> Everyone thought Iraq had WMD. Clinton said it, Gore said it, Blix said it, Chirac said it, Blair said it. Stating otherwise is completely revisionist history.
Funny, *I* stated otherwise before the invasion started. And I came to that conclusion by following the news carefully. It was in-your-face obvious that Bush was just saying whatever he thought would get people on the pro-war bandwagon.
> You see, North Korea has no oil, and therefore no way to pay for its "liberation".
Heh. Remember back $200,000,000,000 ago, when the Administration was telling Congress that Iraq would pay for most of its liberation and reconstruction out of oil exports? Bet you haven't heard that one in a while.
> If you really think Iraq was invaded for "weapons of mass destruction" or "oil" you are brain dead.
Well, I don't think it was for WMD; I think that was just a deceptive excuse that the Warcriminal in Chief thought he could get away with.
As for oil... yes, that was a major reason. The '91 war left Iraq isolated and restricted on selling its oil output, with no resolution in sight. The Bush Administration found that situation unsatisfactory, and used the first possible excuse to do something about it.
> Iraq was simply a front in 'war on terror' or the christian/secularist vs radical islamic war.
Yeah, right. The only Islamicist terrorist organization in Iraq was thriving under our protection in the northern no-fly zone.
> The war was brought to Bagdad so it wouldn't be fought in Boise.
Funny, people used to justify fighting in Vietnam so we wouldn't have to fight commies in California.
> Or maybe we need to elect presidents who can see into the future since that is the only way anyone would have known how Iraq would turn out and that NK would do this.
People who run propaganda through a critical filter when they hear it knew darn well that Iraq didn't have any WMD, and NK's progress on building nukes was well known to everyone.
North Korea: Dictator: Check Oppressed people: Check No legitimate elections: Check WMDs: Check Threatening to the West: Check
Send in the troops! What's that? We're going to use diplomacy instead? We're going to try to avoid tens of thousands of deaths and injured? Wow, good thinking. Too bad about that other country...
> What's even more frightening is that they're not willing to talk about it.
What's really frightening is that we have an Administration that couldn't invade Iraq fast enough, all the while pretending that North Korea would just go away if we ignored it hard enough.
> [...]as the memory management/system programming facilities in Ada are very different from that in C/C++. For example you don't have crazy things like function pointers and a lot of the generally unsafe features that C/C++ has to make system programming easier.
Actually it does; I wrote an application that uses an array of function pointers so that the logic calls the appropriate function based on the index. (IIRC, the index was an enumerated type.)
However, I suspect that it's still safer than in C/C++, because of the strong type checking on pointer usage.
> Is it even possible to write a device driver in Ada?
Here's the first thing Google turned up. (For those who don't have access to the ACM portal, the short answer is "yes".)
Also, as someone else has already noted, the need for embedded systems was one of the key design considerations for the competition that produced Ada.
> > You can specify layout of data down to the byte-order and bit-width,
> Replace "can" with "must", because what some view as a priviledge, others will find an obligation.
Except that it's not an obligation in Ada. It's an option available for when you need it. I almost never use it.
> > Ada didn't catch on much more are down to an early lack of good compilers
> Which was a direct consequence of language overcomplexity.
Yes, Ada overchallenged the compiler technology of the time. That problem has long since been surmounted: you can now get the GPL'd source code for a compliant Ada compiler (GNAT), and you can get commercial support for it if you wish (Ada Core Technologies).
> Writing a complete, minimally adequate C compiler is 6-month's work for a talented undergrad. Writing a complete Ada compiler...?
Given that the compilers already exist and are freely available, that's hardly an issue when choosing a language for an application. I happen to prefer the language that lets me write minimally buggy, highly maintainable code quickly, even if it did take someone more work to create the compiler.
> When Ada was released it's documentation was something like 10 times as much as C++ had. C++ is larger Ada's NOW, and Ada hasn't changed. (Partially this is because C++ originally had poor documentation, and partially it's because the C++ specs repeatedly needed to be expanded.
Ironically (in the popular sense of the word), one of the reasons often cited as a reason to use C++ over Ada now ("Ada doesn't have standard class libraries") is the same reason often cited for not using Ada when it first came out ("there's way too much stuff in this language").
> To make the point clearer, the normal use would be something like:
type Array_Bounds is Integer range 1..5; A : Array(Array_Bounds) of Integer; begin for I in A'range loop -- do stuff end loop;
Usually with a big gap between the declarations and the loop, or even with them in a different package.
I like this stuff because it: a) expresses constraints on the state of the program, and b) makes it easier to concentrate on solving the problem at hand rather than worrying over the details of pre-declared abstractions. After I put a bit of thought into the design of my data structures, I end up programming at a "higher level" than I do in most other languages I've used.
