FUD flows in both directions, and businesses should be at least aware of the blogosphere, and that bloggers may be spreading misinformation, and how to counter it with the truth.
The problem is, when small companies (or even individuals) are attacked unfairly, it can spread so fast that there is no way to "counter it with the truth". The sheer mass of lies drowns out the small voice of the innocent victim.
I am wondering how many legitimate, honest businesses may have been crushed by anonymous smear campaigns that they did not have the resources to fight.
I can't believe how many people are forgetting about laws regarding slander and libel.
Do we have free speech? Yes.
Can we use it to spread lies about people in order to hurt their reputation? No.
Regardless of how badly the article miscommunicated this point (i.e. mixing up the facts in some of the stated examples), I think that was the gist of what they were saying.
Before you bash the article in its entirety, consider the following paragraph:
But if blogging is journalism, then some of its practitioners seem to have learned the trade from Jayson Blair. Many repeat things without bothering to check on whether they are true, a penchant political operatives have been quick to exploit. "Campaigns understand that there are some stories that regular reporters won't print. So they'll give those stories to the blogs," says Christian Grantham, a Democratic consultant in Washington who also blogs. He cites the phony John Kerry/secret girlfriend story spread by bloggers in the 2004 primaries. The story was bogus, but no blogger got fired for printing the lie. "It's not like journalism, where your reputation is ruined if you get something wrong. In the blogosphere people just move on. It's scurrilous," Grantham says.
I'm sure the next time some candidate is attacked unfairly in the blogs, people will be screaming about it.
Yes, in an ideal world the U.S. government could "stick it to the man" and pass all kinds of new laws to try to force gas prices to be lower.
However, we as a nation are really at the mercy of the oil industry, and the people in the government know this.
Recently, a bill (the Senate version) was squashed that would have encouraged the oil industry to build new refineries. The opponents claimed it would relax too many environmental regulations, and that oil companies have been voluntarily shutting down refineries. Perhaps this is true, but now the oil industry has been handed an excuse not to build new refineries.
How do we force the companies to sell oil at a cheaper price? Does the government rush in and take control of the companies? We can pass laws that "encourage" alternative energies, but does that reduce the cost of oil right now?
Re:Not so sure about this - I stil "don't get it"
on
What is Ruby on Rails?
·
· Score: 1
I too have to admit that I just don't get it, but I'm willing to learn. However, I want a true explanation of the concept, not just a testimonial. Telling me, "It's the best thing out there", doesn't cut it.
From the beginning, I've been wanting a simple explanation of the structure of RoR. It is almost as if people are afraid that if you dig deeper into the design, you will discover something that will turn you away before trying it out. People shouldn't be afraid of the truth.
I submitted the article because I am genuinely interested in the idea (which opposes my original thinking) that I can get away with using arrays and not take a performance hit.
I am happy if it is true, because using arrays results in code that is easier to maintain and read.
When submitting the article, I made it a point to avoid using inflamatory language, and went out of my way to present both sides of the issue, even going as far as making a case for the opposing view.
In fact, when I brought the idea up the first time in the other thread, my own posts were met with a harsh remark about why I was wrong. That comment, while not as friendly as I would prefer, is what got me interested in the idea. I posted to Ask Slashdot because I wanted to hear some more level-headed opinions on the matter that didn't include inflamatory language.
From the replies I've seen so far, I can see there are indeed some critical thinkers reading this site who are nice enough to respond in kind.
Since the original ended up using registers, it couldn't be any more efficient.
Before I even posted it, I tried it with the XOR swap. The code ended up looking very convoluted. I don't think the compiler recognized the XOR swap design.
Hmm... I guess I just don't think of things that way. I don't think of pointer usage as being "tricky". In fact, I consider array indexing to be inefficient, especially when an expression is being used as the index. When compiled, the resulting code has to evaluate an extra expression every time the array is indexed, which it then adds that to base address of the array. Thus you have extraneous computations, to say nothing about the temporary storage that needs to be used. Even when using a straight variable as the index, it still has to be added to the base address.
I would find it extremely uncomfortable to be forced to use array indexing when using pointers would be faster and more efficient (and, to me, very easy to understand).
Well, this is about as readable as I can make it while sticking with the original concept of using pointers (it appears slashdot likes to mess with my formatting though):
What, are you sore you didn't think of it yourself?
