If you need comments to understand your own code, then your code is sloppy and you should fix that problem first. Writting sloppy code is like having bad handwritting. Fix your handwritting. Comments get out of date and are a topic all their own. Someone who writes sloppy code will probably write sloppy worthless comments as well.
You should also code first because you know what a function is supposed to do. When it does exactly what it's supposed to do then comment it. Otherwise your comments will be more along the lines of wishful thinking and lead to more confusion.
You should understand the language well enough that you can keep in your head everything the code is doing and if not, understand the language well enough to be able to read the code to see what it's doing. Comments are not going to help you debug a function. You need to be able to read the code itself to be an effective debugger. Only once it is debugged can you confidently place in comments that say what the function does. Otherwise, it's just wishful thinking.
The most commenting I do before writing a function is a rough outline of the steps the function needs to go through. Only after the function is done and does exactly what it's supposed to do, do I comment it.
I've gone back to code (thousands of lines) I wrote in BASIC 10 years ago and can understand exactly what's going on despite there being no comments. Same with stuff I've written in C/C++. Comments are not essentional if you can read code like a book. Which, a professional programmer should be able to do.
www.wolf5k.com has an obfuscated version of Wolf3D written in Javascript. I went through and deobfuscated the code, figured out exactly what it does and then commented it. I then took the deobfuscated version and translated it to C++. I did the same with the Gavare ioccc ray tracer although the results havn't been posted on-line yet.
If you want visitors to not block your ads you have to come up with a way to cripple the site if the ads are not displayed. Unfortunatly ad blocks are client side and can't always be detected by the server.
Ads indirectly cover costs (large sites get paid because they can claim X amount of people see the ads per month, not per click or per sale) and images are a very big bandwidth hog. So if a visitor doesn't want to look at ads then Yahoo saves some money by not showing images either. And as a possible bonus the web-site looks so terrible that the user stops blocking their ads just so the images load.
I havn't needed to implement it on my site yet but checking whether or not Javascript is enabled on the client side is quite trivial.
Once the server knows if Javascript is disabled on the client side the possibilities are pretty endless. Most ads (like AdSense) rely on Javscript so knowing javascript is enabled is important.
People use the fact that we are functional creatures all the time. People like to think they have free will and can make chaotic choices but the fact is every choice is a product of inputs. Social Engineering is figuring out what inputs produce what outputs and then engaging peoples "free will" to get them to make the choices the SE wanted them to make.
That's where Gorgias' argument about whether or not Helen was to blame for the Trojan war falls apart. He couldn't fatham the possibility that Helen made a choice in her own mind because it wasn't a situational vacuum. Therefore the situation must be to blame in some way. He doesn't even consider the possibility that Helen actually wanted to go with Paris because she wanted to and for no other reason.
People act like if you convince somebody of something it diminishes their ability to make a choice of their own mind because you provided input.
This lack of free will comes in handy at parties where nobody is drinking the punch but everyone wants vodka. The obvious solution is to put the vodka in the punch and then everyone is happy. Despite obviously manipulating the situation people did make the choice of their own mind to drink the punch.
Determinism isn't about *what* choices you make, it's about *why* you make them.
Re:Free will an illusion? Lies, I tell you!
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Some thoughts on Free Will
---------------- "Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favoring deterministic structural forces over the ability of individual people to act"
The good old "free will v. predestination" problem. I never understood why rules conflict with free will. Does the fact that gravity exists deprive me of the ability to make choices? Consider any important point in your life. Now consider how much of it you had control over. Yet, at that point in your life, faced with the laws (circumstances out of your control), you made a choice.
Just because you don't like the fact that a drunk driver could kill you tomorrow, doesn't mean it couldn't happen. You, quite simply, are not in control of your life. When you are on the road, your life is not in your own hands alone. Your life is in the hands of everyone around you. The lives of those around you are in your hands. When you apply for a job it's ultimately up to those hiring you to make the decision. Not you.
I remember one evening I was looking to cross an intersection from one shopping complex to another. The driver on the other side was turning left. I delayed and he had to wait for me since I had the right of way. A second or two later some idiot ran the red light on his side. If I hadn't been there and he had simply gone he would have been broadsided.
I'm pretty comfortable with the fact there are laws of the universe within which I must make my choices. I'm also comfortable with the fact that the small choices people make can lead to big changes in my life.
From the deconstruction article linked from the Wikipedia
"In each of these fields, deconstructive readings attempt to show how texts are multivocal: how they cannot simply be read as works by individual authors communicating distinct messages, but instead must be read as sites of conflict within a given culture or worldview. As a result of deconstruction, texts reveal a multitude of viewpoints existing simultaneously, often in direct conflict with one another. Comparison of a deconstructive reading of a text with a more traditional one will also show how many of these viewpoints are suppressed and ignored."
Basically this says there is no truth. Anything says everything. This idea goes way back to the Sophists in ancient Greece who believed nothing and would argue the case for anything for anyone who paid them. We call these people lawyers today. Structuralism is objective while decontructionism is subjective. In today's society, it's far more popular to not believe in absolutes. Believeing in absolutes alledgedly makes you old fashioned and close minded.
But, it's a poor reason to reject something as obvious as structuralism just because you don't like the idea of objective facts and rules that govern. The fact of the matter is that there are objective truths and there are subjective opinions.
