Good code avoids putting variables or functions unnecessarily in the global namespace. This means that the likelihood of name collisions is less likely so your code project is more likely to play nice with other code projects.
Name collisions are the least of concerns of most modern software projects. Any development environment worth considering using will support an automated 'rename' refactoring that will solve such a problem in seconds.
It's also good practice to try and make all of your code non-reentrant and threadsafe.
Ignoring the confusion between reentrant and non-reentrant here, I'm not sure why this is even relevant. In 99% of cases, it will never even matter. Wrap your object in a lock and nobody will care. Performance is not the most important quality of software design for the vast majority of cases, and if a non-threadsafe algorithm is easier for the developer to work with it will usually be better for them to do it that way.
It's also a good idea to COMMENT your code and DOCUMENT your processes
Yes. But better still is to write code whose meaning is obvious without documentation.
1. Continuous integration
2. A large and useful suite of tests that are run during #1
3. A paying customer who cares about the future of the software and is active in its development
4. A manager who understands the full software development life cycle
5. Developers who understand the business domain and problem the software is designed to solve
The submitter said he didn't want the answer to be "try extreme programming".
2 MB isn't even enough for a 1024x768 24bpp bitmap of the rendered page. In order to scroll smoothly, it'll be generating a bitmap of more than is immediately visible.
It doesn't need to have a bitmap of anything other than the currently active tab. The ~50ms it ought to take to draw the window from a data structure describing the document ought to be more than adequate for most purposes, although I'll grant it wouldn't provide smooth scrolling, hence the necessity to keep a bitmap for the active tab.
I also question the necessity even of keeping a bitmap. Could not a vector description (i.e. a "metafile" of some form) be stored instead, which would take a lot less space in most cases?
Is it possible to install Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously? I would like to retain an old working version that I'm comfortable with for one thing. Is it possible to have separate cookies, sessions, etc?
Yes. I currently have 2 and 3 RC2 installed on this machine, and the only negative effect is that they show the 'you've upgraded' page each time I switch between active versions. Not only can you have separate cookies etc, because FF3 has changed the way they're stored, it's not possible to have them shared.
Maybe I would have FF2 locked down and FF3 with flash installed. Is this possible?
I don't know if you can do this or not. My setup has them both sharing the same set of plugins.
Images, html, css, content, media.. all of that takes up space. Firefox has to hold it in memory so it can display it quickly when you click on the tab.
Yes, but not *that much* space. An average web page has about 50-200k of data associated with it. Firefox 3 RC2 with nothing open takes about 90MB on my system. Allowing some overhead (say ~1000%) for structuring this data in a useful form, this suggests that with 60 tabs open it should be using about 220MB. 1.3GB is excessive.
It's not like we all have to sprint to our computers and start it on the minute.
In fact, the organisers are probably relying on the fact that we won't. If a record-breaking number of downloads for a 24 hour period occurred all starting within a few minutes of each other, I don't think even mozilla.org's servers would survive for long.
The first time I wanted to visit this Drudge site I'd heard about, I punched in the obvious url and ended up at the "retort" instead. Isn't that some kind of copyright violation?
Err... no. Titles are not protected by copyright. URLs are not protected by copyright. Single words are not protected by copyright.
The links in question on Drudge Retort point to Yahoo and Fox News pages containing syndicated AP content. While AP still owns the content on these pages, the bottom line is they were already paid for that content...in other words Yahoo and Fox News are the ones suffering directly from this alleged click reduction since they paid for the content but don't get the ad impressions.
AP's action could be as a result of either Yahoo or Fox News making a complaint to them. Neither of these organisations would have the right to make a DMCA notification themselves, but they could argue that AP failing to do so devalues the service they get from them. From AP's point of view, this has potential impact on future profits. Not much, perhaps, but the possibility is there.
Here's some of the stuff that's likely to happen to your company if it sends those messages:
* Your mail server will be added to blacklists. Legitimate messages you send later may disappear with no indication that they have done so, causing endless frustration and possibly lost money. * Complaints may reach your web site's hosting provider, who may take it offline. Seriously: this happened to one of my clients once. This does happen. * Some recipients are likely to be annoyed and may decide to never do business with your company. The long-term costs of this could be significant. * Depending on where you're based, this could be illegal under either protection of privacy laws (e.g. the UK's Data Protection Act) or anti-spam laws (e.g. several state laws in the U.S.). Your company may receive a hefty fine because of it.
But to assume that no geohashers will ever go on private property because Randall told 'em not to is just naive.
If you don't follow the rules as written, there's no point taking part. The point is to find a mutually-agreed random location that changes from day to day so that you can meet other geohashers there. If you don't follow the rules the way everyone else does, you'll meet no-one.
this is, to my knowledge, a rather unique publication in that it seeks to educate teenage youth about an array of issues ranging from privacy, free software, security and the impact of politics on personal freedom as it relates to the use of technology. Making topics like that exciting, and understandable to a young person may sound like a tall order, and I think it is.
