I agree with your comments. When I started with the Lifeboat compiler "back in the day" I could visualize the assembly that would be generated with the C code being written. Reading from K&R, it's clear that constructs such as switch(), prefix/postfix increments and the like, the register modifer, etc. were all there to make it easier to generate straight-line assembly in a friendlier syntax (I seem to recall that it would, in fact, generate an assembly source listing if requested.). Even the #asm shows the intimacy between the two.
To your points, modern compilers "interpreting" C source into something that is much smaller/faster may get a Good Thing in the long run, but I miss the days when I could just code and know exactly what the compiler would produce. I also remember those times I had to write subroutines in assembler because the compiler refused to produce what I wanted. Sometimes the optimizer is wrong.
The power of C is - and always has been - that it is a shorthand for assembly. It compiles very small and runs very fast, making it ideal for embedded systems.
I highly recommend that you go to 419eater.com and read the stories - it's the best way to lose an afternoon, besides being highly entertaining, informative, and horrifying all at the same time. And, yes, the way these "baiters" operate is not unlike masked vigilantism.
Yet another Microsoft product that is meticulously planned, engineered, and executed such that no one will want to pay for it. Except Mr. Bill, that is.
MS: "Here's our version of an established service, but ours has more restrictions and costs more!"
Mr. Bill: "Sign me up!"
Everyone else: "Pound sand!"
It's more like dressing up like a repairman, going through the unlocked gate, the unlocked door, and raiding the unlocked refrigerator. He clearly took all precautions to not be detected and this passes the "walks like a duck" test. His past behavior and public admissions did not help his case. While I wish all the court documents were available, I've read the finding of fact and law and I agree with it. He dug himself a deep hole and now he can't climb out of it.
Every point you've made is valid, but, at least this is a step in the right direction. Of course, who would pay the DVD price for a download version with DRM, when the costs of doing so is so much higher (bandwidth costs, computing costs, time). When the market complains that they want the service/product but with some adjustments (lower price, multiple runs), then the business model should change. If not, it will die. Such is economics.
Brent Spiner (Data) made it well known that he was tired of the character and wanted to be killed off. The lore goes that he wanted to be killed off in Insurrection, but when the script was delivered to him Berman had written 'Sorry - kill you next time' on the cover. Its no surprise that he was killed off 'next time' in Nemesis.
I second that. I was laid off three times in 2001, and did not find another permanent position until 2003. After reading this paper it was clear to me that, being 45, I was dried up in IT and would not see another opportunity. My current job SUCKS DONKEY BALLS - I work for a bunch of 1d1075 that know nothing of process or how to put a program together. But, the company's paying (mostly) for my education where I'm going to get a business degree and shuffle off this mortal IT coil. As soon as I get the paper, I'm outta here faster than you can offshore my position. Wish me luck.
Fundamental belief that God created the universe does not preclude or invalidate the fact of evolution, or vice versa. The fossil record is irrefutable - species evolve from one state to another.
One is a statement of faith, the other is a statement of fact. Facts should be taught in the public schools. Faith should be taught in the home. The very idea that students should be confounded by faith-based ideas while trying to understand the complexities of the universe is a stunning concept. Parents desiring that their children be taught faith-based ideas along-side facts should put their children in private faith-based schools. I see this as just another cop-out by those folks who want the government to raise their children for them.
there will be enough interest to pull the show back into production, or at least a finale. The cliff hanger at the end of the first (and only) season was just cruel. Reminds me of that scene in Bedazzled (the original) where Satan tears the last page out of Agatha Christi novels.
Dang you Fox TV! Dang you to heck! Oh, wait, House is pretty good, and 24. Ok, just dang you a little bit...
Lately there have been several attempts by public figures to silence their critics who use blogs/etc. They've attempted to get identifying information from ISP's and web hosts, but in all cases (that I've heard) the courts have upheld the freedom of speech. That is, to (earnestly) criticize anonymously is akin to the anonymous pamphleteering that helped flame the American Revolution (and others, I'm sure). The practice could not be more American.
Surprise! Now it is a crime to speak up without putting your head in a noose. I predict this will not survive any test in the courts - but I also suspect that it will be used to counter-annoy (vis-a-vis RIAA). Just another example of these "public servants" exploiting their power for their own gain.
Simply put, the Apple market share is small, so there is less incentive for competitors to develop alternative products to Apple's own OS, media player, etc. Unlike Microsoft, Apple does not need to do anything to stymie or eliminate competition. Apple users are 'mostly' happy with what Apple themselves provide, so Apple putting the de facto software with the box is more of a convenience for the user than an attempt to pre-empt a competing product.