No matter how much free will you think you have, there are clear laws of nature that dictate eating jell-o will not cure cancer. You can not choose to make jell-o a cure for cancer simply because you say it is.
Both of these schools of thought can exist perfectly together. There are many things in this world that fall under structuralism and many things in this world that fall under deconstructionism. But nothing, by definition of these two theories, can exist in both schools of thought simultaniously.
Every theory has it's detractors. There are still people who think the earth is flat. But they're going to need better arguments.
"I don't like the idea of not being in control" is not a good argument against structuralism. The more aware of the laws around you the more in control you will be. Man cannot fly on their own. Laws of physics dictate we stay on the ground. However, by understanding the laws of physics man found a way to use those laws to allow him to fly.
And now we all have more choices. If I want to jump off a large cliff and not die I can do that now using tools that work within the laws of nature to slow my decent.
And I am okay with this.
Retrieved from "http://www.icarusindie.com/wiki/index.php/MTE482_ Discussion_6"
That would probably be a legal option to take against them.
For me, I use hotmail which works great. I get very little spam and havn't lost any e-mails. I can contact anybody without any worries.
But, I also run a private mail server that my contact form makes use of. If someone wants to contact me, they can and there's nothing some third party can do about it. My ISP could block the web-server's port but that's about it and I see no sign of that ever happening. Especially since they did block port 250 after a few months. If they're able to find mail servers on alternate ports and close them off, I imagine they can find http servers on alt ports and close them off as well if they wanted to.
Now I just have the web-server make a connection to the localhost to post the e-mail. I can still get the e-mail remotely through POP3.
If RBLs keep it up e-mail is just going to be relegated to a few trusted services. Imagine only being able to send e-mail to and from other Hotmail users.
E-mail will be no different than on-line chat. You'll only be able to communicate with those using the same service.
www.bootsix.net informs the reader that he's busy on a video project. Most likely he gave persmission to distribute the story and then really didn't care to talk to random fanboys on the net about it.
It's like writting a fan mail to someone famous, getting a response out of them and then pretending they're dead because they won't continue responding to your letters.
I've done that many times as the reciever of e-mails from random people. I will typically respond to someone once if they contact me through my web-site's form. After that the chance of a response from me drop quickly to zero. Initial response, and then never heard from again. That's the typical MO of people when talking to people they don't know and don't care to know. He answer'd the ZUG guy's question and that's all be felt compelled to be obliged to.
The big mistake that Bobby Johnny made was registering the power book site (which is his own site BTW so another one that isn't shut down) under his own name and home address.
So if the guy wanted to fly across the ocean and whack him, he could. But most likely Bobby just didn't care to continue some long conversation with the ZUG guy and has better things to do as mentioned on his main site; the video project.
But I have to say, assuming he's dead leads to a more interesting ending.
I'd say he's just tired of the fanboys and has moved on with his life.
That doesn't turn up the King James version of the Bible. Only books about King James.
book King James Bible only turns up a literary analysis. Not the actual Bible. It's simply not in their system or under some magic terms that we havn't figured out yet.
I don't know how a bogus link got modded up +5 Informative. Oh, right, this is Slashdot. Mod first then ask questions.
Google has also added National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi white supremacist web site to their "legitimate" news sources.
So, I'm pretty much done caring what what Google's employees are doing. As long as their search engine remains sane, they can scan whatever books and link to whatever news sources they want.
The only reason anyone should be using VB is to maintain existing products. Any new products where VB was considered, should be using C# instead.
C# was thought to be MS's answer to Java. But what it actually did was remove any reason for VB to continue to exist. It wasn't the Java killer. It was the VB killer.
Any coder who can only code in a single lanaguge is a weak coder of no value to a company. At my job I've used at least 5 languages since I started. Times change, languages change. You need to adapt or you'll become obsolete.
I've used VB in the past. I used C# for a project having no knowledge of C# previously and instantly picked it up. I even managed to convert Quadpack from C to C# with little effort while putting up a nice GUI with the amount of ease that I was used to with VB.
You should have talked to your bosses and other employees BEFORE you went ahead and used GPL'd code for company work. At the time, how did you justify what you were doing? You should have known at the time it would be a problem. The only person responsible for this violation is you.
If the company is worried about being sued then they should fire you and get rid of your project and hire someone else who's not incompetent to do the work. Or, maybe you'll get lucky and they'll be able to comply without any issues. Chances are that IBM/ActiveState will allow the code to be licensed to the company for a fee so they don't have to release their own code. ID Software does this. You can have the code under GPL for free or pay a large sum so you can keep your code closed.
What you should have done is first looked to see if comparable product existed that had a more agreeable license such as the BSD license, and if not, you should have reinvented the wheel.
You could still reinvent the wheel or find a comparable product and replace IBM and ActiveState's code. And that's probably what you'll have to do to keep your job.
There's no harm no foul in using GPL code as a crutch to develop with. You then just have to get rid of any GPL code entirely before you release the product.
Anti-Planet Screenshots. Anti-Planet is a FPS rendered entirely using ray tracing. It requires an SSE compatible processor (PIII and above. AMD only recently implemented SSE in their processors). This has been out long before Doom 3 and runs on systems Doom 3 couldn't possibly run on and the graphics tricks it does are just now being put into raster graphics based games.