Look, the stipulation was to allocate the least amount of memory as possible. It didn't say anything about local variables being an exception to the rule.
You can eliminate one more local variable using an XOR swap.
If I knew I could have two local variables I would code it like the final revision of my own solution.
As a side note... using a local char variable as temporary storage for the swap would likely be faster than the XOR swap, considering all the pointer dereferencing that has to be done.
However, the rules specified allocating the least amount of memory as possible, so I assumed even local variables would count against it.
Here's my variation on the ReverseString. It uses the XOR swap as well (like the other guy--beat me to the punch), but uses pointers instead of all the arithmentic inside of array indices.
It also doesn't require a length to be passed, and checks if the pointer is not NULL.
void ReverseString(char *ptr1) {
char *ptr2;
if (ptr1 && *ptr1)
{
for (ptr2 = ptr1 + 1; *ptr2; ptr2++);
The last time I checked, Bush can only serve two terms. So much for the Hitler comparison, unless he somehow gets 75% of the country to vote for a constitutional amendment.
You really shouldn't worry so much. I mean, considering how much value the average American places on their constitutionally protected right to watch porn and smoke dope in the privacy of their own home, there would be a violent revolution as soon as there was even a hint that people might be deprived of such fundamental necessities.
Actually, on Windows 2000 and later, services running under the local System account can access network resources, as long as the machine is a member of a Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory domain. It uses the credentials of the machine account, and authentication is via Kerberos only, so authentication will fail if the Service Principal Names are not registered correctly on both the client and server systems.
I've used this feature many times to run startup scripts (which run as the local System account) that download files or write logs to network shares.
For some reason, that particular example sounds more like a mathematics problem than a programming challenge.
Solving the "secret" of that problem had nothing to do with programming, and everything to do with mathematics and geometry.
Yes, I know that there are a lot of mathematics involved in programming, but being good at math doesn't always involved being good at programming. Having a greater understanding of mathematics certainly doesn't hurt either; one wouldn't want to undertake designing a 3d game without a good understanding of the geometry involved.
To me, a true programming contest would use real-world tasks as a basis for the challenges, and would judge the results based on efficiency, documentation (important in the real world!), creativity, and overall style. To heck with 90 minute time limits... I think a whole day would be needed to really draw out the best in the programmers, and give them the time to add the documentation.
I agree that excessive taxation undermines private funding. I think taxes are too high as it is, and need to be reduced to allow/encourage people to make their own economic decisions.
At least that way, we couldn't blame everything on the government, or look to the government to be our great saviour.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, when small companies (or even individuals) are attacked unfairly, it can spread so fast that there is no way to "counter it with the truth". The sheer mass of lies drowns out the small voice of the innocent victim.
I am wondering how many legitimate, honest businesses may have been crushed by anonymous smear campaigns that they did not have the resources to fight.
I can't believe how many people are forgetting about laws regarding slander and libel.
Do we have free speech? Yes.
Can we use it to spread lies about people in order to hurt their reputation? No.
Regardless of how badly the article miscommunicated this point (i.e. mixing up the facts in some of the stated examples), I think that was the gist of what they were saying.
Free speech is perfectly legal.
Slander and libel, however, are generally not.
Anonymous slander and libel are even worse.
I'm sure the next time some candidate is attacked unfairly in the blogs, people will be screaming about it.
Yes, in an ideal world the U.S. government could "stick it to the man" and pass all kinds of new laws to try to force gas prices to be lower.
However, we as a nation are really at the mercy of the oil industry, and the people in the government know this.
Recently, a bill (the Senate version) was squashed that would have encouraged the oil industry to build new refineries. The opponents claimed it would relax too many environmental regulations, and that oil companies have been voluntarily shutting down refineries. Perhaps this is true, but now the oil industry has been handed an excuse not to build new refineries.
How do we force the companies to sell oil at a cheaper price? Does the government rush in and take control of the companies? We can pass laws that "encourage" alternative energies, but does that reduce the cost of oil right now?
I don't like this special edition.
In the original, the FCC shot first.
I too have to admit that I just don't get it, but I'm willing to learn. However, I want a true explanation of the concept, not just a testimonial. Telling me, "It's the best thing out there", doesn't cut it.
