I hate to say this; but Adobe's documentation DOES serve both of these functions. In some cases. They do provide some good boilerplate examples in their API documentation.
(The big problem is: they often have examples that Adobe's tech writers dreamed-up as probable use-cases, not customer-driven typical use-cases. So that's a place where Adobe's documentation falls far short; and another HUGE issue, is that, at least in actionscript/flash, there are multiple different syntaxes for implementing the same API - depending on the code context, and so you may be doing it "way A" and the example is "way B", and you have no idea how to translate it. Microsoft's Visual Basic does the same damn thing. There are tons of VBScript calls that work in some contexts with parameters enclosed in (), and in other contexts, just hanging out, comma-delimited. You - as the coder, have to just guess.
you sir, have perfectly described it. So well, in fact, that my wangle is, indeed, throbbing.
But seriously - this is probably the biggest challenge I face in my work - which I've been doing since about 1980. When I encounter some documentation, and there's no fucking context, and no reference TO context - that documentation just utterly fails. Here it is. 2013. And we still haven't solved the problem.
I go to Stack Overflow, and read through a few extra pages of chitchat . . . and THERE is my context. Usually.
It's SPECTRE - on both sides. They're attacking BOTH sides, trying to start a cyber war, so they can profit by selling both sides new cyber war weapons. It's genius, I tell you. And now, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.
right, because it would have been awfully embarrassing to find out that we were shoveling money into the pocket of the dude who was protecting bin Laden for 5 years. . . .
I agree that he should face charges for violating his SF-312 (and others). But his intent was pretty clearly not to aid Al Qaida, and was to try to force his comrades to prosecute this war in an honorable and legal fashion. His conscience bothered him that he was a part of the same team that was indiscriminately killing civilians, torturing prisoners, and doing dirty deals with dictators throughout the world. How he dealt with that conscience wasn't very healthy or smart. But it wasn't the same - pretty clearly not - as taking up arms against our nation. I don't think it's wrong to insist that we hold to our honor and adhere to some standards of common decency - even in war. To say that we're at war and "anything goes" is the true coward's way.
"or the whole thing would just fall apart" is actually a pretty lame justification.
Though I completely agree that Manning did screw himself over royally, pretty much. I'm generally not into victim blaming, but when one signs an SF-312, one really ought to read and adhere to what one's signing. If you don't agree with what's going on, you're obligated to report that to the FSO, and get your clearance revoked and work a non-cleared job. Period. Just because someone else is dishonoring their agreements doesn't mean you get to dishonor yours.
Microsoft Word - Visual Basic Macros are a pretty hardcore programming language. If kids can hack THAT. Well, that was pretty much THE SHIT back in 1998, anyway. . . Nevermind. Back to your Scheme and Logo assignments!
I would say that we're in a post-ethics era, however.
Given the whole situation with drone-strikes on US citizens labelled "terrorists", torture, bank bailouts, just end-to-end.
I agree with you that the technology isn't really there yet. (though this might be a nice argument for terrified contractors to ask for R&D money in the pre-sequestration environment). But if/when the technology is there, I'm *sure* there's going to be no real issues with ethics, and they're just going to fucking do it. There's no leadership on that front anymore.
Then the people who fielded the drone-air-force learn a costly lesson in how to fuck themselves over good an hard. I'll laugh at them, and start brushing up on my Mandarin.
Iran DOES have some pretty brilliant scientists. GPS blocking is one thing, but GPS forgery - I'm not buying that. That's bullshit. I tend to believe the theory that they got a couple of aircraft around the drone, and herded it using it's close-range collision avoidance system. That's why it landed hard.
well, they could set up a bunch of PV panels to capture sunlight into electricity, and split the CO2 into carbon and oxygen using catalyzed electrolysis. Release the oxygen into the atmosphere, and just dump the carbon into the ground or something.
