Hmm, I wasn't clear in my example. I left out the variable declarations, but in the code I was quoting, num was an integer, the cardinality of an array, which has little danger of being not-a-number. You're right, my comment isn't applicable for all possible contexts of that code.
At any rate, my point was that bad boolean expressions can be inefficient and a pain for the code maintainer.
Boolean algebra is critical to anyone who programs using "if" and "for" statements
Can't stress this point enough. I'm pretty tired of cleaning up 20+ line blocks of nested if/else statements--it's unnecessarily complex, bug prone, and impossible to understand.
And then there are the really mysterious things like this (I've actually seen this):
if (num < limit) { ... } else if (num >= limit) { ... } else {
error("Unexpected error. Please contact customer support immediately."); }
This kind of stuff makes Baby Knuth cry. At least learn enough to know that there are no other options besides "true" and "false".
Yeah, this article is pretty vague as to what exactly happened. Toward the end of the page:
In August, Computer Associates signed the SCO license and paid $40 million to Canopy Group to settle breach-of-contract charges...
To a careful, skeptical reader, this makes it sound like CA was bribed to accept the license, signing the license as part of a settlement completely unrelated to their Linux usage, but the rest of the article completely buys into SCO's spin on the event.
You might be surprised. A year into the development of a software project I was once involved with, we weren't sure it the app would even work if the admin user's password wasn't "password".
And, yes, we did fix that bug, so don't bother trying it.
Well, they could always fall back on the copyright hoarding that they do so well. They can dangle all the old Disney films, plus all the foreign films for which they've bought the US distribution rights, in front of consumers, threatening to throw them in the vault forever.
All they need are a few more senators to champion Disney's cause (and then die) to extend copyright forever.
My theory is that this is yet another golden age of slashdot trolling. Not since Jon Katz was writing regularly could someone get modded up for a post as off-topic, unimaginative, inflammatory, and whiny as "I don't want to read this. You guys suck!".
That's a really good point. The move toward a Playmobil-like construction set (which, by the way, I think are excellent toys) makes sense for the reasons you mention. And I'd prefer these over some cheaply-made TV show/movie merchandise.
I haven't seen the designer sets, though I must say that one great thing about the old sets was that I really felt I learned something constructing them. After building enough spaceships piece by piece, seeing how the blocks could be used to build a complex structure, I had the tools to visualize a finished vehicle and build it from the basic blocks. While not for everyone, I think that's a valuable experience.
Yes, during his career he did work in nearly every format available to him, though we usually only see his 4x5 and 8x10 black and whites. One thing you learn from his sort of experience is how to choose the best tool for the job, and there are things for which digital is the best choice. Yes, he would have used digital (though I would argue not exclusively).
Exactly correct. You can even look at specifics of Adams's darkroom techniques and preferences to see just how much he minimized his environmental impact.
One of Adams's favorite developers was Kodak HC-110. This is a liquid concentrate used at very high dilutions (Adams actually favored it at dilutions much higher than Kodak recommends) with an extremely long shelf life. I've heard it was intentionally developed as an environmentally friendly developer (I believe it's free of metol, pyrogallol, and Paraphenylene Diamine, the more toxic developing agents). Nowadays there are even developers based on vitamin-C (XTOL, maybe? I've never used it).
The stop bath is basically dilute vinegar. Some photographers (myself included) use plain water for this.
That leaves used fixer. Most photographers doing large amount of processing will save used fix and recover the silver from it, so no silver will actually go down the drain.
So definitely black and white developing can be done with minimal impact.
And if you want your camera to be a fashion statement, or completely believe that they don't make them like they used to, check out http://www.cameraquest.com. Great place to read about vintage cameras. This site is largely responsible for my 1940's-era rangefinder collection.
I haven't owned a camera from the Olympus OM line, but I've handled them and my impressions are favorable. Smaller than other SLRs, easy to use, and lower priced than many others. I believe these have been discontinued, so you'll have to stick to the used market.