From the beginning, I've been wanting a simple explanation of the structure of RoR. It is almost as if people are afraid that if you dig deeper into the design, you will discover something that will turn you away before trying it out. People shouldn't be afraid of the truth.
I submitted the article because I am genuinely interested in the idea (which opposes my original thinking) that I can get away with using arrays and not take a performance hit.
I am happy if it is true, because using arrays results in code that is easier to maintain and read.
When submitting the article, I made it a point to avoid using inflamatory language, and went out of my way to present both sides of the issue, even going as far as making a case for the opposing view.
In fact, when I brought the idea up the first time in the other thread, my own posts were met with a harsh remark about why I was wrong. That comment, while not as friendly as I would prefer, is what got me interested in the idea. I posted to Ask Slashdot because I wanted to hear some more level-headed opinions on the matter that didn't include inflamatory language.
From the replies I've seen so far, I can see there are indeed some critical thinkers reading this site who are nice enough to respond in kind.
Isn't the entire Linux kernel written in C?
I wasn't talking about database front ends and other softcore programming when I submitted the article.
What is used to compile the Linux Kernel?
Since the original ended up using registers, it couldn't be any more efficient.
Before I even posted it, I tried it with the XOR swap. The code ended up looking very convoluted. I don't think the compiler recognized the XOR swap design.
Have you even read the bible?
Hmm... I guess I just don't think of things that way. I don't think of pointer usage as being "tricky". In fact, I consider array indexing to be inefficient, especially when an expression is being used as the index. When compiled, the resulting code has to evaluate an extra expression every time the array is indexed, which it then adds that to base address of the array. Thus you have extraneous computations, to say nothing about the temporary storage that needs to be used. Even when using a straight variable as the index, it still has to be added to the base address.
I would find it extremely uncomfortable to be forced to use array indexing when using pointers would be faster and more efficient (and, to me, very easy to understand).
What, are you sore you didn't think of it yourself?
Look, the stipulation was to allocate the least amount of memory as possible. It didn't say anything about local variables being an exception to the rule.
You can eliminate one more local variable using an XOR swap.
If I knew I could have two local variables I would code it like the final revision of my own solution.
If I recall, the only stipulation was "code a function to reverse the order of a string with allocating as little extra memory as possible".
:)
It doesn't say anything about being fast, efficient, easy to understand
So I coded something in which the only allocation is a single local pointer.
I think one of the other posters was right though about (x++) expanding to (x = x + 1)
I'm thinking about refactoring the code to use pre-increment/decrement only.
As a side note... using a local char variable as temporary storage for the swap would likely be faster than the XOR swap, considering all the pointer dereferencing that has to be done.
However, the rules specified allocating the least amount of memory as possible, so I assumed even local variables would count against it.
It also doesn't require a length to be passed, and checks if the pointer is not NULL.
The last time I checked, Bush can only serve two terms. So much for the Hitler comparison, unless he somehow gets 75% of the country to vote for a constitutional amendment.
You really shouldn't worry so much. I mean, considering how much value the average American places on their constitutionally protected right to watch porn and smoke dope in the privacy of their own home, there would be a violent revolution as soon as there was even a hint that people might be deprived of such fundamental necessities.
I've used this feature many times to run startup scripts (which run as the local System account) that download files or write logs to network shares.
For some reason, that particular example sounds more like a mathematics problem than a programming challenge.
Solving the "secret" of that problem had nothing to do with programming, and everything to do with mathematics and geometry.
Yes, I know that there are a lot of mathematics involved in programming, but being good at math doesn't always involved being good at programming. Having a greater understanding of mathematics certainly doesn't hurt either; one wouldn't want to undertake designing a 3d game without a good understanding of the geometry involved.
To me, a true programming contest would use real-world tasks as a basis for the challenges, and would judge the results based on efficiency, documentation (important in the real world!), creativity, and overall style. To heck with 90 minute time limits... I think a whole day would be needed to really draw out the best in the programmers, and give them the time to add the documentation.
Looks like you've hit a very sensitive nerve :)
I agree that excessive taxation undermines private funding. I think taxes are too high as it is, and need to be reduced to allow/encourage people to make their own economic decisions.
At least that way, we couldn't blame everything on the government, or look to the government to be our great saviour.