I grab two random license plates, concatenate them, and screw with capitalization. I've been using this method since 6th grade and it's always been secure enough.
Do people really use apt-get directly instead of dselect?
In short: I hope not. Apt-get is really only useful after an initial dselect. If you're using apt-get dist-upgrade, only pacakges you currently have (dpkg --list if you're curious) will be upgraded, and packages will be added or removed based upon the dependencies of said packages. If you have nothing installed on your machine, apt-get is useless unless you know every single package which is necessary to get the base system up and functional.
That's where dselect comes in. You need dselect to select the initial packages for your box (due to its default package list, etc.). But after that initial dselect, you never really need to touch dselect again, apt-get takes care of it all.
So, to answer your question [at least from my experience], people use dselect initially to configure their box, and then apt-get to maintain it after the fact.
In addition, what I've learned to do is use dselect as a tool for searching for obscure packages I need (but don't remember the package name, etc.), and then just apt-get install packagename. Apt-get can't replace dselect in that functionality (although you *could* grep through the apt-get package lists if you felt like it, and I have), but there is really no point to running dselect after the initial install to maintain pacakges.
On the other hand, if apt-get were included on boot/rescue disks, and apt-get base_install were possible [or dinstall used a nasty apt-get instead of a clean dselect], then dselect would lose much of its standing and apt-get could eventually completely replace dselect. I, for one, hope both dselect and apt-get stay around for a long time, together, they're incredibly powerful and helpful.
Norman, I truly did not write that in the spirit of a troll. The word/pixel thing was something I pulled out of my ass to try and make my point, I do realize how stupid that actually is, I just thought it would help some people to visualize what I meant.
What I've started to wonder is where else it's underlying principles could be used, or where this sort of technology could lead in the future.
Could it be used to analyze text from certain authors (hey, text and art are no different to a computer - treat words as "pixels" and sentences and structures flow like colors) and mimic their style? Could this one day be used to turn my dull crud into something Fitzgerald or Hemingway or even Asimov or Heinlein might have written?
I also have the following few questions:
What happens when one feeds a Van Gogh through the Van Gogh filter? Does the resultant image change much?
Does the program apply the "filter" differently depending on what type of input it encounters, or is the same method applied to all input?
Conversely, can the program be used to recognize when a work is of a certain artist?
Or can it be used to see if an image has already been passed through a certain filter?
Are there cases which cause the method to fail or create an undecipherable image? And if so, are these cases unique or do they conincide with a certain type of artistic style? [e.g. Monet -> Van Gogh just won't work right?]
I think that sums up my feelings. This stuff is really impressive guys, I hope the conference goes well.
I'll try and dignify you with an answer just in case I'm mistaken:
I was simply asking a question I found intellectually interesting. If cars are required to have these GPS devices in them, how would one get around being moniterred by them? I believe everyone has a right to this knowledge. You are correct, some people will use this knowledge to break the law. But remember there is a bell curve. On the other end are the people who use this knowledge to stop the people who break laws. And in the middle are the vast majority of people, who either know and do nothing, or don't know and don't care. I'm simply saying that those people in the center have a right to know.
I was in no way advocating breaking laws, I was simple asking a question which piqued my interest.
The police do something similiar to this in New York. At random street corners throughout parts of the city, there's a hidden camera in a lamppost and a pressure trigger on the ground. When the light is red and your car goes over the trigger on the ground, the camera snaps a picture of your license plate.
I got a ticket in the mail with a nice picture showing my car, license plate prominent, going through a red light in Brooklyn.
It's damn hard to contest when you actually did it and they have you on film doing it. D'Oh!
Of course, there are ways to fool the system. I know people who started shalacking [sic] their license plates with some reflective coating, so that when a picture was taken, all that one could see was a bright blur.
So the question is how would one get around the GPS sytem if it were imposed? Because even if you could somehow keep the GPS system from telling the central station that you were speeding, you'd now be the only person on the road going above the speed limit, making it very easy for a cop to spot you and pull you over. I guess the trick would be to have the GPS system tell the station that you were a different car, and then you could go marginally above the speed limit without being stopped. I don't know. And I'm really rambling nonsensically now. So I'll stop.
When they fine you, will they also notify the police that you were speeding?
Eh? Just seems shady to me. No speeding ticket, the police don't get notified, and the rental company gets paid. And as a bonus, if you get pulled over by the cops, you get to pay both the police and the rental company. What an amazing business plan guys!
