I'll take a text editer and CLI over an IDE anytime.
Ok, not anytime. The IDE search & jump facilities are extremely useful when you first sit down to work on a code base that you aren't familiar with. But for my own code, or for others' code that I've worked with long enough to understand reasonably well, I find IDEs a nuisance.
If your programming language lets you use "+" for more than one numeric type, you use operator overloading. Unless you think adding fp numbers should use a different syntax than adding integers, you're a fan of operator overloading.
An "Ask Slashdot" re the stupidest overloadings we've ever seen might be fun, but discussing whether the functionality is a good idea is absurd. Any discussion should center on when to use it, not whether to use it.
> The presidential seal is like a trademark; it cannot be used without approval. To allow use in unofficial printed/published matter (a la The Onion) dilutes its efficacy.
So, for-pay encyclopedias can't include it in an article?
> Go ahead, wack me with an "off topic" - but cold fusion is real. Money is rapidly going back into CF after many years of black-balling scientists from the community who would even mention CF. Go research caviture bubble cold fusion - its the cutting edge right now and may just sweep the world in a few years.
However, that phenomenon has nothing to do with the CNF buzz, which claimed that you could get power from fusion simply by running a palladium wire through a beaker of water.
> When completed in 1978, the National Solar Thermal Test Facility cost just over $21 million. The NSTTF is an array of 222 focusable mirrors, or heliostats, covering 8 acres (7 football fields), located on the grounds of Sandia National Laboratory at the edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
> The mirrors (facets) are focused onto a receiver or target mounted on a tower. The NSTTF tower is 200 feet tall, and its 8-foot-thick foundation is 50 feet below ground. The mirrors can direct up to 5 megawatts of solar radiation onto the receiver or other experimental objects. An uncooled object placed in the beam can be quickly raised to temperatures of over 4000 degrees F.
And if the Romans park a ship atop the tower during a seige, they'll be in a heap o' trouble.
> The anti-personnel aspects of the Archimedes Heatray were probably more important. Imagine being a rower and this intolerable heat builds up on your back. Or a steersman or bowman? Sighting in the glare?
Like a great big low-tech laser pointer to shine in the pilot's eyes?
> Perhaps the best thing to do would be for America's scientific elite to leave America to those who are either religious fanatics or have a strong dislike for academia.
Tempting, but I think I'll stay here and try to keep the world's largest nuclear arsenal from falling into the hands of ignorant savages ruled by theocrats.
"May cause you to turn green and grow a second head. May cause addiction in persons with neurotic fixations on sanitation. For external use only. Not for use by children under 40. Erotic applications may violate the Sex Toys Act of 1986. Batteries not included."
> I prefer NASA's terminology: Payload Specialist.
And I call myself "a non-participant in the pizza acquisition venture" rather than "a deadbeat", but it doesn't have much effect on peoples' perceptions.
> Whether or not you subscribe to the whole "dinosaurs became birds" theory, there is no question that dinosaurs != reptiles!
There's room for opinion on that. A strict cladist would say that even humans are reptiles, in the same way that we're apes, primates, mammals, vertebrates, chordates, etc.
> One massive problem with the theory of birds evolving from dinosaurs is the date for birds keeps going backward and very early feathered reptiles have been found. The solution seems obvious. Birds, Mammals and dinosaurs evolved at roughly the same time.
Dinosaurs were around for ~100,000,000 years, and there's no requirement that birds wait for them to all die.
Even if birds split off during the first million years of that period, it would still be correct to say that they evolved from dinosaurs.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you referring to this theory?
> By five weeks to eight weeks, when cytokine production reached "peak" levels, some rats curled up in a ball and slept in between tasks.
I do that at work from time to time as well.
I'll take a text editer and CLI over an IDE anytime.
Ok, not anytime. The IDE search & jump facilities are extremely useful when you first sit down to work on a code base that you aren't familiar with. But for my own code, or for others' code that I've worked with long enough to understand reasonably well, I find IDEs a nuisance.
If your programming language lets you use "+" for more than one numeric type, you use operator overloading. Unless you think adding fp numbers should use a different syntax than adding integers, you're a fan of operator overloading.
An "Ask Slashdot" re the stupidest overloadings we've ever seen might be fun, but discussing whether the functionality is a good idea is absurd. Any discussion should center on when to use it, not whether to use it.
> The seal is the property of the people of the United States of America. It's not copyrightable, it's not trademarked, [...]
S eal.jpg.
