In your hypothetical "safe" language (C#, for example), I can't count how many times I've seen system calls wrapped in a try/catch to hide the exception, then carry on pretending the call worked just fine. Guess what? SAME DAMNED PROBLEM!
Yeah, which is why you *don't catch exceptions you can't recover from*. It's a basic design tenant, and it's *easier* to do than fucking it up by incorrectly handling the error. Basically, in a language like C, you have two options:
1) Check for the error and handle it, possibly incorrectly, leading to the problem you describe. 2) Ignore the error, and your program could misbehave.
An exception-based language gives you these options:
1) Catch the error and handle it, possibly incorrectly, leading to the problem you describe. 2) Ignore the error, and the program violently terminates.
Gee, which one do you think is better from a security standpoint?
Nope, sorry buddy, but *any* language that uses exceptions as the model for error indication will be superior, as far as security goes, to a language like C. The real problem with the GP is that that also includes C++ (which, at least in a decent compiler, throws an exception if new fails to allocate a chunk of memory).
Benchmarks may not help as well. Gut feel is sometimes the best we get.
That has to be the most absurd thing I've read in a long time. Either you're not a software developer, or you're an incredibly bad one. Either way, it's clear your opinions regarding X can probably be safely ignored.
Well, you go run some benchmarks and prove that there's a big win to be had by moving to a non-IPC based model of communication. A significant rewrite like that requires some serious numbers to back it up, and so far, all you've provided is anecdotes and gutfeel, and my friend, that ain't enough.
While I agree that wireless is about as easy as it can possibly be in Ubuntu (assuming drivers work-out-the-box), my experience has been that power management does continue to suck. Ignoring for the moment that my T61 running gutsy periodically hangs waking up from suspend, or that hibernate has *never* worked, even basic things like battery life suffer under Linux, and unfortunately that's the fault of the applications more than it is Ubuntu. Just fire up powertop on a laptop running Linux... the out-of-the-box battery life is usually dismal, and it's all because of applications that contain things like polling loops, which prevent the CPU from dropping down into a low-power state for long periods of time. The only solution is to use powertop to shutdown/disable applications and services that behave poorly, but that's obviously a) a hack, b) incredibly tedious, and c) well past what a "normal" user can be expected to do.
Which is why, if anything, you need to pick a school with a coop or internship program, if it's available. These programs make it possible for students to get real-world experience that they can actually put on their resumes, which provides an invaluable leg up over other new grads.
Yeah, like I said... a market made up of all three of you.:)
Re:Skill and not language used?
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Nah. "Hack it 'til it compiles" still works in a strict language. It just takes a little longer.
The reality is, bad programmers will inevitably generate bad code. Skilled programmers, however, can always write quality code, regardless of the language, however they will also be able to utilize available language features (such as DBC, etc) to improve their work. At least, IME.
Yeah, the right solution was an internal, corporate IM server of some description with convo logging turned on (we use IRC with a logging bot). Using an external IM service for corporate communications is, frankly, completely idiotic.
On desktops, yes. For a laptop, assuming the manufacturer isn't retarded, installing widescreen displays in a 4x3 case, the narrower form-factor of the overall laptop means big wins on portability.
Speaking for myself, I have a 1440x900 15.4" T61 (there's no way my eyes could handle the tiny features on a 1920x1200) and I never want to go back to a 4x3 laptop. Sure, I may get less overall visible footprint, but portability, for me, is key in a laptop, and the shorter display means the whole thing is far more stable, not to mention usable in tight spaces, such as aircraft.
I'd set up Myth TV in an instant, but as far as I know it will not record any of the encrypted shows (i.e. sci-fi channel) on cable.
Use a cheap cable tuner from your provider and route it's output into a capture card on the Myth side. Then drive the menagerie using an IR blaster (mine are from www.irblaster.info).
I have this set up in my system (using a pair of cheap Motorola boxes I picked up off of ebay) and in the year and a bit my system has been in service, I can count the number of missed tunes on one hand (and I suspect those are just a bug in my channel changing script that I never seem to get around to fixing, since it happens once in a blue moon).
Heck, if you get really lucky, the tuner box may have a serial or firewire port you can use to trigger the channel changes, in case you're leary of IR blasters (though, like I say, I think those fears are massively overblown).
Perhaps it's that Tivo "just works"? If I wasn't gainfully employeed and had tens of hours a week to burn, I'd get a MythTV box.