See also Little Brother, a novel by Cory Doctorow that treads similar ground.
For replying this high. But, I have people at work who aren't complete idiots who use a similar method and have claimed mpg benefits. [...] The basic premise is that by pulling "free" energy from the alternator, you crack H20 into H2 and O2, then reintroduce them together back into the air intake via a crude nozzle. The site/book's author does not understand why this "works" but claims that the gasoline is "more potent" in some way. This is apparently the "new science." Ugh.
My basic understanding is there are two ways this can work:
1. The alternator is able to draw energy from the kinetic energy of the vehicle during the process of "engine braking". This can usefully be converted to hydrogen for later consumption, rather than dropped into useless heat as it normally would be, thus saving a little energy.
2. Adding hydrogen to the fuel/air mix allows ignition at a lower concentration of fuel; this means engines can be set to run somewhat leaner and therefore obtain better economy (similarly to how an engine with smaller cylinders obtains better economy) at the expense of peak power output.
So, yes, it's entirely plausible your colleagues are getting economy benefits from this. Switching to a car with a less powerful engine or even a hybrid would be substantially better, though.
My first reaction is that the geohashing folks overreacted. I might be a little concerned and take photos of license plates if a bunch of people suddenly showed up on my property somewhere out in the boonies.
Well, yes, except they weren't on the property... they met on the road outside. And as somebody else has pointed out, the location was on the edges of a respectable S.F. suburb, not exactly "out in the boonies".
So, basically, everyone's overreacted. But then one of the overreactors was Darcy [not entirely safe for work], so all is forgiven.;)
Seriously, what is it with the XKCD guys? If their hashed coordinates led them to the inside of someone's house, would they kick down the door and walk in? Of course not! But somehow, because it's a remote area, they think it's perfectly okay to trespass. They're being idiots, and eventually someone is going to get hurt.
Read the description in the article. They weren't on somebody's land: they were on the road outside it. What it says: "You can drive by, and park on the OPPOSITE side of the road, but don't go any further." This guy is sensitive to people parking on the road outside his land.
I don't know why the xkcd folks think they can just get away with this.. you can't just drive out to a random spot; that's called trespassing unless it just happens to be on public land.
From the description of how to perform geohashing: "When any coordinates generated by the Geohashing algorithm fall within a dangerous area, are inaccessible, or would require illegal trespass, DO NOT attempt to reach them." The general rule is to meet on the closest public road to the point generated.
These geohashers (and anyone else who shows up unannounced on private property) are pretty much looking to become s statistic.
Geohashers do not go onto private property. From the original description: "When any coordinates generated by the Geohashing algorithm fall within a dangerous area, are inaccessible, or would require illegal trespass, DO NOT attempt to reach them." (emphasis mine). The usual procedure (as was followed in this case, if you read the description) is to meet on the closest public road to the coordinates generated.
This land-owner was overreacting to the presence of a large group of people on the public road close to their property, not to trespassers.
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But d0000000d, yer missing the point. He wants to do something 1337 hAxXoRz with all these drives. I mean, really, selling them on eBay would be what the n0rmLz would do.
Absolutely. My advice: there are open source designs for processors, IDE adapters and gigabit ethernet controllers that can be loaded onto FPGAs. There's not a lot you need to know beyond this to go and do it yourself.
Isn't it some kind of EULA infringement rather than a copyright one ?
First of all, the guy was charged with a criminal offence. EULA violation isn't a criminal offence; only Microsoft have a claim against him for EULA violation, and from all appearances they haven't been involved in this case at all.
Secondly, to get him for an EULA violation, they'd have to prove first that he'd agreed to the EULA. And seeing as he was modifying other people's Xboxen, it would be kind of tricky to show there was any reason why he would have done so.
Apostrophes are NOT used for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals, including acronyms.
Not quite true. According to the Oxford Manual of Style (IIRC: i don't have my copy with me) an apostrophe may be used for a noun plural where the noun is either an acronym (particularly if it ends in "S", e.g. "SOS's") or a number (e.g. "80's"). I'm sure many other style guides include similar advice. See here for more info.
Does this establish that the whole idea of it being a crime to provide a service that allows others to circumvent copyright is going to fall apart?
I doubt it. Unfortunately the case doesn't seem to have made it to BAILII, but I suspect the ruling was on the grounds that there are commercially relevant and legal purposes for a modchip (e.g. personal backups, grey imports, custom software) and therefore the relevant legislation does not apply in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
vaj tlhIngan Hol jatlh SoH?
Good code avoids putting variables or functions unnecessarily in the global namespace. This means that the likelihood of name collisions is less likely so your code project is more likely to play nice with other code projects.