Re:Mythbusters Question - This Way and That
on
Ask The Mythbusters
·
· Score: 1
Truck is traveling at vector -60mph, and ball is travelling at +60mph + effect of +60mph wind on the ball, and the ball is spinning, etc. Given that the sum of all positive vectors less the negative vector is > 0, then the net velocity of the ball would be +, and would fall in an arc away from the truck. A very steep arc, but not straight down.
If these ducks awaken a large enough giant, maybe said giant will finally get the patent system changed. I mean, really, who here wouldn't reach for the 'rejected: prior art' stamp after the first reading?
It was just ~25 years ago that MCA went to the wall claiming that video cassettes would only be used to steal movies, and wanted fee assessed to every VCR and blank cassette sold as a proactive remedy. This went to the supreme court, who wisely (stangely enough) ruled that just because a technology can be used for illegal activities does not mean that it will be used for illegal activities. And told them to go away. Now we hear the rattle of that snake rearing its head again...
Funny, though, if they had won would they have the immense video market they have today?
A: That's a common stereotypical name of computer geeks.
This shocked me. In the deposition, he uses the term at least twice - indicating it is a common association of the term to non-SCO programmers. Being in geekdom for some thrity years now, I have never heard the term before. "Long hair" and "dirty fingernails", but nothing like "smell". "Long hair" just refers to the Berkley roots of everything from the 70's, when everyone had long hair that did the hacker stuff. "Dirty fingernails" meant that you got your hands dirty from doing hard work down on the iron (soldering, wire-wrapping, etc), rather than doing just "clean" programming from a user terminal. Terms of endearment, all. "Long-hair smelly's" sounds like an SCO-only term for those who do "real" programming for the love of it (or, dare say, for the Good of the art?)
The use of "smelly" tells me two things: 1) SCO staff has no clue as to what real development is all about, and 2) their opinion of hackers, and the Linux community at large, is very low.
Along with many others here, I was sympathetic to the plight of the SCO staff who are being flown into the ground by management greed. I sympathize no more.
Try this - your right to free speech ends at my right not to listen to it. The common adage is if you don't like what's on tv - turn it off. However, if I am going to what I think is a news website, for example, and instead get a hard-core pr0n site, then I've been forced to view content that I did not wish to view, and I paid for the bandwidth to view it. That wrongs me. Now, if say there were two rooms, one labeled 'right wing zealots' and the other 'left wing zealots', then I could choose which room I wanted to go into, or no room at all. Sans that choice, I am being forced to tolerate content/speech/images/whatever with neither prior notice or consent (which is closer to your Chinese argument). What I am speaking of is choice. If you want to view smut, go to where the smut is, but don't disguise it as something else to fool me into viewing it. One could also argue that if such tactics are necessary to get traffic, then maybe the content isn't exactly desired by all parties.
Now, given that when rules are layed out (such as please put your pr0n site on.xxx), then there are people that will ignore/abuse that rule and not follow them, rendering the rules mute. Given that some content, such as pr0n is so offensive to some, and given that the peddlers of such material aren't exacly pillars of society, then laws are required to force compliance. This is why we have liquor laws, and controlled substance laws, and traffic laws, or any other law for that matter.
Delegating (read forcing) pr0n or other 'specialized' content (yes, including political speech) into specific domains is no different than forcing history books into the history section of the library. So long as the content can be published and one can access it, then no censorship (or any fallacious 'slippery-slope' scenario to the contrary) exists.
The real problem here, I believe, is that with.xxx viewing pr0n becomes more deliberate and accountable (since.xxx domains can be readily detected) and as such some (most?) viewers of pr0n are afraid of being discovered/busted. So, the bottom line is, if you're going to view pr0n, then at least be accountable for viewing it. Hence, arguments against such a policy usually hide an alternate agenda.
...Please google 'censorship' before flaming...
It is not censorship to restrict where you can publish your smut, only if you are prohibited from publishing your smut. If laws are made that whacking material can only exist on the.xxx domain, then violating that law should result in a penalty - such as a fine or jail time.
Once the TLD is in place, then what we need is legislation that requires SOB websites to be in the.XXX domain. That should put an end to spoof sites. That is, if whitehouse.com is used to host a porn site, it is by definition illegal (since its not in the.XXX domain) and can be preemptively taken down, and the owners fined.
...the shows that you make available on TV for Free...
Television shows are not 'free' - they are to you and me in terms of real cost, but the producers of those shows sells advertising time which pays, in part, for the show. The better the show, the more viewers it attracts, and although the aggregate water pressure drops at every commercial break, the number of potential eyeballs that might stick around to view the ad is what drives the show into repeat seasons, ups available cash for better production values, etc.
In recent years, however, there's been a significant spike in the after-market for such shows. Used to be, they were doomed to be repeated on local UHF television stations or late-night affiliates. Now, there's video where you can buy the show on DVD for your very own! Now, if those shows are made available via the internet (agreeably at a lesser quality), then the incentive to purchase those after market products is reduced.