That, along with Wolf 5k inspired me to start working with software rendering. I think ray tracing will eventually be the way real time graphics are rendered in order to keep upping the bar for realism.
I'm working on tutorials covering software rendering topics. The tutorials start by deobfuscating and fully documenting Wolf5K, cover some basic ray tracing and are now going through raster graphics since the concepts used for raster graphics apply for ray tracing as well. I'll be returning to do more advanced ray tracing stuff later. The tutorials also cover an enhanced version of Wolf5K written in C++ that is true color and has no texture size limitations.
All you need is PHP and mySQL (or equivelant) and a few lines of code. On my own site, revenue covers costs so I'm not worried about people blocking Google AdSense by killing Java-Script.
This was just an exercise to devise an effective way it could be done.
If the javascript counter doesn't match the page counter you can pretty much do whatever you want at that point. You can require a payment to allow the user to visit the site, you can just refuse to show content until they turn on javascript, or you can simply use it for statistical purposes to see how many visitors aren't using Java-script.
Once you know what the user's browser is doing on the server side, the possibilities are pretty endless.
I can't believe people actually pay for ringtones. There are countless MIDI sites out there so there's no shortage of tones. The only challenge is getting it to your phone. I found that takes only about a dozen lines of code. A cell phone user can then WAP to the site, enter the ID number of the tone and a generic file retrieval script that works with any system sends the file to the phone and you're done. PHP doesn't require anything special to transfer a file to a phone versus a PC.
I transfer out about 900 MIDI files per day and the bandwidth cost is negligable. I average about 40MB of transfer per day. So I don't really see how pay sites justify it besides the fact there are suckers out there.
It took you a month to get 3000 people to waste money on a tone. It's taken me since December 16th, 2004 for over 63000 MIDI files to be downloaded from my site.
On my site, I recognize that a MIDI on the phone is no different than a MIDI on your computer so not only is it the largest collection of ringtones on the net, it's also one of the largest MIDI sites on the net.
I don't know why more MIDI sites don't offer a simple WAP script.
I use my own site quite a bit to get tones. If I want a ringtone, I hunt down the MIDI and post it on my own site rather than digging through annoying ringtone sites. The only charge is what the phone company charges per KB of data transfer. Which, in my case, is 3 cents per KB.
Certainly beats wasting another couple bucks for something I know for a fact doesn't cost the site owner a dime. It's like restaurants charging two bucks for a cup of soda that costs less than 1 penny per ounce of syrup. CO2 is also negligable in cost per cup. A cup of soda contains mostly water.
All I wanted was one ringtone; The Lonely Shepherd. And nobody had it so I whipped up a little test site just for me so I could transfer the midi to my phone. Ringtones are huge and many sites have them but they're mostly annoying with ads and a rediculous amount of clicks just to get a tone. Since I had all kinds of MIDIs I decided to throw them all onto the site and pretty it up a bit with the focus on simplicity.
It hasn't taken too long for it to become one of the largest sections on the site and it only took about a weekend to code. mySQL holds all the plaintext found in MIDI files so you can find what you're looking for a lot easier and also checks to see if the file is explicitly copyright ((c) or copyright appears in the file) and doesn't allow it to be accessed if it is.
There are actually over 100,000 midi files on the server. Dupes (MD5 hash check) and copyrighted files aren't counted in the available count.
Prior to custom ringtones everyone would check their phone to see if it was theirs that was ringing. With a unique tone you know if it's you or not without going for the phone.
Bloggers leach off the main stream and not so main stream media. Occasionally they find something original. Dan Rather, Churchill, and Easton Jordan all got their shove down the mountain from bloggers. Every once in awhile the MSM picks up a story from bloggers.
Their goal is not to replace the MSM, but to provide a single point of entry for people to get a wide range of stories that the MSM won't touch or simply glosses over.
Claiming that bloggers aren't real journalists is as retarded as claiming people who work on open source aren't real programmers.
The only difference between bloggers and the MSM is that there are more independent bloggers and as such the quality ranges from very low to very high which the MSM has a pretty consistent level. Quality blogs issue corrections very fast based on reader input. The MSM occasionally posts corrections on page 100 in the corner fine print.
You can't go to Live Journal and make rediculous generalizations about bloggers. The MSM is just pissed that they're getting ripped on by "amatures" and people are losing their jobs because of it. The MSM is no longer an unchallenged medium. How often does the LA Times print objections to something the Washington Post wrote?
The goal isn't the be the new media but rather to complement the existing forms of media by bringing in a variety of sources to a single location.
It's a lot easier to go to a blog and see what's going on around the world than it is to visit a dozen different MSM sites.
Loki never had a chance in court. What they do is illegal. What's ironic is all the posts on Slashdot saying that it's "copyright infringment" not "theft" when it comes to downloading movies they have no rights to have. Despite the fact that both are against the law so it's a pointless argument.
What Loki did wasn't theft either. Everybody willingly gave them money. It was a con. They didn't steal anybody's money.
So nobody has any real legal leg to stand on to demand the money that Loki is running off with, back. I wonder how many people gave large donations expecting it to be used to cover court costs and now the money is sitting in a personal bank account for use for whatever.
