This is one of the main reasons I think patents are, by and large, bogus. There is a marked tendency for multiple people to "invent" something at essentially the same time.
And that's hardly a surprise, since inventions depend critically on the mass of technology current in society. I conjecture that "little guys" do most of the work, and "inventors" merely skim the cream off the top.
> "There's no silver bullet" -Fred Brooks, a long time ago.
Ah, yes -- the mantra of people whose favorite language is known to promote sloppy programming practices or otherwise correlates with buggy code.
There's no silver bullet, in the sense that switching languages won't make all your problems go away, but that's hardly the same as saying that choice of language won't make a difference.
> If software was tested until there were absolutely zero defects in it you A) be waiting a long time to get it and B) you'd probably faint dead away when you saw the price tag.
That's certainly true today, but must it be true forever? I suspect we'll soon reach the point where the public says "Enough!" to crappy software, and then the eggheads with their code generators and correctness provers will crowd out us ordinary geeks with our bug-laden code.
The NIST commissioned a study (sorry, 1.4Mb.pdf) that analyzed the cost of bugs^w "inadequate software testing infrastructure" in a couple of industries and then estimated how the cost scaled up to the entire USA. Result: $60 billion per year.
If you don't want to download the report, there's a brief summary in RISKS Digest 22.11, on comp.risks. If you do download the report, the final numbers are on p.174
> Would you prefer to work at a company who spewed money at anyone for no reason?
That's hardly what I suggested, as even the most casual reader must realize.
> Be serious: the company that pays you only the rate that they must to retain youre services is a company that plans to survive.
Which is why he should turn down the counteroffer: to send a message that "the rate they must pay me to retain my services" is "what I'm worth". They lowballed him (in more than one sense of the word), so let them suffer.
> The nature of capitalism is that, on the average, most people are paid less than they are worth to the company. The difference between what they are paid and what they are worth is the company's profit.
And the smartest managers pay the employees nothing at all.
ps - You have a funny notion of where profit comes from.
Face it: his boss just admitted that he or she has been paying him less than he's worth to the company. Is that the kind of culture where he should want to work?
> > land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger
> Seems to me these are parallel constructs:
That would require another "or". The only grammatical question is whether the the "when" clause modifies all the preceding, or just "in the militia", and the comma makes it all but certain that it is intended to modify all the preceding.
> It never ceases to amaze me that the same people who scream the loudest when the government does something they don't like tend to be the very same folks who support giving the government more and more power.
The government is grabbing more and more power right now, and I don't support it.
> Precedent means everything. Otherwise you have anarchy. If a judge wants to overturn precedent, he better have a damn good reason.
You broach the heart of the matter. Most of us hold an ideal notion of what Justice means. I suspect that courts, because of their very nature, are ultimately more concerned with procedure and predictability than with idealized abstractions.
This doesn't please me, but to some extent it's understandable. And sometimes it makes court rulings more comprehensible to the layman.
> > except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger
> as much as it scares me to give additional powers to someone like GWB I believe terrorist attacks and potential attacks constitute a public danger as good as anything you could think up. so it appears to be constitutional to my eyes.
Sounds to me like the "when" clause qualifies "in the land or naval forces, or in the militia". I.e., the requirement for a grand jury indictment holds even in the armed forces, except "when in actual service in time of war or public danger".
> eally just a front for MS to push a political agenda around? i've never heard of ADTI (although i do know who Alexis DeTocqueville is) until now, and they don't seem to be a legitimate research organization.
No, they're a "think tank" that will do a hatchet job on anything any right wing or pro-business group is willing to pay them for.
(Not to imply that similar services aren't available to left wing / anti-business groups, albeit from other service providers.)
> Anyway - that's how Yoda should have fought. He should have been slow, graceful and easily dispatched his enemies using only the force.
Yeah, but how many action figures would he sell that way?
> Lastly, the reason Yoda and Boba Fett were awesome characters in the original trilogy was because they were mysterious - unknown pasts, unknown barely hinted-at abilities under the surface. Lucas destroyed their mystique by making them full fleshed-out characters in AOTC.
