Yeah, exceptions are fine and dandy, as long as the other software components in the system are designed to trap and report the exception. 99% of the time, this is not the case.
Sure, software fails - but what makes it very difficult to use, maintain, and write, is when you don't get any information back about what caused the failure.
Yes, but did you notice that every monorail station can only be accessed from the street by first walking about 1/4 mile through a casino lobby? This will not reduce congestion. It will only increase pedestrian congestion. If it takes an hour to wait in line to ride a monorail to travel what would be a 15 minute walk, you've defeated the purpose. Unless the purpose was to draw more people into the casinos to gamble. . .
The fact is, the Internet, as we know it, hasn't been "as we know it" for quite some time. Ever since it was opened to commercial exploitation.
This brought ads, banners, tracking of personal information, privacy invasion, email/macro viruses, monoculture, and the big Race To Be The Next Microsoft.
It's been widely recognized that the killer app was email, and that nobody ever really figured out how to profit from providing it as a service (as opposed to simply profitting from using it). And the spammers have gone quite far to attempt to ruin it.
The other killer app is the blog - or really collaborative discussions - originally NNTP. And guess what? That was effectively killed by spam too.
The really neat thing was how everyone and their brother, back in 1996, could suddenly create a web page detailing their hobbies, their cars, their dogs, etc. And while that grew tiresome, the web, as a whole, was an incredible source for information.
Then the search engines were commercialized so that you couldn't find these sites anymore, only the big commercial ones. And services were consolidated so that not everyone could afford their own web page or connection anymore, and simple, basic HTML was eschewed for "flashy FrontPage garbage" - this effectively has eliminated the democratization of the web.
And finally, the lawyers moved in. The whole point of the Internet was the free sharing of ideas and information. Until they figured out that theoretically, they should be making money off of this. And it was all shut down.
So now that the Internet is just one big commercial - what's the point? I can drive to Las Vegas, look at billboards, and see REAL naked chicks. Who needs the Internet?
"What I've learned is that you'll never convert members of the latter group into members of the former"
But it's very easy to convert the former into the latter. Put a hard worker into an environment full of stupid rules and red tape, and other slackers, and underequip him, and they'll be a slacker in no time at all.
The fault lies NOT in the worker, or the worker's needs to set certain hours.
The fault lies in the management and the business process, for failing utterly to provide accurate metrics on productivity. This is a basic need of business that simply is not met in MOST environments I'm familliar with. So they attempt to measure worker productivity via inappropriate methods like: hours worked and MLOCs. (Millions of Lines Of Code).
But should engineering majors really fault the business majors for not thinking like engineers? They can't help it, it's those neckties cutting off circulation to their brains.
The point is - resistance of authority - for the sake of resistance of authority.
I'm not saying that justifies it. But we all have a little bit of rebel in us. Especially when we see the execs raking in 20 times our salaries, for jobs which are essentially professional schmoozing.
I like this idea, and I think it's a good one (though I didn't see the second movie yet.)
I mean, in the original Matrix - there were several inconsistencies in the "story". First and formost, the second-law of thermodynamics - and the fact that a smart guy like Morpheus didn't know that his understanding of what the Matrix was for violated the second law of thermodynamics.
But then there was the idea that - people died. If people were batteries, why do they need to be conscious? Why do they allow their critical power supply to die out in car accidents, plagues, satanic rituals, etc? A battery should not be taken out of service until it is worn out.
Probably, if someone "dies" in the Matrix, their memory is erased, (assuming that the machines have the technical wherewithall) and they're put into a different Matrix.
The other bit was what the Agent Smith said when interrogating Morpheus. That they had programmed The Human Condition in for a reason. That people NEED suffering. Perhaps some people need a higher degree of suffering than others - hence the Zion-Matrix, or metaMatrix, whatever you want to call it. People also NEED hope, as well.
