I could care less about having a gun for my personal civil protection. The chances of me getting to a firearm before a criminal shot me are next to nothing. But the fact of the matter is, we don't trust our Government.
So, what, you think you've got a better change of getting to a firearm before the government nukes you?
Look, I'm sure I'm at least as anti-government as you are (I'm an anarchist), but the naivety of this defence of the second ammendment never ceases to amaze me. To paraphrase Weber, the government is the government because they've got more guns than you. If the government is strong, no amount of guns in private hands are going to be able to overthrow it; if the government is weak, any laws it makes prohibiting gun ownership will be trivial to ignore. The idea that opposing gun control is some kind of stand for freedom, rather than, in practice, a call for more Columbines or Tony Martins, is one American Dream I'd like to see well and truly disposed of.
That's not a boycott. That is just you making a choice. It is the same as me, a non-smoker, saying I have boycotted the tobacco industry. If you're not in the market and you don't buy then it is not really a boycott is it.
He's right, you know. People who don't care about music not buying music doesn't hurt the RIAA. The people who have the leverage to change the RIAA's minds are the people who buy a lot of music - so, next time you're thinking of buying a CD, see if you can download it first, and tell all your friends to avoid giving money to the RIAA too. Hell, if you've got the balls and want to do a bit of real civil disobedience, e-mail the RIAA and tell them that you were going to buy the CD, but, because of their absolutist stance on file sharing, you decided to download it instead. Only if the RIAA realise that this is not about freeloaders, but about people with a serious objection to their business practices, will they even consider changing their attitude.
(The other advantage of this tactic is that even if it doesn't change the RIAA's minds, you've got the music you wanted for free).
But if you're an average Linux user, forget about trying to get Debian stable to work on any hardware put out in the past year and a half.
So don't use Debian stable. Debian testing is as stable as your average release of Redhat or Mandrake. If you need something rock-solid, use Debian stable; otherwise, use testing, with unstable packages for anything on the bleeding edge.
You could probably implement inline regular expressions in C++ using expression templates, actually. Check out Spirit, which gives you inline BNF grammars in C++.
First off, as others have pointed out, you don't need to introduce a new class to do this kind of thing - C++ has vectors and pairs built in, and tuples will probably be in the next version of the standard.
However, you're right about the 'easy to instantiate' part, but I don't think static typing is really the problem. The problem with types in C++ is that you have to explicitly mention them, when a lot of the time the compiler could figure them out itself. In your example, you could do:
The type declaration isn't really necessary - the compiler knows that get_address_entries() returns a vector of pairs of strings, so could give the variable it's proper type. There's been some discussion about introducing type-inference into the language, so you could say:
auto entries = get_address_entries();
Which would make this kind of thing as easy to use as Python, while keeping the advantages of static typing in tracking down errors.
GNOME 2 does have a menu editor - it's called nautilus. Under Go->Start Here in nautilus there's a directory called 'Applications', which contains a representation of the menu hierarchy. Just drag and drop launchers here to change the menu.
I understand this is disabled in RH9, though, so maybe that's your problem.
Here is a copy of the plea bargain Austin signed. It doesn't mention any of the hacking allegations the FBI included on the warrent they used to search his house. Whether or not Sherman is a hacker, he was sentenced to prison for providing information - not conspiracy or incitement, but simply speech. Whether or not you agree with Austin's politics, that's quite simply terrifying.
... when you have some arguments to support your assertions.
(And when you do have those arguments, you might want to share them with the philosophers, who have been arguing about these questions for a couple of thousand years).
However, with the addition of Parrot, Python, as well as Perl, will be running on a virtual machine that uses registers rather than a stack. Register based machines are much faster than stack based machines.
Surely the main advantage of registers on real machines is that they are on-chip, and so avoid a memory lookup. That isn't going to apply for a virtual machine, so I'm not clear why register-based VMs would be quicker. I guess you might avoid a level of indirection(in pseudo-C, you access vm->register, rather than vm->memory[address]), but would that have a significant effect on speed?
I'm not denying that Parrot is a good thing, and it may well be faster than CPython (I've no idea). I'm just not sure I follow your reasoning.
It's ages since I saw a proper troll on slashdot - and not only did you manage to sucker a few replies, you got the mods, too.