Chances are that the MPAA will never see a dime of the settlement. There are only certain things that can be seized to cover the settlement. OJ Simpson learned this after his conviction which is why he's able to play golf all day and live comfortably while not paying the settlement.
That was incredibly stupid on Loki's part. So basically what they did was ask for a large amount of money from it's users who for some reason or another gave them some, then Loki turns around and rats on them and walks away with the money. Most likely since they "agreed" to turn over the logs (as opposed to being forced) they probably used them as part of a plea deal to get a lesser fine.
So who's going to donate to the next BitTorrent site that asks?
I introduced the company I work for to Subversion. They now use it will all new projects. All prior existing projects still use CVS. I also created a full featured (including per project, directory level permissions with inheritence capabilities) web-based client in PHP that is tied into dotProject. Most web based interfaces to SVN that I found back when I started the project failed to consider that some people need restricted access.
Most people just use Tortoise though. The web-interface is nice for browsing repositories and downloading single files but when you need more stuff done, then Tortoise is ideal.
I put up to half a meg of plain text files into the database for searching purposes. It's not difficult to find. You could use TextPad to search an entire code tree to clean up the comments prior to releasing it if you don't already have a repository with search capabilities.
It would also be a pretty trivial task to write a script to pull out all the comments and locations to make it easy to review and clean.
Employees would then just need to know that comments are subject to company communications policy. If you aren't allowed to use curse words in an e-mail then you shoudn't be allowed to do it in code. It's not professional.
I really don't like the idea of harvesting stem cells from embryos (but I'm not going to fight tooth and nail to stop the inevitable, we don't reject what the Nazis learned simply because of their methods, but we certainly don't condon their actions either) so what I'd like to see is science looking for ways to get stem cells by other means. We used to scratch the scalps on people with headaches to let the blood out to make the headache go away. Now we use Aspirine.
Rather than trying to solve these problems by going directly for the (quite possibly misguided) "magic bullet" I'd like to see science spending more time trying to cure these things with "not so magic" bullets which I don't think anyone has a problem with. The problem is this idea that embyonic stem cells are an inevitable success. Which, it's not. But this idea is thrown out there and so less controversial sources of stem cells are quickly dismissed.
Like it or not, at least in the US, scientists need government funds to do these experiments and in the US we have a president and a large vocal population who isn't going to let government funds support these types of experiments. If private funds could do the job then there wouldn't be a problem. But even the wealthy private sector isn't too keen on this stuff either.
As a result, science needs to find ways to solve problems that stick to the ethical guidlines dictated by the people whether they happen to like them or not.
The UK rushing to this magic bullet without considering alternatives is a bad idea.
I'd be more inclinded to be happy about this if challenged, conclusive studies existed that alternate sources of stem cells were 100% unviable to cure various problems.
You know all those major companies running big expensive servers with expensive software built to be secure? They're behind firewalls.
A firewall is a standard piece of hardware that every net connected computer needs regardless of what it's running.
Windows is not special in this need.
We didn't use to have a big "use a condom" mentality either. Times have changed.
Not too long ago everyone had dial-up. Dial up users tended to go through the ISPs proxy which prevented anyone from connecting directly to their system. With broadband comes your own personal IP address that people can try to connect to.
This is why firewalls are needed now while they weren't before.
What's stopping you from hosting a school paper elsewhere (like a blog) and reporting using that? You can put the fluff stuff the school wants in the official paper and then start a second paper on-line that's not bound by the administration.
The school has to CTA which is why they restrict what kind of information gets printed. It's not to keep the student's down. If you were to print taboo topics the school would have a lot of angry parents to deal with.
It doesn't matter what paper you work for, you're going to be restricted in what you can print. It had zero to do with government censorship and everything to do with keeping the readers (and their parents) happy.
Linux won't be a threat until
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 1
it's as easy to use as Windows or Mac OS. Until it makes inroads to the typical user, Linux isn't a big issue.
Linux has a very tiny collection of games that can be played compared to the overall market. And it has no exclusive games (none worth getting excited about anyway). Exclusive games are what get people to buy multiple consoles. Linux has no exclusive applications. Hardware is still a long way from being reliably plug and play on Linux.
If Linux could make inroads even with the gamer market, they'd be getting somewhere.
Linux has come a long way but they've still got a very very long way to go.
At the bottom of the paper is a list of URLs to old education videos at archive.org
For my Education Psychology class I had to do a research paper on motivation then and now. "The Drop Out" is especially good. The short version is that nothing has changed. The only "change" is the amount of education needed to succeed. In the video High School is enough but in todays society, college is needed. But why kids drop out is still the same.
The problem is the myth that things have changed and that "old" people don't understand what the kids are going through.
The most successful schools are those which address not only the educational needs of students but also the social development needs. "The Drop Out" was made 10 years earlier but virtually quotes the hierarchy of needs. So yes it is possible and a very good idea for the older generation to guide the younger generation without being a "know it all nanny" putting the students off.
Historically, it's only the counselors that have been taught this stuff. Now, all teachers are getting educated on how to work with students in social matters.
Slashdot Mirror
If you need comments to understand your own code, then your code is sloppy and you should fix that problem first. Writting sloppy code is like having bad handwritting. Fix your handwritting. Comments get out of date and are a topic all their own. Someone who writes sloppy code will probably write sloppy worthless comments as well.