This is slightly offtopic, but I wanted to address one quick thing imipak mentioned:
Unless the admin has been paranoid / smart / had enough copious spare time to implement quotas, a generic user on a Red Hat Linux (and AFAIK, other distros) can crash the whole thing with a one-liner fork bomb
It doesn't take paranoia, smarts, or lots of spare time for a competent sys-admin to fix the fork bomb problem./etc/limits (at least under Debian GNU/Linux) allows you to limit the number of simultaneous processes a user can run. Place a limit on all users except root (and any trustworthy or daemon based accounts which might need the extra processes) and boom, no more fork() bombs from users. [please excuse the bad pun]
Of course, this is a truly trivial issue, and there are still many security flaws within Linux and MS Windows. I'm just trying to say that the answer to what looks like a simple problem can sometimes be ridiculously stupid.
Back on topic:
The main flaw in operating systems [from my experience] come from memmory issues. This can be caused by bad third party software (as I saw someone else mentioning earlier), unstable software, an incompetent or unknowledgeable systems administrator, or for various other reasons. But let's focus on the sys-admin. That to me is the reason Linux is more stable than Windows. The everyday user doesn't have the power to make changes which could ruin the machine.
Take a look at most games. On the side of the box they come in, the game usually has a warning under WinNT saying "must have administrator access", and many other programs ask a user to log in as administrator and add "C:\whatever\" to their PATH environment variable. Adding hardware has the same issues.
It's little things like this which cause companies to provide "Expert Professioanl Installation". They've learned from experience that the majority of users just can't handle these simple tasks. And they're right. How many people do you know who renovate their houses or apartments themselves without a contractor? It's not because they're stupid, it's because they realize they don't know what they're doing or are unsure of their own abilities or just don't have the time to learn the trade.
The problem is, lots of people like to try to do these types of things on their own. Like the home-fixit addict [my father is one, and I'm damn close to one], you can save yourself lots of time and money, or completely screw things up. It's fun, and hey, why not take the risk? Well, when it comes to computers, you risk taking out vital support beams without ever knowing what you have done. This is the problem which runs rampant with Windows systems as I see it: the users, not the software. If I were to hire a professional contractor, he'd tell me exactly why my place is falling apart: I didn't hire a contractor and tried to do it myself. One has to be reasonable and learn what to do by oneself and what to hire a professional to do. To too many people, computers are simply toys to fool around with. When their operating system crashes, they get annoyed. It's like a screaming baby crying over its new yellow rubber-ducky. "Honey, it broke because you ripped its head off." Don't expect the baby to understand.
I'm not saying that the majority of users are like this (if I did, concider the statement retracted), but I definately know a LOT of people who fit the description. Windows machines tend to be treated as toys, for MS Windows is the most common pre-packaged operating system out there. Linux, on the other hand, is not used as a toy. It takes a conscious decision to switch to Linux (or any *nix for that matter), usually requiring the deleting of a nice fat Win32 partition, and takes knowledge and know-how and a clue to get started. It's like buying a fully furnished house versus buying an empty house in a small, slowly growing, semi-isolated community. It's a lot easier to play around in a house with the cool furniture and a stocked fridge than it is to play around in a house with quasi-built bookcases, nails scatterred all over the floor, and a sign where the fridge should be which says "Cook it Yourself!" All in all, I bet that if Linux ever becomes as mainstream as Windows, and typical users have root privleges, the exact same problems will arise as have arisen with windows. Do you know how many new Linux users look stunned when I tell them they should never log into their system as root? Hell, I had that shocked look the first time someone told it to me.
Hope I made some sense. If I'm wrong, don't flame me, correct me.
You certainly make a good point. I was thinking more along the lines of activites geared towards those students who felt left out (damnit, I know I was one). I didn't even realize that what I said could be interpreted as meaning a reprogramming camp.
I'm not saying I have a solution (I don't), but what I was trying to say is that the government should look into constructive ways of helping children, as opposed to just banning anything and everything they feel might be a bad influence. I say ban alcoholics from the presidency. [Sue me, I have a horrible sense of humor. Thanks dad!]
I once heard someone speak about the government's obsession with declaring "war" on everything it tries to deal with. The Federal Government's most prolific war is the "War on Drugs". "War" seems to be a buzzword which drives people to rally behind a cause.
Unforunately, most of the times these wars are completely inappropriate. This war on video games, specifically of the point and shoot variety, is one of these inappropriate wars. The legislators are missing the point entirely.
Instead of banning video games, why not appropriate money to schools to adequately pay guidance counselors or set up after-school programs taillered to making outcasts fit in?