And finally, if one first saw the Matrix when they were stoned, what's the first thing they think about after they realize that "omigod, What if I'm really in the Matrix?" - that's right "or maybe if I got out, I was still in the Matrix?" There's no way to be sure.
So how does paying $18 for 18 songs at 99 cents a pop differ from paying $18 for 18 songs on a music CD?
In the first case, if your hard drive crashes, you lose your music. The music is in a lower quality audio format. etc.
99 cents a pop is way too much for this format. Try 25.
Re:What's really outrageous
on
Brain Privacy
·
· Score: 1
yeah, but if you're thinking about a person you know who pronounces it "reeeediculous", as part of their colloquial accent, and as you're typing in slashdot, you may be thinking about this person and how it amuses you that they pronounce the word in that way - and so you type it that way, isn't it equally as valid? Sure it is!
How do you know? Did you brain scan them? (ba-dum-dum)
The historical documentation about homosexuality among the ancient Greeks is there, perhaps a bit overblown, but it's there. But it's a gross exaggeration to say that they were ALL gay.
just another extension of the 1998 zeitgeist; It's all about eyeballs.
baloney.
Show me the profits.
Re:Military Industrial Complex
on
Secret Empire
·
· Score: 1
The worst aspect of the Military Industrial Complex is really that it defeats free enterprise. Large companies who have influence with political insiders generally get large contracts, and smaller corporations, who may be more innovative, more efficient, more nimble, cannot compete due to the nepotism. Thus these larger, dominant companies don't have to necessarily work hard at providing a competitive product. The end result is a Soviet-level of mediocrity.
A good example is how influential power companies like Dynergy and Enron lobbied heavily, and used their influence to craft a regulatory structure for California's Energy market - and then used loopholes they crafted into the system to bilk Californians out of BILLIONS of dollars, while creating a power crisis that severely damaged California's high-tech industry, and their paid-for politicians kept any investigation or government interference from occurring to stop it.
I can personally guarantee that companies like Halliburton are NOT the best ones for the job, and I feel sorry for not only the Iraqi people, but the poor bastards who will have to work those "reconstructed" oil fields. And also the poor American taxpayers who funded this free ride for this contractor.
Re:U2..? High speed...?
on
Secret Empire
·
· Score: 1
The U2 also had a very narrow speed at which it could maintain flight at it's cruising altitude. IIRC, it was plus or minus 1 mph.
At that altitude, if you flew too fast, you'd break the sound barrier, and this plane could not withstand the shock wave, it was subsonic.
But if you slowed down, the air was so thin, that the wings would stall and the plane would fall out of the sky.
It's main survivable attribute was the fact that it flew so high, no other fighter could intercept it, and no antiaircraft missile of that period could reach it. (but later, the soviets built one that COULD take it out).
And China is starting a program based on the Mexican version of the 1975 SuperBeetle.
If anyone is concerned that this represents an apparent Devolution of humanity's capacity to invent, and innovate - Why not read a classic science fiction book by Issac Asimov, called Foundation. It's actually a trilogy, but it's about this very subject.
The people who are in power today have command of JUST the technology they need in order to maintain their hegemony. Any more is superfluous. The only thing that matters is political power. The technology that created this power has served it's purpose, and now the only technology necessary is that which maintains that power.
Anyone who tells you any different is trying to sell you something.
Notice how the development of new technology which might "shake the tree" is gradually becoming legally and economically prohibited. . .
Oh, there's no doubt that x-33 would have flown. It would even have launched! But the problem is - in the effort to make it an economical vehicle, they opted to use an oddly-shaped carbon-fiber fuel tank, which could not stand the pressure it was designed to withstand.
Had they used an aluminium, or stainless steel tank, it would have easily worked, but the payload would have been cut roughly in half. Or had they used a more symetrical shape, the carbon-fiber tank would have worked, but there would not have been as much internal space for the cargo.
It's all about the payload. You've gotta accomidate the payload.
