If by "self-documenting code" you mean code with milti-paragraph long comments in it explaining in detail what each section does and how it's intended to work, with a detailed change log at the top of each section of the code, then I agree with you.
However IME to most developers "self-documenting code" means something more like "you should be smart enough to know how this works from reading my semi-descriptive variable names". I've seen comments like "Here's the main routine. This is fun" in some code that I've picked up and had to maintain. Made me shake my head at the time.
When I first started my career, I met a developer who put a comment on almost every line of his code. When I asked him why, he said, "because I try to code like the next person who's going to look at what I did is an idiot. And it usually is. It's usually me". I laughed at the time, but as I've grown older I've come to realize how true it is.
This is an excellent point, but to counter it I would say that all of the space ships that were designed for the first x-prize competition must surely have cost much more than the $10 Million prize.
Ok-- I'm not the first one here to point out that google TV failed because of lack of content, but IIRC the idea was initially that it would be able to pull in any content off the web-- including hulu, abc.com, nbc.com, etc... but the content owners immediately blocked google tv from their web sites.
What I don't get is... why didn't google just code around this and give you the chance to change the user agent? Make it look like firefox on windows xp to the servers and call it a job?
At work we recently updated our windows installations about six months ago-- to XP service pack 3.
I'm guessing we'll be sticking with XP until microsoft pries it out of our cold, dead, fingers.
I don't want to go an question the validity of the numbers that Forbes is throwing around here, but they don't exactly make sense to me. How can the cost of manufacturing be so low?
If it's only 2% of the cost of a device anyway, why would you want to outsource it? The labor to make a $400 ipad is... $8? Really?
Here's what I don't understand:
why can't some other company make essentially the same organism and just "code around" the patent? In software, there are a hundred different ways to achieve a similar effect and so most patents are easy enough to get around.
Genetic sequences, with their billions of possible combinations, and thousands of genes that are dormant and do nothing, should be incredibly easy to do this with. So why doesn't someone start selling a cheap knock-off of Monsanto's crop?
A lot will depend on how google handles it. If you google "gingrich" and hit "I'm feeling lucky" or just look at the first result returned, what page will it be?
So in the clinical trials, do some of the volunteers NOT get the actual vaccine? It seems like you have to validate its effectiveness against something... but giving people a placebo instead of an actual vaccine against a life-threatening disease seems sort of dodgy...
nothing mentioned in the summary sounds as though it would improve the game of football from a fan's perspective. At all.
Quarterbacks wired to every player and calling plays without a huddle? Really? How does that make the game more fun to watch?
noscript and flashblock?
That's what I run. I don't have any annoying pop-ups or animated ads (which seem to be mostly in flash)
Ads are no longer a problem for me, so I never bothered to install adblock.
What am I missing here?
Because the first thing verizon would do is remove the "cancel my service" button that netflix has. You'll have to sit on hold an hour to get your service turned off or even downgraded.
yet another reason not to watch good morning america.
While this might be moderately interesting to the slashdot crowd, is this really news?
And really.... pushing a physical ideal is a problem now? Are we supposed to start idolizing fat and dumpy? Or worse... Robin Roberts?
while I appreciate the brilliant quote, I don't get it. Something is wrong with a chance to score a tablet for $99?
Did HP do a bait and switch last time around?
OTOH, I guess we should be skeptical of a company that's abandoning the tablet market and webOS selling these at must certainly be a loss.
That's a really excellent point. But the publishers could get around that by dictating the format their books get published in be readable by different e-readers. Most things seem to be able to read ePUB format. Pretty sure they all read PDFs.
Certainly publishers should be able to charge what they want for a book. The rest of what you say is good only... not true.
You can find video games on sale for different prices from different stores. If you don't see different products at different prices, you're just not looking hard enough.
Modern warfare 3 sells for $59 most places, but I managed to find it for $52. Lots of things go on sale. I could buy the hunger games trilogy in Hardcover from Barnes and Noble for $30 or from Amazon for $22. But the ebooks were the same price everywhere (and inexplicable more expensive than the hardcovers). Nobody cries foul because for other items because, while everyone buys things at the same price, they don't all take the same amount of profit and resell it at the same price. At least they don't have to.
Ebooks are a problem because publishers have contracts explicitly saying how much profit a company can, and has to make (the "agent" model).
Needed to install 7-zip on a windows computer, and was in a hurry, so I went to the first Google result instead of sourceforge.
I aborted the install when I saw the "install this great toolbar" button. Still, I almost messed up my friend's computer.
Important safety tip #1: Google doesn't always produce the result you really want anymore.
Important safety tip #2: when installing open source software, Sourceforge is probably where you want to look.
The tech industry isn't trying to re-imagine TV because there's something wrong with it.
Companies like Apple and Google are trying to re-invent TV because they don't make any money off of it the way it is. Cable companies, networks and studios make a crap load of money from delivering TV content, and the tech industry wants a piece of that.
Slashdot Mirror
And here's the Facebook page of that pedestrian you just ran over.
for gods sake somebody mod parent up to 5
If by "self-documenting code" you mean code with milti-paragraph long comments in it explaining in detail what each section does and how it's intended to work, with a detailed change log at the top of each section of the code, then I agree with you.
However IME to most developers "self-documenting code" means something more like "you should be smart enough to know how this works from reading my semi-descriptive variable names". I've seen comments like "Here's the main routine. This is fun" in some code that I've picked up and had to maintain. Made me shake my head at the time.
