Would Slasdot have commented if Bianca Hoogendijk had died this week? Or Hannelore Graser? They are respectively former dutch and german 'first ladies'. And I will not even start on Joachim Sauer (the current husband of Angela Merkel. But then most Americans will ask "Who is Angela Merkel".
As a nerd of long standing I like Slashdot. But I am often offended by the USA-centric attitude of the editors. Why not include an european or asian collaborator? I am available.
In dutch, I am afraid, but google translate may give you enough pointers to start your own research. Or read "the 25th hour" by Virgil Gheorghiu. When Churchill coined the phrase "the iron curtain" it was exacty this what he meant. But probably you will prefer to ignore this side of history.
There is a school of thought - a very large school - that sees prewar Europa as a green pasture with ever blue skies and fluffy rabbits and ponies, foremost among them the poor, innocent Poles. Then the bad Germans came and started killing the poor, defenceless rabbits.
This image is not quite correct. The Poles tought to be on the winning side, and already had taken their share of the division of Tchechoslowakie - Churchill in his memoires says that the Poles behaved like hyenas. Nevertheless, they have been dining out on their role of victims ever since the war.
Everybody who is in the slightest interested in WWII and the holocaust will know that the Polish were virulent antisemites. Perhaps even worse than the predominantly european-oriented germans. I cannot imagine that this initiative will make history forget this.
actually, the death count in the post-war Polish deathcamps for Germans came near to the percentages of Auschwitz. Bottom line: there is nothing that humans are not willing to inflict on other humans for the Good, preferably national, Cause. It is such a pity that history is not taught as an exact science.
Thinly veiled american imperialism. If the fundamentalist islam was not worse, I would applaud another 9/11. Don't drivel about 'innocent victims', the US has been doing the same and worse all over the world.
In the Netherlands we don't call that a 'Crescent' but a 'Bahco' (which is a swedish firm) or an' engelse sleutel' (english wrench). And I did not know that I, as a dutchmen on an international forum, was supposed to be familiar with american nomenclature.
The discussion was about quality and price of tools. I was and I am unhappy with the obvious assumption of the author that high retail price and 'made in the USA' equalled to quality. In my experience that is not true.
May I add that the best operating systems for PCs, Linux and FreeBSD are free? And that the Linux based Android got messed up after the big companies grabbed their piece of the action?
Among all the stupid chauvinistic stories I read, this one tops all. Crescent wrenches are made all over the world, and the USA was not the first to manufacture one. The one I have has a scale, and I use it. Don't know where it was made, but judging its price it was not made in the USA.
Also, I have several PCs. My Macbook certainly performs worse and has more problems than the ALDI nameless that is my main computer. My cheap east-german, polish, taiwanese or chinese tools are as rugged and relieble as the expensive stuff that comes from America. This has been a pattern ever since I carried my Apple II to the attic.
The point I am making is that most cheap products that I buy (in Europe) are as good or better than the more expensive brand products. YMMV, but don't come with all kinds of mystic explanations.
All things considered, what will be better for the world: bankruptcy of Volkswagen and considerable upheaval in the european or even world-wide economics? In a time where there are enough problems as it is?
Or finding a way in which damage TO ALL CONCERNED will be minimized?
There are not many liberal arts students who seriously embrace programming, but those who do, generally enter the field from the angle of AI. In my opinion they belong to the best. Luc Steels comes to mind, or Walter Daelemans.
If you would extend your informations to those small and unimportant areas of the world that do not belong to the USA, you would find the example of Gronngen, in Holland. From the sixties a very large gasdeposit was exploited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field. In the seventies and eighties small earthquakes occurred in that province, which was peculiar, because there are almost no earthquakes in Holland. But both frequency and strength kept increasing. http://www.nlog.nl/nl/reserves/reserves/reassessment-of-the-probability-of-higher-magnitude-earthquakes-in-the-groningen-gas-field.pdf
To cut a long story of greed and denial short: gas exploitation is now cut back and some damages will be paid.
But what really bugs me is that nobody seems to be aware of this plain and important example of correlation between eqrthquakes and gas/oil exploitation.
If you ask me, there will be no internet any more in 20 years, except as a curio or for very backward infrastructures. The transfer of information will have found new ways, that we cannot even imagine at this moment and the need for knowlegdge will have changed accordingly.
Assuming of course that there will be no ecological meltdown or AI singularity.
Heeh... two weeks ago we had almost the same situation in Leiden, the Netherlands, where a marketing bureau placed a camera in the train station... http://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/28-01-2015/bommelding-op-station-leiden-blijkt-misverstand-reclamebureau-liet-vuilniszak-met- (in dutch, I am afraid)
It seems that most people have forgotten that one of the goals of Pascal was the teaching of programming and algoritms. As far as I am concerned, it did a good job, although later I learnt C and preferred it as a tool. And now I am old and lazy and just use a combination of Bash and awk for quick and dirty stuff and PHP for more complicated things.