My experience with Biodiesel was that I ran B99 for 5 years. When my supplier folded, I had to switch back to petro-diesel, but commercial suppliers had switched to Ultra-low sulfur diesel, (to decrease sulfur emissions). This caused a reaction with my fuel-pump seals (NOT my fuel filter!). My fuel-pump started leaking, (and this leaked onto the wiring harness, and also ate away a temperature sensor that caused all kinds of weird symptoms for a while before I figured out what was really going on - the temperature sensor controlled injection quantity, and as that flaked out, the engine just started injecting incorrect amounts, intermittently, as the fuel temperature changed.)
Anyway - when it started to leak enough that I SAW the dripping, I rebuilt the pump with new seals, of a different type of rubber (Viton) which can handle ULSD and Biodiesel. (It was the ULSD that was really the problem - though had I not used Bio, it wouldn't have been a problem, according to VW).
The rebuild kit was $99, and it was 8 hours of my time. (a pro could have done the job in 2 hrs). I also had to replace some of the soft fuel lines, but it's hard-lines from the tank to the filter, so this was 2 soft lines from the filter to the pump.
I guess the injectors are supposed to also have some bushings that are going to fail on me as well, but 20k miles later, they seem to still be okay.
Later model VW's void the warranty if you use Biodiesel that comes from sources other than rapeseed oil. (ie. if it comes from corn oil, they say that the acid esters will eat the seals or harm the engine's emissions control equipment somehow - 2005 and later engiens have much more advance emissions control than my 2003).
So the biofuel isssue can be pretty complex. Whether ethanol is going to be any worse for those components than gasoline, I don't know. I think that diesel/biodiesel is chemically much more complex than gasoline and ethanol. And I think that Biodiesel is still difficult to produce, in reiable quantity. I don't know that anyone has a good industrial process for that yet. Not on the scale that regular diesel is produced.
Then another researcher said that we needed to include the "cost" of energy inputs like the artificial nitrogen fertilizers (which are VERY energy intensive), and farm equipment (automation, tractors, combines, processing plants, etc) . . .
While that's also a "valid" calculation, it's not necessarily an accurate reflection of the net result of long-term biofuel production, (or how yeilds go if we forgo artificial ammonia production. . . it IS possible to grow corn without that).
One day, the petroleum's going to run out. Unfortunately, our environment will also be completely fucked up. We will be dealing with much worse droughts, heat-waves, harsher winters, completely dead, acidified oceans, destructive storms, probably no ability to have natural pollinating insects, or even to fight invasive weeds, and no way to obtain increasingly rare soil enriching potassium and other minerals and fertilizers. It will be much harder to grow biofuel crops. But it will be our only choice - so it will be the ONLY choice that makes sense, and these "economists" can go suck it.
Fat economists will probably be the first ones eaten.
For the record - I never really considered my Palm (iii) a "real" computer.
But when I got the original iPhone - I rooted it and installed the bsd tools on it, and sure as shit, in my mind, that thing was a REAL computer to me. It had wifi, an IP address, the whole deal.
That's my definition.
I can go back to the ZX-80 toys on which I learned, in the early 1980's . . . in comparison, they were primitive, and I suppose they were "computers".
Hey, I got a little paint app and tablet for my Wii, and my daughter loved the crap out of that thing.
A few years later, and I got her a Wacom for her macbook, and she still liked the Wii program better. She said it was easier to use. (until I installed the wacom driver. . . .;)
Slashdot Mirror
fresh outta mod points, but you deserve a +6.
I hate to say this; but Adobe's documentation DOES serve both of these functions. In some cases. They do provide some good boilerplate examples in their API documentation.