One thing that the Shuttle does that NO other vehicle can accomplish right now, is loft a payload greater than a dozen feet in diameter. All the other spacelift vehicles right now are limited to what can fit on a truck to ship the missile from the manufacturing facility to the launch pad. The X-33 had to do that too.
It's probably a workable concept - but there was a lot of political pressure to bitchslap the contractor because it was leading to unacceptable cost-overruns. There's a large movement in the procurement circles to try to do away with the huge cost overruns many large government projects have been seeing increasingly over the past 20 years.
I hate to reply to my own post, but I just thought of an additional argument in support of "socializing" IP consumption;
IP itself is a natural public resource, a monopoly access to the market, granted to the copyright/patent owner BY the government. And therefore, is actually a public resource established for private gain (presumably in exchange for eventual disbursement to the public domain). In this way - funding public IP access via a general tax is really a no-brainer.
We just have to figure out how some old lady in Texas benefits from my weekly Buffy The Vampire Slayer viewing habit . . .
Is it better to take every driver on a road, and extract fifty cents for their share of building and maintaining the road?
Or is it better to simply make everybody pay for the road through a general tax?
In the first case, you add the overhead of all those toll collection and enforcement employees, the overhead incurred to the users having to wait in long lines to pay, which increases the congestion, and reduces the overall efficiency of the road as a traffic conduit.
In the second case, you end up charging people who don't directly benefit from the road. But bottom line is, EVERYBODY benefits from the road (except maybe the people whose houses were bulldozed to build it). In fact, many stores and businesses will thrive only BECAUSE the road was built, and perhaps benefit even more than a person who shaves 20 minutes a day off his or her commute because they drive that road. (this is the same as the argument that freely distributing music is a benefit to the musician because it increases exposure).
Probably has a LOT more to do with consolidation of access providers - same as Cable. Since we have all these monopolies controlling (decent) access, (decent access= DSL/Cable/ISDN, etc.) we don't have any competition, and therefore prices are roughly DOUBLE of what people in Japan and Canada get DSL access for.
you talk about being able to access a Unix terminal any time - but frankly - Windows has had a telnet for a while, and if that's not good enough for you, (as is the case for most people I talk to) there's Cygwin, and for those with $, Exceed.
Bush's religosity is a front to gain campaign $$$. There's really no element to his behavior that suggests to me that he's in any way affected by (or even aware of) the teachings of Christ.
On the other hand, many well-known American Christian leaders don't seem to have it right. Personified in the following anecdote:
Last Sunday, one pastor in my church (nondenominational) remarked about the politicization of religion, and how there's a growing movement in the world today that if we'd just join this party, or vote for that candidate, that it would set things right and there would be peace and joy on earth. Then he talked about how when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a Colt, his disciples were thinking "oh boy, I'm going to be secretary of state!" not knowing that they're leader would be executed within a week. Jesus wasn't riding into Jerusalem to take political control. He wants control of us as individuals. Those who choose to give Him control. I really liked that point, and frankly, there's a TON of scripture that backs that up.
Then the other pastor gave a sermon, and hemmed and hawed about how the world is in such turmoil because we're chasing God out of our schools, and rejecting him in public life. He apparently hadn't even listened to his partner who ran the first part of the service.
This is the fundamental thing that's wrong with the Christian Church today. Is these little napoleonic pastors who aren't happy giving humble service as teachers to the faithful who will listen. They want to be "religious leaders".
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, exceptions are fine and dandy, as long as the other software components in the system are designed to trap and report the exception. 99% of the time, this is not the case.
Sure, software fails - but what makes it very difficult to use, maintain, and write, is when you don't get any information back about what caused the failure.
Public enemy #1 - MFC
Yes, but did you notice that every monorail station can only be accessed from the street by first walking about 1/4 mile through a casino lobby?