Re: You're right about the problem...
on
Death of the Album?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> How did Britney Spears become the youngest female artist to debut her first album at #1? Because they had been playing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" constantly for six months, but there was no way to purchase it.
> that the people tirelessly campaigning for the renewal of Battlestar Galactica have finally won, but "religious issues"? Is that really necessary in science fiction?
Presumably people in the future will still live in societies and cultures.
Why wouldn't religion be any less legitimate grist for the mill than their government, economy, mating habits, or starship designs?
> When they will be able to classify the 2,000,000(estimate number of known species) species?? And who will be the poor soul that have to carry the weight of the task(An intern maybe??)
It would save a lot of trouble if we just used the boarding sequence numbers from Noah's passenger manifest.
>..based on something from Star Trek. This is the very kind of thing I think of when they pull up their tricorder to some alien race, and poof, a strand of their DNA is up on one of those pretty LCD monitors behind them.
But that's a few hundred years in the future. Right now the Federation still uses the older Anal Probe (tm) technology, to the great mortification of species all around the galaxy.
Actually, Ada [sic] is for big, complicated software systems that you want to be able to maintain.
Of course, maintainability is a key component of security, and Ada does offer built-in resistance to buffer overflows, but I don't think security is the primary reason for choosing Ada [sic].
> AA:SF is cool. Can someone help me with the later missions. I've toppled the statue, and am holding my own against the insurgents, and I've seen the "Mission Accomplished" splash screen... but I can't seem to find the WMD anywhere? Is there a secret button I need to push somewhere?
You can always tell the newbies, 'cause they wander off looking for WMD instead of OBL.
Slashdot Mirror
> Everyone thought Iraq had WMD. Clinton said it, Gore said it, Blix said it, Chirac said it, Blair said it. Stating otherwise is completely revisionist history.
Funny, *I* stated otherwise before the invasion started. And I came to that conclusion by following the news carefully. It was in-your-face obvious that Bush was just saying whatever he thought would get people on the pro-war bandwagon.
> Funny no one ever stood up and said we screwed up in Viet Nam.
Oddly enough, when the Iraq/Vietnam comparison comes up on Usenet you get people who argue that we "really" won in Vietnam.
> You see, North Korea has no oil, and therefore no way to pay for its "liberation".
Heh. Remember back $200,000,000,000 ago, when the Administration was telling Congress that Iraq would pay for most of its liberation and reconstruction out of oil exports? Bet you haven't heard that one in a while.
> If you really think Iraq was invaded for "weapons of mass destruction" or "oil" you are brain dead.
Well, I don't think it was for WMD; I think that was just a deceptive excuse that the Warcriminal in Chief thought he could get away with.
As for oil... yes, that was a major reason. The '91 war left Iraq isolated and restricted on selling its oil output, with no resolution in sight. The Bush Administration found that situation unsatisfactory, and used the first possible excuse to do something about it.
> Iraq was simply a front in 'war on terror' or the christian/secularist vs radical islamic war.
Yeah, right. The only Islamicist terrorist organization in Iraq was thriving under our protection in the northern no-fly zone.
> The war was brought to Bagdad so it wouldn't be fought in Boise.
Funny, people used to justify fighting in Vietnam so we wouldn't have to fight commies in California.
> Wrong, whats really frightening is that a religous extremist nutjob is in control over an agressive country which owns tons of nuclear weapons
What?!?!?!?
> (the only country who ever used a nuclear bomb against another country).
Oh... I thought you were talking about Iran.
> Your complaints about C are uninformed
And you are a good illustration of the fact that the most vehement complaints about Ada come from the people who know the least about it.
> Unlike Ada or Eiffel, which have never in their entire history been a reasonable solution to anything
Hope you're just trolling, 'cause otherwise you're making one heck of a fool of yourself.
> Or maybe we need to elect presidents who can see into the future since that is the only way anyone would have known how Iraq would turn out and that NK would do this.
People who run propaganda through a critical filter when they hear it knew darn well that Iraq didn't have any WMD, and NK's progress on building nukes was well known to everyone.
Lesse...
North Korea:
Dictator: Check
Oppressed people: Check
No legitimate elections: Check
WMDs: Check
Threatening to the West: Check
Send in the troops! What's that? We're going to use diplomacy instead? We're going to try to avoid tens of thousands of deaths and injured? Wow, good thinking. Too bad about that other country...
You neglected the all-important:
Has major portion of world's oil supply: nope.
> What's even more frightening is that they're not willing to talk about it.
What's really frightening is that we have an Administration that couldn't invade Iraq fast enough, all the while pretending that North Korea would just go away if we ignored it hard enough.