Personally, I use video games as a stress reliever. If I wasn't shooting some wierd alien from another dimension and releasing my frustration, maybe then I'd be more likely to shoot up a school, not the other way around. I'm not sure if that's clear, so let me offer an analogy: banning these video games is akin to banning stress relief balls from the office place because they reduce productivity.
Now, I understand that there are some people for whom video games are an encouragement. What people (specifically legislatures) fail to realize is that people with these said tendencies will find another way to motivate themselves if not through video games. Try banning Guns and Ammo before Quake 3 or The Matrix.
I think I've said more than enough, even though I have much more to say. [Note: I am not advocating banning Guns and Ammo, it was just an example.]
Umm, my major problem with C++ is execution time. I try and write as little as possible in C++, sticking mainly to C and Perl for anything which needs to execute quickly.
C++'s fallback is that it is a bloated language with too many frivolous constructs. For anyone who doesn't believe me, take a look at section 3.8 of The Practice of Programming by Kernighan and Pike. Repeating them is a waste of space and my time (and you might as well pick up the book and read the whole thing while you're at it =]).
Therefore, I think that the best thing (well, at least an important thing) to do with the next incarnation of C++ is to move a lot of the bloated architecture into external libraries, so that what is necessary can easily be loaded, and so that execution time would speed up incredibly. Of course, I'm not saying this is easy to do or even really possible, I'm just saying that it should probably be looked at pretty carefully.
Okay, I hate to do this, and I'm afraid of becomming a troll, but I'll take that chance.
Your position is barely thought out, and you ignore one key fact: there is a serious drug problem in the United States and around the world. Okay great, you make a game. At best, this will distract people from the real problem at hand.
Now, I disagree with how this "war" on drugs is being fought, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it has a noble, worthwhile end. Drugs are a problem. It's a simple as that. This game idea trivializes that fact into Cyberdemons being a problem on Phobos. Give me a break.
You can even argue that this game would be the most effective anti-drug policy the government could possibly have. If, indeed, video games have the potential to turn young people into killers, then hollow-faced, chronically sick game avatar junkies constantly searching for a high "by any means necessary" should steer plenty of kids onto the straight and narrow.
Umm, no.
I don't think this position has any credence whatsoever. This position has been shown in a multitude of movies and other video games. <sarcasm>Haven't you noticed how most video game zombies appear to be high on something?</sarcasm> People know that drugs are bad for them. Ask anyone who smokes cigarettes, "Yeah, it's bad for me, but . ..". It's that "but" which makes all the difference. You can browbeat people with reasons not to do something, but the fact of the matter is that, with a single acceptable reason, or peer pressure, or a prior taste, that reason is meaningless to said person. Sometimes, the more you tell people not to do something, the more exciting and intriguing it becomes.
I could rant on, and I have much more to say, but I think I've made my main point, so I'll stop and let this sink in.
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Re:Not quite the sequel: quick fix
on
The New Flatland
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· Score: 2
I neglected to change the subject of that post before I submitted it. I just meant to say that there were at least two other "sequels" to Flatland that I knew of, that some people might be interested in reading.
Actually, there have been two books already hailled as "sequels" to Edwin A. Abbot's Flatland.
The first is Sphereland, written in 1960 by Dionys Burger. The English translation I have has a forward by Isaac Asimov [cool little useless tidbit].
The second is Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension, written by Rudolf v. B. Rucker in 1977. Aside from the <sarcasm>eloquent title</sarcasm> it follows in the same format as the previous two.
The following is part of the blurb from Sphereland:
This delightful fantasy by a distinguished Dutch mathematician both entertains and instructs in the multidimensional geometries of curved space and the expanding universe. Written in 1960 as a sequel to Edwin A. Aboot's Victorian satire, it is the story of a Hexagon, the brilliant grandson on Flatland's Square who in his lifetime is confronted with even greater dimensionality problems. In the process of solving them he corrects his grandfather on some points...
And Geomerty, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension:
This is a highly readable, popular exposition of the fourth dimension and the structure of the universe.... Find a perfect analogy in the situation of the geometrical characters in Flatland, Professor Rucker continues the adventures of the two-dimensional world visited by a three-dimensional world in terms of the fourth dimension....
Honestly, I think you've summed up the situation pretty well. As a contractor, I have no problem letting people open-source code which contains nothing relevent to the company. Obviously, some code we cannot allow to be open-sourced, and employees have to sign NDAs before working on it. Our lawyers insist on it, and our company has been screwed before we beefed up policies. Unfortunate, but necessary.