(For the clue-impaired, the parent includes a humorous reversal of the real situation - C|Net is full of software for _Windows_, where the equivalent tool is part of the system on any linux distribution)
But when you have infinite free energy and infinite free labour, why would you want an economy? We can spend our time writing poems, or walking in the countryside, or having sex (or doing all three at once). Sounds better than having a job.
I can see why the developers might not like people modding their games, but that by itself doesn't make it illegal. Once you've bought the game, you can more or less do what you like with it, and if that interferes with the developers' money-making plans, bad luck to them.
I think, in these days of EULAs, DMCAs and WIPOs, it's important to keep in mind that intellectial property rights aren't a blank cheque to make money. Merely interfering with software (or music, or whatever) isn't copyright infringement. It's possible (but, I think, unlikely) that mods are derivative works, but, other than that, the original developers don't (or shouldn't) have any control over modding groups.
tATu are great for lots of reasons, one of them being that they're positive role models for young people considering their sexuality. But they're not gay - check out this interview. It's a gimmick, and a really cool one.
Can you give us a quick example of how you would do something useful in an OODBMS? The idea sounds interesting, but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how one would use them without falling back into 'relational persistence thoughts'.
Could you explain what strategy is involved in NetHack? I've always played it as an exploration-based game with hack-and-slash combat - but perhaps that explains why I do so badly at it.
I said it was like a dumbed down version of Diablo. The gameplay is similar to Diablo, but with an even greater emphasis on hack-and-slash and trial-and-error. That seems to me exactly what you'ld get if you dumbed down Diablo. The fact that, in terms of causality, NetHack influenced Diablo (rather than the other way round) doesn't make my comparison any less accurate.
Well, to be honest, your examples reflect precisely what I dislike about NetHack, its arbitariness. How do you learn any of this stuff other than trial and error? Diablo has at least occassional attempts to produce a gameworld that makes sense, rather than just being a random and incomprehensible series of 'hacks'.
Baldur's Gate or Deus Ex are, to my mind, much more immersive than either NetHack or Diablo, not primarily because of the graphics, but because it's possible to do well in these games by thinking like a participant in the game world, rather than as an external player of the game. Much of the best recent Interactive Fiction is immersive for similar reasons, and obviously in the case of IF, the immersiveness isn't to do with the graphics. Adam Cadre's I-0 is a good example.
I'm aware that some people like the NetHack style of gameplay, but frankly, they're wrong. More to the point, though, I do think the NetHack style, whether good or bad, is distinctly old-fashioned. Merely improving the graphics won't make the game more appealing to those who want a more modern style of gameplay, which seemed to be the suggestion being made by the guy I was originally replying to.
Oh, BTW:
GENOCIDE! Woot!
I can't help but think that's going to be quoted out-of-context against you, one of these days.
Improving Nethack's graphics just emphasises how poor the gameplay actually is, because you start comparing it with half decent games (like Baldur's Gate). The text-based versions have a certain retro charm, but the game is incredibly simplistic (more-or-less a dumbed-down version of Diablo). Detailed, more realistic graphics (even the tile-based graphics of Falcon's Eye) just raise expectations that the game itself will be complex or 'realistic' (in whetever sense of that word is appropriate to a fantasy game).
Nethack is for the old-skool, people who don't care about modern gameplay or modern graphics. A graphical update won't make it into a worthwhile modern game.
But when the copyright regime crumbles, we stop needing the GPL. If you can't enforce monopoly control over information, there stops being any incentive not to share that information. If anyone can freely distribute the binaries to Windows, what commercial advantage do MS get by keeping the code secret? And even if they decided to do so, it would only take one philanthropically inclined microserf (or one cracker) to get hold of the source, and we'd all be happily sharing it.
The purpose of the GPL is to subvert copyright. Wholesale civil disobedience (which filesharing is) is a rather more direct means to the same end. If we destroy copyright, the GPL stops working, but Free Software wins.
I wish people would stop moderating line-noise like the parent (and first posts, penis birds, Soviet Russia jokes etc.) as Trolls. There's a perfectly good Offtopic category for mere irrelevant crap. Trolls are inflamatory or intentionally stupid posts designed to get a response. The parent isn't.
Interestingly, the King James edition of the bible has a perpetual copyright in the UK (it predates modern copyright law, but is covered by its own special law). The lucky buggers who've got permission to produce copies (Cambridge University Press being one, I believe) are really raking it in.
It's not really a 'top 10', more a 'random 10 that happened to piss this guy off'. Having said that, he identifes mostly genuine problems, and cogently explains them to boot.