You should also code first because you know what a function is supposed to do. When it does exactly what it's supposed to do then comment it. Otherwise your comments will be more along the lines of wishful thinking and lead to more confusion.
You should understand the language well enough that you can keep in your head everything the code is doing and if not, understand the language well enough to be able to read the code to see what it's doing. Comments are not going to help you debug a function. You need to be able to read the code itself to be an effective debugger. Only once it is debugged can you confidently place in comments that say what the function does. Otherwise, it's just wishful thinking.
The most commenting I do before writing a function is a rough outline of the steps the function needs to go through. Only after the function is done and does exactly what it's supposed to do, do I comment it.
I've gone back to code (thousands of lines) I wrote in BASIC 10 years ago and can understand exactly what's going on despite there being no comments. Same with stuff I've written in C/C++. Comments are not essentional if you can read code like a book. Which, a professional programmer should be able to do.
www.wolf5k.com has an obfuscated version of Wolf3D written in Javascript. I went through and deobfuscated the code, figured out exactly what it does and then commented it. I then took the deobfuscated version and translated it to C++. I did the same with the Gavare ioccc ray tracer although the results havn't been posted on-line yet.
Deobfuscated Wolf5K
If you want practice reading "bad" code, deobfuscating programs is great practice.
Ben
If you want visitors to not block your ads you have to come up with a way to cripple the site if the ads are not displayed. Unfortunatly ad blocks are client side and can't always be detected by the server.
Ads indirectly cover costs (large sites get paid because they can claim X amount of people see the ads per month, not per click or per sale) and images are a very big bandwidth hog. So if a visitor doesn't want to look at ads then Yahoo saves some money by not showing images either. And as a possible bonus the web-site looks so terrible that the user stops blocking their ads just so the images load.
I havn't needed to implement it on my site yet but checking whether or not Javascript is enabled on the client side is quite trivial.
Server Side Javascript Check
Once the server knows if Javascript is disabled on the client side the possibilities are pretty endless. Most ads (like AdSense) rely on Javscript so knowing javascript is enabled is important.
People use the fact that we are functional creatures all the time. People like to think they have free will and can make chaotic choices but the fact is every choice is a product of inputs. Social Engineering is figuring out what inputs produce what outputs and then engaging peoples "free will" to get them to make the choices the SE wanted them to make.
That's where Gorgias' argument about whether or not Helen was to blame for the Trojan war falls apart. He couldn't fatham the possibility that Helen made a choice in her own mind because it wasn't a situational vacuum. Therefore the situation must be to blame in some way. He doesn't even consider the possibility that Helen actually wanted to go with Paris because she wanted to and for no other reason.
People act like if you convince somebody of something it diminishes their ability to make a choice of their own mind because you provided input.
This lack of free will comes in handy at parties where nobody is drinking the punch but everyone wants vodka. The obvious solution is to put the vodka in the punch and then everyone is happy. Despite obviously manipulating the situation people did make the choice of their own mind to drink the punch.
Determinism isn't about *what* choices you make, it's about *why* you make them.
Some thoughts on Free Will
_ Discussion_6"
----------------
"Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favoring deterministic structural forces over the ability of individual people to act"
The good old "free will v. predestination" problem. I never understood why rules conflict with free will. Does the fact that gravity exists deprive me of the ability to make choices? Consider any important point in your life. Now consider how much of it you had control over. Yet, at that point in your life, faced with the laws (circumstances out of your control), you made a choice.
Just because you don't like the fact that a drunk driver could kill you tomorrow, doesn't mean it couldn't happen. You, quite simply, are not in control of your life. When you are on the road, your life is not in your own hands alone. Your life is in the hands of everyone around you. The lives of those around you are in your hands. When you apply for a job it's ultimately up to those hiring you to make the decision. Not you.
I remember one evening I was looking to cross an intersection from one shopping complex to another. The driver on the other side was turning left. I delayed and he had to wait for me since I had the right of way. A second or two later some idiot ran the red light on his side. If I hadn't been there and he had simply gone he would have been broadsided.
I'm pretty comfortable with the fact there are laws of the universe within which I must make my choices. I'm also comfortable with the fact that the small choices people make can lead to big changes in my life.
From the deconstruction article linked from the Wikipedia
"In each of these fields, deconstructive readings attempt to show how texts are multivocal: how they cannot simply be read as works by individual authors communicating distinct messages, but instead must be read as sites of conflict within a given culture or worldview. As a result of deconstruction, texts reveal a multitude of viewpoints existing simultaneously, often in direct conflict with one another. Comparison of a deconstructive reading of a text with a more traditional one will also show how many of these viewpoints are suppressed and ignored."
Basically this says there is no truth. Anything says everything. This idea goes way back to the Sophists in ancient Greece who believed nothing and would argue the case for anything for anyone who paid them. We call these people lawyers today. Structuralism is objective while decontructionism is subjective. In today's society, it's far more popular to not believe in absolutes. Believeing in absolutes alledgedly makes you old fashioned and close minded.
But, it's a poor reason to reject something as obvious as structuralism just because you don't like the idea of objective facts and rules that govern. The fact of the matter is that there are objective truths and there are subjective opinions.
No matter how much free will you think you have, there are clear laws of nature that dictate eating jell-o will not cure cancer. You can not choose to make jell-o a cure for cancer simply because you say it is.
