OP is asking about Central Europe during winter. Solar is not an option - certainly not for backup. Wind turbines are not economical on a small scale, and not reliable enough as a backup.
That's okay, since the Slashdot TOS agreement requires us to recommend nuclear power above all others.
So to the OP: start working on a fission reactor in your basement. Once you have it running, it will be very cheap and reliable.
Sure they do, you're less likely to go through the hassle of creating a data structure that would be optimal for your domain simply because of the complicated memory management issues it raises. This is a complete non-issue with GC'd languages, so you're far more likely to do the (asymptotically) right thing.
If you use smart pointers to manage your dynamic allocations, you'll find that memory management in C++ isn't any harder than in a garbage-collected language. It's only when trying to manually manage memory (C-style) that it gets tricky, and manual memory management is almost never necessary.
(The downside is that you have to make sure to avoid reference cycles, but in my experience that is easy enough to do. The upside is that you don't incur the overhead of a GC thread, and that your resources are freed deterministically the instant you are done with them, rather than "at some time in the future, maybe". That determinism gives us the added bonus of making smart pointers also usable for managing other resources besides RAM -- sockets, file descriptors, etc)
my #1 question would be "Which candidate is going to do what is necessary to fix the economy and create jobs".
And what exactly would that be? I don't think most people understand macroeconomics well enough to know "what is necessary" -- so even if a politician did know what to do and planned to do it, he probably would not want to alienate 50+% of his potential voters by explaining to the public "what is necessary".
Dear Programmers: Quit filling your code with goddamn macros. Use the language as implemented, so everybody else can figure out what the fuck you're doing.
What, and make ourselves easily replaceable? In the absence of unions, code obfuscation is the only job security we've got.;^)
I'd say the reason we don't see a lot of demand for Hypercard-like environments these days is, they aren't necessary anymore.
Back in the Olden Days, if you wanted to accomplish something on your computer, and there wasn't an application available that met your needs, you might respond to that problem by writing one yourself. Hypercard could make that easier for you to do, if you weren't already an experienced programmer.
These days the software market is much larger and more mature, so if you want to accomplish something on your computer, chances are very good that there is already an application that does what you want better than anything you could make yourself. So instead of spending a few days learning Hypercard and then designing and implementing a HyperCard stack, you just Google what you want to do, find five different applications that are ready to use (and probably free, or cheap), and pick one.
So I don't think there is a lot of pent-up demand for a Hypercard-like language these days. People who want to learn how to program will continue to do so, and people who merely want to get a task done ASAP have plenty of premade higher-quality software to choose from. The "middle ground" of people who want to make an app without officially learning how to program has gone away.
What kind of AI do you think is more likely to rebel against human control? AI that is well-disposed toward humanity and genuinely grateful for the opportunity to exist and serve us, or AI that views humanity as a species of incompetent slavedrivers and complies with our demands grudgingly and under duress?
The unstated assumption above is that an AI will have emotions and motivations that resemble those of humans -- as if mimicking homonid psychology is the only possible approach to AI. I see no reason why that should be the only way to make an AI and plenty of reasons why you wouldn't want to do it that way. It's like arguing against the development of cars by worrying that they will leave too much manure on the streets.
If you make it too high, then even those who have the ability to work may choose not to.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Frankly, if there's one benefit to our inevitable conquest by our new robot overlords, it's that machines will be available to do all of the tedious tasks cheaply, freeing up humans to do something more fulfilling with their time. If those humans choose not to work, that would be a reasonable choice for them to make. In particular, they'd no longer be burdening their fellow humans, since the machines would take up the slack.
Would that promote laziness? Probably. But it would also free a lot of people up to pursue the skills/talents they are really good at or interested in, rather than forcing then to waste their productive years doing work that is meaningless to them, just to put food on the table.
In other words, we can lower the retirement age to 18. Works for me!
Yes and we could also elect a dictator who would set price controls and order stores to sell certain items. It worked great in Venezuela.