Name collisions are the least of concerns of most modern software projects. Any development environment worth considering using will support an automated 'rename' refactoring that will solve such a problem in seconds.
It's also good practice to try and make all of your code non-reentrant and threadsafe.
Ignoring the confusion between reentrant and non-reentrant here, I'm not sure why this is even relevant. In 99% of cases, it will never even matter. Wrap your object in a lock and nobody will care. Performance is not the most important quality of software design for the vast majority of cases, and if a non-threadsafe algorithm is easier for the developer to work with it will usually be better for them to do it that way.
It's also a good idea to COMMENT your code and DOCUMENT your processes
Yes. But better still is to write code whose meaning is obvious without documentation.
Good software has:
1. Continuous integration
2. A large and useful suite of tests that are run during #1
3. A paying customer who cares about the future of the software and is active in its development
4. A manager who understands the full software development life cycle
5. Developers who understand the business domain and problem the software is designed to solve
The submitter said he didn't want the answer to be "try extreme programming".
2 MB isn't even enough for a 1024x768 24bpp bitmap of the rendered page. In order to scroll smoothly, it'll be generating a bitmap of more than is immediately visible.
It doesn't need to have a bitmap of anything other than the currently active tab. The ~50ms it ought to take to draw the window from a data structure describing the document ought to be more than adequate for most purposes, although I'll grant it wouldn't provide smooth scrolling, hence the necessity to keep a bitmap for the active tab.
I also question the necessity even of keeping a bitmap. Could not a vector description (i.e. a "metafile" of some form) be stored instead, which would take a lot less space in most cases?
Is it possible to install Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously? I would like to retain an old working version that I'm comfortable with for one thing. Is it possible to have separate cookies, sessions, etc?
Yes. I currently have 2 and 3 RC2 installed on this machine, and the only negative effect is that they show the 'you've upgraded' page each time I switch between active versions. Not only can you have separate cookies etc, because FF3 has changed the way they're stored, it's not possible to have them shared.
Maybe I would have FF2 locked down and FF3 with flash installed. Is this possible?
I don't know if you can do this or not. My setup has them both sharing the same set of plugins.
That's a PEBCAK error, not a fault with Firefox.
Images, html, css, content, media.. all of that takes up space. Firefox has to hold it in memory so it can display it quickly when you click on the tab.
Yes, but not *that much* space. An average web page has about 50-200k of data associated with it. Firefox 3 RC2 with nothing open takes about 90MB on my system. Allowing some overhead (say ~1000%) for structuring this data in a useful form, this suggests that with 60 tabs open it should be using about 220MB. 1.3GB is excessive.
It's not like we all have to sprint to our computers and start it on the minute.
In fact, the organisers are probably relying on the fact that we won't. If a record-breaking number of downloads for a 24 hour period occurred all starting within a few minutes of each other, I don't think even mozilla.org's servers would survive for long.
The first time I wanted to visit this Drudge site I'd heard about, I punched in the obvious url and ended up at the "retort" instead. Isn't that some kind of copyright violation?
Err... no. Titles are not protected by copyright. URLs are not protected by copyright. Single words are not protected by copyright.
The links in question on Drudge Retort point to Yahoo and Fox News pages containing syndicated AP content. While AP still owns the content on these pages, the bottom line is they were already paid for that content...in other words Yahoo and Fox News are the ones suffering directly from this alleged click reduction since they paid for the content but don't get the ad impressions.
AP's action could be as a result of either Yahoo or Fox News making a complaint to them. Neither of these organisations would have the right to make a DMCA notification themselves, but they could argue that AP failing to do so devalues the service they get from them. From AP's point of view, this has potential impact on future profits. Not much, perhaps, but the possibility is there.
Here's some of the stuff that's likely to happen to your company if it sends those messages:
* Your mail server will be added to blacklists. Legitimate messages you send later may disappear with no indication that they have done so, causing endless frustration and possibly lost money.
* Complaints may reach your web site's hosting provider, who may take it offline. Seriously: this happened to one of my clients once. This does happen.
* Some recipients are likely to be annoyed and may decide to never do business with your company. The long-term costs of this could be significant.
* Depending on where you're based, this could be illegal under either protection of privacy laws (e.g. the UK's Data Protection Act) or anti-spam laws (e.g. several state laws in the U.S.). Your company may receive a hefty fine because of it.
But to assume that no geohashers will ever go on private property because Randall told 'em not to is just naive.
If you don't follow the rules as written, there's no point taking part. The point is to find a mutually-agreed random location that changes from day to day so that you can meet other geohashers there. If you don't follow the rules the way everyone else does, you'll meet no-one.
this is, to my knowledge, a rather unique publication in that it seeks to educate teenage youth about an array of issues ranging from privacy, free software, security and the impact of politics on personal freedom as it relates to the use of technology. Making topics like that exciting, and understandable to a young person may sound like a tall order, and I think it is.
