we're doing some rather unsettling things that I don't want to be associated with
And that's why you're not some sort of government agent doing those things. This attitude bothers me for the same reason the "No blood for oil" types bother me. You don't get how important that sort of thing is. No blood for oil? Then what will you shed blood for? Losing oil supplies will so vastly change your way of life that you would argue it impossible if someone accurately showed you. If you think shady goings-on are an endeavor unique to America, you need to wake up. Every country (EVERY country - if you're not an American, believe that your country does it, too) does that. Even if only to stay in power and not out of a desire to provide for the people, every government strives to provide a certain lifestyle or quality of life to the people, and this is the price. If you don't like it, stop doing anything that requires oil (drive a car, use electricity, buy processed foods, etc). Don't get upset at the government for doing what it has to to provide you with something you'd complain about losing (probably here).
You're right, I do feel pretty embarrassed. Except for the fact that I said it's a document to aid in safety of navigation and it has all kinds of rules for safety of navigation, I'd positively die of embarrassment.
The legal issues are what make counter-piracy hard (there are other factors, of course). That's setting yourself up for failure, though, if you have to work through the rules of engagement for three different countries. The Navy works very hard to make sure its actions are in line with US and UN law, hence the JAG presence. It sucks from a warfighter's perspective, but the fact is that legal conduct goes a long way toward enabling what the Navy does. It's pretty easier to ignore the idiots that like to chime in on subjects like this when I can clearly connect what the US military does and the laws governing the actions, whether they're US laws or international. Having been in operations that face such sticky legal issues, it's easy to see why we care; ignoring just a few laws makes it very easy to slip into indiscriminate killings or outright aggression. Laws hamper operations, but are important, perhaps because they hamper operations.
US does nothing, people complain that we can't do anything with our super-powerful navy. US does something, people complain that we're sticking our noses into blah blah. It's getting hard to give a shit about generally uninformed opinion in the face of piracy.
Somali MO: Attack unarmed vessel, capture crew, demand ransom, kill crew if no money transferred, steal ship, sell cargo. US MO: Approach armed hijackers, negotiate first, offer to pay ransom, honor ransom negotiation if accepted, escort rescued ship's crew, even if not American.
Oh yes, I see the hypocrisy in using different terms for what amount to basically behaving the same way.
As for your last point, maybe you should do some research into the operating cost of a single destroyer vs. what percent of shipping is affected by piracy. While you're at it, check out the legal ramification of attacking pirates. My guess is since you haven't yet, you won't do it now.
You clearly know neither the history nor the content of the UN Conventions of Law on the Sea. It's impressive, though, that you manage to spin a document to aid safety of navigation into a UN attempt to check unbridled American imperialism. You tip your hand, though; you won't get many people hating the US with that kind of sudden intensity.
Soul Calibur was one of the games that made the Dreamcast worth while and is one of the greatest games of all time, certainly best among fighting games. I can't believe there isn't any version of Soul Calibur on any list.
I'm awfully sick of hearing people talk about smart technicians this way. I guess playing basketball and having lots of sex is the meaningful way to live your life. Incidentally, have you ever seen the beginning of the movie Idiocracy?
Of course it's overly complicated, it's made from Legos. Engineering students build a tiny bridge out of pasta; that's too small for what it does. Point is it shows understanding of concepts and ingenuity in using materials and conditions which are less than ideal. I'm very impressed.
For the most part it isn't up to the developers. The funding comes from a company that expects a product on a certain timeline. Valve has the advantage of being financially self-sufficient (in the beginning Gabe Newell was paying all of his programmers out of his own pocket - he was one of the original Microsoft Millionaires), so they don't have to answer to anyone but their customers. Valve is quite the anomaly among game developers.
Ok, then I agree with you mostly. A really neat weapon system would be one that's less than lethal and would allow for more room in RoE, but it's still the hardest part of initiating combat.
Dealing with hostile small boats is a nightmare. In order to shoot one while not in a hot war, you have to establish hostile intent, which is pretty hard to do. Compounding this further is that our enemies know what our rules of engagement are, and constantly ride the line of them. When you transit the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian small boats constantly charge your ship and turn away at the last minute. If you ask them to stop, they say they're "conducting training in international waters," which is true per the UN Convention on Law of the Sea. Chinese small boats do the same thing. When transiting through the Strait of Taiwan, PRC fishing vessels will frequently drive in front of your ship and stop, sometimes a hundred yards or less in front of you. Guess whose fault it is if you hit them?
You contradict yourself in your own post by recognizing that the RoE is the biggest problem, but still saying that it's a failure of procedure when a small boat gets too close. Which is it?
Nope. First of all, chaff is awesome, especially because it's a low-cost counter to a high-cost weapon, which makes it an effective counter even before the enemy chooses to employ his weapon system (since he might decide it's not economically worth it).