Regarding which, see the note at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USPresidential
Oh, and there's an image of the seal there as well, for those who want to commit an outrage by putting it on their web pages.
> The presidential seal is like a trademark; it cannot be used without approval. To allow use in unofficial printed/published matter (a la The Onion) dilutes its efficacy.
So, for-pay encyclopedias can't include it in an article?
> On PvP servers, female avatars are much more likely to be played by men.
Of course: most FBI agents are males.
> Are you a fucking moron?
Are you deficient in reading comprehension?
> Couldn't some people just simply mirror the stuff elsewhere and go on from there?
Answers.com has been ripping Wikipedia since forever. Google searches frequently turn up hits with identical text from both domains.
Here's an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Graves
http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-graves (scroll down a bit)
> Go ahead, wack me with an "off topic" - but cold fusion is real. Money is rapidly going back into CF after many years of black-balling scientists from the community who would even mention CF. Go research caviture bubble cold fusion - its the cutting edge right now and may just sweep the world in a few years.
However, that phenomenon has nothing to do with the CNF buzz, which claimed that you could get power from fusion simply by running a palladium wire through a beaker of water.
> When completed in 1978, the National Solar Thermal Test Facility cost just over $21 million. The NSTTF is an array of 222 focusable mirrors, or heliostats, covering 8 acres (7 football fields), located on the grounds of Sandia National Laboratory at the edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
> The mirrors (facets) are focused onto a receiver or target mounted on a tower. The NSTTF tower is 200 feet tall, and its 8-foot-thick foundation is 50 feet below ground. The mirrors can direct up to 5 megawatts of solar radiation onto the receiver or other experimental objects. An uncooled object placed in the beam can be quickly raised to temperatures of over 4000 degrees F.
And if the Romans park a ship atop the tower during a seige, they'll be in a heap o' trouble.
> The anti-personnel aspects of the Archimedes Heatray were probably more important. Imagine being a rower and this intolerable heat builds up on your back. Or a steersman or bowman? Sighting in the glare?
Like a great big low-tech laser pointer to shine in the pilot's eyes?
...if they had properly powered it with cold nuclear fission.
Would we get a Robson Crusoe?
> Perhaps the best thing to do would be for America's scientific elite to leave America to those who are either religious fanatics or have a strong dislike for academia.
Tempting, but I think I'll stay here and try to keep the world's largest nuclear arsenal from falling into the hands of ignorant savages ruled by theocrats.
> The Americans have "faith based" science. What could go wrong?
We may not produce the best science, but at least we produce the best musi- uh, the best televis- uh, the best automob- uh...
We're screwed, aren't we.
> the new plant absorbs nitrogen oxide and other substances from the air better than the original Cherry Sage.
But unfortunately releases them again when you smoke it.
Whoever owns it can do what they please with it (modulo any contractual constraints).
> Also, why call it a pencil? It doesn't write anything.
If you work in a biolab you could draw pictures in the bacterial cultures with it.
A light sabre for sanitation freaks.
> I prefer NASA's terminology: Payload Specialist.
And I call myself "a non-participant in the pizza acquisition venture" rather than "a deadbeat", but it doesn't have much effect on peoples' perceptions.
> Whether or not you subscribe to the whole "dinosaurs became birds" theory, there is no question that dinosaurs != reptiles!
There's room for opinion on that. A strict cladist would say that even humans are reptiles, in the same way that we're apes, primates, mammals, vertebrates, chordates, etc.
> I think the word "theory" is usually linked to something we think is "probably true". It's a working hypothesis
We use the word "theory" for several different things.
It can mean a guess or suspicion, as in "I don't know who stole my calculator, but I have a theory who did".
It can mean a formal mathematical system, such as "computational complexity theory".
It can mean a well accepted model that explains some class of observed phenomena, such as "neo-darwinian synthesis".
The term is also used in "conspiracy theory", which is hard to distinguish from "symptom of paranoia".
We also say "in theory, blah blah", where "theory" seems to be an appeal to some assumed principle that underlies the "blah blah" claim.
And the one that it's "usually linked to" in your mind isn't what it means in the sciences.
> One massive problem with the theory of birds evolving from dinosaurs is the date for birds keeps going backward and very early feathered reptiles have been found. The solution seems obvious. Birds, Mammals and dinosaurs evolved at roughly the same time.
Dinosaurs were around for ~100,000,000 years, and there's no requirement that birds wait for them to all die.
Even if birds split off during the first million years of that period, it would still be correct to say that they evolved from dinosaurs.