Huh? I mean, granted, it took me, let's see... a day or two to get Myth running, then a bit of tweaking here and there for the few weeks that followed in order to get things running smoothly. Since then (about a year ago), it's basically been an appliance.
Something tells me you've either never actually installed and run a Myth system before, or it was so long ago that your complaints simply no longer apply.
Well, until Hauppauge is ready, legal access to premium HD content via CableCard. Well, that and just generally easier install and a more polished UI.
OTOH, HD Component capture is weeks away, now, and if you can live with Myth's quirks (and I know I can), feature-for-feature, I think Myth compares quite well (at least AFAICT), while providing capability that a Tivo owner could only dream of.
Though, I do wish Myth had some kind of suggestion feature... once you're weened off of traditional scheduled, live television, it's difficult to discover new programming to watch, especially when Myth is auto-skipping commercials for you. As of late, the only new shows I watch are ones that I happen to catch a glimpse of when the autoskip fails.:)
Yes, that sounds like the kind of thing a *teenager trying to install games* might do.
Look, it's about raising barriers. Sure, if you're a determined hacker, you can probably break the system. But we're talking about a friggin' library, here, not the NSA.
He said noise blocking, not noise canceling. Think earplugs combined with headphones. Far superior to noise canceling phones, don't require any power whatsoever, and work fairly well versus speech (as well as any earplugs do, anyway).
Personally, I favour Shure, mainly because their soft plugs are better than virtually anything else on the market.
Yup [startribune.com] and it's really hurting everyone from large pizza chains [news-press.com] right down to the local Asian restaurant my wife and I frequent at least three times a month.
Just thank god you don't live in, say, Haiti or Egypt, where there've been food riots due to skyrocketing prices (like, 40% increases since January type skyrocketing).
The use of food as a fuel source is, without a doubt, the most idiotic, selfish, short-sighted thing the developed world has ever dreamed up...
The part you highlighted, actually, which has been an element of scholarly debate regarding the second amendment (something *you* apparently don't understand). Quoting Michael Dorf (link) on the topic of methods of interpretation of the second amendment following a recent ruling in the case of "United States v. Emerson":
"The first model holds that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to the people collectively rather than to individuals, because the right's only purpose is to enable states to maintain a militia; it is not for individuals' benefit. The second model is similar to the first. It holds that the right to keep and bear arms exists only for individuals actively serving in the militia, and then only pursuant to such regulations as may be prescribed. Under either of the first two models, a private citizen has no right to possess a firearm for personal use. But the court rejected these two models in favor of a third, the individual rights model. Under this third model, the Second Amendment protects a right of individuals to own and possess firearms, much as the First Amendment protects a right of individuals to engage in free speech."
So, "the people" could be all individuals, or it could be "the people", as part of a "well-regulated militia", the latter emphasizing the purpose clause of the amendment. Your own bias results in your choice of interpretation. But it isn't the only one, believe it or not (of course, most pro-gun folks would prefer not). And, interestingly, that same article points out that "in endorsing the third, individual rights model, the Fifth Circuit broke ranks with the other federal appeals courts that have addressed the issue, all of which have adopted some variant of the first two models."
Of course, my bet is you'll go the way of our favorite arch-conservative, ArcherB, and just decry this stuff as the imaginative ramblings of ivory-tower scholars and judges who like to "legislate from the bench". That's your choice... and I would expect nothing less. But, maybe someone with a more open mind will come along, read this, and realize there's more to this debate than the simple black-and-white interpretation the pro-gun lobby likes to favour.
Speaking of silly argument, yours appears entirely incoherent. Please, try well composed english, next time, instead of what appears to be random words strung together. I mean, what the hell does
'the restriction of a right is not equivalent to "not believing gun ownership is a right"'
Don't try to call me ignorant and then follow up with a ridiculous argument like yours.
It isn't mine. It's the argument of legal scholars that has existed for decades (probably centuries) and stood the test of time. But, yes, I'm sure you're correct, and have out-though generations of scholars. Congrats! You should write a paper, I'm sure many would love to read it!
Slashdot Mirror
In your hypothetical "safe" language (C#, for example), I can't count how many times I've seen system calls wrapped in a try/catch to hide the exception, then carry on pretending the call worked just fine. Guess what? SAME DAMNED PROBLEM!