My experience with Comaq has been pretty piss-poor. In fact, I've said in the past that I would never, ever buy anything from Compaq again. I've held to this promise for over five years now.
So my question is, how does the IPAQ rate? I've heard lots of random stuff, but nothing definitive. People seem to like it. But it's from Compaq. How does this balance out? Is it worth calling off my vendetta against Compaq because they have actually come out with a decent product?
Honestly, it depends on the subject of the email and how the body is phrased.
As a student, I get emails all the time from friends and professors, etc. Emails which start "English department looking for . ..", I summarily delete. Ones in math, physics, complex systems, or computer science I read. So, in a sense, you truly are spamming all those people who have no interests in what you're mailling about.
On the other hand, maybe if you got the email addresses of all the students within your department, possibly those who have already declared it as their major, then in no way could it be conciderred spam. Just don't turn it into a mailling list. One clean, clear mailling is fine. Mailling any more frequently than absolutely necessary (once per term maybe), turns it into spam.
In other words, circumstances determine whether the mail you're sending is spam or not. Spam to me might not be spam to you, and vica versa. As long as what you're mailling about is predominantly clear and your sending it to people who have some affiliation to you, your professor's request isn't that farfetched.
I agree with what you say, but I have one counter-example: speed. I know people who can read braille much faster than I can read text (and I'm a pretty fast reader). It makes it that much more efficient for the blind. I could also rant about text-to-speech synthesis and processor utilization, but that's irrelevant.
Also, with text-to-braille one can control the speed at which they read, if they skip text, etc. Fast braille is very different than listening to a chipmunk.
In other words, I think both approaches have their uses.
I'm wonderring about this in a slightly different fashion. "Feeling" graphics aside, I wonder how this could be used to help the blind read web pages. Couldn't this technology be used just as easily to scan the ascii character at the cursor and render it in brail, litterally at the person's fingertips?
I can see many uses for this technology. If nothing else, it would make things like USENET directly accessable to the blind.
Now, of course, I have a vested interest in this, because my grandfather was both blind and brilliant, and would have substantially benefitted from technology like this.
Of couse, there are a bunch of technical problems with turning a web page into brail, like, how does one find the start of the text? How can one be expected to drag the mouse in a straight line over the text so as to not scramble the contents of what they're reading? But I think these questions can be solved. I truly think this holds vast potential, so congrats to the company behind this!
Umm, I beg to differ. I bought the scsi version, and I most certainly have the click of death. The drive worked superbly for three years, and now most of my backed-up data is lost.
With my zip-drive, the click of death did two very specific things. First, it made it impossible to read/write any data to/from zip disks. But what really upset me was the second thing it did. Any disk I placed in the zip drive was destroyed! I don't know what physical malfunction caused the click of death, but my guess is that it was some instrument scraping against the media within the disk. I lost a lot of important backup data (thankfully the originals still existed in some cases) because after the click of death, no other functional zip drives could read my zip disks.
It is incredibly annoying (and this is an understatement) when you go to read backup data, and have that backup data destroyed instead.
It would be very nice to see.edu domains that aren't only 4-year colleges, too, so I hope that happens.
Umm, check out Stuyvesant High School. Stuy has a class B.edu domain for the same reason MIT has a class A... they got it ages ago before there were regulations of these sorts.
My question then becomes what happens to places like Stuy which are not four years colleges but which do have a.edu domain? What if other high schools like Stuy and Bronx Science come along with a valid claim for a.edu domain? Will they be summarily denied now?
Care to mention a company with a.com address that would be happy letting someone else get the.firm? Or a company that would settle for the.firm knowing that a good portion of their traffic would end up going to the.com?.flop, I think.
Exactly!
So if you had a.com, along with the.firm, and.net, and.whatever, and suddenly there was a problem over redistributing just.com's, would it really matter that much to you?
Slashdot Mirror
I grab two random license plates, concatenate them, and screw with capitalization. I've been using this method since 6th grade and it's always been secure enough.
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That's where dselect comes in. You need dselect to select the initial packages for your box (due to its default package list, etc.). But after that initial dselect, you never really need to touch dselect again, apt-get takes care of it all.
So, to answer your question [at least from my experience], people use dselect initially to configure their box, and then apt-get to maintain it after the fact.
In addition, what I've learned to do is use dselect as a tool for searching for obscure packages I need (but don't remember the package name, etc.), and then just apt-get install packagename. Apt-get can't replace dselect in that functionality (although you *could* grep through the apt-get package lists if you felt like it, and I have), but there is really no point to running dselect after the initial install to maintain pacakges.