Only thing I don't get is his complaint about filesystem scans. He doesn't say what distro he's using, but my experience of Redhat, older versions of Mandrake, and Debian, is that the filesystem check at boot-up is non-interactive, and chooses whether or not to fix things by itself. I can only remember one occasion when I was asked anything on boot-up, and that was when I'd managed to completely trash my disk. The computer said something to the effect of 'I've no idea what's going on, enter the root password if you think you can fix it.' But user interaction is, as far as I know, only required on those occassions when there really is no other choice.
You might want to try DirectConnect, which would allow you to easily restrict the connections to hosts on the local network. We have a couple of DC hubs here at Cambridge University (one 'elite' hub for people sharing a lot, and another hub with no minimum share). Just word of mouth has allowed it to expand so that it has multiple terabytes shared most evenings, so I rarely have any need to download stuff from outside Cambridge any more.
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Look, I'm sure I'm at least as anti-government as you are (I'm an anarchist), but the naivety of this defence of the second ammendment never ceases to amaze me. To paraphrase Weber, the government is the government because they've got more guns than you. If the government is strong, no amount of guns in private hands are going to be able to overthrow it; if the government is weak, any laws it makes prohibiting gun ownership will be trivial to ignore. The idea that opposing gun control is some kind of stand for freedom, rather than, in practice, a call for more Columbines or Tony Martins, is one American Dream I'd like to see well and truly disposed of.
(The other advantage of this tactic is that even if it doesn't change the RIAA's minds, you've got the music you wanted for free).
You could probably implement inline regular expressions in C++ using expression templates, actually. Check out Spirit, which gives you inline BNF grammars in C++.
First off, as others have pointed out, you don't need to introduce a new class to do this kind of thing - C++ has vectors and pairs built in, and tuples will probably be in the next version of the standard.
However, you're right about the 'easy to instantiate' part, but I don't think static typing is really the problem. The problem with types in C++ is that you have to explicitly mention them, when a lot of the time the compiler could figure them out itself. In your example, you could do:
std::vector<std::pair<std::string, std::string> > entries = get_address_entries();
The type declaration isn't really necessary - the compiler knows that get_address_entries() returns a vector of pairs of strings, so could give the variable it's proper type. There's been some discussion about introducing type-inference into the language, so you could say:
auto entries = get_address_entries();
Which would make this kind of thing as easy to use as Python, while keeping the advantages of static typing in tracking down errors.
GNOME 2 does have a menu editor - it's called nautilus. Under Go->Start Here in nautilus there's a directory called 'Applications', which contains a representation of the menu hierarchy. Just drag and drop launchers here to change the menu.
I understand this is disabled in RH9, though, so maybe that's your problem.
Here is a copy of the plea bargain Austin signed. It doesn't mention any of the hacking allegations the FBI included on the warrent they used to search his house. Whether or not Sherman is a hacker, he was sentenced to prison for providing information - not conspiracy or incitement, but simply speech. Whether or not you agree with Austin's politics, that's quite simply terrifying.
... when you have some arguments to support your assertions.
(And when you do have those arguments, you might want to share them with the philosophers, who have been arguing about these questions for a couple of thousand years).
I'm not denying that Parrot is a good thing, and it may well be faster than CPython (I've no idea). I'm just not sure I follow your reasoning.
It's ages since I saw a proper troll on slashdot - and not only did you manage to sucker a few replies, you got the mods, too.
(For the clue-impaired, the parent includes a humorous reversal of the real situation - C|Net is full of software for _Windows_, where the equivalent tool is part of the system on any linux distribution)
Good point, I'd forgotten about that. And I was reading Look to Windward the otherday, too.
To be fair, you could go back to the original.
But when you have infinite free energy and infinite free labour, why would you want an economy? We can spend our time writing poems, or walking in the countryside, or having sex (or doing all three at once). Sounds better than having a job.
I can see why the developers might not like people modding their games, but that by itself doesn't make it illegal. Once you've bought the game, you can more or less do what you like with it, and if that interferes with the developers' money-making plans, bad luck to them.
I think, in these days of EULAs, DMCAs and WIPOs, it's important to keep in mind that intellectial property rights aren't a blank cheque to make money. Merely interfering with software (or music, or whatever) isn't copyright infringement. It's possible (but, I think, unlikely) that mods are derivative works, but, other than that, the original developers don't (or shouldn't) have any control over modding groups.
tATu are great for lots of reasons, one of them being that they're positive role models for young people considering their sexuality. But they're not gay - check out this interview. It's a gimmick, and a really cool one.
