I was a 16 year old geek when Tron came out. It bored me to tears and I forgot about it as soon as I walked out of the theater. The new Tron Legacy trailer looks every bit as dumb. What am I missing here?
In the 1970s and early 80s, before the internet, before personal computers, nothing linked geeks together more than Martin Gardner's monthly column in Scientific American. I amazed myself with his binary card deck, and collected matchboxes to make a tic-tac-toe learning computer.
His work will live on. I'm sitting next to a shelf full of his books as I type this.
This is not true. Chances of a catastrophic asteroid strike on Earth are significant when you start to think in terms of centuries rather than years. We need to get started on colonization of Mars.
"Shatner had a dry spell in the early 1970s, which he believes was due to his being typecast as Captain Kirk, making it difficult to find other work. Moreover, his wife Gloria Rand left him. With very little money and few acting prospects, he lived in a truck bed camper in the San Fernando Valley until acting bit-parts turned into higher paying roles. Shatner refers to this part of his life as "that period", a humbling one in which he would take any odd job, including small party appearances, to support his family."
It's really strange to think that he went directly from playing Spock to playing a magician named Paris on another show the next season. And Shatner went directly into unemployment for several years, I think.
Re:HTML5 for the win? Sorry, that's not a codec.
on
YouTube Revamp Imminent?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Using HTML5 without calling for a codec is like an incomplete function call.
That doesn't make any sense to me. The <IMG> tag doesn't specify a particular format (JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc.). Why should the <VIDEO> tag specify a format?
"people do foolish things like put their work email address into their webmail account"
Why do webmail providers allow this? In fact, why would a webmail provider allow you to specify any "From:" address other than the user's actual webmail account?
OK, I will grant you that several encyclopedias seem to recognize this usage of the word. I suspect it's just political correctness run amok, but I cannot prove it.
I still maintain however, that the usage causes complete confusion. Witness this sentence from Wikipedia: "White minority rule describes a situation where Whites, comprising the minority of inhabitants in a given region or territory, lead countries where non-White populations are the majority of inhabitants." Who is the minority in this situation?
I have never seen the word "majority" used the way you used it. Never. (I think Wikipedia is wrong as well, and I put a comment on the Talk page asking for evidence that supports their usage.)
I should point out that your use of "majority" in this way left you without a term that means "> 50%". As a result, you commandeered the term "super-majority" for this purpose. This is just wrong. You ended up confusing yourself as much as anyone else.
In short, I believe your usage is probably wrong, and definitely confusing. This is not "choo-choo" territory.
It's interesting that Wiki-sociologists have attempted to redefine the word "minority" in order to accommodate the view that whites are dominant even though they are a numerical minority. However, the dictionary definition takes precedence (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/minority). If you want to use "minority" as a technical sociological term in a popular forum, I would suggest you use the phrase "sociological minority" instead. At least it will be clear what you're trying to say.
C'mon people. I'm sure this is a very nice project and perhaps it might eventually be popular with Grandma Homeuser, but is everyone so dumbstruck by the Google name that they can't state what must be said?
First of all, it's not an OS, so please don't call it an OS. That term has an actual prior meaning that should not be hijacked in an attempt to sound geeky-cool. Perhaps "operating environment" is the right term? In any case, it's just a web app in the end.
Secondly, as a developer, I will never ever ever use this kind of app as my main interface. I need to be able to write/compile/debug software that executes on my actual hardware, not just on some virtual machine in the sky. If you take that away from me, you are taking away one of my most important freedoms. Not to mention that you're also thrusting me back into the 1960's. I own a computer, not just a "terminal".
Third, all your data lives in the cloud. This isn't a showstopper for me personally, but I know it's a big problem for many people. Speak up!
Folks, once the coolness factor wears off, are you really going to want this? I think not.
Facebook only allows you to poke your friends, right? With a restraining order in place, how did these two have such a relationship in the first place?
Thanks, but there are lots of important architectural considerations that are necessarily left out such a discussion. It's not much different from asking for legal advice - you might get a lawyer to answer, but don't take that answer as professional legal advice.
Slashdot is hardly the right venue to get a good answer to this question (how the hell did it end up in the Hardware category?), but I've dealt with this a zillion times, so I'll give a pointer to what is very likely the correct answer: optimistic locking.
Hard locks are probably not what you want in a stateless web app. (E.g. What happens if someone locks a record and then is hit by a bus?) Instead, here's how it works:
User X fetches version 1 of Record A.
User Y fetches version 1 of Record A.
User X modifies her copy of Record A and attempts to save the change.
System checks whether incoming version (1) matches database version (1). It does, so the save proceeds and the version number on the record is updated to 2.
User Y modifies his copy of Record A and attempts to save the change.