I got a Nikon FM2 a few years back. Reasonably small, reasonably rugged (though not as much as the older F2), nice looking cameras. One advantage to Nikon cameras & lenses is that nearly any lens will work with any camera--with a list of exceptions, and sometimes at the expense of functionality like autofocus and full-aperature metering. Because of this continued usefullness, the equipment price doesn't depreciate too much, which can be nice if you ever want to sell it off.
What makes this argument such a doozy is Google has a case directly on point: Jefferson County School Dist. No. R-I v. Moody's Investor's Setvices, Inc.... That case is about as good a case as Google could have hoped for.
Is it so surprising google would be able to find such a case? It took me only 0.15 seconds.
Exactly. According to this CNN article, the astronomers who made the statement didn't regard it as a newsworthy discovery and are surprised by the extent of the media coverage:
The astronomer said that expressing the color for popular viewing was not even part of the original scientific experiment. They did it "as a lark."
"We were doing this as an amusing footnote to our paper," said Glazebrook. "Then there was a huge media thing. We were completely overwhelmed. We didn't expect it to get so big."
Dude opens his concrete-and-lead fridge, pulls out a can of Nuke cola, cracks it open. Cut to stock footage of nuclear weapons tests. Back to dude sitting in crater, face caked in soot, mumbles "Woah" or some other banal exclamation.
Then the motto:
Nuke Cola, It'll blow you away/It'll vaporize yo' ass/It'll make you die, or something.
The list was based on a poll of Amazon customers, so the results shouldn't be too surprising. The complete works of Shakespeare showed up at #16, War and Peace at #18 (didn't look any further, just interested in how far down the list Shakespeare would appear).
Not at all a definitive list (nor intended to be), but unfortunately a lot of people will probably assume it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, I wasn't clear in my example. I left out the variable declarations, but in the code I was quoting, num was an integer, the cardinality of an array, which has little danger of being not-a-number. You're right, my comment isn't applicable for all possible contexts of that code.
At any rate, my point was that bad boolean expressions can be inefficient and a pain for the code maintainer.
<ecode> seems to handle indentation properly.
Can't stress this point enough. I'm pretty tired of cleaning up 20+ line blocks of nested if/else statements--it's unnecessarily complex, bug prone, and impossible to understand.
This kind of stuff makes Baby Knuth cry. At least learn enough to know that there are no other options besides "true" and "false".And then there are the really mysterious things like this (I've actually seen this):
Not a bad deal. I'll trade you the pills for my stock options.
Yeah, this article is pretty vague as to what exactly happened. Toward the end of the page:
In August, Computer Associates signed the SCO license and paid $40 million to Canopy Group to settle breach-of-contract charges...
To a careful, skeptical reader, this makes it sound like CA was bribed to accept the license, signing the license as part of a settlement completely unrelated to their Linux usage, but the rest of the article completely buys into SCO's spin on the event.
Who the hell is "Pootie"?
Pootie Tang
You might be surprised. A year into the development of a software project I was once involved with, we weren't sure it the app would even work if the admin user's password wasn't "password".
And, yes, we did fix that bug, so don't bother trying it.
Please.
Well, they could always fall back on the copyright hoarding that they do so well. They can dangle all the old Disney films, plus all the foreign films for which they've bought the US distribution rights, in front of consumers, threatening to throw them in the vault forever.
All they need are a few more senators to champion Disney's cause (and then die) to extend copyright forever.
Yeah, the No Darls Club.
My theory is that this is yet another golden age of slashdot trolling. Not since Jon Katz was writing regularly could someone get modded up for a post as off-topic, unimaginative, inflammatory, and whiny as "I don't want to read this. You guys suck!".
That's a really good point. The move toward a Playmobil-like construction set (which, by the way, I think are excellent toys) makes sense for the reasons you mention. And I'd prefer these over some cheaply-made TV show/movie merchandise.