This will not reduce congestion. It will only increase pedestrian congestion. If it takes an hour to wait in line to ride a monorail to travel what would be a 15 minute walk, you've defeated the purpose. Unless the purpose was to draw more people into the casinos to gamble. . .
The fact is, the Internet, as we know it, hasn't been "as we know it" for quite some time. Ever since it was opened to commercial exploitation.
This brought ads, banners, tracking of personal information, privacy invasion, email/macro viruses, monoculture, and the big Race To Be The Next Microsoft.
It's been widely recognized that the killer app was email, and that nobody ever really figured out how to profit from providing it as a service (as opposed to simply profitting from using it).
And the spammers have gone quite far to attempt to ruin it.
The other killer app is the blog - or really collaborative discussions - originally NNTP. And guess what? That was effectively killed by spam too.
The really neat thing was how everyone and their brother, back in 1996, could suddenly create a web page detailing their hobbies, their cars, their dogs, etc. And while that grew tiresome, the web, as a whole, was an incredible source for information.
Then the search engines were commercialized so that you couldn't find these sites anymore, only the big commercial ones.
And services were consolidated so that not everyone could afford their own web page or connection anymore, and simple, basic HTML was eschewed for "flashy FrontPage garbage" - this effectively has eliminated the democratization of the web.
And finally, the lawyers moved in. The whole point of the Internet was the free sharing of ideas and information. Until they figured out that theoretically, they should be making money off of this. And it was all shut down.
So now that the Internet is just one big commercial - what's the point? I can drive to Las Vegas, look at billboards, and see REAL naked chicks. Who needs the Internet?
. . . because you sure as hell can't find decent pizza in either Cocoa Beach, Houston, OR Pasadena. . .
"What I've learned is that you'll never convert members of the latter group into members of the former"
But it's very easy to convert the former into the latter. Put a hard worker into an environment full of stupid rules and red tape, and other slackers, and underequip him, and they'll be a slacker in no time at all.
9. sleep hideout. . .
Ironically, I've found that the best place for this is usually the workout room.
Bonus: the only people who come into workout rooms are usually hot chicks doing aerobics or yoga in those skintight unitards. rrrrowr!
This is actually a classic management problem.
The fault lies NOT in the worker, or the worker's needs to set certain hours.
The fault lies in the management and the business process, for failing utterly to provide accurate metrics on productivity. This is a basic need of business that simply is not met in MOST environments I'm familliar with. So they attempt to measure worker productivity via inappropriate methods like: hours worked and MLOCs. (Millions of Lines Of Code).
But should engineering majors really fault the business majors for not thinking like engineers? They can't help it, it's those neckties cutting off circulation to their brains.
The point is - resistance of authority - for the sake of resistance of authority.
I'm not saying that justifies it. But we all have a little bit of rebel in us. Especially when we see the execs raking in 20 times our salaries, for jobs which are essentially professional schmoozing.
I like this idea, and I think it's a good one (though I didn't see the second movie yet.)
I mean, in the original Matrix - there were several inconsistencies in the "story". First and formost, the second-law of thermodynamics - and the fact that a smart guy like Morpheus didn't know that his understanding of what the Matrix was for violated the second law of thermodynamics.
But then there was the idea that - people died. If people were batteries, why do they need to be conscious? Why do they allow their critical power supply to die out in car accidents, plagues, satanic rituals, etc? A battery should not be taken out of service until it is worn out.
Probably, if someone "dies" in the Matrix, their memory is erased, (assuming that the machines have the technical wherewithall) and they're put into a different Matrix.
The other bit was what the Agent Smith said when interrogating Morpheus. That they had programmed The Human Condition in for a reason. That people NEED suffering. Perhaps some people need a higher degree of suffering than others - hence the Zion-Matrix, or metaMatrix, whatever you want to call it. People also NEED hope, as well.
And finally, if one first saw the Matrix when they were stoned, what's the first thing they think about after they realize that "omigod, What if I'm really in the Matrix?" - that's right "or maybe if I got out, I was still in the Matrix?" There's no way to be sure.