When I first started my career, I met a developer who put a comment on almost every line of his code. When I asked him why, he said, "because I try to code like the next person who's going to look at what I did is an idiot. And it usually is. It's usually me". I laughed at the time, but as I've grown older I've come to realize how true it is.
This is an excellent point, but to counter it I would say that all of the space ships that were designed for the first x-prize competition must surely have cost much more than the $10 Million prize.
Am I the only one waiting for our entire fleet of drones to be hacked and turned against us like in battlestar galactica
Ok-- I'm not the first one here to point out that google TV failed because of lack of content, but IIRC the idea was initially that it would be able to pull in any content off the web-- including hulu, abc.com, nbc.com, etc... but the content owners immediately blocked google tv from their web sites. What I don't get is... why didn't google just code around this and give you the chance to change the user agent? Make it look like firefox on windows xp to the servers and call it a job?
It's hard. Any little thing that goes wrong will likely cause the whole thing not to work.
That's why it's rocket science.
This is one of the most ridiculous slashdot comments I have ever heard. Religions have always been allowed to discriminate.
Should a rabbi be forced to perform a wedding ceremony for me then, even if I'm not Jewish?
At work we recently updated our windows installations about six months ago-- to XP service pack 3. I'm guessing we'll be sticking with XP until microsoft pries it out of our cold, dead, fingers.
I don't want to go an question the validity of the numbers that Forbes is throwing around here, but they don't exactly make sense to me. How can the cost of manufacturing be so low? If it's only 2% of the cost of a device anyway, why would you want to outsource it? The labor to make a $400 ipad is... $8? Really?
Here's what I don't understand: why can't some other company make essentially the same organism and just "code around" the patent? In software, there are a hundred different ways to achieve a similar effect and so most patents are easy enough to get around.
Genetic sequences, with their billions of possible combinations, and thousands of genes that are dormant and do nothing, should be incredibly easy to do this with. So why doesn't someone start selling a cheap knock-off of Monsanto's crop?
A lot will depend on how google handles it. If you google "gingrich" and hit "I'm feeling lucky" or just look at the first result returned, what page will it be?
No matter how bad newtgingrich.com turns out, it can't possibly be as bad as what you get when you google Santorum
https://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=santorum...
Or can it?
On the other hand, I think it's humorous regardless of your politics.
Now that china has learned how to file obvious patents and make them sound kinda novel, will we have meaningful patent reform?
So in the clinical trials, do some of the volunteers NOT get the actual vaccine? It seems like you have to validate its effectiveness against something... but giving people a placebo instead of an actual vaccine against a life-threatening disease seems sort of dodgy...
nothing mentioned in the summary sounds as though it would improve the game of football from a fan's perspective. At all. Quarterbacks wired to every player and calling plays without a huddle? Really? How does that make the game more fun to watch?
noscript and flashblock? That's what I run. I don't have any annoying pop-ups or animated ads (which seem to be mostly in flash) Ads are no longer a problem for me, so I never bothered to install adblock. What am I missing here?
Because the first thing verizon would do is remove the "cancel my service" button that netflix has. You'll have to sit on hold an hour to get your service turned off or even downgraded.
yet another reason not to watch good morning america. While this might be moderately interesting to the slashdot crowd, is this really news? And really.... pushing a physical ideal is a problem now? Are we supposed to start idolizing fat and dumpy? Or worse... Robin Roberts?
while I appreciate the brilliant quote, I don't get it. Something is wrong with a chance to score a tablet for $99? Did HP do a bait and switch last time around? OTOH, I guess we should be skeptical of a company that's abandoning the tablet market and webOS selling these at must certainly be a loss.
That's a really excellent point. But the publishers could get around that by dictating the format their books get published in be readable by different e-readers. Most things seem to be able to read ePUB format. Pretty sure they all read PDFs.
Certainly publishers should be able to charge what they want for a book. The rest of what you say is good only... not true. You can find video games on sale for different prices from different stores. If you don't see different products at different prices, you're just not looking hard enough. Modern warfare 3 sells for $59 most places, but I managed to find it for $52. Lots of things go on sale. I could buy the hunger games trilogy in Hardcover from Barnes and Noble for $30 or from Amazon for $22. But the ebooks were the same price everywhere (and inexplicable more expensive than the hardcovers). Nobody cries foul because for other items because, while everyone buys things at the same price, they don't all take the same amount of profit and resell it at the same price. At least they don't have to. Ebooks are a problem because publishers have contracts explicitly saying how much profit a company can, and has to make (the "agent" model).
of course they have. What else do you call it when everybody has to sell things at the same price?
Needed to install 7-zip on a windows computer, and was in a hurry, so I went to the first Google result instead of sourceforge. I aborted the install when I saw the "install this great toolbar" button. Still, I almost messed up my friend's computer. Important safety tip #1: Google doesn't always produce the result you really want anymore. Important safety tip #2: when installing open source software, Sourceforge is probably where you want to look.
The tech industry isn't trying to re-imagine TV because there's something wrong with it. Companies like Apple and Google are trying to re-invent TV because they don't make any money off of it the way it is. Cable companies, networks and studios make a crap load of money from delivering TV content, and the tech industry wants a piece of that.
How did they stay in business as long as they did?