Are you serious? Just get a small smartphone and clip to a strap on your underarm when you enter the clean room. I do it under similar circumstances (not a clean room, quite the opposite)
I was and still am a pretty accomplished C prorammer, and can find my way in assembly. Then C++ came along and everybody seemed to jump on that bandwagon. I couldn't and many of my collegues either. When you have progressed to far along the procedural path, it seems to be impossible to wrap your head around the object oriented paradigma. That is why I also never got into Java.
If we fall back to the technological level of the middle ages, kickstarting a new 20th-century like civilization is impossible. To create such a civilization, you need energy. Almost all resources like coal and oil have depleted to the point that you need a very complex society to win them. But to exploit sun or wind energy on a sufficient scale, you also need the resources of a large technology pyramid.
Again, if you want to keep individuals to try and recreate our technology, you need a society with a certain level of sophistication so that you can afford people that do not directly work for food prodution.
Catch 22.
Finally, if you want to cut all possible corners in research and production, you need a very strong central governement that keeps the focus on those developments. That will not be possible without a fascistoid state.
Perhaps we should take care to avoid bringing our civilization down.
As some other people already remarked, on the face of it this looks like the venerable Unix approach of small tools in a script. My point is that the real world outside, that you are trying to capture in a programming language, can be very complicated. For some domains, e.g. logic or arithmetics, the language can be pretty complicated too - see APL, LISP or Prolog.
But in thirty years of programming (computational linguistiscs), I have found that Unix scripts, awk and plain C covered pretty much 90% of (my) programming needs. If and when necessary I tacked on a larger database system. Of course I tried the new (well, in the nineties they were new) OO systems, but I rapidly got lost in a jungle of libraries and methods and even more documentation. Compare that to the almost ascetic (and aesthetic) clarity of the Unix environment.
Yes, I feel that Unix still has a lot of mileage in it and intentionally or not, this item and the reactions on it, confirm me in this view
I agree 150%. Much as I like KDE and Kubuntu, my strong advice would be a complete feature freeze an concentrate on all the bugs. Every new distribution has dozens of applications unexpectedly misbehaving, many of them are not fixed after updates that themselves introduce other problems again...for gods sake first fix all the broken stuff. I more than once mailed this to the K-people, but they do not even answer.
Slashdot Mirror
Would Slasdot have commented if Bianca Hoogendijk had died this week? Or Hannelore Graser? They are respectively former dutch and german 'first ladies'. And I will not even start on Joachim Sauer (the current husband of Angela Merkel. But then most Americans will ask "Who is Angela Merkel".
As a nerd of long standing I like Slashdot. But I am often offended by the USA-centric attitude of the editors. Why not include an european or asian collaborator? I am available.
Paai
http://historiek.net/oorlog-ging-gruwelijk-door-na-1945/43768/#.VsWPailc000
In dutch, I am afraid, but google translate may give you enough pointers to start your own research. Or read "the 25th hour" by Virgil Gheorghiu. When Churchill coined the phrase "the iron curtain" it was exacty this what he meant. But probably you will prefer to ignore this side of history.
Paai
There is a school of thought - a very large school - that sees prewar Europa as a green pasture with ever blue skies and fluffy rabbits and ponies, foremost among them the poor, innocent Poles. Then the bad Germans came and started killing the poor, defenceless rabbits.
This image is not quite correct. The Poles tought to be on the winning side, and already had taken their share of the division of Tchechoslowakie - Churchill in his memoires says that the Poles behaved like hyenas. Nevertheless, they have been dining out on their role of victims ever since the war.
Facts.
Paai
Everybody who is in the slightest interested in WWII and the holocaust will know that the Polish were virulent antisemites. Perhaps even worse than the predominantly european-oriented germans. I cannot imagine that this initiative will make history forget this.
Paai
actually, the death count in the post-war Polish deathcamps for Germans came near to the percentages of Auschwitz. Bottom line: there is nothing that humans are not willing to inflict on other humans for the Good, preferably national, Cause. It is such a pity that history is not taught as an exact science.
Paai
Thinly veiled american imperialism. If the fundamentalist islam was not worse, I would applaud another 9/11. Don't drivel about 'innocent victims', the US has been doing the same and worse all over the world.
Paai
In the Netherlands we don't call that a 'Crescent' but a 'Bahco' (which is a swedish firm) or an' engelse sleutel' (english wrench). And I did not know that I, as a dutchmen on an international forum, was supposed to be familiar with american nomenclature.
The discussion was about quality and price of tools. I was and I am unhappy with the obvious assumption of the author that high retail price and 'made in the USA' equalled to quality. In my experience that is not true.
May I add that the best operating systems for PCs, Linux and FreeBSD are free? And that the Linux based Android got messed up after the big companies grabbed their piece of the action?
Paai
Among all the stupid chauvinistic stories I read, this one tops all. Crescent wrenches are made all over the world, and the USA was not the first to manufacture one. The one I have has a scale, and I use it. Don't know where it was made, but judging its price it was not made in the USA.
Also, I have several PCs. My Macbook certainly performs worse and has more problems than the ALDI nameless that is my main computer. My cheap east-german, polish, taiwanese or chinese tools are as rugged and relieble as the expensive stuff that comes from America. This has been a pattern ever since I carried my Apple II to the attic.
