. The Java language specification is still controlled by Sun, so it isn't an open standard; however, there ARE open-source implementations of that standard.
I agree. Java is not a language for systems programming. The question is, what percentage of programming tasks entail low-level systems programming versus high-level applications programming?
The VAST majority of software being written is high-level business applications; hence there are at least an order of magnitude more JOBS available for application programmers than systems programmers. For virtually all business apps, programmer productivity, code maintainability, and predictable scalability are FAR more important than raw execution speed. This is where Java puts C++ to shame.
In the hands of a skilled C++, as well a C, developer these things are actually not the issue you made them out to be.
Bullshit. IME, there are maybe 1000 (tops) C/C++ programers in the world that can consistantly write non-trivial code without memory leaks, buffer overflows, and the whole gamut of classical C/C++ bugs, and even these top programmers still make the occasional mistake. If the hacker gods can't get it right, what chance do mere mortals have?
I've worked with some really brilliant C++ hackers, who tested the crap out of their code, and they were still constantly finding the same old classic bugs. The fact remains that it is insanely difficult to write good C++ code. Java lowers the bar somewhat, so that you don't require superhuman ability to write decent software.
The only advantage for Java is that its standard library is bigger than the other languages
I wouldn't say that's it's ONLY advantage. There is a HUGE amount of industry support for Java, particuarly for server-side enterprise applications (Websphere, Tomcat, etc). The desktop is not the sum total of the computing universe. Java scales well at the enterprise level and Java code is a lot more maintainable than C++, or even perl.
Look at some help wanted ads and see how many companies are hiring J2EE/EJB programmers compared to Python or perl programmers, and how much those positions pay. I don't care how "cool" a language is, I care that someone is going to pay me to use it. I'd develop in COBOL (shudder!) if that's where the jobs were.
being an athlete myself, I don't see how you could not watch them compete
I'm an archer, rifleman, and fencer; and yet, I watched none of these olympic events (nor any other) on TV, and probably would not have watched any in person even if I lived in Athens and was given free tickets.
Personally, I'd rather set up my target in my back yard and fill it full of arrows rather than watch an archery competition on TV. I'd love to be able to train with an Olympic class archer, or even to talk to one and and get advice, because that would actually improve my own skill. Watching them compete on TV does nothing to improve my performance, no matter how accomplished the contestants are or how impressive thier shooting is.
That Nixon ordered them to? I must have missed that memo
What do you think was discussed during that famous erased portion of the relevant tape? You think Nixon was telling Liddy his grandmother's super-secret recipie for chocolate chip cookies and didn't want anyone else to know it?
It's just as stupid to believe that Bush deliberately targeted him for being a liberal democrat
Yeah, and it was just as stupid to believe that Nixon ordered his goons to break into the Democratic National Comittee's headquarters and steal documents. Oh wait, that REALLY HAPPENED.
You think that your St. George is any less likely than Nixon to abuse the power of the Presidency? I'll give you three guesses who Bush Sr's political mentor and patron was. Here's a hint: he came from Yorba Linda and had a dog named Checkers.
The RISC guys had it right. So right in fact that even current x86 chips are RISC on the inside, and then waste close to half their transistor count on circutry that does nothing besides transform the x86 instruction set into something that isn't brainfucked. That Athlon-64 would cost half as much, draw half as much power, and generate half the heat if you ripped out the x86 emulation layer.
The goal of every good Sysadmin/DBA should be to automate himself out of a job. The real trick is to make sure your boss doesn't catch on that you've done so.
Remember, kids: if you're going to do the same general task more than twice, it's worth your while to write a shell script to do it for you. If it can possibly break, preemptively write a script to help you fix it, and write another one to monitor it to make sure it isn't broken. Like a boy scout, a sysadmin's motto is "be prepared".
By "Intel" the article should have said "x86". The x86 architecture, as fundimentally flawed as it is, has driven virtually everything else out of the market. Alpha's gone, PA-RISC is going, SPARC is on it's way out. The Power/PowerPC a architecture is hanging in there, so there's still some choice left for main-line computing.
Of course the power of the various embedded processors (Dragonball,StrongARM) and single-chip computers are rising to the point that they could be meet most user's computing needs. We've reached the point where average users don't need any more power; they need the same power with less heat & noise and more reliability & stability.
Exactly. Sounds like they fell into the classic Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. Virtually EVERY cancer clustering study ever done has been eventually been debunked.
The human mind is hard-wired to find patterns in images, hence we have natural tendancy to think that there is a meaningful pattern in completely random data. This is also why we tend to see human faces in odd places (Clouds, the moon, shower mold, bumps on a tortilla, etc) -- a huge part of our brain is dedicated to decoding human facial expressions, so it should be no suprise when we observe a face-like image emerge from random noise.
I get around most of mySQL's "limitations" in TCL.
Really? Please tell me how to implement atomic transactions and stored procedures in TCL. Please tell me how you reliably guard against SQL injection attacks using TCL.
Because there are a whole lot of stubborn idiots out there who think that MySQL is the be-all and end-all of databases and refuse to learn anything else. Fanboy mentality instead of solid engineering practices.