Both of these schools of thought can exist perfectly together. There are many things in this world that fall under structuralism and many things in this world that fall under deconstructionism. But nothing, by definition of these two theories, can exist in both schools of thought simultaniously.
Every theory has it's detractors. There are still people who think the earth is flat. But they're going to need better arguments.
"I don't like the idea of not being in control" is not a good argument against structuralism. The more aware of the laws around you the more in control you will be. Man cannot fly on their own. Laws of physics dictate we stay on the ground. However, by understanding the laws of physics man found a way to use those laws to allow him to fly.
And now we all have more choices. If I want to jump off a large cliff and not die I can do that now using tools that work within the laws of nature to slow my decent.
And I am okay with this.
Retrieved from "http://www.icarusindie.com/wiki/index.php/MTE482
That would probably be a legal option to take against them.
For me, I use hotmail which works great. I get very little spam and havn't lost any e-mails. I can contact anybody without any worries.
But, I also run a private mail server that my contact form makes use of. If someone wants to contact me, they can and there's nothing some third party can do about it. My ISP could block the web-server's port but that's about it and I see no sign of that ever happening. Especially since they did block port 250 after a few months. If they're able to find mail servers on alternate ports and close them off, I imagine they can find http servers on alt ports and close them off as well if they wanted to.
Now I just have the web-server make a connection to the localhost to post the e-mail. I can still get the e-mail remotely through POP3.
If RBLs keep it up e-mail is just going to be relegated to a few trusted services. Imagine only being able to send e-mail to and from other Hotmail users.
E-mail will be no different than on-line chat. You'll only be able to communicate with those using the same service.
All his web-sites have not come down.
www.bootsix.net informs the reader that he's busy on a video project. Most likely he gave persmission to distribute the story and then really didn't care to talk to random fanboys on the net about it.
It's like writting a fan mail to someone famous, getting a response out of them and then pretending they're dead because they won't continue responding to your letters.
I've done that many times as the reciever of e-mails from random people. I will typically respond to someone once if they contact me through my web-site's form. After that the chance of a response from me drop quickly to zero. Initial response, and then never heard from again. That's the typical MO of people when talking to people they don't know and don't care to know. He answer'd the ZUG guy's question and that's all be felt compelled to be obliged to.
The big mistake that Bobby Johnny made was registering the power book site (which is his own site BTW so another one that isn't shut down) under his own name and home address.
So if the guy wanted to fly across the ocean and whack him, he could. But most likely Bobby just didn't care to continue some long conversation with the ZUG guy and has better things to do as mentioned on his main site; the video project.
But I have to say, assuming he's dead leads to a more interesting ending.
I'd say he's just tired of the fanboys and has moved on with his life.
That doesn't turn up the King James version of the Bible. Only books about King James.
book King James Bible only turns up a literary analysis. Not the actual Bible. It's simply not in their system or under some magic terms that we havn't figured out yet.
I don't know how a bogus link got modded up +5 Informative. Oh, right, this is Slashdot. Mod first then ask questions.
Google has also added National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi white supremacist web site to their "legitimate" news sources.
So, I'm pretty much done caring what what Google's employees are doing. As long as their search engine remains sane, they can scan whatever books and link to whatever news sources they want.
I have better places to get my news and books.
girls like dicks.
For points 1,2 and (possibly) 3 see C#
The only reason anyone should be using VB is to maintain existing products. Any new products where VB was considered, should be using C# instead.
C# was thought to be MS's answer to Java. But what it actually did was remove any reason for VB to continue to exist. It wasn't the Java killer. It was the VB killer.
Any coder who can only code in a single lanaguge is a weak coder of no value to a company. At my job I've used at least 5 languages since I started. Times change, languages change. You need to adapt or you'll become obsolete.
I've used VB in the past. I used C# for a project having no knowledge of C# previously and instantly picked it up. I even managed to convert Quadpack from C to C# with little effort while putting up a nice GUI with the amount of ease that I was used to with VB.
VB is dead, switch to C#.
You should have talked to your bosses and other employees BEFORE you went ahead and used GPL'd code for company work. At the time, how did you justify what you were doing? You should have known at the time it would be a problem. The only person responsible for this violation is you.
If the company is worried about being sued then they should fire you and get rid of your project and hire someone else who's not incompetent to do the work. Or, maybe you'll get lucky and they'll be able to comply without any issues. Chances are that IBM/ActiveState will allow the code to be licensed to the company for a fee so they don't have to release their own code. ID Software does this. You can have the code under GPL for free or pay a large sum so you can keep your code closed.
What you should have done is first looked to see if comparable product existed that had a more agreeable license such as the BSD license, and if not, you should have reinvented the wheel.
You could still reinvent the wheel or find a comparable product and replace IBM and ActiveState's code. And that's probably what you'll have to do to keep your job.
There's no harm no foul in using GPL code as a crutch to develop with. You then just have to get rid of any GPL code entirely before you release the product.
Anti-Planet Screenshots. Anti-Planet is a FPS rendered entirely using ray tracing. It requires an SSE compatible processor (PIII and above. AMD only recently implemented SSE in their processors). This has been out long before Doom 3 and runs on systems Doom 3 couldn't possibly run on and the graphics tricks it does are just now being put into raster graphics based games.