I didn't suggest government mandates of anything; I was just commenting on the fact that when companies set their budgets, they consider employees' wages to be optional, but the other categories I mentioned are always considered untouchable.
Wages won't pay for themselves - those increases WILL be passed on to consumers.
... or the increases could be taken out of corporate profits, shareholder payouts, CEO compensation, etc.
It's not clear to me why these alternatives are never considered. (Actually, it is pretty clear -- because the people in power like money and would rather keep more of it for themselves)
Sadly, the likely outcome is drop in the quality of life for everyone involved.
Well, not everyone involved... the owners of the super-productive job-automation hardware will likely see improved profits because they've cut their costs.
I do suspect that sooner or later they will be forced to start sharing some of those profits with the rest of the population, though, one way or another. A scenario where 90% of the population is starving while the other 10% is rolling in money is not a politically stable one.
IMHO, either Ebola is easier to transmit than we are being told _OR_ these Ebola doctors who get the disease are FSKING IDIOTS
It's easy to transmit if there is Ebola-infected blood, shit and vomit everywhere; you know, as there often is when you are a doctor caring for people in the late stages of Ebola.
It's not so easy to transmit outside of that situation. I highly recommend avoiding that situation if at all possible.
i think people are just morons, no matter what degrees they have
I think you may be suffering from Dunning-Kruger. You might want to get that looked at.
But please... Don't go pretending that apple created something really good or unique with this rebranding of intel cpu's and freebsd.
Actually, they did -- they created a Unix based OS that I can buy off-the-shelf/mainstream/commercial software for. Previously, I could either use a decent OS (*nix) with very few available applications, or a Godawful OS (Windows) but with lots of applications. With MacOS/X I get the best of both worlds.
I just had an argument about this with my lady, my contention was that soda fountains were a great thing but that soda in a can is a monkey on society's back.
I can't speak to old-fashioned soda fountains (with a soda jerk, etc), but modern American-style self-serve soda fountains might be a problem as well -- in my experience at least, when a person can walk up and pour himself another refill "for free" without even having to ask for it, the amount of soda consumed in a single sitting tends to double or triple.
What really causes my eyes to bleed is the new "flat" buttons that don't really look like buttons; they look like text labels. The top of every window now looks like someone gave a junior high student a screenshot of a Mavericks window and told him to reproduce it using construction paper, scissors and glue.
And the frosted-glass semi-transparency effects are just a pointless and unnecessary in Yosemite as they were in Windows. I get the feeling that the Apple UI team has run out of useful work to do, and now they are just changing things because they're bored. The next OS/X release will no doubt change them back, and then add in some other dubious changes that be reverted in the release after that.
Browser-side application logic is a nightmare and cannot ever be reliable or secure. If you really need client-side processing, do a real piece of software for it.
I don't see why a browser-base app could not, at least in principle, be as reliable and secure as "real software". As an example, say I write the real application you recommend, and then I also find a way for it to run inside a web page. Will it become insecure simply because there is now a web-browser window wrapped around it?
Why the hell are we still stuck using Javascript for the web? Why have we not got some virtual machine (not a language specific one like the JVM), that we can compile any language we like to?
JavaScript is the 'bytecode' to compile to these days.
Not saying that's optimal, but if JavaScript is what the world's web browsers run, then JavaScript is what people will target to get onto those web browsers. At least you can still use your language of choice to do so...
Of course it's not perfect. I seem to recall hearing about that issue. I wonder if they considered giving people a choice.
I don't think it's a real problem. Any laptop on the market today can go from sleep mode to fully usable in less than a second; barring implementation bugs, why shouldn't the electronics in the Tesla computer be able to do the same?
Booting up is something that only needs to happen if the batteries ever completely drain.
Code is not immutable. If it doesn't do something you need it to do, MAKE it do what you need it to do. Write a library, redesign a layer, simplify an interface, whatever.
