I saw this article first on IFLScience, and wowee... the comments were the equivalent of repeatedly thwacking multiple hornets nests with sticks. The sheer number of people up in arms about this study is jawdropping.
While not really surprising, it is depressing. Especially when you consider the fact that the majority of people who were outraged had no idea what homeopathy actually was. Countless comments about how willow bark, st. johns wort, etc worked for them and therefore the study was just a big conspiracy by big pharma, etc. They were completely oblivious to the fact that what they were talking about wasn't even homeopathy.
I'm torn between wanting to try to educate these people, or just declaring it a lost cause and troll them until they burst a blood vessel or something.
I'm seeing so many posts about how people "will never buy from Lenovo again because they can't be trusted" etc etc, and can't help shrug cynically.
I wonder how many of these same people buy Sony products despite not just one, but an entire string of blatantly anti-consumer decisions (of which the rootkit CDs were just one)
Or Microsoft, which has a very long history of not just anti-consumer, but crushing the PC industry and suberting entire standards bodies. But in the last couple years they've thrown a few open source bones... yeah that totally makes up for the last 20+ years of damage they have caused.
So yeah, I hope everyone gets to enjoy their collective outrage while it lasts, cause before you know it you'll find your comments will get modded troll by people who think you're just overreacting.
It's already been demonstrated that when people believe a given thing, they will go out of their way to *continue* believing that thing. Even if you show them an overwhelming amount of evidence that they are wrong, rather than convincing them to change their opinion, they will instead double-down on their existing belief.
Combine that with the fact that there is a ridiculous amount of crap out there, from 'vaccines cause autism' idiots to Fox News, we *need* some kind of filtering to eliminate the nonsense that is put up there with the explicit purpose of misinforming people.
The only concern against something like this, is how easily/likely it would be for governments to subvert for pushing propoganda.
Of course, the end result will probably be that people stop using Google, cause being able to confirm their bias is far more important to people than the search engine they use.
This. It's to the point where a lot of options for iOS arn't even available in android.
Case in point: Scrabble. On iOS there is a free version with a metric crapton of ads, and a $10 paid for version with no ads.
Android? They don't even *offer* the $10 one. Only the version that gives craptons of ads. Not only that, the Android version was fond of crashing and not updating properly when the persons turn was over. I was shocked. As I was using iOS and my spouse was using Android, I was trying to find a word game that existed on both platforms and wasn't crap. Thankfully Wordfeud fit the bill. Available for both platforms, with similar buy options.
Now we're both on iOS because I don't have time to put up with the BS.
The last time I worked on a brand new Sony laptop, it was clear that Sony considered the laptop to be nothing more than a delivery vehicle for it's entertainment products. There was so much Sony crapware on the machine that, out of the box, it wasn't even usable until I uninstalled the majority of the junk.
I anticipate that Sony will force you to watch a movie trailer every time you turn it on, and won't let you use it until you've watched the whole thing.
I've always believed algorithms and neural networks to be essentially opposites to each other.
Algorithms are blocks of code that handles a predefined task. Classic example: quicksort vs bubblesort
Neural networks are a black box of systems that are trained with input until they produce the output you want. Further, even when it is working, you won't truly know what is happening internally, and you're only hope of knowing that it works is throwing a ridiculous amount of inputs at it and seeing how it responds.
You've missed my point completely. It's not about how difficult it is to implement. It's about knowing when to implement it.
And I've seen enough hideous code to say that way too many programmers are not skilled enough to realize that they don't know how to make that judgement call, so it is infinitely simpler to simply advise them to not use certain constructs.
Are you an anti-vaxxer as well? Because you're using the same logic that they use.
"It's not a problem anymore so we shouldn't have to do this and I resent being told what to do!"
It's not a problem anymore BECAUSE avoiding goto has become conventional wisdom.
If we start telling people that it's ok to use goto again, take a wild guess what will happen? We will go right back to the days of spaghetti code, except it will be that much worse now because software has become overwhelmingly more complex today compared to several decades ago.
The problem with self-described experts is that a lot of people think they're experts when in fact they are not, resulting in a hideous mash that some poor sap down the line has to somehow decipher.
It boils down to risk-reward. If there is a clear and overwhelming reason to use it, then go ahead. If not, then a convention control flow structure will be easier to debug, easier to maintain, and is less likely to cause an inadvertent bug because you jumped out of a code block without cleaning something up.
That is a neverending wealth of evidence of how badly people code.
But your argument is silly. Of course banning conditional loops is dumb. You're right A determined programmer can make hash out of any programming language. The question becomes a matter of how easy it is for Dunning-Kruger code monkeys to mutilate their code while thinking they are doing things properly.
It's about raising the bar and forcing people to think in a more structured way.
"Banning" goto is like "Banning" jaywalking. Because enough people screw it up badly enough that it is simpler to just warn against it in general.