So how does paying $18 for 18 songs at 99 cents a pop differ from paying $18 for 18 songs on a music CD?
In the first case, if your hard drive crashes, you lose your music. The music is in a lower quality audio format. etc.
99 cents a pop is way too much for this format.
Try 25.
yeah, but if you're thinking about a person you know who pronounces it "reeeediculous", as part of their colloquial accent, and as you're typing in slashdot, you may be thinking about this person and how it amuses you that they pronounce the word in that way - and so you type it that way, isn't it equally as valid?
Sure it is!
How do you know?
Did you brain scan them?
(ba-dum-dum)
The historical documentation about homosexuality among the ancient Greeks is there, perhaps a bit overblown, but it's there. But it's a gross exaggeration to say that they were ALL gay.
just another extension of the 1998 zeitgeist;
It's all about eyeballs.
baloney.
Show me the profits.
The worst aspect of the Military Industrial Complex is really that it defeats free enterprise. Large companies who have influence with political insiders generally get large contracts, and smaller corporations, who may be more innovative, more efficient, more nimble, cannot compete due to the nepotism. Thus these larger, dominant companies don't have to necessarily work hard at providing a competitive product. The end result is a Soviet-level of mediocrity.
A good example is how influential power companies like Dynergy and Enron lobbied heavily, and used their influence to craft a regulatory structure for California's Energy market - and then used loopholes they crafted into the system to bilk Californians out of BILLIONS of dollars, while creating a power crisis that severely damaged California's high-tech industry, and their paid-for politicians kept any investigation or government interference from occurring to stop it.
I can personally guarantee that companies like Halliburton are NOT the best ones for the job, and I feel sorry for not only the Iraqi people, but the poor bastards who will have to work those "reconstructed" oil fields. And also the poor American taxpayers who funded this free ride for this contractor.
The U2 also had a very narrow speed at which it could maintain flight at it's cruising altitude. IIRC, it was plus or minus 1 mph.
At that altitude, if you flew too fast, you'd break the sound barrier, and this plane could not withstand the shock wave, it was subsonic.
But if you slowed down, the air was so thin, that the wings would stall and the plane would fall out of the sky.
It's main survivable attribute was the fact that it flew so high, no other fighter could intercept it, and no antiaircraft missile of that period could reach it. (but later, the soviets built one that COULD take it out).
Escape velocity is NOT the same as what's required to reach orbit.
Escape Velocity is what's required to escape the earth's gravity.
Reaching Earth Orbit is NOT escaping earth's gravity.
Russia is flying a 1957 Beetle.
And China is starting a program based on the Mexican version of the 1975 SuperBeetle.
If anyone is concerned that this represents an apparent Devolution of humanity's capacity to invent, and innovate -
Why not read a classic science fiction book by Issac Asimov, called Foundation. It's actually a trilogy, but it's about this very subject.
The people who are in power today have command of JUST the technology they need in order to maintain their hegemony. Any more is superfluous. The only thing that matters is political power. The technology that created this power has served it's purpose, and now the only technology necessary is that which maintains that power.
Anyone who tells you any different is trying to sell you something.
Notice how the development of new technology which might "shake the tree" is gradually becoming legally and economically prohibited. . .
Oh, there's no doubt that x-33 would have flown.
It would even have launched!
But the problem is - in the effort to make it an economical vehicle, they opted to use an oddly-shaped carbon-fiber fuel tank, which could not stand the pressure it was designed to withstand.
Had they used an aluminium, or stainless steel tank, it would have easily worked, but the payload would have been cut roughly in half.
Or had they used a more symetrical shape, the carbon-fiber tank would have worked, but there would not have been as much internal space for the cargo.
It's all about the payload. You've gotta accomidate the payload.