...isn't more viewers WHAT YOU WANTED?
Well, yes, but what they want is more counted viewers. It would be cool if they could claim that they had a 6% share on the 'live' broadcast, and a 30% of internet interest? If the extra eyeballs could be quantified, they could turn those into advertising dollars which would leave them not only with nothing to complain about, but given them reason to seed the content themselves!
It sucks, but the producers do have a right to protect their markets. The challenge, for everyone involved, is to find a happy middle-ground. The p2p interest is an un-tapped market which the MPAA would rather ignore. Would you pay $1 for a show downloaded off the internet? Is there some way to guarantee that the advertising remain inserted? How can you give the producers their candy, and the downloaders their fix, and have a win-win?
Slashdot Mirror
So many books - so many lame, lame books.
Al Franken wants controls because his facial scan identifies as "asshole."
I agree with your comments. When I started with the Lifeboat compiler "back in the day" I could visualize the assembly that would be generated with the C code being written. Reading from K&R, it's clear that constructs such as switch(), prefix/postfix increments and the like, the register modifer, etc. were all there to make it easier to generate straight-line assembly in a friendlier syntax (I seem to recall that it would, in fact, generate an assembly source listing if requested.). Even the #asm shows the intimacy between the two. To your points, modern compilers "interpreting" C source into something that is much smaller/faster may get a Good Thing in the long run, but I miss the days when I could just code and know exactly what the compiler would produce. I also remember those times I had to write subroutines in assembler because the compiler refused to produce what I wanted. Sometimes the optimizer is wrong.
The power of C is - and always has been - that it is a shorthand for assembly. It compiles very small and runs very fast, making it ideal for embedded systems.
I highly recommend that you go to 419eater.com and read the stories - it's the best way to lose an afternoon, besides being highly entertaining, informative, and horrifying all at the same time. And, yes, the way these "baiters" operate is not unlike masked vigilantism.
Yet another Microsoft product that is meticulously planned, engineered, and executed such that no one will want to pay for it. Except Mr. Bill, that is.
MS: "Here's our version of an established service, but ours has more restrictions and costs more!"
Mr. Bill: "Sign me up!"
Everyone else: "Pound sand!"
It's more like dressing up like a repairman, going through the unlocked gate, the unlocked door, and raiding the unlocked refrigerator. He clearly took all precautions to not be detected and this passes the "walks like a duck" test. His past behavior and public admissions did not help his case. While I wish all the court documents were available, I've read the finding of fact and law and I agree with it. He dug himself a deep hole and now he can't climb out of it.
Every point you've made is valid, but, at least this is a step in the right direction. Of course, who would pay the DVD price for a download version with DRM, when the costs of doing so is so much higher (bandwidth costs, computing costs, time). When the market complains that they want the service/product but with some adjustments (lower price, multiple runs), then the business model should change. If not, it will die. Such is economics.
Brent Spiner (Data) made it well known that he was tired of the character and wanted to be killed off. The lore goes that he wanted to be killed off in Insurrection, but when the script was delivered to him Berman had written 'Sorry - kill you next time' on the cover. Its no surprise that he was killed off 'next time' in Nemesis.
I second that. I was laid off three times in 2001, and did not find another permanent position until 2003. After reading this paper it was clear to me that, being 45, I was dried up in IT and would not see another opportunity. My current job SUCKS DONKEY BALLS - I work for a bunch of 1d1075 that know nothing of process or how to put a program together. But, the company's paying (mostly) for my education where I'm going to get a business degree and shuffle off this mortal IT coil. As soon as I get the paper, I'm outta here faster than you can offshore my position. Wish me luck.
One is a statement of faith, the other is a statement of fact. Facts should be taught in the public schools. Faith should be taught in the home. The very idea that students should be confounded by faith-based ideas while trying to understand the complexities of the universe is a stunning concept. Parents desiring that their children be taught faith-based ideas along-side facts should put their children in private faith-based schools. I see this as just another cop-out by those folks who want the government to raise their children for them.
Dang you Fox TV! Dang you to heck! Oh, wait, House is pretty good, and 24. Ok, just dang you a little bit...
Surprise! Now it is a crime to speak up without putting your head in a noose. I predict this will not survive any test in the courts - but I also suspect that it will be used to counter-annoy (vis-a-vis RIAA). Just another example of these "public servants" exploiting their power for their own gain.
You have my sympathies.
That's why you have a state income tax.
Simply put, the Apple market share is small, so there is less incentive for competitors to develop alternative products to Apple's own OS, media player, etc. Unlike Microsoft, Apple does not need to do anything to stymie or eliminate competition. Apple users are 'mostly' happy with what Apple themselves provide, so Apple putting the de facto software with the box is more of a convenience for the user than an attempt to pre-empt a competing product.