Just because an expert does it, doesn't mean everyone should. An expert developer has a much better structural understanding of how a system works, and is better able to judge whether going against conventional wisdom is beneficial or not, risky or not, etc.
Anyone else doing is is just doing the programming equivalent of the cargo cult.
I'm sorry, but you picked a shockingly bad example to support your argument. Gamergate IS a problem. If you think women getting flooded with "You should be raped until you die!" messages is acceptable, then you have no business being part of civilized society.
Obviously it hasn't occurred to you that there would be a lot more 'good posts' if there weren't so many trolls around.
The only thing I use twitter for is as an RSS feed for certain companies I want to pay attention to. I sure as hell have no interest in posting random thoughts on there and waiting to become a target.
Seriously, while recent moves in this regard have been good, only a fool would ignore history. Microsoft, for as long as it has existed, has done countless morally dubious things in order to maintain control. The history is all right there for the googling. Just because they do a couple Good(tm) things doesn't magically mean they have suddenly realized the errors of their ways and are doing a 180. You can't erase ~40 years of assholry.
Based on the moves Microsoft has done lately, I will move my needle from "completely distrust" to "MAYBE it's not a trap" but still nowhere near the realm of "trustworthy"
It is normal to for scientific results to waffle back and forth, especially when we don't have a complete picture of what's going on.
The real problem is that newspapers report on every single damn study, so you end up with this whole "Eggs are bad! No wait they're good! No wait they're bad again!" thing going.
It's impossible to know what's what when you are bombarded with information, and that information is presented piecemeal and conflicts with previous information.
That's bizarre... How in the world does something like that happen?
Of course, as a general rule I don't apply an Apple ID to the initial user of the machine, because I save that to serve as an emergency admin user, so that's probably why I haven't noticed.
You wouldn't happen to know the specific version of yosemite your machine came with? (Guessing 10.10.1?)
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If the knock offs have better battery than the original, I'll take the knock offs any day.
I saw this article first on IFLScience, and wowee... the comments were the equivalent of repeatedly thwacking multiple hornets nests with sticks. The sheer number of people up in arms about this study is jawdropping.
While not really surprising, it is depressing. Especially when you consider the fact that the majority of people who were outraged had no idea what homeopathy actually was. Countless comments about how willow bark, st. johns wort, etc worked for them and therefore the study was just a big conspiracy by big pharma, etc. They were completely oblivious to the fact that what they were talking about wasn't even homeopathy.
I'm torn between wanting to try to educate these people, or just declaring it a lost cause and troll them until they burst a blood vessel or something.
Perhaps someone should to point out to the Indian Gov't that Barbara Streisand was a woman. ;)
I'm seeing so many posts about how people "will never buy from Lenovo again because they can't be trusted" etc etc, and can't help shrug cynically.
I wonder how many of these same people buy Sony products despite not just one, but an entire string of blatantly anti-consumer decisions (of which the rootkit CDs were just one)
Or Microsoft, which has a very long history of not just anti-consumer, but crushing the PC industry and suberting entire standards bodies. But in the last couple years they've thrown a few open source bones... yeah that totally makes up for the last 20+ years of damage they have caused.
So yeah, I hope everyone gets to enjoy their collective outrage while it lasts, cause before you know it you'll find your comments will get modded troll by people who think you're just overreacting.
Does this mean there will or won't be 4 more weeks of winter on the comet?
It's already been demonstrated that when people believe a given thing, they will go out of their way to *continue* believing that thing. Even if you show them an overwhelming amount of evidence that they are wrong, rather than convincing them to change their opinion, they will instead double-down on their existing belief.
Combine that with the fact that there is a ridiculous amount of crap out there, from 'vaccines cause autism' idiots to Fox News, we *need* some kind of filtering to eliminate the nonsense that is put up there with the explicit purpose of misinforming people.
The only concern against something like this, is how easily/likely it would be for governments to subvert for pushing propoganda.
Of course, the end result will probably be that people stop using Google, cause being able to confirm their bias is far more important to people than the search engine they use.
*cough* Fox News *coughcough*
This. It's to the point where a lot of options for iOS arn't even available in android.
Case in point: Scrabble. On iOS there is a free version with a metric crapton of ads, and a $10 paid for version with no ads.
Android? They don't even *offer* the $10 one. Only the version that gives craptons of ads. Not only that, the Android version was fond of crashing and not updating properly when the persons turn was over. I was shocked. As I was using iOS and my spouse was using Android, I was trying to find a word game that existed on both platforms and wasn't crap. Thankfully Wordfeud fit the bill. Available for both platforms, with similar buy options.
Now we're both on iOS because I don't have time to put up with the BS.
The last time I worked on a brand new Sony laptop, it was clear that Sony considered the laptop to be nothing more than a delivery vehicle for it's entertainment products. There was so much Sony crapware on the machine that, out of the box, it wasn't even usable until I uninstalled the majority of the junk.