One thing that the Shuttle does that NO other vehicle can accomplish right now, is loft a payload greater than a dozen feet in diameter. All the other spacelift vehicles right now are limited to what can fit on a truck to ship the missile from the manufacturing facility to the launch pad.
The X-33 had to do that too.
It's probably a workable concept - but there was a lot of political pressure to bitchslap the contractor because it was leading to unacceptable cost-overruns. There's a large movement in the procurement circles to try to do away with the huge cost overruns many large government projects have been seeing increasingly over the past 20 years.
I hate to reply to my own post, but I just thought of an additional argument in support of "socializing" IP consumption;
IP itself is a natural public resource, a monopoly access to the market, granted to the copyright/patent owner BY the government. And therefore, is actually a public resource established for private gain (presumably in exchange for eventual disbursement to the public domain).
In this way - funding public IP access via a general tax is really a no-brainer.
We just have to figure out how some old lady in Texas benefits from my weekly Buffy The Vampire Slayer viewing habit . . .
It's really the whole Toll Road dilemma.
Is it better to take every driver on a road, and extract fifty cents for their share of building and maintaining the road?
Or is it better to simply make everybody pay for the road through a general tax?
In the first case, you add the overhead of all those toll collection and enforcement employees, the overhead incurred to the users having to wait in long lines to pay, which increases the congestion, and reduces the overall efficiency of the road as a traffic conduit.
In the second case, you end up charging people who don't directly benefit from the road. But bottom line is, EVERYBODY benefits from the road (except maybe the people whose houses were bulldozed to build it). In fact, many stores and businesses will thrive only BECAUSE the road was built, and perhaps benefit even more than a person who shaves 20 minutes a day off his or her commute because they drive that road.
(this is the same as the argument that freely distributing music is a benefit to the musician because it increases exposure).
Probably has a LOT more to do with consolidation of access providers - same as Cable. Since we have all these monopolies controlling (decent) access, (decent access= DSL/Cable/ISDN, etc.) we don't have any competition, and therefore prices are roughly DOUBLE of what people in Japan and Canada get DSL access for.
DUH!
Actually, the OS X terminal sucks ass.
Try GLTerm, or any one of half a dozen freeware terminal replacements. The one that ships with OS X is a snail by comparison. Try it, you'll see. . .
you talk about being able to access a Unix terminal any time -
but frankly - Windows has had a telnet for a while, and if that's not good enough for you, (as is the case for most people I talk to) there's Cygwin, and for those with $, Exceed.
But people still drift to pure Unix. . .
I'm kind of disappointed at the responses here. . .
p # for all the budding wordsmiths out there!
Anyway, here's my contribution:
www.google.com # must include this!
http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/default.asp #cool! visually conceptualizes large numbers.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/desktop/index.js
Bush's religosity is a front to gain campaign $$$. There's really no element to his behavior that suggests to me that he's in any way affected by (or even aware of) the teachings of Christ.
On the other hand, many well-known American Christian leaders don't seem to have it right. Personified in the following anecdote:
Last Sunday, one pastor in my church (nondenominational) remarked about the politicization of religion, and how there's a growing movement in the world today that if we'd just join this party, or vote for that candidate, that it would set things right and there would be peace and joy on earth.
Then he talked about how when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a Colt, his disciples were thinking "oh boy, I'm going to be secretary of state!" not knowing that they're leader would be executed within a week. Jesus wasn't riding into Jerusalem to take political control. He wants control of us as individuals. Those who choose to give Him control.
I really liked that point, and frankly, there's a TON of scripture that backs that up.
Then the other pastor gave a sermon, and hemmed and hawed about how the world is in such turmoil because we're chasing God out of our schools, and rejecting him in public life. He apparently hadn't even listened to his partner who ran the first part of the service.
This is the fundamental thing that's wrong with the Christian Church today. Is these little napoleonic pastors who aren't happy giving humble service as teachers to the faithful who will listen. They want to be "religious leaders".
So did the Taliban.