Yeah, which is why you *don't catch exceptions you can't recover from*. It's a basic design tenant, and it's *easier* to do than fucking it up by incorrectly handling the error. Basically, in a language like C, you have two options:
1) Check for the error and handle it, possibly incorrectly, leading to the problem you describe.
2) Ignore the error, and your program could misbehave.
An exception-based language gives you these options:
1) Catch the error and handle it, possibly incorrectly, leading to the problem you describe.
2) Ignore the error, and the program violently terminates.
Gee, which one do you think is better from a security standpoint?
Nope, sorry buddy, but *any* language that uses exceptions as the model for error indication will be superior, as far as security goes, to a language like C. The real problem with the GP is that that also includes C++ (which, at least in a decent compiler, throws an exception if new fails to allocate a chunk of memory).
Benchmarks may not help as well. Gut feel is sometimes the best we get.
That has to be the most absurd thing I've read in a long time. Either you're not a software developer, or you're an incredibly bad one. Either way, it's clear your opinions regarding X can probably be safely ignored.
Well, you go run some benchmarks and prove that there's a big win to be had by moving to a non-IPC based model of communication. A significant rewrite like that requires some serious numbers to back it up, and so far, all you've provided is anecdotes and gutfeel, and my friend, that ain't enough.
While I agree that wireless is about as easy as it can possibly be in Ubuntu (assuming drivers work-out-the-box), my experience has been that power management does continue to suck. Ignoring for the moment that my T61 running gutsy periodically hangs waking up from suspend, or that hibernate has *never* worked, even basic things like battery life suffer under Linux, and unfortunately that's the fault of the applications more than it is Ubuntu. Just fire up powertop on a laptop running Linux... the out-of-the-box battery life is usually dismal, and it's all because of applications that contain things like polling loops, which prevent the CPU from dropping down into a low-power state for long periods of time. The only solution is to use powertop to shutdown/disable applications and services that behave poorly, but that's obviously a) a hack, b) incredibly tedious, and c) well past what a "normal" user can be expected to do.
Which is why, if anything, you need to pick a school with a coop or internship program, if it's available. These programs make it possible for students to get real-world experience that they can actually put on their resumes, which provides an invaluable leg up over other new grads.
... and you're saying those are reasons *not* to vote Democratic?
It's simply a specialty market now.
:)
Yeah, like I said... a market made up of all three of you.
Nah. "Hack it 'til it compiles" still works in a strict language. It just takes a little longer.
The reality is, bad programmers will inevitably generate bad code. Skilled programmers, however, can always write quality code, regardless of the language, however they will also be able to utilize available language features (such as DBC, etc) to improve their work. At least, IME.
Yeah, the right solution was an internal, corporate IM server of some description with convo logging turned on (we use IRC with a logging bot). Using an external IM service for corporate communications is, frankly, completely idiotic.
On desktops, yes. For a laptop, assuming the manufacturer isn't retarded, installing widescreen displays in a 4x3 case, the narrower form-factor of the overall laptop means big wins on portability.
Speaking for myself, I have a 1440x900 15.4" T61 (there's no way my eyes could handle the tiny features on a 1920x1200) and I never want to go back to a 4x3 laptop. Sure, I may get less overall visible footprint, but portability, for me, is key in a laptop, and the shorter display means the whole thing is far more stable, not to mention usable in tight spaces, such as aircraft.
I'd set up Myth TV in an instant, but as far as I know it will not record any of the encrypted shows (i.e. sci-fi channel) on cable.
Use a cheap cable tuner from your provider and route it's output into a capture card on the Myth side. Then drive the menagerie using an IR blaster (mine are from www.irblaster.info).
I have this set up in my system (using a pair of cheap Motorola boxes I picked up off of ebay) and in the year and a bit my system has been in service, I can count the number of missed tunes on one hand (and I suspect those are just a bug in my channel changing script that I never seem to get around to fixing, since it happens once in a blue moon).
Heck, if you get really lucky, the tuner box may have a serial or firewire port you can use to trigger the channel changes, in case you're leary of IR blasters (though, like I say, I think those fears are massively overblown).
Perhaps it's that Tivo "just works"? If I wasn't gainfully employeed and had tens of hours a week to burn, I'd get a MythTV box.
Huh? I mean, granted, it took me, let's see... a day or two to get Myth running, then a bit of tweaking here and there for the few weeks that followed in order to get things running smoothly. Since then (about a year ago), it's basically been an appliance.