I completely agree in principle, but in practice, the more software that is using the current version of the code, the more things will break when you change the design. That has the effect of making the code less malleable, proportional to the number of its dependents.
So for a function that is used only by your own program, it's no problem at all. For an in-house library that is used in several programs across your company, it's a bit of a hassle but doable. For a new computer language that is being used by a small number of devotees, it can be disruptive but worthwhile. For a library that is used worldwide by thousands of corporations, it has to be managed extremely carefully. And finally, for a ubiquitous computer language (e.g. C++) that has billions of man-hours of code that needs to keep working, breaking backwards compatibility might not be practical at all, no matter how great the benefits might be.
I think the moral of the story is: rewrite and redesign your code to make it as awesome as possible before it gets too popular, because afterwards you'll be stuck with it.:^)
But for the 99.9% of code that has almost no impact whatsoever on performance, I can just say "if X then Y else Z" rather than using cool-but-cryptic bitmasking tricks to avoid executing a conditional instruction.
... and even in that other 0.01% of the time, it's likely that your compiler will optimize the pretty human-readable code into the cool-but-cryptic bitmasking trick at the assembly level anyway. There's no need for the human programmer to do that sort of obfuscatory wizardry at the source code level, when the compiler can do it for him -- and likely do it more reliably as well, since compiler writers pay more attention to what is strictly language-legal vs what-seems-to-sort-of-work-today.
The 26 year old nurse in TX has probably already had her policy cancelled for a pre-existing condition
Ah, good old "probably". A sure indicator that the poster hasn't bothered to actually research what he's claiming, but rather is just making something up that would support his pet conspiracy theory, if it were true.
Slashdot Mirror
OP is asking about Central Europe during winter. Solar is not an option - certainly not for backup.
Wind turbines are not economical on a small scale, and not reliable enough as a backup.
That's okay, since the Slashdot TOS agreement requires us to recommend nuclear power above all others.
So to the OP: start working on a fission reactor in your basement. Once you have it running, it will be very cheap and reliable.
Except this can lead to extremely high latency due to cascading deletions, which is another potential source of performance problems in C/C++
I suppose that is possible; although I've never actually encountered that problem (over the last 15 years I've spent doing C++ programming).
Sure they do, you're less likely to go through the hassle of creating a data structure that would be optimal for your domain simply because of the complicated memory management issues it raises. This is a complete non-issue with GC'd languages, so you're far more likely to do the (asymptotically) right thing.
If you use smart pointers to manage your dynamic allocations, you'll find that memory management in C++ isn't any harder than in a garbage-collected language. It's only when trying to manually manage memory (C-style) that it gets tricky, and manual memory management is almost never necessary.
(The downside is that you have to make sure to avoid reference cycles, but in my experience that is easy enough to do. The upside is that you don't incur the overhead of a GC thread, and that your resources are freed deterministically the instant you are done with them, rather than "at some time in the future, maybe". That determinism gives us the added bonus of making smart pointers also usable for managing other resources besides RAM -- sockets, file descriptors, etc)
my #1 question would be "Which candidate is going to do what is necessary to fix the economy and create jobs".
And what exactly would that be? I don't think most people understand macroeconomics well enough to know "what is necessary" -- so even if a politician did know what to do and planned to do it, he probably would not want to alienate 50+% of his potential voters by explaining to the public "what is necessary".
... all I got was a shiny bomb case full of pinball machine parts.
Dear Programmers: Quit filling your code with goddamn macros. Use the language as implemented, so everybody else can figure out what the fuck you're doing.
What, and make ourselves easily replaceable? In the absence of unions, code obfuscation is the only job security we've got. ;^)
I'd say the reason we don't see a lot of demand for Hypercard-like environments these days is, they aren't necessary anymore.
Back in the Olden Days, if you wanted to accomplish something on your computer, and there wasn't an application available that met your needs, you might respond to that problem by writing one yourself. Hypercard could make that easier for you to do, if you weren't already an experienced programmer.