That, along with Wolf 5k inspired me to start working with software rendering. I think ray tracing will eventually be the way real time graphics are rendered in order to keep upping the bar for realism.
Real Time Software Rendering
I'm working on tutorials covering software rendering topics. The tutorials start by deobfuscating and fully documenting Wolf5K, cover some basic ray tracing and are now going through raster graphics since the concepts used for raster graphics apply for ray tracing as well. I'll be returning to do more advanced ray tracing stuff later. The tutorials also cover an enhanced version of Wolf5K written in C++ that is true color and has no texture size limitations.
Server Side Java-Script check
All you need is PHP and mySQL (or equivelant) and a few lines of code. On my own site, revenue covers costs so I'm not worried about people blocking Google AdSense by killing Java-Script.
This was just an exercise to devise an effective way it could be done.
If the javascript counter doesn't match the page counter you can pretty much do whatever you want at that point. You can require a payment to allow the user to visit the site, you can just refuse to show content until they turn on javascript, or you can simply use it for statistical purposes to see how many visitors aren't using Java-script.
Once you know what the user's browser is doing on the server side, the possibilities are pretty endless.
How about Apple keeps their money and Pat-Rights goes and fucks themselves.
IANAL and this may not be sound legal advice.
50,000+ free MIDI Ringtones
I can't believe people actually pay for ringtones. There are countless MIDI sites out there so there's no shortage of tones. The only challenge is getting it to your phone. I found that takes only about a dozen lines of code. A cell phone user can then WAP to the site, enter the ID number of the tone and a generic file retrieval script that works with any system sends the file to the phone and you're done. PHP doesn't require anything special to transfer a file to a phone versus a PC.
I transfer out about 900 MIDI files per day and the bandwidth cost is negligable. I average about 40MB of transfer per day. So I don't really see how pay sites justify it besides the fact there are suckers out there.
It took you a month to get 3000 people to waste money on a tone. It's taken me since December 16th, 2004 for over 63000 MIDI files to be downloaded from my site.
On my site, I recognize that a MIDI on the phone is no different than a MIDI on your computer so not only is it the largest collection of ringtones on the net, it's also one of the largest MIDI sites on the net.
I don't know why more MIDI sites don't offer a simple WAP script.
I use my own site quite a bit to get tones. If I want a ringtone, I hunt down the MIDI and post it on my own site rather than digging through annoying ringtone sites. The only charge is what the phone company charges per KB of data transfer. Which, in my case, is 3 cents per KB.
Certainly beats wasting another couple bucks for something I know for a fact doesn't cost the site owner a dime. It's like restaurants charging two bucks for a cup of soda that costs less than 1 penny per ounce of syrup. CO2 is also negligable in cost per cup. A cup of soda contains mostly water.
Here
All I wanted was one ringtone; The Lonely Shepherd. And nobody had it so I whipped up a little test site just for me so I could transfer the midi to my phone. Ringtones are huge and many sites have them but they're mostly annoying with ads and a rediculous amount of clicks just to get a tone. Since I had all kinds of MIDIs I decided to throw them all onto the site and pretty it up a bit with the focus on simplicity.
It hasn't taken too long for it to become one of the largest sections on the site and it only took about a weekend to code. mySQL holds all the plaintext found in MIDI files so you can find what you're looking for a lot easier and also checks to see if the file is explicitly copyright ((c) or copyright appears in the file) and doesn't allow it to be accessed if it is.
There are actually over 100,000 midi files on the server. Dupes (MD5 hash check) and copyrighted files aren't counted in the available count.
Prior to custom ringtones everyone would check their phone to see if it was theirs that was ringing. With a unique tone you know if it's you or not without going for the phone.
Bloggers leach off the main stream and not so main stream media. Occasionally they find something original. Dan Rather, Churchill, and Easton Jordan all got their shove down the mountain from bloggers. Every once in awhile the MSM picks up a story from bloggers.
Their goal is not to replace the MSM, but to provide a single point of entry for people to get a wide range of stories that the MSM won't touch or simply glosses over.
Claiming that bloggers aren't real journalists is as retarded as claiming people who work on open source aren't real programmers.
The only difference between bloggers and the MSM is that there are more independent bloggers and as such the quality ranges from very low to very high which the MSM has a pretty consistent level. Quality blogs issue corrections very fast based on reader input. The MSM occasionally posts corrections on page 100 in the corner fine print.
You can't go to Live Journal and make rediculous generalizations about bloggers. The MSM is just pissed that they're getting ripped on by "amatures" and people are losing their jobs because of it. The MSM is no longer an unchallenged medium. How often does the LA Times print objections to something the Washington Post wrote?
The goal isn't the be the new media but rather to complement the existing forms of media by bringing in a variety of sources to a single location.
It's a lot easier to go to a blog and see what's going on around the world than it is to visit a dozen different MSM sites.
Loki never had a chance in court. What they do is illegal. What's ironic is all the posts on Slashdot saying that it's "copyright infringment" not "theft" when it comes to downloading movies they have no rights to have. Despite the fact that both are against the law so it's a pointless argument.
What Loki did wasn't theft either. Everybody willingly gave them money. It was a con. They didn't steal anybody's money.