Chaff works by tricking either an incoming missile or an enemy's fire control radar into thinking the radar return generated by the chaff cloud is actually the ship. Between the ship and the threat is literally the LAST place you want to chaff to stay, since a kinetic trigger missile will fly through the chaff and still hit the ship, and a proximally triggered missile will explode in the chaff, close enough to the ship to damage it.
Also, some missiles search for target in far-to-near order, meaning you actually fire the chaff on the side of the ship AWAY from the missile in order to confuse it. Good thing I'm here to explain things.
That's interesting. I've only thought of these algorithms in a conceptual sense, and when I've coded them I've coded them to sort objects. I've never thought of any clever speedups or hardware tricks like that.
Your answer should be "Smoothsort, how much data per item to sort, how big is each item," since two objects each containing 500GB of data would be way easier to sort than 20,0000 objects each containing 5MB of data.
If a CS graduate does not understand the difference between passing by value and passing by reference, there are serious problem with the way that CS curriculum is designed. My college's CS program is not one of the best ones in the country (USA), but we started out with C++ to understand what programs are, how the interact with the OS, things like that. In that same intro course, we touched on OO (in C++) and assembly, but mainly as different ways to code rather than different ways to think of a program. Follow on classes got into the theory of OO and what assembly code (which is basically shorthand binary) does in the processor itself. Whether they're better for practical programming or not, all of these things should be covered in undergrad CS.
As for crappy code, any profession runs into this dilemma. The modern tools we use (chainsaws, prewritten code, power tools, etc) are all very effective and efficient because of the history of professionals who have refined them. Would you think any less of your car mechanic if he didn't know how his tools worked, but could still use them to fix your car? Does that matter to you, the one who contracts his service?
Well, you're also injecting an argument about compiled vs. interpreted code, too, which has its own pros and cons. I would agree that you can write the same program to run faster in assembly, but the time lost far outweighs the time gained in execution. Remember that nowadays programmer time is expensive and computer time is cheap.
Of course abstraction and code reuse came before OO, but OO makes it much clear and easier to learn and understand pre-existing code, in my opinion. I can code in Java, C++, and Scheme, and I can easily say that code writtn in Java or OO C++ is much easier to figure out (with or without documentation) than Scheme.
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It's a round number to a computer.
we're doing some rather unsettling things that I don't want to be associated with
And that's why you're not some sort of government agent doing those things. This attitude bothers me for the same reason the "No blood for oil" types bother me. You don't get how important that sort of thing is. No blood for oil? Then what will you shed blood for? Losing oil supplies will so vastly change your way of life that you would argue it impossible if someone accurately showed you. If you think shady goings-on are an endeavor unique to America, you need to wake up. Every country (EVERY country - if you're not an American, believe that your country does it, too) does that. Even if only to stay in power and not out of a desire to provide for the people, every government strives to provide a certain lifestyle or quality of life to the people, and this is the price. If you don't like it, stop doing anything that requires oil (drive a car, use electricity, buy processed foods, etc). Don't get upset at the government for doing what it has to to provide you with something you'd complain about losing (probably here).
You're right, I do feel pretty embarrassed. Except for the fact that I said it's a document to aid in safety of navigation and it has all kinds of rules for safety of navigation, I'd positively die of embarrassment.
The legal issues are what make counter-piracy hard (there are other factors, of course). That's setting yourself up for failure, though, if you have to work through the rules of engagement for three different countries. The Navy works very hard to make sure its actions are in line with US and UN law, hence the JAG presence. It sucks from a warfighter's perspective, but the fact is that legal conduct goes a long way toward enabling what the Navy does. It's pretty easier to ignore the idiots that like to chime in on subjects like this when I can clearly connect what the US military does and the laws governing the actions, whether they're US laws or international. Having been in operations that face such sticky legal issues, it's easy to see why we care; ignoring just a few laws makes it very easy to slip into indiscriminate killings or outright aggression. Laws hamper operations, but are important, perhaps because they hamper operations.
US does nothing, people complain that we can't do anything with our super-powerful navy. US does something, people complain that we're sticking our noses into blah blah. It's getting hard to give a shit about generally uninformed opinion in the face of piracy.
Somali MO: Attack unarmed vessel, capture crew, demand ransom, kill crew if no money transferred, steal ship, sell cargo.
US MO: Approach armed hijackers, negotiate first, offer to pay ransom, honor ransom negotiation if accepted, escort rescued ship's crew, even if not American.
Oh yes, I see the hypocrisy in using different terms for what amount to basically behaving the same way.
As for your last point, maybe you should do some research into the operating cost of a single destroyer vs. what percent of shipping is affected by piracy. While you're at it, check out the legal ramification of attacking pirates. My guess is since you haven't yet, you won't do it now.
You clearly know neither the history nor the content of the UN Conventions of Law on the Sea. It's impressive, though, that you manage to spin a document to aid safety of navigation into a UN attempt to check unbridled American imperialism. You tip your hand, though; you won't get many people hating the US with that kind of sudden intensity.