I guess we invaded the wrong country... maybe we should elect presidents with a better grasp of geography. Or reality.
> [...]as the memory management/system programming facilities in Ada are very different from that in C/C++. For example you don't have crazy things like function pointers and a lot of the generally unsafe features that C/C++ has to make system programming easier.
Actually it does; I wrote an application that uses an array of function pointers so that the logic calls the appropriate function based on the index. (IIRC, the index was an enumerated type.)
However, I suspect that it's still safer than in C/C++, because of the strong type checking on pointer usage.
> Is it even possible to write a device driver in Ada?
Here's the first thing Google turned up. (For those who don't have access to the ACM portal, the short answer is "yes".)
Also, as someone else has already noted, the need for embedded systems was one of the key design considerations for the competition that produced Ada.
> > You can specify layout of data down to the byte-order and bit-width,
> Replace "can" with "must", because what some view as a priviledge, others will find an obligation.
Except that it's not an obligation in Ada. It's an option available for when you need it. I almost never use it.
> > Ada didn't catch on much more are down to an early lack of good compilers
> Which was a direct consequence of language overcomplexity.
Yes, Ada overchallenged the compiler technology of the time. That problem has long since been surmounted: you can now get the GPL'd source code for a compliant Ada compiler (GNAT), and you can get commercial support for it if you wish (Ada Core Technologies).
> Writing a complete, minimally adequate C compiler is 6-month's work for a talented undergrad. Writing a complete Ada compiler...?
Given that the compilers already exist and are freely available, that's hardly an issue when choosing a language for an application. I happen to prefer the language that lets me write minimally buggy, highly maintainable code quickly, even if it did take someone more work to create the compiler.
> When Ada was released it's documentation was something like 10 times as much as C++ had. C++ is larger Ada's NOW, and Ada hasn't changed. (Partially this is because C++ originally had poor documentation, and partially it's because the C++ specs repeatedly needed to be expanded.
Ironically (in the popular sense of the word), one of the reasons often cited as a reason to use C++ over Ada now ("Ada doesn't have standard class libraries") is the same reason often cited for not using Ada when it first came out ("there's way too much stuff in this language").
Usually with a big gap between the declarations and the loop, or even with them in a different package.> To make the point clearer, the normal use would be something like:
I like this stuff because it:
a) expresses constraints on the state of the program, and
b) makes it easier to concentrate on solving the problem at hand rather than worrying over the details of pre-declared abstractions. After I put a bit of thought into the design of my data structures, I end up programming at a "higher level" than I do in most other languages I've used.
> How did Britney Spears become the youngest female artist to debut her first album at #1? Because they had been playing "Hit Me Baby One More Time" constantly for six months, but there was no way to purchase it.
Also, she has big tits.
> that the people tirelessly campaigning for the renewal of Battlestar Galactica have finally won, but "religious issues"? Is that really necessary in science fiction?
Presumably people in the future will still live in societies and cultures.
Why wouldn't religion be any less legitimate grist for the mill than their government, economy, mating habits, or starship designs?
> When they will be able to classify the 2,000,000(estimate number of known species) species?? And who will be the poor soul that have to carry the weight of the task(An intern maybe??)
It would save a lot of trouble if we just used the boarding sequence numbers from Noah's passenger manifest.
>
But that's a few hundred years in the future. Right now the Federation still uses the older Anal Probe (tm) technology, to the great mortification of species all around the galaxy.
Apparently they only offer a 'certificate' rather than a university degree, but the Guildhall at SMU has been running for two and a half years now.
There may be earlier programs; this is just one that I happen to know of.
> ADA is good for secure stuff
Actually, Ada [sic] is for big, complicated software systems that you want to be able to maintain.
Of course, maintainability is a key component of security, and Ada does offer built-in resistance to buffer overflows, but I don't think security is the primary reason for choosing Ada [sic].
> C++ is good for GUI
That claim isn't so much wrong as... baffling.
> The itching wasn't so bad, but the burning drove me nuts.
Sounds like Hera shared more than her clitus.
> Each one is something like this:
> 620ad934fc97bebb65f77bc883211351
> That makes me wonder - just what does each one represent?
It's either a compressed and encrypted representation of everything on your hard drive, or else a fortune cookie in 4un94r14n 1337.
Fnordicated User Dispatch
> Plug your game into this equation:
f=ck
> AA:SF is cool. Can someone help me with the later missions. I've toppled the statue, and am holding my own against the insurgents, and I've seen the "Mission Accomplished" splash screen... but I can't seem to find the WMD anywhere? Is there a secret button I need to push somewhere?
You can always tell the newbies, 'cause they wander off looking for WMD instead of OBL.