They also see a lot of use for database servers. In the Sybase/MS-SQL architecture, one of the biggest performance bottlenecks is tempdb I/O (kind of like a swap partition for the database). Putting tempdb on a solid-state drive can make a huge improvement in overall performance.
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Try getting a group together in a major city and march down the street, or gather together in a public park WITHOUT a permit and see what happens. Try carrying an anti-Bush sign outside of an "approved free-speech zone" during the Republican National Convention and see how long it takes you to get arrested.
(so we can all point and laugh...) Laugh at you, maybe. Star Wars isn't science fiction - it's space fantasy.
Yes, it's entertaining. Yes, it is (or was, before Lucas dorked it up) a fun movie to watch. The point the grandparent was trying to make is that, strictly speaking, it's not really SCIENCE fiction because there's no science. Read some real science fiction(*) and compare it to Star Wars and you'll see the only thing they have in common is that they're set in space. (*) Some real Sci-Fi titles to check out:
Stanley Kubrick's films are very different than typical Hollywood fare -- you may not like them, appreciate them, or even get them, but you can't deny that they're art. But hey, tastes differ; that's why Baskin-Robbins makes 31 flavors of ice cream. Just because YOU don't like mint chocolate chip doesn't mean that it sucks.
Freedom of speech, assembly, and association are fundimental human rights according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, of which France is a signatory. Banning political parties and political speech, no matter how pure your motives or how objectionable the group being suppressed, is fundimentally wrong no matter how you cut it.
You don't have to like Nazis to respect their right to be idiots; and suppressing them only forces them to go underground, making it harder to keep an eye on them.
- If it's a mission critical system, you don't just buy one -- you buy two and (preferably) have them installed in geographically seperated areas.
- If one does buy the farm through some freak catastrophy, you're not the one who's fsck'ed -- the vendor and/or your insurance company is.
If you rely on a multi-million dollar piece of equipment to run your business and don't have redundancy, insurance, and service contracts, you deserve whatever happens to you.I virtually married my virtual girlfriend, but then she ran off with my virtual best friend and took my virtual house and virtual dog too.
The VAST majority of software being written is high-level business applications; hence there are at least an order of magnitude more JOBS available for application programmers than systems programmers. For virtually all business apps, programmer productivity, code maintainability, and predictable scalability are FAR more important than raw execution speed. This is where Java puts C++ to shame.
I've worked with some really brilliant C++ hackers, who tested the crap out of their code, and they were still constantly finding the same old classic bugs. The fact remains that it is insanely difficult to write good C++ code. Java lowers the bar somewhat, so that you don't require superhuman ability to write decent software.
Look at some help wanted ads and see how many companies are hiring J2EE/EJB programmers compared to Python or perl programmers, and how much those positions pay. I don't care how "cool" a language is, I care that someone is going to pay me to use it. I'd develop in COBOL (shudder!) if that's where the jobs were.
Oh, and the correct word isn't "Baltomorean"; it's "Baltimoron". :-)
Personally, I'd rather set up my target in my back yard and fill it full of arrows rather than watch an archery competition on TV. I'd love to be able to train with an Olympic class archer, or even to talk to one and and get advice, because that would actually improve my own skill. Watching them compete on TV does nothing to improve my performance, no matter how accomplished the contestants are or how impressive thier shooting is.
You think that your St. George is any less likely than Nixon to abuse the power of the Presidency? I'll give you three guesses who Bush Sr's political mentor and patron was. Here's a hint: he came from Yorba Linda and had a dog named Checkers.
In Three words: Variable Length Instructions
The RISC guys had it right. So right in fact that even current x86 chips are RISC on the inside, and then waste close to half their transistor count on circutry that does nothing besides transform the x86 instruction set into something that isn't brainfucked. That Athlon-64 would cost half as much, draw half as much power, and generate half the heat if you ripped out the x86 emulation layer.
Remember, kids: if you're going to do the same general task more than twice, it's worth your while to write a shell script to do it for you. If it can possibly break, preemptively write a script to help you fix it, and write another one to monitor it to make sure it isn't broken. Like a boy scout, a sysadmin's motto is "be prepared".
Of course the power of the various embedded processors (Dragonball,StrongARM) and single-chip computers are rising to the point that they could be meet most user's computing needs. We've reached the point where average users don't need any more power; they need the same power with less heat & noise and more reliability & stability.
The human mind is hard-wired to find patterns in images, hence we have natural tendancy to think that there is a meaningful pattern in completely random data. This is also why we tend to see human faces in odd places (Clouds, the moon, shower mold, bumps on a tortilla, etc) -- a huge part of our brain is dedicated to decoding human facial expressions, so it should be no suprise when we observe a face-like image emerge from random noise.
Because there are a whole lot of stubborn idiots out there who think that MySQL is the be-all and end-all of databases and refuse to learn anything else. Fanboy mentality instead of solid engineering practices.
They also see a lot of use for database servers. In the Sybase/MS-SQL architecture, one of the biggest performance bottlenecks is tempdb I/O (kind of like a swap partition for the database). Putting tempdb on a solid-state drive can make a huge improvement in overall performance.