I haven't seen the designer sets, though I must say that one great thing about the old sets was that I really felt I learned something constructing them. After building enough spaceships piece by piece, seeing how the blocks could be used to build a complex structure, I had the tools to visualize a finished vehicle and build it from the basic blocks. While not for everyone, I think that's a valuable experience.
It's already been about a month since SCO was told to produce some REAL goods.
5 days left.
Yes, during his career he did work in nearly every format available to him, though we usually only see his 4x5 and 8x10 black and whites. One thing you learn from his sort of experience is how to choose the best tool for the job, and there are things for which digital is the best choice. Yes, he would have used digital (though I would argue not exclusively).
Exactly correct. You can even look at specifics of Adams's darkroom techniques and preferences to see just how much he minimized his environmental impact.
One of Adams's favorite developers was Kodak HC-110. This is a liquid concentrate used at very high dilutions (Adams actually favored it at dilutions much higher than Kodak recommends) with an extremely long shelf life. I've heard it was intentionally developed as an environmentally friendly developer (I believe it's free of metol, pyrogallol, and Paraphenylene Diamine, the more toxic developing agents). Nowadays there are even developers based on vitamin-C (XTOL, maybe? I've never used it).
The stop bath is basically dilute vinegar. Some photographers (myself included) use plain water for this.
That leaves used fixer. Most photographers doing large amount of processing will save used fix and recover the silver from it, so no silver will actually go down the drain.
So definitely black and white developing can be done with minimal impact.
And if you want your camera to be a fashion statement, or completely believe that they don't make them like they used to, check out http://www.cameraquest.com. Great place to read about vintage cameras. This site is largely responsible for my 1940's-era rangefinder collection.
I haven't owned a camera from the Olympus OM line, but I've handled them and my impressions are favorable. Smaller than other SLRs, easy to use, and lower priced than many others. I believe these have been discontinued, so you'll have to stick to the used market.
I got a Nikon FM2 a few years back. Reasonably small, reasonably rugged (though not as much as the older F2), nice looking cameras. One advantage to Nikon cameras & lenses is that nearly any lens will work with any camera--with a list of exceptions, and sometimes at the expense of functionality like autofocus and full-aperature metering. Because of this continued usefullness, the equipment price doesn't depreciate too much, which can be nice if you ever want to sell it off.
Just wanted to share my favorite subject line I've received so far:
"To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
It turned out to be an add for human growth hormone pills.
From the analysis:
... That case is about as good a case as Google could have hoped for.
What makes this argument such a doozy is Google has a case directly on point: Jefferson County School Dist. No. R-I v. Moody's Investor's Setvices, Inc.
Is it so surprising google would be able to find such a case? It took me only 0.15 seconds.
Of course, he has nothing to fear from Bowser
Since the courts found it to be an anti-competetive practice, MS can no longer bundle its own bowser with the game.
Here's another good Zuse resource. Has background/biographical info, simulations/replicas of his machines, and an archive of his papers.
Uzi, as the firewall box maybe?
Exactly. According to this CNN article, the astronomers who made the statement didn't regard it as a newsworthy discovery and are surprised by the extent of the media coverage:
The astronomer said that expressing the color for popular viewing was not even part of the original scientific experiment. They did it "as a lark."
"We were doing this as an amusing footnote to our paper," said Glazebrook. "Then there was a huge media thing. We were completely overwhelmed. We didn't expect it to get so big."
First thought this was going to be an announcement of upcoming Futurama cameos.
CT:Do you people actually visit microsoft.com?
I didn't know we weren't supposed to.
I can already see the ads for this...
Dude opens his concrete-and-lead fridge, pulls out a can of Nuke cola, cracks it open. Cut to stock footage of nuclear weapons tests. Back to dude sitting in crater, face caked in soot, mumbles "Woah" or some other banal exclamation.
Then the motto:
Nuke Cola, It'll blow you away/It'll vaporize yo' ass/It'll make you die, or something.
Not at all a definitive list (nor intended to be), but unfortunately a lot of people will probably assume it is.