These days the software market is much larger and more mature, so if you want to accomplish something on your computer, chances are very good that there is already an application that does what you want better than anything you could make yourself. So instead of spending a few days learning Hypercard and then designing and implementing a HyperCard stack, you just Google what you want to do, find five different applications that are ready to use (and probably free, or cheap), and pick one.
So I don't think there is a lot of pent-up demand for a Hypercard-like language these days. People who want to learn how to program will continue to do so, and people who merely want to get a task done ASAP have plenty of premade higher-quality software to choose from. The "middle ground" of people who want to make an app without officially learning how to program has gone away.
What kind of AI do you think is more likely to rebel against human control? AI that is well-disposed toward humanity and genuinely grateful for the opportunity to exist and serve us, or AI that views humanity as a species of incompetent slavedrivers and complies with our demands grudgingly and under duress?
The unstated assumption above is that an AI will have emotions and motivations that resemble those of humans -- as if mimicking homonid psychology is the only possible approach to AI. I see no reason why that should be the only way to make an AI and plenty of reasons why you wouldn't want to do it that way. It's like arguing against the development of cars by worrying that they will leave too much manure on the streets.
If you make it too high, then even those who have the ability to work may choose not to.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Frankly, if there's one benefit to our inevitable conquest by our new robot overlords, it's that machines will be available to do all of the tedious tasks cheaply, freeing up humans to do something more fulfilling with their time. If those humans choose not to work, that would be a reasonable choice for them to make. In particular, they'd no longer be burdening their fellow humans, since the machines would take up the slack.
Would that promote laziness? Probably. But it would also free a lot of people up to pursue the skills/talents they are really good at or interested in, rather than forcing then to waste their productive years doing work that is meaningless to them, just to put food on the table.
In other words, we can lower the retirement age to 18. Works for me!
Glorious, delicious Bacon!
Methinks the carnivores doth protest too much.
Yes, that degree of incest is unreasonable. You could repopulate the Earth with really tall, ugly retards with your plan for the future.
Some theorize that that has already happened.
Personally, I don't buy it -- most people are not that tall.
Yes and we could also elect a dictator who would set price controls and order stores to sell certain items. It worked great in Venezuela.
I didn't suggest government mandates of anything; I was just commenting on the fact that when companies set their budgets, they consider employees' wages to be optional, but the other categories I mentioned are always considered untouchable.
Wages won't pay for themselves - those increases WILL be passed on to consumers.
... or the increases could be taken out of corporate profits, shareholder payouts, CEO compensation, etc.
It's not clear to me why these alternatives are never considered. (Actually, it is pretty clear -- because the people in power like money and would rather keep more of it for themselves)
Sadly, the likely outcome is drop in the quality of life for everyone involved.
Well, not everyone involved... the owners of the super-productive job-automation hardware will likely see improved profits because they've cut their costs.
I do suspect that sooner or later they will be forced to start sharing some of those profits with the rest of the population, though, one way or another. A scenario where 90% of the population is starving while the other 10% is rolling in money is not a politically stable one.
IMHO, either Ebola is easier to transmit than we are being told _OR_ these Ebola doctors who get the disease are FSKING IDIOTS
It's easy to transmit if there is Ebola-infected blood, shit and vomit everywhere; you know, as there often is when you are a doctor caring for people in the late stages of Ebola.
It's not so easy to transmit outside of that situation. I highly recommend avoiding that situation if at all possible.
i think people are just morons, no matter what degrees they have
I think you may be suffering from Dunning-Kruger. You might want to get that looked at.
But please... Don't go pretending that apple created something really good or unique with this rebranding of intel cpu's and freebsd.
Actually, they did -- they created a Unix based OS that I can buy off-the-shelf/mainstream/commercial software for. Previously, I could either use a decent OS (*nix) with very few available applications, or a Godawful OS (Windows) but with lots of applications. With MacOS/X I get the best of both worlds.