I anticipate that Sony will force you to watch a movie trailer every time you turn it on, and won't let you use it until you've watched the whole thing.
Have I missed something?
I've always believed algorithms and neural networks to be essentially opposites to each other.
Algorithms are blocks of code that handles a predefined task. Classic example: quicksort vs bubblesort
Neural networks are a black box of systems that are trained with input until they produce the output you want. Further, even when it is working, you won't truly know what is happening internally, and you're only hope of knowing that it works is throwing a ridiculous amount of inputs at it and seeing how it responds.
You've missed my point completely. It's not about how difficult it is to implement. It's about knowing when to implement it.
And I've seen enough hideous code to say that way too many programmers are not skilled enough to realize that they don't know how to make that judgement call, so it is infinitely simpler to simply advise them to not use certain constructs.
Is this one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" things?
I bet it's one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" things.
Are you an anti-vaxxer as well? Because you're using the same logic that they use.
"It's not a problem anymore so we shouldn't have to do this and I resent being told what to do!"
It's not a problem anymore BECAUSE avoiding goto has become conventional wisdom.
If we start telling people that it's ok to use goto again, take a wild guess what will happen? We will go right back to the days of spaghetti code, except it will be that much worse now because software has become overwhelmingly more complex today compared to several decades ago.
The problem with self-described experts is that a lot of people think they're experts when in fact they are not, resulting in a hideous mash that some poor sap down the line has to somehow decipher.
It boils down to risk-reward. If there is a clear and overwhelming reason to use it, then go ahead. If not, then a convention control flow structure will be easier to debug, easier to maintain, and is less likely to cause an inadvertent bug because you jumped out of a code block without cleaning something up.
Just peruse http://www.thedailywtf.com/ if you need emperical evidence.
That is a neverending wealth of evidence of how badly people code.
But your argument is silly. Of course banning conditional loops is dumb. You're right A determined programmer can make hash out of any programming language. The question becomes a matter of how easy it is for Dunning-Kruger code monkeys to mutilate their code while thinking they are doing things properly.
It's about raising the bar and forcing people to think in a more structured way.
"Banning" goto is like "Banning" jaywalking. Because enough people screw it up badly enough that it is simpler to just warn against it in general.
Just because an expert does it, doesn't mean everyone should. An expert developer has a much better structural understanding of how a system works, and is better able to judge whether going against conventional wisdom is beneficial or not, risky or not, etc.
Anyone else doing is is just doing the programming equivalent of the cargo cult.
Why is this modded to -1?
What the AC said is absolutely correct, although admittedly they could have been a tad more tactful about it.
OF course there's a debate! There are gaps in the science that scientists refuse to acknowledge!
Some celebrity told me that AGW causes autism, and I for one won't stand for it!
Not having any idea of the actual reasons behind these decisions, I'm going to pull a possibility out my... out of thin air.
Is it because their liability would increase dramatically if they implemented a more secure system and it still somehow gets compromised?
What is this SH3 ASM nonsense?
System/390 assembly is the proper assembly to use! All other ASM is just uneducated slang talk.
Case in point...
In other words, it's working?
I'm sorry, but you picked a shockingly bad example to support your argument. Gamergate IS a problem. If you think women getting flooded with "You should be raped until you die!" messages is acceptable, then you have no business being part of civilized society.
Obviously it hasn't occurred to you that there would be a lot more 'good posts' if there weren't so many trolls around.
The only thing I use twitter for is as an RSS feed for certain companies I want to pay attention to. I sure as hell have no interest in posting random thoughts on there and waiting to become a target.
Does this mean Microsoft has developed cancer?
Seriously, while recent moves in this regard have been good, only a fool would ignore history. Microsoft, for as long as it has existed, has done countless morally dubious things in order to maintain control. The history is all right there for the googling. Just because they do a couple Good(tm) things doesn't magically mean they have suddenly realized the errors of their ways and are doing a 180. You can't erase ~40 years of assholry.
Based on the moves Microsoft has done lately, I will move my needle from "completely distrust" to "MAYBE it's not a trap" but still nowhere near the realm of "trustworthy"
Is it the science, or the science reporting?
It is normal to for scientific results to waffle back and forth, especially when we don't have a complete picture of what's going on.
The real problem is that newspapers report on every single damn study, so you end up with this whole "Eggs are bad! No wait they're good! No wait they're bad again!" thing going.
It's impossible to know what's what when you are bombarded with information, and that information is presented piecemeal and conflicts with previous information.
That's bizarre... How in the world does something like that happen?
Of course, as a general rule I don't apply an Apple ID to the initial user of the machine, because I save that to serve as an emergency admin user, so that's probably why I haven't noticed.
You wouldn't happen to know the specific version of yosemite your machine came with? (Guessing 10.10.1?)
Thanks for sharing.