Something tells me you've either never actually installed and run a Myth system before, or it was so long ago that your complaints simply no longer apply.
Well, until Hauppauge is ready, legal access to premium HD content via CableCard. Well, that and just generally easier install and a more polished UI.
:)
OTOH, HD Component capture is weeks away, now, and if you can live with Myth's quirks (and I know I can), feature-for-feature, I think Myth compares quite well (at least AFAICT), while providing capability that a Tivo owner could only dream of.
Though, I do wish Myth had some kind of suggestion feature... once you're weened off of traditional scheduled, live television, it's difficult to discover new programming to watch, especially when Myth is auto-skipping commercials for you. As of late, the only new shows I watch are ones that I happen to catch a glimpse of when the autoskip fails.
Blah blah blah... move the fuck away if you don't like it. Fucking separatist wanker... thank god you people are a dying breed.
So, all three of you, then? :)
Absolutely. Those countdowns aren't there for the pedestrians. They're there for the drivers (and my wife and I love 'em, too).
Yes, that sounds like the kind of thing a *teenager trying to install games* might do.
Look, it's about raising barriers. Sure, if you're a determined hacker, you can probably break the system. But we're talking about a friggin' library, here, not the NSA.
If the engineers, who had requested the ability to create a new product from the ground up
You still wouldn't be done.
He said noise blocking, not noise canceling. Think earplugs combined with headphones. Far superior to noise canceling phones, don't require any power whatsoever, and work fairly well versus speech (as well as any earplugs do, anyway).
Personally, I favour Shure, mainly because their soft plugs are better than virtually anything else on the market.
Yup [startribune.com] and it's really hurting everyone from large pizza chains [news-press.com] right down to the local Asian restaurant my wife and I frequent at least three times a month.
Just thank god you don't live in, say, Haiti or Egypt, where there've been food riots due to skyrocketing prices (like, 40% increases since January type skyrocketing).
The use of food as a fuel source is, without a doubt, the most idiotic, selfish, short-sighted thing the developed world has ever dreamed up...
Have you written that paper, yet?
The part you highlighted, actually, which has been an element of scholarly debate regarding the second amendment (something *you* apparently don't understand). Quoting Michael Dorf (link) on the topic of methods of interpretation of the second amendment following a recent ruling in the case of "United States v. Emerson":
"The first model holds that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to the people collectively rather than to individuals, because the right's only purpose is to enable states to maintain a militia; it is not for individuals' benefit. The second model is similar to the first. It holds that the right to keep and bear arms exists only for individuals actively serving in the militia, and then only pursuant to such regulations as may be prescribed. Under either of the first two models, a private citizen has no right to possess a firearm for personal use. But the court rejected these two models in favor of a third, the individual rights model. Under this third model, the Second Amendment protects a right of individuals to own and possess firearms, much as the First Amendment protects a right of individuals to engage in free speech."
So, "the people" could be all individuals, or it could be "the people", as part of a "well-regulated militia", the latter emphasizing the purpose clause of the amendment. Your own bias results in your choice of interpretation. But it isn't the only one, believe it or not (of course, most pro-gun folks would prefer not). And, interestingly, that same article points out that "in endorsing the third, individual rights model, the Fifth Circuit broke ranks with the other federal appeals courts that have addressed the issue, all of which have adopted some variant of the first two models."
Of course, my bet is you'll go the way of our favorite arch-conservative, ArcherB, and just decry this stuff as the imaginative ramblings of ivory-tower scholars and judges who like to "legislate from the bench". That's your choice... and I would expect nothing less. But, maybe someone with a more open mind will come along, read this, and realize there's more to this debate than the simple black-and-white interpretation the pro-gun lobby likes to favour.
It seems pretty cut and dry to me.
Better get writing, then! Sounds like you have a successful career in law or academia ahead of you!
Speaking of silly argument, yours appears entirely incoherent. Please, try well composed english, next time, instead of what appears to be random words strung together. I mean, what the hell does
'the restriction of a right is not equivalent to "not believing gun ownership is a right"'
even mean??
Don't try to call me ignorant and then follow up with a ridiculous argument like yours.
It isn't mine. It's the argument of legal scholars that has existed for decades (probably centuries) and stood the test of time. But, yes, I'm sure you're correct, and have out-though generations of scholars. Congrats! You should write a paper, I'm sure many would love to read it!