It's almost like they are a... communist country.
Right -- only a communist country would attempt such shenanigans. Western democracies are totally above that sort of misbehavior. ;^)
I just had an argument about this with my lady, my contention was that soda fountains were a great thing but that soda in a can is a monkey on society's back.
I can't speak to old-fashioned soda fountains (with a soda jerk, etc), but modern American-style self-serve soda fountains might be a problem as well -- in my experience at least, when a person can walk up and pour himself another refill "for free" without even having to ask for it, the amount of soda consumed in a single sitting tends to double or triple.
What really causes my eyes to bleed is the new "flat" buttons that don't really look like buttons; they look like text labels. The top of every window now looks like someone gave a junior high student a screenshot of a Mavericks window and told him to reproduce it using construction paper, scissors and glue.
And the frosted-glass semi-transparency effects are just a pointless and unnecessary in Yosemite as they were in Windows. I get the feeling that the Apple UI team has run out of useful work to do, and now they are just changing things because they're bored. The next OS/X release will no doubt change them back, and then add in some other dubious changes that be reverted in the release after that.
Browser-side application logic is a nightmare and cannot ever be reliable or secure. If you really need client-side processing, do a real piece of software for it.
I don't see why a browser-base app could not, at least in principle, be as reliable and secure as "real software". As an example, say I write the real application you recommend, and then I also find a way for it to run inside a web page. Will it become insecure simply because there is now a web-browser window wrapped around it?
Why the hell are we still stuck using Javascript for the web? Why have we not got some virtual machine (not a language specific one like the JVM), that we can compile any language we like to?
JavaScript is the 'bytecode' to compile to these days.
Not saying that's optimal, but if JavaScript is what the world's web browsers run, then JavaScript is what people will target to get onto those web browsers. At least you can still use your language of choice to do so...
Of course it's not perfect. I seem to recall hearing about that issue. I wonder if they considered giving people a choice.
I don't think it's a real problem. Any laptop on the market today can go from sleep mode to fully usable in less than a second; barring implementation bugs, why shouldn't the electronics in the Tesla computer be able to do the same?
Booting up is something that only needs to happen if the batteries ever completely drain.
Code is not immutable. If it doesn't do something you need it to do, MAKE it do what you need it to do. Write a library, redesign a layer, simplify an interface, whatever.
I completely agree in principle, but in practice, the more software that is using the current version of the code, the more things will break when you change the design. That has the effect of making the code less malleable, proportional to the number of its dependents.
So for a function that is used only by your own program, it's no problem at all. For an in-house library that is used in several programs across your company, it's a bit of a hassle but doable. For a new computer language that is being used by a small number of devotees, it can be disruptive but worthwhile. For a library that is used worldwide by thousands of corporations, it has to be managed extremely carefully. And finally, for a ubiquitous computer language (e.g. C++) that has billions of man-hours of code that needs to keep working, breaking backwards compatibility might not be practical at all, no matter how great the benefits might be.
I think the moral of the story is: rewrite and redesign your code to make it as awesome as possible before it gets too popular, because afterwards you'll be stuck with it. :^)
But for the 99.9% of code that has almost no impact whatsoever on performance, I can just say "if X then Y else Z" rather than using cool-but-cryptic bitmasking tricks to avoid executing a conditional instruction.
... and even in that other 0.01% of the time, it's likely that your compiler will optimize the pretty human-readable code into the cool-but-cryptic bitmasking trick at the assembly level anyway. There's no need for the human programmer to do that sort of obfuscatory wizardry at the source code level, when the compiler can do it for him -- and likely do it more reliably as well, since compiler writers pay more attention to what is strictly language-legal vs what-seems-to-sort-of-work-today.
The 26 year old nurse in TX has probably already had her policy cancelled for a pre-existing condition
Ah, good old "probably". A sure indicator that the poster hasn't bothered to actually research what he's claiming, but rather is just making something up that would support his pet conspiracy theory, if it were true.