Soul Calibur was one of the games that made the Dreamcast worth while and is one of the greatest games of all time, certainly best among fighting games. I can't believe there isn't any version of Soul Calibur on any list.
And they fire the whole bullet! That's 64% more bullet per bullet!
LEGONET begins building at a geometric rate and becomes self-aware at 0214 EST April 22 2011.
I'm awfully sick of hearing people talk about smart technicians this way. I guess playing basketball and having lots of sex is the meaningful way to live your life. Incidentally, have you ever seen the beginning of the movie Idiocracy?
Of course it's overly complicated, it's made from Legos. Engineering students build a tiny bridge out of pasta; that's too small for what it does. Point is it shows understanding of concepts and ingenuity in using materials and conditions which are less than ideal. I'm very impressed.
Ah yes, the Bob Loblaw Law Blog. You, sir, are a mouthful.
Yup. Just ask the Alderac Entertainment Group.
For the most part it isn't up to the developers. The funding comes from a company that expects a product on a certain timeline. Valve has the advantage of being financially self-sufficient (in the beginning Gabe Newell was paying all of his programmers out of his own pocket - he was one of the original Microsoft Millionaires), so they don't have to answer to anyone but their customers. Valve is quite the anomaly among game developers.
Ok, then I agree with you mostly. A really neat weapon system would be one that's less than lethal and would allow for more room in RoE, but it's still the hardest part of initiating combat.
You should probably go back and read my post to see why all the things you said are wrong.
Dealing with hostile small boats is a nightmare. In order to shoot one while not in a hot war, you have to establish hostile intent, which is pretty hard to do. Compounding this further is that our enemies know what our rules of engagement are, and constantly ride the line of them. When you transit the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian small boats constantly charge your ship and turn away at the last minute. If you ask them to stop, they say they're "conducting training in international waters," which is true per the UN Convention on Law of the Sea. Chinese small boats do the same thing. When transiting through the Strait of Taiwan, PRC fishing vessels will frequently drive in front of your ship and stop, sometimes a hundred yards or less in front of you. Guess whose fault it is if you hit them?
You contradict yourself in your own post by recognizing that the RoE is the biggest problem, but still saying that it's a failure of procedure when a small boat gets too close. Which is it?
Nope. First of all, chaff is awesome, especially because it's a low-cost counter to a high-cost weapon, which makes it an effective counter even before the enemy chooses to employ his weapon system (since he might decide it's not economically worth it).
Chaff works by tricking either an incoming missile or an enemy's fire control radar into thinking the radar return generated by the chaff cloud is actually the ship. Between the ship and the threat is literally the LAST place you want to chaff to stay, since a kinetic trigger missile will fly through the chaff and still hit the ship, and a proximally triggered missile will explode in the chaff, close enough to the ship to damage it.
Also, some missiles search for target in far-to-near order, meaning you actually fire the chaff on the side of the ship AWAY from the missile in order to confuse it. Good thing I'm here to explain things.
A few moments? That's it?
Damn, I just spent my last mod point, too. +1 in spirit, at least.
That's interesting. I've only thought of these algorithms in a conceptual sense, and when I've coded them I've coded them to sort objects. I've never thought of any clever speedups or hardware tricks like that.
Your answer should be "Smoothsort, how much data per item to sort, how big is each item," since two objects each containing 500GB of data would be way easier to sort than 20,0000 objects each containing 5MB of data.
Maybe that's why you can't find your job :)
If a CS graduate does not understand the difference between passing by value and passing by reference, there are serious problem with the way that CS curriculum is designed. My college's CS program is not one of the best ones in the country (USA), but we started out with C++ to understand what programs are, how the interact with the OS, things like that. In that same intro course, we touched on OO (in C++) and assembly, but mainly as different ways to code rather than different ways to think of a program. Follow on classes got into the theory of OO and what assembly code (which is basically shorthand binary) does in the processor itself. Whether they're better for practical programming or not, all of these things should be covered in undergrad CS.
As for crappy code, any profession runs into this dilemma. The modern tools we use (chainsaws, prewritten code, power tools, etc) are all very effective and efficient because of the history of professionals who have refined them. Would you think any less of your car mechanic if he didn't know how his tools worked, but could still use them to fix your car? Does that matter to you, the one who contracts his service?
Well, you're also injecting an argument about compiled vs. interpreted code, too, which has its own pros and cons. I would agree that you can write the same program to run faster in assembly, but the time lost far outweighs the time gained in execution. Remember that nowadays programmer time is expensive and computer time is cheap.
Of course abstraction and code reuse came before OO, but OO makes it much clear and easier to learn and understand pre-existing code, in my opinion. I can code in Java, C++, and Scheme, and I can easily say that code writtn in Java or OO C++ is much easier to figure out (with or without documentation) than Scheme.