(The big problem is: they often have examples that Adobe's tech writers dreamed-up as probable use-cases, not customer-driven typical use-cases. So that's a place where Adobe's documentation falls far short; and another HUGE issue, is that, at least in actionscript/flash, there are multiple different syntaxes for implementing the same API - depending on the code context, and so you may be doing it "way A" and the example is "way B", and you have no idea how to translate it. Microsoft's Visual Basic does the same damn thing. There are tons of VBScript calls that work in some contexts with parameters enclosed in (), and in other contexts, just hanging out, comma-delimited. You - as the coder, have to just guess.
yep. And all this time, I thought it was just me. I thought I was just stupid.
you sir, have perfectly described it. So well, in fact, that my wangle is, indeed, throbbing.
But seriously - this is probably the biggest challenge I face in my work - which I've been doing since about 1980. When I encounter some documentation, and there's no fucking context, and no reference TO context - that documentation just utterly fails. Here it is. 2013. And we still haven't solved the problem.
I go to Stack Overflow, and read through a few extra pages of chitchat . . . and THERE is my context. Usually.
. . . sacking of the jewish temple, burning of the library in alexandria. A lot of these specific incidents come to mind.
these guys must have all gone to the same business school. I want to find out where, track down their professor, and kick him in the nuts.
SPECTRE.
It's SPECTRE - on both sides. They're attacking BOTH sides, trying to start a cyber war, so they can profit by selling both sides new cyber war weapons. It's genius, I tell you. And now, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.
oh - the F4 had a gun.
In the cockpit, a flare-gun, used by downed pilots to signal search-and-rescue.
right, because it would have been awfully embarrassing to find out that we were shoveling money into the pocket of the dude who was protecting bin Laden for 5 years. . . .
I agree that he should face charges for violating his SF-312 (and others). But his intent was pretty clearly not to aid Al Qaida, and was to try to force his comrades to prosecute this war in an honorable and legal fashion. His conscience bothered him that he was a part of the same team that was indiscriminately killing civilians, torturing prisoners, and doing dirty deals with dictators throughout the world. How he dealt with that conscience wasn't very healthy or smart. But it wasn't the same - pretty clearly not - as taking up arms against our nation. I don't think it's wrong to insist that we hold to our honor and adhere to some standards of common decency - even in war. To say that we're at war and "anything goes" is the true coward's way.
yeah - pretty much ALL of this information was already out.
"or the whole thing would just fall apart" is actually a pretty lame justification.
Though I completely agree that Manning did screw himself over royally, pretty much. I'm generally not into victim blaming, but when one signs an SF-312, one really ought to read and adhere to what one's signing. If you don't agree with what's going on, you're obligated to report that to the FSO, and get your clearance revoked and work a non-cleared job. Period. Just because someone else is dishonoring their agreements doesn't mean you get to dishonor yours.
Microsoft Word - Visual Basic Macros are a pretty hardcore programming language. If kids can hack THAT. Well, that was pretty much THE SHIT back in 1998, anyway. . . Nevermind. Back to your Scheme and Logo assignments!
I would say that we're in a post-ethics era, however.
Given the whole situation with drone-strikes on US citizens labelled "terrorists", torture, bank bailouts, just end-to-end.
I agree with you that the technology isn't really there yet.
(though this might be a nice argument for terrified contractors to ask for R&D money in the pre-sequestration environment).
But if/when the technology is there, I'm *sure* there's going to be no real issues with ethics, and they're just going to fucking do it. There's no leadership on that front anymore.
what if?
Then the people who fielded the drone-air-force learn a costly lesson in how to fuck themselves over good an hard. I'll laugh at them, and start brushing up on my Mandarin.
Iran DOES have some pretty brilliant scientists. GPS blocking is one thing, but GPS forgery - I'm not buying that. That's bullshit. I tend to believe the theory that they got a couple of aircraft around the drone, and herded it using it's close-range collision avoidance system. That's why it landed hard.
Instead of selling the military Iron Man suits so you could fly a pilot without a plane, the military is flying planes without pilots.
well, they could set up a bunch of PV panels to capture sunlight into electricity, and split the CO2 into carbon and oxygen using catalyzed electrolysis. Release the oxygen into the atmosphere, and just dump the carbon into the ground or something.