So nobody has any real legal leg to stand on to demand the money that Loki is running off with, back. I wonder how many people gave large donations expecting it to be used to cover court costs and now the money is sitting in a personal bank account for use for whatever.
Chances are that the MPAA will never see a dime of the settlement. There are only certain things that can be seized to cover the settlement. OJ Simpson learned this after his conviction which is why he's able to play golf all day and live comfortably while not paying the settlement.
That was incredibly stupid on Loki's part. So basically what they did was ask for a large amount of money from it's users who for some reason or another gave them some, then Loki turns around and rats on them and walks away with the money. Most likely since they "agreed" to turn over the logs (as opposed to being forced) they probably used them as part of a plea deal to get a lesser fine.
So who's going to donate to the next BitTorrent site that asks?
I introduced the company I work for to Subversion. They now use it will all new projects. All prior existing projects still use CVS. I also created a full featured (including per project, directory level permissions with inheritence capabilities) web-based client in PHP that is tied into dotProject. Most web based interfaces to SVN that I found back when I started the project failed to consider that some people need restricted access.
Most people just use Tortoise though. The web-interface is nice for browsing repositories and downloading single files but when you need more stuff done, then Tortoise is ideal.
The F-Word in released code for major games.
It's found in Quake 2, Quake 3 and others.
I put up to half a meg of plain text files into the database for searching purposes. It's not difficult to find. You could use TextPad to search an entire code tree to clean up the comments prior to releasing it if you don't already have a repository with search capabilities.
It would also be a pretty trivial task to write a script to pull out all the comments and locations to make it easy to review and clean.
Employees would then just need to know that comments are subject to company communications policy. If you aren't allowed to use curse words in an e-mail then you shoudn't be allowed to do it in code. It's not professional.
I really don't like the idea of harvesting stem cells from embryos (but I'm not going to fight tooth and nail to stop the inevitable, we don't reject what the Nazis learned simply because of their methods, but we certainly don't condon their actions either) so what I'd like to see is science looking for ways to get stem cells by other means. We used to scratch the scalps on people with headaches to let the blood out to make the headache go away. Now we use Aspirine.
Rather than trying to solve these problems by going directly for the (quite possibly misguided) "magic bullet" I'd like to see science spending more time trying to cure these things with "not so magic" bullets which I don't think anyone has a problem with. The problem is this idea that embyonic stem cells are an inevitable success. Which, it's not. But this idea is thrown out there and so less controversial sources of stem cells are quickly dismissed.
Like it or not, at least in the US, scientists need government funds to do these experiments and in the US we have a president and a large vocal population who isn't going to let government funds support these types of experiments. If private funds could do the job then there wouldn't be a problem. But even the wealthy private sector isn't too keen on this stuff either.
As a result, science needs to find ways to solve problems that stick to the ethical guidlines dictated by the people whether they happen to like them or not.
The UK rushing to this magic bullet without considering alternatives is a bad idea.
I'd be more inclinded to be happy about this if challenged, conclusive studies existed that alternate sources of stem cells were 100% unviable to cure various problems.
Those studies currently do not exist.
You know all those major companies running big expensive servers with expensive software built to be secure? They're behind firewalls.
A firewall is a standard piece of hardware that every net connected computer needs regardless of what it's running.
Windows is not special in this need.
We didn't use to have a big "use a condom" mentality either. Times have changed.
Not too long ago everyone had dial-up. Dial up users tended to go through the ISPs proxy which prevented anyone from connecting directly to their system. With broadband comes your own personal IP address that people can try to connect to.
This is why firewalls are needed now while they weren't before.
What's stopping you from hosting a school paper elsewhere (like a blog) and reporting using that? You can put the fluff stuff the school wants in the official paper and then start a second paper on-line that's not bound by the administration.
The school has to CTA which is why they restrict what kind of information gets printed. It's not to keep the student's down. If you were to print taboo topics the school would have a lot of angry parents to deal with.
It doesn't matter what paper you work for, you're going to be restricted in what you can print. It had zero to do with government censorship and everything to do with keeping the readers (and their parents) happy.
it's as easy to use as Windows or Mac OS. Until it makes inroads to the typical user, Linux isn't a big issue.
Linux has a very tiny collection of games that can be played compared to the overall market. And it has no exclusive games (none worth getting excited about anyway). Exclusive games are what get people to buy multiple consoles. Linux has no exclusive applications. Hardware is still a long way from being reliably plug and play on Linux.
If Linux could make inroads even with the gamer market, they'd be getting somewhere.
Linux has come a long way but they've still got a very very long way to go.
And That's the Way It Was
At the bottom of the paper is a list of URLs to old education videos at archive.org
For my Education Psychology class I had to do a research paper on motivation then and now. "The Drop Out" is especially good. The short version is that nothing has changed. The only "change" is the amount of education needed to succeed. In the video High School is enough but in todays society, college is needed. But why kids drop out is still the same.
The problem is the myth that things have changed and that "old" people don't understand what the kids are going through.
The most successful schools are those which address not only the educational needs of students but also the social development needs. "The Drop Out" was made 10 years earlier but virtually quotes the hierarchy of needs. So yes it is possible and a very good idea for the older generation to guide the younger generation without being a "know it all nanny" putting the students off.
Historically, it's only the counselors that have been taught this stuff. Now, all teachers are getting educated on how to work with students in social matters.