Kind of like his inspiring "explanation" of The Force in E1, eh?
> ''George told me, 'You don't understand,''' says Coleman. '''The fans WANT this. They've been dying for this. I can't tell you how many letters I get. They want to see Yoda throw it down.'''
What the fan letter actually said:
Dear Mr. Lucas. Episode I made me want to
throw up. Try something different or get out of the business.
BTW, it came out on The News Hour tonight that his arrest wasn't primarily triggered by Zubaydah's implication. Rather, he raised suspicions when he showed up at the US Consulate in Pakistan asking for a replacement for a lost passport. (They originally suspected that he might be an imposter trying to get a fake passport.) An alert consulate employee alerted the regional security contact and the investigation started then. There were actually agents watching him on the plane back to the USA.
Even with that much discussion on The News Hour I still hadn't heard about the Zurich meeting until you posted your links. The media is doing a horrible job on this story.
> Where in the law does holding citizenship bar you from being treated as an enemy combatant?
Where does the US Constitution say "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury unless the state accuses him of being an enemy combatant"?
What if the state accuses you of being an enemy combatant and blackholes you, too? That's OK, right? You can trust the government to do the right thing on this?
> Precedent was established in 1942 during WW II. Democratic president, even.
And the government is infallible, right?
And what does the political gender of the president at that time have to do with it? "Democrats have set aside the constitution in the past, so Republicans can do it now", kind of thing?
(Not to imply that I think a hypothetical Gore administration would be doing anything different right now.)
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the main reasons I think patents are, by and large, bogus. There is a marked tendency for multiple people to "invent" something at essentially the same time.
And that's hardly a surprise, since inventions depend critically on the mass of technology current in society. I conjecture that "little guys" do most of the work, and "inventors" merely skim the cream off the top.
> This is what makes this find truly amazing.
What makes it amazing is that it wasn't hax0red several thousand years ago.
> "There's no silver bullet" -Fred Brooks, a long time ago.
Ah, yes -- the mantra of people whose favorite language is known to promote sloppy programming practices or otherwise correlates with buggy code.
There's no silver bullet, in the sense that switching languages won't make all your problems go away, but that's hardly the same as saying that choice of language won't make a difference.
> If software was tested until there were absolutely zero defects in it you A) be waiting a long time to get it and B) you'd probably faint dead away when you saw the price tag.
That's certainly true today, but must it be true forever? I suspect we'll soon reach the point where the public says "Enough!" to crappy software, and then the eggheads with their code generators and correctness provers will crowd out us ordinary geeks with our bug-laden code.
The NIST commissioned a study (sorry, 1.4Mb
If you don't want to download the report, there's a brief summary in RISKS Digest 22.11, on comp.risks. If you do download the report, the final numbers are on p.174
> What do you want to bet that the payout will be in the form of a $40 rebate on your next MS purchase?
Or $40 worth of free Web browsers...
When you change the size of the array later, everything stays Cooper City.> GNAT [gnat.com], an open source Ada-95 compiler, support those checks.
The language also supports bug-resistant programming, e.g. -
> Evidence: Loud bloop! sound coming from the ocean.
> Conclusion: Monster squid.
Null Hypothesis: Whale fart.
> Would you prefer to work at a company who spewed money at anyone for no reason?
That's hardly what I suggested, as even the most casual reader must realize.
> Be serious: the company that pays you only the rate that they must to retain youre services is a company that plans to survive.
Which is why he should turn down the counteroffer: to send a message that "the rate they must pay me to retain my services" is "what I'm worth". They lowballed him (in more than one sense of the word), so let them suffer.
> The nature of capitalism is that, on the average, most people are paid less than they are worth to the company. The difference between what they are paid and what they are worth is the company's profit.
And the smartest managers pay the employees nothing at all.
ps - You have a funny notion of where profit comes from.
> Don't be so naive.
