The linked-to article was written by one Schlomi Fish, who is a kind of programming language troll.
I wrote a very nice Lisp program once upon a time, and Fish wrote a critique one of whose main points is that I should have written it in a different programming language, quote:
If Meta-CVS' author wishes to make it more popular, I strongly advise him to re-implement it in C, Perl, Python or something more standard.
So we can take this new article to be a kind of insider's guide to trolling, I suppose.:)
What a fucking arrogant asshole, "strongly advising" his superior.
Even though you can't see what's behind the logo, you can see what effect that area of space has had on those around it.
This sounds like pure bunk that you made up.
I have a picture taken in a room, in which a vase, with a flower in it, resting on a coffee table, is occluded by the seat rest of an armchair.
Can you cite me the URL of a program which can use the vase's "effect on that area of space" to remove the armchair from the image, revealing the vase?
A robot is autonomous; it does not simply follow someone else's movements.
E.g. Wikipedia:
A robot is a virtual or mechanical artificial agent. In practice, it is usually an electro-mechanical machine which is guided by computer or electronic programming, and is thus able to do tasks on its own. Another common characteristic is that by its appearance or movements, a robot often conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own.
The GPS data is no better than your word; it could be easily faked.
It is not from an independent, trusted third party.
Basically the whole story about the smart phone and the GPS data is a long-winded way of entering a "not guilty" plea.
I've seen an inexperienced, young cop in traffic court lose something like eight cases in a row because he could not produce evidence.
Everything from speeding, to red lights, to parking more than 30cm from the curb.
I had a brilliant defense planned against my charge of running a yellow light, but I didn't get a chance to present it; the judge asked the officer for evidence first, and since there wasn't any, all I had to do was enter my plea of no guilty.
I don't understand why he bothered to show up that day, other than to get paid.
The official "organic" is stupid, because many organic compounds are not of biological origin; e.g. fluorinated or chlorinated hydrocarbons. Even compounds carbon-silicon bonds are called "organosilicon".
Then there is the problem that some molecules in living things have inorganic components, like organo-metallic compounds (haemoglobin, chlorophyll,...).
The "organic food" people have reclaimed the word for a use which is closer to what it suggests: originating in the organs of a living thing.
A pesticide with chlorinated benzene rings does not originate in a living thing, and neither does silicone rubber.
Pipes often have to withstand pressure. A square pipe is suboptimal for pressure.
A pressurized cylinder expands evenly all around, but a pressurized prism will pincushion, leading to a large concentration of stress at the corners.
Thus a square pipe would have to be a lot thicker to achieve the same maximum pressure rating as a round pipe made from the same material.
Round pipes are easier to route. A pre-formed elbow piece fitted to a round pipe can be rotated in any direction.
Low pressure ducts (e.g. air ducts in buildings) are often rectangular, because that is not an issue for them, and making them that way maximizes their cross-sectional area within a building space that is itself rectangular. (The bigger the cross-sectional area, the more efficient the flow).
That being said, I think it's ridiculous to suggest that a chip that resides on the surface of a pipe (whose diameter is much larger than the chip) must be flexible!
A bicycle chain is made of rigid links, yet appears flexible. Objects flexible on a large scale don't have to be made up of small-scale components which are themselves flexible.
A flexible film can contain tiny inflexible chips.
Suppose a thin film, like food wrap, is bent to a curvature of 0.25 cm radius. That's not actually a significant curvature on the scale of something that is much smaller than a millimeter.
It does sound like these engineers touting the flexibility of the processor not because it's an important real-world requirement, but only because it justifies the work they are doing.
Branch on Carry Clear dead, indeed.
on
The Death of BCC
·
· Score: 1
Global CPU condition codes for program logic are largely dead because they are hard to parallelize.
In modern instruction set architectures, CPU flags are for things like interrupt masks and privilege modes, not for "the most recent arithmetic instruction produced a carry".:)
People get BCCs all the time. Everytime you get an email where your address doesn't show up in the To: or Cc: field, guess what? That's right, Bcc! That means all the distribution lists you belong to use bcc.
When you get a Bcc e-mail, you generally do not know you are getting one, because your name does appear on the To: line, and ONLY your name. Only the e-mail contents can give you a clue that it's a Bcc. If you get a message from Bob where Bob is quoting and replying to Alice, and you are not Alice, and Alice does not even appear in the Cc or To, you're probably getting a Bcc.
Mailing lists do not use Bcc. Bcc is specifically for the situation where by sending to multiple people, you do NOT wish to create the potential for a list discussion. Mailing list servers iterate over all of the members of a list and repeat the e-mail individually to each person.
Microsoft would not have been able to use any of these "strong arm" tactics on the manufacturers if it was not in fact Microsoft Windows and Windows applications which fueled most of the world's demands for the hardware!
These tactics are a consequence of two simple facts: the hardware became commoditized from the point in the mid 1980's when the first IBM PC clones came out. Whereas Microsoft software is not commoditized. Anyone can make a PC-compatible computer, but Windows is proprietary.
More than 99% of the users want Windows on their PC. They don't care which PC that is all that much; it makes no difference to them.