System checks whether incoming version (1) matches database version (2). It does not, so User Y is notified that he cannot save his changes.
User Y fetches version 2 of Record A and tries again.
This is also known in the vernacular as "second save loses". It may sound too harsh, but it is much better than "first save loses and user isn't notified", which is what you get if you have no currency checking at all. And it's also much more web friendly that your old desktop app (which uses an approach that is technically called "pessimistic locking").
For any of you tempted to wax nostalgic about COBOL, let me explain[*] just one charming feature: Procedure calls in COBOL are not stack based. That's right, there is no call stack.
In fact, you can't even really call a procedure in COBOL. Instead, you invoke what amounts to a GOTO/COMEFROM pair. COBOL programs are divided into "paragraphs". When you want to execute a procedure, you PERFORM PARA-1 THRU PARA-N. Yes, that's right - the return point of the invocation varies at the whim of the caller. Heck, the return point of the invocation can even appear *before* the starting point.
But wait, it gets even better! These invocations can overlap (again, rather than stacking). So if I PERFORM PARA-1 THRU PARA-5, then in the middle of PARA-3 I decide to PERFORM PARA-4 THRU PARA-6, guess what happens? As the instruction pointer passes the end of PARA-5, it doesn't continue through to PARA-6. No! There's still an active "COMEFROM" at the end of PARA-5 from the first invocation that returns control to the statement following that invocation. From there, it's like a whack-a-mole. The COMEFROM at the end of PARA-5 is cleared, but should control ever pass the end of PARA-6 for any reason whatsoever, there's still an active COMEFROM waiting there to send the instruction pointer back to the statement following the second invocation.
In short, pray that you never have to debug a poorly structured COBOL program. It is essentially impossible.
[*]Disclaimer: This information is based on suppressed traumatic memories from 20 years ago, so some details may be incorrect.
My kids play Spore. It looks like an entertaining game with no relation to reality whatsoever. If they use it to teach evolution (or anything about biology, really), I would pull my kid out the next day. It's pure fantasy - nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't belong in a science class.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdotters have been complaining about Slashdot for as long as I can remember (since '98).
From TFA: "Wall-mounted cameras report on the glider's position and the control system looks up a trajectory that will take it to the perch."
How exactly is that going to work with an actual power line? Not a lot of wall-mounted cameras up there.
I was a 16 year old geek when Tron came out. It bored me to tears and I forgot about it as soon as I walked out of the theater. The new Tron Legacy trailer looks every bit as dumb. What am I missing here?
Yes. The Readability add-on is the best Firefox add-on I've come across in the last few years. So much easier on the eyes.
In the 1970s and early 80s, before the internet, before personal computers, nothing linked geeks together more than Martin Gardner's monthly column in Scientific American. I amazed myself with his binary card deck, and collected matchboxes to make a tic-tac-toe learning computer.
His work will live on. I'm sitting next to a shelf full of his books as I type this.
Ronald Reagan - you mean that guy who raised the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion?
There is zero _urgency_ to send humans
This is not true. Chances of a catastrophic asteroid strike on Earth are significant when you start to think in terms of centuries rather than years. We need to get started on colonization of Mars.
"Shatner had a dry spell in the early 1970s, which he believes was due to his being typecast as Captain Kirk, making it difficult to find other work. Moreover, his wife Gloria Rand left him. With very little money and few acting prospects, he lived in a truck bed camper in the San Fernando Valley until acting bit-parts turned into higher paying roles. Shatner refers to this part of his life as "that period", a humbling one in which he would take any odd job, including small party appearances, to support his family."
From Wikipedia
It's really strange to think that he went directly from playing Spock to playing a magician named Paris on another show the next season. And Shatner went directly into unemployment for several years, I think.
Using HTML5 without calling for a codec is like an incomplete function call.
That doesn't make any sense to me. The <IMG> tag doesn't specify a particular format (JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc.). Why should the <VIDEO> tag specify a format?
It's sad really, the most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same rabid supporters of the policies that are destroying it.
Great point. I think that may become my new quote.
"people do foolish things like put their work email address into their webmail account"
Why do webmail providers allow this? In fact, why would a webmail provider allow you to specify any "From:" address other than the user's actual webmail account?
OK, I will grant you that several encyclopedias seem to recognize this usage of the word. I suspect it's just political correctness run amok, but I cannot prove it.
I still maintain however, that the usage causes complete confusion. Witness this sentence from Wikipedia: "White minority rule describes a situation where Whites, comprising the minority of inhabitants in a given region or territory, lead countries where non-White populations are the majority of inhabitants." Who is the minority in this situation?
Further (and rather hilarious) confusion can be found in the bizarre disagreement between the disambiguation page for "minority" vs. the actual page for "minority".