Can you give us a quick example of how you would do something useful in an OODBMS? The idea sounds interesting, but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how one would use them without falling back into 'relational persistence thoughts'.
I said it was like a dumbed down version of Diablo. The gameplay is similar to Diablo, but with an even greater emphasis on hack-and-slash and trial-and-error. That seems to me exactly what you'ld get if you dumbed down Diablo. The fact that, in terms of causality, NetHack influenced Diablo (rather than the other way round) doesn't make my comparison any less accurate.
Well, to be honest, your examples reflect precisely what I dislike about NetHack, its arbitariness. How do you learn any of this stuff other than trial and error? Diablo has at least occassional attempts to produce a gameworld that makes sense, rather than just being a random and incomprehensible series of 'hacks'.
Baldur's Gate or Deus Ex are, to my mind, much more immersive than either NetHack or Diablo, not primarily because of the graphics, but because it's possible to do well in these games by thinking like a participant in the game world, rather than as an external player of the game. Much of the best recent Interactive Fiction is immersive for similar reasons, and obviously in the case of IF, the immersiveness isn't to do with the graphics. Adam Cadre's I-0 is a good example.
I'm aware that some people like the NetHack style of gameplay, but frankly, they're wrong. More to the point, though, I do think the NetHack style, whether good or bad, is distinctly old-fashioned. Merely improving the graphics won't make the game more appealing to those who want a more modern style of gameplay, which seemed to be the suggestion being made by the guy I was originally replying to.
Oh, BTW:
GENOCIDE! Woot!
I can't help but think that's going to be quoted out-of-context against you, one of these days.
Improving Nethack's graphics just emphasises how poor the gameplay actually is, because you start comparing it with half decent games (like Baldur's Gate). The text-based versions have a certain retro charm, but the game is incredibly simplistic (more-or-less a dumbed-down version of Diablo). Detailed, more realistic graphics (even the tile-based graphics of Falcon's Eye) just raise expectations that the game itself will be complex or 'realistic' (in whetever sense of that word is appropriate to a fantasy game).
Nethack is for the old-skool, people who don't care about modern gameplay or modern graphics. A graphical update won't make it into a worthwhile modern game.
But when the copyright regime crumbles, we stop needing the GPL. If you can't enforce monopoly control over information, there stops being any incentive not to share that information. If anyone can freely distribute the binaries to Windows, what commercial advantage do MS get by keeping the code secret? And even if they decided to do so, it would only take one philanthropically inclined microserf (or one cracker) to get hold of the source, and we'd all be happily sharing it.
The purpose of the GPL is to subvert copyright. Wholesale civil disobedience (which filesharing is) is a rather more direct means to the same end. If we destroy copyright, the GPL stops working, but Free Software wins.
I wish people would stop moderating line-noise like the parent (and first posts, penis birds, Soviet Russia jokes etc.) as Trolls. There's a perfectly good Offtopic category for mere irrelevant crap. Trolls are inflamatory or intentionally stupid posts designed to get a response. The parent isn't.
Interestingly, the King James edition of the bible has a perpetual copyright in the UK (it predates modern copyright law, but is covered by its own special law). The lucky buggers who've got permission to produce copies (Cambridge University Press being one, I believe) are really raking it in.
It's not really a 'top 10', more a 'random 10 that happened to piss this guy off'. Having said that, he identifes mostly genuine problems, and cogently explains them to boot.
Only thing I don't get is his complaint about filesystem scans. He doesn't say what distro he's using, but my experience of Redhat, older versions of Mandrake, and Debian, is that the filesystem check at boot-up is non-interactive, and chooses whether or not to fix things by itself. I can only remember one occasion when I was asked anything on boot-up, and that was when I'd managed to completely trash my disk. The computer said something to the effect of 'I've no idea what's going on, enter the root password if you think you can fix it.' But user interaction is, as far as I know, only required on those occassions when there really is no other choice.
You might want to try DirectConnect, which would allow you to easily restrict the connections to hosts on the local network. We have a couple of DC hubs here at Cambridge University (one 'elite' hub for people sharing a lot, and another hub with no minimum share). Just word of mouth has allowed it to expand so that it has multiple terabytes shared most evenings, so I rarely have any need to download stuff from outside Cambridge any more.