The obvious result is that Microsoft can treat the PC vendors like trash.
This is their own fault. They do not bring a proprietary value to the table, only commodity, replaceable pieces. They have next to nothing to negotiate with against Microsoft.
If Windows was widely cloned, it would be different. The PC manufacturer could tell Microsoft: our users want Windows, but we don't like your terms. We will go with someone else's Windows.
Like it or not, Windows and its programs are what created the demand which has caused the commodity hardware to drop in price and increase in power. The fact that you can get a cheap, powerful PC for running Linux is something we owe in large part to Microsoft.
Even if you don't use Windows, you benefit from the economy of scale created by millions of Windows-using PC users around the globe who create the demand for PC's.
Also, because Windows is big, bloated and slow, this has created massive consumer demand for more powerful hardware.
The upshot is that you wouldn't have a PC which is as cheap, as fast and with as large a memory as what you have today if it were not for Windows.
Even the fact that Windows is preinstalled on PC's is a piece of streamlining which saves the industry as a whole money (remember, most users end up with Windows: this is just the principle of optimizing the frequent case!)
They should put a little USB port on this display mouse, where you can plug in another mouse, to control a little pointer on host mouse's display, as an alternative to using it as a touch screen.
Windows, and MS applications, could be a lot harder to pirate than they are.
They are not, because Microsoft would rather have infringing users of MS software, rather than have those users migrate to non-MS software. An infringing MS desktop is still an MS desktop, and MS can count it among their installed base, which works in their favor in all situations when someone makes a pro-MS argument based on installed base.
They even let infringing users keep Windows dynamically up to date!
You can't hold the view that all users are welcome, infringing or not, and then at the same time complain about a large nonpaying fraction of your user base.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.kylheku.com/~kaz/mcvs-criticisms.html
The linked-to article was written by one Schlomi Fish, who is a kind of programming language troll.
I wrote a very nice Lisp program once upon a time, and Fish wrote a critique one of whose main points is that I should have written it in a different programming language, quote:
If Meta-CVS' author wishes to make it more popular, I strongly advise him to re-implement it in C, Perl, Python or something more standard.
So we can take this new article to be a kind of insider's guide to trolling, I suppose. :)
What a fucking arrogant asshole, "strongly advising" his superior.
Even though you can't see what's behind the logo, you can see what effect that area of space has had on those around it.
This sounds like pure bunk that you made up.
I have a picture taken in a room, in which a vase, with a flower in it, resting on a coffee table, is occluded by the seat rest of an armchair.
Can you cite me the URL of a program which can use the vase's "effect on that area of space" to remove the armchair from the image, revealing the vase?
Thanks.
The only reason a court would be gathering such information is to stifle free speech.
You seem to be confusing free and anonymous.
Freedom of speech does not extend to freedom from the consequences of speech by concealing your identity. (That's another kind of freedom).
A robot is autonomous; it does not simply follow someone else's movements.
E.g. Wikipedia:
A robot is a virtual or mechanical artificial agent. In practice, it is usually an electro-mechanical machine which is guided by computer or electronic programming, and is thus able to do tasks on its own. Another common characteristic is that by its appearance or movements, a robot often conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own.
Personally, I will stick with my desktop...to me this thing is just a really expensive toy.
And don't forget the laptop. The laptop is the faithful portable computer that has been with us since the 1980's!
No portable device has managed to topple the laptop.
Who cares how thin/light it is? Anyone interested in using it as a book reader
I doubt that much of the target market has enough of an attention span to read anything longer than 200 words.
The GPS data is no better than your word; it could be easily faked.
It is not from an independent, trusted third party.
Basically the whole story about the smart phone and the GPS data is a long-winded way of entering a "not guilty" plea.
I've seen an inexperienced, young cop in traffic court lose something like eight cases in a row because he could not produce evidence.
Everything from speeding, to red lights, to parking more than 30cm from the curb.
I had a brilliant defense planned against my charge of running a yellow light, but I didn't get a chance to present it; the judge asked the officer for evidence first, and since there wasn't any, all I had to do was enter my plea of no guilty.
I don't understand why he bothered to show up that day, other than to get paid.
/* empty */
Do you also plan to pay for food with money that turns to shit within a day?
See, the thing about analogies ...
The official "organic" is stupid, because many organic compounds are not of biological origin; e.g. fluorinated or chlorinated hydrocarbons. Even compounds carbon-silicon bonds are called "organosilicon".
Then there is the problem that some molecules in living things have inorganic components, like organo-metallic compounds (haemoglobin, chlorophyll, ...).
The "organic food" people have reclaimed the word for a use which is closer to what it suggests: originating in the organs of a living thing.
A pesticide with chlorinated benzene rings does not originate in a living thing, and neither does silicone rubber.
Pipes often have to withstand pressure. A square pipe is suboptimal for pressure.
A pressurized cylinder expands evenly all around, but a pressurized prism will pincushion, leading to a large concentration of stress at the corners.
Thus a square pipe would have to be a lot thicker to achieve the same maximum pressure rating as a round pipe made from the same material.
Round pipes are easier to route. A pre-formed elbow piece fitted to a round pipe can be rotated in any direction.