The point I am making is that most cheap products that I buy (in Europe) are as good or better than the more expensive brand products. YMMV, but don't come with all kinds of mystic explanations.
Paai
All things considered, what will be better for the world: bankruptcy of Volkswagen and considerable upheaval in the european or even world-wide economics? In a time where there are enough problems as it is?
Or finding a way in which damage TO ALL CONCERNED will be minimized?
Paai
There are not many liberal arts students who seriously embrace programming, but those who do, generally enter the field from the angle of AI. In my opinion they belong to the best. Luc Steels comes to mind, or Walter Daelemans.
Paai
If you would extend your informations to those small and unimportant areas of the world that do not belong to the USA, you would find the example of Gronngen, in Holland. From the sixties a very large gasdeposit was exploited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field. In the seventies and eighties small earthquakes occurred in that province, which was peculiar, because there are almost no earthquakes in Holland. But both frequency and strength kept increasing. http://www.nlog.nl/nl/reserves/reserves/reassessment-of-the-probability-of-higher-magnitude-earthquakes-in-the-groningen-gas-field.pdf
To cut a long story of greed and denial short: gas exploitation is now cut back and some damages will be paid.
But what really bugs me is that nobody seems to be aware of this plain and important example of correlation between eqrthquakes and gas/oil exploitation.
USA-only?
Paai
If you ask me, there will be no internet any more in 20 years, except as a curio or for very backward infrastructures. The transfer of information will have found new ways, that we cannot even imagine at this moment and the need for knowlegdge will have changed accordingly.
Assuming of course that there will be no ecological meltdown or AI singularity.
Paai
Heeh... two weeks ago we had almost the same situation in Leiden, the Netherlands, where a marketing bureau placed a camera in the train station... http://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/28-01-2015/bommelding-op-station-leiden-blijkt-misverstand-reclamebureau-liet-vuilniszak-met- (in dutch, I am afraid)
Copycat at work?
Paai
It seems that most people have forgotten that one of the goals of Pascal was the teaching of programming and algoritms. As far as I am concerned, it did a good job, although later I learnt C and preferred it as a tool. And now I am old and lazy and just use a combination of Bash and awk for quick and dirty stuff and PHP for more complicated things.
Paai
OFF-TOPIC...? Sad how one of Terry Pratchetts most beautiful characters is unknown on slashdot. But what can you expect on a Merkin site.
Paai
Ooook. Oook. Ooooook.Eeeek!
paai
Are you serious? Just get a small smartphone and clip to a strap on your underarm when you enter the clean room. I do it under similar circumstances (not a clean room, quite the opposite)
Paai
I was and still am a pretty accomplished C prorammer, and can find my way in assembly. Then C++ came along and everybody seemed to jump on that bandwagon. I couldn't and many of my collegues either. When you have progressed to far along the procedural path, it seems to be impossible to wrap your head around the object oriented paradigma. That is why I also never got into Java.
Paai
WTF is David Hasselhof? Should I know?
(short visit to Google)
Oh, some american actor.
I feel that this is just Ukrainian propaganda and has no place in Slashdot.
Paai
The phrase "hacking hands" suddenly acquires a lot more meaning...
Paai
If we fall back to the technological level of the middle ages, kickstarting a new 20th-century like civilization is impossible. To create such a civilization, you need energy. Almost all resources like coal and oil have depleted to the point that you need a very complex society to win them. But to exploit sun or wind energy on a sufficient scale, you also need the resources of a large technology pyramid.
Again, if you want to keep individuals to try and recreate our technology, you need a society with a certain level of sophistication so that you can afford people that do not directly work for food prodution.
Catch 22.
Finally, if you want to cut all possible corners in research and production, you need a very strong central governement that keeps the focus on those developments. That will not be possible without a fascistoid state.
Perhaps we should take care to avoid bringing our civilization down.
Paai
As some other people already remarked, on the face of it this looks like the venerable Unix approach of small tools in a script. My point is that the real world outside, that you are trying to capture in a programming language, can be very complicated. For some domains, e.g. logic or arithmetics, the language can be pretty complicated too - see APL, LISP or Prolog.
But in thirty years of programming (computational linguistiscs), I have found that Unix scripts, awk and plain C covered pretty much 90% of (my) programming needs. If and when necessary I tacked on a larger database system. Of course I tried the new (well, in the nineties they were new) OO systems, but I rapidly got lost in a jungle of libraries and methods and even more documentation. Compare that to the almost ascetic (and aesthetic) clarity of the Unix environment.
Yes, I feel that Unix still has a lot of mileage in it and intentionally or not, this item and the reactions on it, confirm me in this view
Paai
I agree 150%. Much as I like KDE and Kubuntu, my strong advice would be a complete feature freeze an concentrate on all the bugs. Every new distribution has dozens of applications unexpectedly misbehaving, many of them are not fixed after updates that themselves introduce other problems again...for gods sake first fix all the broken stuff. I more than once mailed this to the K-people, but they do not even answer.
Paai
Does nobody read discworld any more? Where ants act as bits in a magical computer?
Paai