Truck is traveling at vector -60mph, and ball is travelling at +60mph + effect of +60mph wind on the ball, and the ball is spinning, etc. Given that the sum of all positive vectors less the negative vector is > 0, then the net velocity of the ball would be +, and would fall in an arc away from the truck. A very steep arc, but not straight down.
If these ducks awaken a large enough giant, maybe said giant will finally get the patent system changed. I mean, really, who here wouldn't reach for the 'rejected: prior art' stamp after the first reading?
It was just ~25 years ago that MCA went to the wall claiming that video cassettes would only be used to steal movies, and wanted fee assessed to every VCR and blank cassette sold as a proactive remedy. This went to the supreme court, who wisely (stangely enough) ruled that just because a technology can be used for illegal activities does not mean that it will be used for illegal activities. And told them to go away. Now we hear the rattle of that snake rearing its head again...
Funny, though, if they had won would they have the immense video market they have today?
This shocked me. In the deposition, he uses the term at least twice - indicating it is a common association of the term to non-SCO programmers. Being in geekdom for some thrity years now, I have never heard the term before. "Long hair" and "dirty fingernails", but nothing like "smell". "Long hair" just refers to the Berkley roots of everything from the 70's, when everyone had long hair that did the hacker stuff. "Dirty fingernails" meant that you got your hands dirty from doing hard work down on the iron (soldering, wire-wrapping, etc), rather than doing just "clean" programming from a user terminal. Terms of endearment, all. "Long-hair smelly's" sounds like an SCO-only term for those who do "real" programming for the love of it (or, dare say, for the Good of the art?)
The use of "smelly" tells me two things: 1) SCO staff has no clue as to what real development is all about, and 2) their opinion of hackers, and the Linux community at large, is very low.
Along with many others here, I was sympathetic to the plight of the SCO staff who are being flown into the ground by management greed. I sympathize no more.
Now, given that when rules are layed out (such as please put your pr0n site on .xxx), then there are people that will ignore/abuse that rule and not follow them, rendering the rules mute. Given that some content, such as pr0n is so offensive to some, and given that the peddlers of such material aren't exacly pillars of society, then laws are required to force compliance. This is why we have liquor laws, and controlled substance laws, and traffic laws, or any other law for that matter.
Delegating (read forcing) pr0n or other 'specialized' content (yes, including political speech) into specific domains is no different than forcing history books into the history section of the library. So long as the content can be published and one can access it, then no censorship (or any fallacious 'slippery-slope' scenario to the contrary) exists.
The real problem here, I believe, is that with .xxx viewing pr0n becomes more deliberate and accountable (since .xxx domains can be readily detected) and as such some (most?) viewers of pr0n are afraid of being discovered/busted. So, the bottom line is, if you're going to view pr0n, then at least be accountable for viewing it. Hence, arguments against such a policy usually hide an alternate agenda.
...Please google 'censorship' before flaming... It is not censorship to restrict where you can publish your smut, only if you are prohibited from publishing your smut. If laws are made that whacking material can only exist on the .xxx domain, then violating that law should result in a penalty - such as a fine or jail time.
Once the TLD is in place, then what we need is legislation that requires SOB websites to be in the .XXX domain. That should put an end to spoof sites. That is, if whitehouse.com is used to host a porn site, it is by definition illegal (since its not in the .XXX domain) and can be preemptively taken down, and the owners fined.
Television shows are not 'free' - they are to you and me in terms of real cost, but the producers of those shows sells advertising time which pays, in part, for the show. The better the show, the more viewers it attracts, and although the aggregate water pressure drops at every commercial break, the number of potential eyeballs that might stick around to view the ad is what drives the show into repeat seasons, ups available cash for better production values, etc.
In recent years, however, there's been a significant spike in the after-market for such shows. Used to be, they were doomed to be repeated on local UHF television stations or late-night affiliates. Now, there's video where you can buy the show on DVD for your very own! Now, if those shows are made available via the internet (agreeably at a lesser quality), then the incentive to purchase those after market products is reduced.
Well, yes, but what they want is more counted viewers. It would be cool if they could claim that they had a 6% share on the 'live' broadcast, and a 30% of internet interest? If the extra eyeballs could be quantified, they could turn those into advertising dollars which would leave them not only with nothing to complain about, but given them reason to seed the content themselves!
It sucks, but the producers do have a right to protect their markets. The challenge, for everyone involved, is to find a happy middle-ground. The p2p interest is an un-tapped market which the MPAA would rather ignore. Would you pay $1 for a show downloaded off the internet? Is there some way to guarantee that the advertising remain inserted? How can you give the producers their candy, and the downloaders their fix, and have a win-win?
Therein lies the challenge.