. . . it's because they have to translate their product into a weird foreign language. Right?
I don't know much about this with Ethanol.
My experience with Biodiesel was that I ran B99 for 5 years. When my supplier folded, I had to switch back to petro-diesel, but commercial suppliers had switched to Ultra-low sulfur diesel, (to decrease sulfur emissions). This caused a reaction with my fuel-pump seals (NOT my fuel filter!). My fuel-pump started leaking, (and this leaked onto the wiring harness, and also ate away a temperature sensor that caused all kinds of weird symptoms for a while before I figured out what was really going on - the temperature sensor controlled injection quantity, and as that flaked out, the engine just started injecting incorrect amounts, intermittently, as the fuel temperature changed.)
Anyway - when it started to leak enough that I SAW the dripping, I rebuilt the pump with new seals, of a different type of rubber (Viton) which can handle ULSD and Biodiesel. (It was the ULSD that was really the problem - though had I not used Bio, it wouldn't have been a problem, according to VW).
The rebuild kit was $99, and it was 8 hours of my time. (a pro could have done the job in 2 hrs). I also had to replace some of the soft fuel lines, but it's hard-lines from the tank to the filter, so this was 2 soft lines from the filter to the pump.
I guess the injectors are supposed to also have some bushings that are going to fail on me as well, but 20k miles later, they seem to still be okay.
Later model VW's void the warranty if you use Biodiesel that comes from sources other than rapeseed oil. (ie. if it comes from corn oil, they say that the acid esters will eat the seals or harm the engine's emissions control equipment somehow - 2005 and later engiens have much more advance emissions control than my 2003).
So the biofuel isssue can be pretty complex. Whether ethanol is going to be any worse for those components than gasoline, I don't know. I think that diesel/biodiesel is chemically much more complex than gasoline and ethanol. And I think that Biodiesel is still difficult to produce, in reiable quantity. I don't know that anyone has a good industrial process for that yet. Not on the scale that regular diesel is produced.
It's not that they were "fudging" the results.
The original results showed a net positive yeild.
Then another researcher said that we needed to include the "cost" of energy inputs like the artificial nitrogen fertilizers (which are VERY energy intensive), and farm equipment (automation, tractors, combines, processing plants, etc) . . .
While that's also a "valid" calculation, it's not necessarily an accurate reflection of the net result of long-term biofuel production, (or how yeilds go if we forgo artificial ammonia production. . . it IS possible to grow corn without that).
One day, the petroleum's going to run out. Unfortunately, our environment will also be completely fucked up. We will be dealing with much worse droughts, heat-waves, harsher winters, completely dead, acidified oceans, destructive storms, probably no ability to have natural pollinating insects, or even to fight invasive weeds, and no way to obtain increasingly rare soil enriching potassium and other minerals and fertilizers. It will be much harder to grow biofuel crops. But it will be our only choice - so it will be the ONLY choice that makes sense, and these "economists" can go suck it.
Fat economists will probably be the first ones eaten.
I find it hard to believe that the Nation that is home to the Ministry of Silly Walks has ridiculed a scientist for his strange ideas. . .
Penetrating children with toys? What is this, 4chan?
For the record - I never really considered my Palm (iii) a "real" computer.
But when I got the original iPhone - I rooted it and installed the bsd tools on it, and sure as shit, in my mind, that thing was a REAL computer to me. It had wifi, an IP address, the whole deal.
That's my definition.
I can go back to the ZX-80 toys on which I learned, in the early 1980's . . . in comparison, they were primitive, and I suppose they were "computers".
Hey, I got a little paint app and tablet for my Wii, and my daughter loved the crap out of that thing.
A few years later, and I got her a Wacom for her macbook, and she still liked the Wii program better. She said it was easier to use. (until I installed the wacom driver. . . . ;)