Face it: his boss just admitted that he or she has been paying him less than he's worth to the company. Is that the kind of culture where he should want to work?
> > land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger
> Seems to me these are parallel constructs:
That would require another "or". The only grammatical question is whether the the "when" clause modifies all the preceding, or just "in the militia", and the comma makes it all but certain that it is intended to modify all the preceding.
> It never ceases to amaze me that the same people who scream the loudest when the government does something they don't like tend to be the very same folks who support giving the government more and more power.
The government is grabbing more and more power right now, and I don't support it.
Who cares... you haven't been able to get a decent price for a Slashdot account since the karma cap went on.
> Precedent means everything. Otherwise you have anarchy. If a judge wants to overturn precedent, he better have a damn good reason.
You broach the heart of the matter. Most of us hold an ideal notion of what Justice means. I suspect that courts, because of their very nature, are ultimately more concerned with procedure and predictability than with idealized abstractions.
This doesn't please me, but to some extent it's understandable. And sometimes it makes court rulings more comprehensible to the layman.
> But they weren't citizens.
One of them supposedly was.
> > except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger
> as much as it scares me to give additional powers to someone like GWB I believe terrorist attacks and potential attacks constitute a public danger as good as anything you could think up. so it appears to be constitutional to my eyes.
Sounds to me like the "when" clause qualifies "in the land or naval forces, or in the militia". I.e., the requirement for a grand jury indictment holds even in the armed forces, except "when in actual service in time of war or public danger".
> eally just a front for MS to push a political agenda around? i've never heard of ADTI (although i do know who Alexis DeTocqueville is) until now, and they don't seem to be a legitimate research organization.
No, they're a "think tank" that will do a hatchet job on anything any right wing or pro-business group is willing to pay them for.
(Not to imply that similar services aren't available to left wing / anti-business groups, albeit from other service providers.)
> Anyway - that's how Yoda should have fought. He should have been slow, graceful and easily dispatched his enemies using only the force.
Yeah, but how many action figures would he sell that way?
> Lastly, the reason Yoda and Boba Fett were awesome characters in the original trilogy was because they were mysterious - unknown pasts, unknown barely hinted-at abilities under the surface. Lucas destroyed their mystique by making them full fleshed-out characters in AOTC.
Kind of like his inspiring "explanation" of The Force in E1, eh?
> Yoda vs. Miss Piggy.
In Sumo wrestlers' garb.
(Fantasize about that as you drift off to sleep tonight!)
> ''George told me, 'You don't understand,''' says Coleman. '''The fans WANT this. They've been dying for this. I can't tell you how many letters I get. They want to see Yoda throw it down.'''
What the fan letter actually said:
> Some articles with more information:
Thanks.
BTW, it came out on The News Hour tonight that his arrest wasn't primarily triggered by Zubaydah's implication. Rather, he raised suspicions when he showed up at the US Consulate in Pakistan asking for a replacement for a lost passport. (They originally suspected that he might be an imposter trying to get a fake passport.) An alert consulate employee alerted the regional security contact and the investigation started then. There were actually agents watching him on the plane back to the USA.
Even with that much discussion on The News Hour I still hadn't heard about the Zurich meeting until you posted your links. The media is doing a horrible job on this story.
> No, it wasn't.
I was there, d00d.
> Where in the law does holding citizenship bar you from being treated as an enemy combatant?
Where does the US Constitution say "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury unless the state accuses him of being an enemy combatant"?
What if the state accuses you of being an enemy combatant and blackholes you, too? That's OK, right? You can trust the government to do the right thing on this?
> Precedent was established in 1942 during WW II. Democratic president, even.
And the government is infallible, right?
And what does the political gender of the president at that time have to do with it? "Democrats have set aside the constitution in the past, so Republicans can do it now", kind of thing?
(Not to imply that I think a hypothetical Gore administration would be doing anything different right now.)
> We are talking about people who want to come into this country and kill as many people as they can.
You left out the subtle but oh-so-critical "are accused of".