Low pressure ducts (e.g. air ducts in buildings) are often rectangular, because that is not an issue for them, and making them that way maximizes their cross-sectional area within a building space that is itself rectangular. (The bigger the cross-sectional area, the more efficient the flow).
That being said, I think it's ridiculous to suggest that a chip that resides on the surface of a pipe (whose diameter is much larger than the chip) must be flexible!
A bicycle chain is made of rigid links, yet appears flexible. Objects flexible on a large scale don't have to be made up of small-scale components which are themselves flexible.
A flexible film can contain tiny inflexible chips.
Suppose a thin film, like food wrap, is bent to a curvature of 0.25 cm radius. That's not actually a significant curvature on the scale of something that is much smaller than a millimeter.
It does sound like these engineers touting the flexibility of the processor not because it's an important real-world requirement, but only because it justifies the work they are doing.
Global CPU condition codes for program logic are largely dead because they are hard to parallelize.
In modern instruction set architectures, CPU flags are for things like interrupt masks and privilege modes, not for "the most recent arithmetic instruction produced a carry". :)
People get BCCs all the time. Everytime you get an email where your address doesn't show up in the To: or Cc: field, guess what? That's right, Bcc! That means all the distribution lists you belong to use bcc.
When you get a Bcc e-mail, you generally do not know you are getting one, because your name does appear on the To: line, and ONLY your name. Only the e-mail contents can give you a clue that it's a Bcc. If you get a message from Bob where Bob is quoting and replying to Alice, and you are not Alice, and Alice does not even appear in the Cc or To, you're probably getting a Bcc.
Mailing lists do not use Bcc. Bcc is specifically for the situation where by sending to multiple people, you do NOT wish to create the potential for a list discussion. Mailing list servers iterate over all of the members of a list and repeat the e-mail individually to each person.
Great! I can add one more reason why I don't use Facebook: I'm helping to keep Bcc alive.
If you want to reach me with a group e-mail that looks like it is only going to me, you will just have to blow the dust off that Bcc header.
Bcc is useful when you're sending an e-mail to many people without intending to start a virtual mailing list discussion where people can "reply all".
It is essential in situations where you need to ask a bunch of people some personal question where an accidental "reply all" leads to embarassment.
I believe that space is infinite, in that you can keep moving in any direction without hitting a wall.
The universe is just the subspace of space which contains stuff.
Space does not end there; it's just that there isn't anything beyond.
What keeps geek culture from dying or becoming popular?
Why, it oscillates around a Lagrange point, no doubt.
Microsoft would not have been able to use any of these "strong arm" tactics on the manufacturers if it was not in fact Microsoft Windows and Windows applications which fueled most of the world's demands for the hardware!
These tactics are a consequence of two simple facts: the hardware became commoditized from the point in the mid 1980's when the first IBM PC clones came out. Whereas Microsoft software is not commoditized. Anyone can make a PC-compatible computer, but Windows is proprietary.
More than 99% of the users want Windows on their PC. They don't care which PC that is all that much; it makes no difference to them.
The obvious result is that Microsoft can treat the PC vendors like trash.
This is their own fault. They do not bring a proprietary value to the table, only commodity, replaceable pieces. They have next to nothing to negotiate with against Microsoft.
If Windows was widely cloned, it would be different. The PC manufacturer could tell Microsoft: our users want Windows, but we don't like your terms. We will go with someone else's Windows.
Like it or not, Windows and its programs are what created the demand which has caused the commodity hardware to drop in price and increase in power. The fact that you can get a cheap, powerful PC for running Linux is something we owe in large part to Microsoft.
Even if you don't use Windows, you benefit from the economy of scale created by millions of Windows-using PC users around the globe who create the demand for PC's.
Also, because Windows is big, bloated and slow, this has created massive consumer demand for more powerful hardware.
The upshot is that you wouldn't have a PC which is as cheap, as fast and with as large a memory as what you have today if it were not for Windows.
Even the fact that Windows is preinstalled on PC's is a piece of streamlining which saves the industry as a whole money (remember, most users end up with Windows: this is just the principle of optimizing the frequent case!)
How do they ascertain customer's morals? Just because someone buys something from you doesn't mean they have good morals!
What if the culprits turn out to be customers assisted by an employee? :)
They should put a little USB port on this display mouse, where you can plug in another mouse, to control a little pointer on host mouse's display, as an alternative to using it as a touch screen.
They just don't want to say the real one, probably resembling 0.00001%, because then it would appear that the paying users are a weird minority.
People will then rationalize continuing not to pay as a way of avoiding joining a weird minority.
Windows, and MS applications, could be a lot harder to pirate than they are.
They are not, because Microsoft would rather have infringing users of MS software, rather than have those users migrate to non-MS software. An infringing MS desktop is still an MS desktop, and MS can count it among their installed base, which works in their favor in all situations when someone makes a pro-MS argument based on installed base.
They even let infringing users keep Windows dynamically up to date!
You can't hold the view that all users are welcome, infringing or not, and then at the same time complain about a large nonpaying fraction of your user base.
I avoided this kind of irritation by marrying a Japanese woman.