Thank you leading me to investigate this. I definitely learned something.
I have never seen the word "majority" used the way you used it. Never. (I think Wikipedia is wrong as well, and I put a comment on the Talk page asking for evidence that supports their usage.)
I should point out that your use of "majority" in this way left you without a term that means "> 50%". As a result, you commandeered the term "super-majority" for this purpose. This is just wrong. You ended up confusing yourself as much as anyone else.
In short, I believe your usage is probably wrong, and definitely confusing. This is not "choo-choo" territory.
It's interesting that Wiki-sociologists have attempted to redefine the word "minority" in order to accommodate the view that whites are dominant even though they are a numerical minority. However, the dictionary definition takes precedence (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/minority). If you want to use "minority" as a technical sociological term in a popular forum, I would suggest you use the phrase "sociological minority" instead. At least it will be clear what you're trying to say.
A minority to who? The only way that's at all possible is if you say we're a minority compared to everyone else added up, which is stupid.
You might think it's stupid, but that's what the word "minority" means!
Minority means < 50%
Majority means > 50%
Super-majority means > 50% + X, where X is some positive number.
They are not relative terms.
C'mon people. I'm sure this is a very nice project and perhaps it might eventually be popular with Grandma Homeuser, but is everyone so dumbstruck by the Google name that they can't state what must be said?
First of all, it's not an OS, so please don't call it an OS. That term has an actual prior meaning that should not be hijacked in an attempt to sound geeky-cool. Perhaps "operating environment" is the right term? In any case, it's just a web app in the end.
Secondly, as a developer, I will never ever ever use this kind of app as my main interface. I need to be able to write/compile/debug software that executes on my actual hardware, not just on some virtual machine in the sky. If you take that away from me, you are taking away one of my most important freedoms. Not to mention that you're also thrusting me back into the 1960's. I own a computer, not just a "terminal".
Third, all your data lives in the cloud. This isn't a showstopper for me personally, but I know it's a big problem for many people. Speak up!
Folks, once the coolness factor wears off, are you really going to want this? I think not.
Facebook only allows you to poke your friends, right? With a restraining order in place, how did these two have such a relationship in the first place?
I've seen many spectacular Slashdot screwups over the years, but this is a new one. Well done, guys!
Thanks, but there are lots of important architectural considerations that are necessarily left out such a discussion. It's not much different from asking for legal advice - you might get a lawyer to answer, but don't take that answer as professional legal advice.
Yes, this is a good way to do it.
Slashdot is hardly the right venue to get a good answer to this question (how the hell did it end up in the Hardware category?), but I've dealt with this a zillion times, so I'll give a pointer to what is very likely the correct answer: optimistic locking.
Hard locks are probably not what you want in a stateless web app. (E.g. What happens if someone locks a record and then is hit by a bus?) Instead, here's how it works:
This is also known in the vernacular as "second save loses". It may sound too harsh, but it is much better than "first save loses and user isn't notified", which is what you get if you have no currency checking at all. And it's also much more web friendly that your old desktop app (which uses an approach that is technically called "pessimistic locking").
Good point. 99% pure = 10,000 parts-per-million contamination.
For any of you tempted to wax nostalgic about COBOL, let me explain[*] just one charming feature: Procedure calls in COBOL are not stack based. That's right, there is no call stack.
In fact, you can't even really call a procedure in COBOL. Instead, you invoke what amounts to a GOTO/COMEFROM pair. COBOL programs are divided into "paragraphs". When you want to execute a procedure, you PERFORM PARA-1 THRU PARA-N. Yes, that's right - the return point of the invocation varies at the whim of the caller. Heck, the return point of the invocation can even appear *before* the starting point.
But wait, it gets even better! These invocations can overlap (again, rather than stacking). So if I PERFORM PARA-1 THRU PARA-5, then in the middle of PARA-3 I decide to PERFORM PARA-4 THRU PARA-6, guess what happens? As the instruction pointer passes the end of PARA-5, it doesn't continue through to PARA-6. No! There's still an active "COMEFROM" at the end of PARA-5 from the first invocation that returns control to the statement following that invocation. From there, it's like a whack-a-mole. The COMEFROM at the end of PARA-5 is cleared, but should control ever pass the end of PARA-6 for any reason whatsoever, there's still an active COMEFROM waiting there to send the instruction pointer back to the statement following the second invocation.
In short, pray that you never have to debug a poorly structured COBOL program. It is essentially impossible.
[*]Disclaimer: This information is based on suppressed traumatic memories from 20 years ago, so some details may be incorrect.
My kids play Spore. It looks like an entertaining game with no relation to reality whatsoever. If they use it to teach evolution (or anything about biology, really), I would pull my kid out the next day. It's pure fantasy - nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't belong in a science class.