See also Little Brother, a novel by Cory Doctorow that treads similar ground.
For replying this high. But, I have people at work who aren't complete idiots who use a similar method and have claimed mpg benefits. [...] The basic premise is that by pulling "free" energy from the alternator, you crack H20 into H2 and O2, then reintroduce them together back into the air intake via a crude nozzle. The site/book's author does not understand why this "works" but claims that the gasoline is "more potent" in some way. This is apparently the "new science." Ugh.
My basic understanding is there are two ways this can work:
1. The alternator is able to draw energy from the kinetic energy of the vehicle during the process of "engine braking". This can usefully be converted to hydrogen for later consumption, rather than dropped into useless heat as it normally would be, thus saving a little energy.
2. Adding hydrogen to the fuel/air mix allows ignition at a lower concentration of fuel; this means engines can be set to run somewhat leaner and therefore obtain better economy (similarly to how an engine with smaller cylinders obtains better economy) at the expense of peak power output.
So, yes, it's entirely plausible your colleagues are getting economy benefits from this. Switching to a car with a less powerful engine or even a hybrid would be substantially better, though.
My first reaction is that the geohashing folks overreacted. I might be a little concerned and take photos of license plates if a bunch of people suddenly showed up on my property somewhere out in the boonies.
;)
Well, yes, except they weren't on the property... they met on the road outside. And as somebody else has pointed out, the location was on the edges of a respectable S.F. suburb, not exactly "out in the boonies".
So, basically, everyone's overreacted. But then one of the overreactors was Darcy [not entirely safe for work], so all is forgiven.
Perhaps people should just stay inside all day.
Hold on. You mean there's something out there... beyond my monitors... outside my HOUSE? I was wondering what the door was for...
Seriously, what is it with the XKCD guys? If their hashed coordinates led them to the inside of someone's house, would they kick down the door and walk in? Of course not! But somehow, because it's a remote area, they think it's perfectly okay to trespass. They're being idiots, and eventually someone is going to get hurt.
Read the description in the article. They weren't on somebody's land: they were on the road outside it. What it says: "You can drive by, and park on the OPPOSITE side of the road, but don't go any further." This guy is sensitive to people parking on the road outside his land.
I don't know why the xkcd folks think they can just get away with this.. you can't just drive out to a random spot; that's called trespassing unless it just happens to be on public land.
From the description of how to perform geohashing: "When any coordinates generated by the Geohashing algorithm fall within a dangerous area, are inaccessible, or would require illegal trespass, DO NOT attempt to reach them." The general rule is to meet on the closest public road to the point generated.
Generally it's not a good idea to get in a gun fight with a rancher on their own property.
Generally, it's not a good idea to be on private property without permission.
They were on the road outside the rancher's property, not actually on private property.
These geohashers (and anyone else who shows up unannounced on private property) are pretty much looking to become s statistic.
Geohashers do not go onto private property. From the original description: "When any coordinates generated by the Geohashing algorithm fall within a dangerous area, are inaccessible, or would require illegal trespass, DO NOT attempt to reach them." (emphasis mine). The usual procedure (as was followed in this case, if you read the description) is to meet on the closest public road to the coordinates generated.
This land-owner was overreacting to the presence of a large group of people on the public road close to their property, not to trespassers.
But d0000000d, yer missing the point. He wants to do something 1337 hAxXoRz with all these drives. I mean, really, selling them on eBay would be what the n0rmLz would do.
Absolutely. My advice: there are open source designs for processors, IDE adapters and gigabit ethernet controllers that can be loaded onto FPGAs. There's not a lot you need to know beyond this to go and do it yourself.
[original research]
Isn't it some kind of EULA infringement rather than a copyright one ?
First of all, the guy was charged with a criminal offence. EULA violation isn't a criminal offence; only Microsoft have a claim against him for EULA violation, and from all appearances they haven't been involved in this case at all.
Secondly, to get him for an EULA violation, they'd have to prove first that he'd agreed to the EULA. And seeing as he was modifying other people's Xboxen, it would be kind of tricky to show there was any reason why he would have done so.
Apostrophes are NOT used for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals, including acronyms.
Not quite true. According to the Oxford Manual of Style (IIRC: i don't have my copy with me) an apostrophe may be used for a noun plural where the noun is either an acronym (particularly if it ends in "S", e.g. "SOS's") or a number (e.g. "80's"). I'm sure many other style guides include similar advice. See here for more info.
Does this establish that the whole idea of it being a crime to provide a service that allows others to circumvent copyright is going to fall apart?
I doubt it. Unfortunately the case doesn't seem to have made it to BAILII, but I suspect the ruling was on the grounds that there are commercially relevant and legal purposes for a modchip (e.g. personal backups, grey imports, custom software) and therefore the relevant legislation does not apply in this case.