On the other hand, if apt-get were included on boot/rescue disks, and apt-get base_install were possible [or dinstall used a nasty apt-get instead of a clean dselect], then dselect would lose much of its standing and apt-get could eventually completely replace dselect. I, for one, hope both dselect and apt-get stay around for a long time, together, they're incredibly powerful and helpful.
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Norman, I truly did not write that in the spirit of a troll. The word/pixel thing was something I pulled out of my ass to try and make my point, I do realize how stupid that actually is, I just thought it would help some people to visualize what I meant.
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What I've started to wonder is where else it's underlying principles could be used, or where this sort of technology could lead in the future.
Could it be used to analyze text from certain authors (hey, text and art are no different to a computer - treat words as "pixels" and sentences and structures flow like colors) and mimic their style? Could this one day be used to turn my dull crud into something Fitzgerald or Hemingway or even Asimov or Heinlein might have written?
I also have the following few questions:
I think that sums up my feelings. This stuff is really impressive guys, I hope the conference goes well.
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I'll try and dignify you with an answer just in case I'm mistaken:
I was simply asking a question I found intellectually interesting. If cars are required to have these GPS devices in them, how would one get around being moniterred by them? I believe everyone has a right to this knowledge. You are correct, some people will use this knowledge to break the law. But remember there is a bell curve. On the other end are the people who use this knowledge to stop the people who break laws. And in the middle are the vast majority of people, who either know and do nothing, or don't know and don't care. I'm simply saying that those people in the center have a right to know.
I was in no way advocating breaking laws, I was simple asking a question which piqued my interest.
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I got a ticket in the mail with a nice picture showing my car, license plate prominent, going through a red light in Brooklyn.
It's damn hard to contest when you actually did it and they have you on film doing it. D'Oh!
Of course, there are ways to fool the system. I know people who started shalacking [sic] their license plates with some reflective coating, so that when a picture was taken, all that one could see was a bright blur.
So the question is how would one get around the GPS sytem if it were imposed? Because even if you could somehow keep the GPS system from telling the central station that you were speeding, you'd now be the only person on the road going above the speed limit, making it very easy for a cop to spot you and pull you over. I guess the trick would be to have the GPS system tell the station that you were a different car, and then you could go marginally above the speed limit without being stopped. I don't know. And I'm really rambling nonsensically now. So I'll stop.
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When they fine you, will they also notify the police that you were speeding?
Eh? Just seems shady to me. No speeding ticket, the police don't get notified, and the rental company gets paid. And as a bonus, if you get pulled over by the cops, you get to pay both the police and the rental company. What an amazing business plan guys!---
This is slightly offtopic, but I wanted to address one quick thing imipak mentioned:
It doesn't take paranoia, smarts, or lots of spare time for a competent sys-admin to fix the fork bomb problem. /etc/limits (at least under Debian GNU/Linux) allows you to limit the number of simultaneous processes a user can run. Place a limit on all users except root (and any trustworthy or daemon based accounts which might need the extra processes) and boom, no more fork() bombs from users. [please excuse the bad pun]
Of course, this is a truly trivial issue, and there are still many security flaws within Linux and MS Windows. I'm just trying to say that the answer to what looks like a simple problem can sometimes be ridiculously stupid.
Back on topic:
The main flaw in operating systems [from my experience] come from memmory issues. This can be caused by bad third party software (as I saw someone else mentioning earlier), unstable software, an incompetent or unknowledgeable systems administrator, or for various other reasons. But let's focus on the sys-admin. That to me is the reason Linux is more stable than Windows. The everyday user doesn't have the power to make changes which could ruin the machine.
Take a look at most games. On the side of the box they come in, the game usually has a warning under WinNT saying "must have administrator access", and many other programs ask a user to log in as administrator and add "C:\whatever\" to their PATH environment variable. Adding hardware has the same issues.
It's little things like this which cause companies to provide "Expert Professioanl Installation". They've learned from experience that the majority of users just can't handle these simple tasks. And they're right. How many people do you know who renovate their houses or apartments themselves without a contractor? It's not because they're stupid, it's because they realize they don't know what they're doing or are unsure of their own abilities or just don't have the time to learn the trade.
The problem is, lots of people like to try to do these types of things on their own. Like the home-fixit addict [my father is one, and I'm damn close to one], you can save yourself lots of time and money, or completely screw things up. It's fun, and hey, why not take the risk? Well, when it comes to computers, you risk taking out vital support beams without ever knowing what you have done. This is the problem which runs rampant with Windows systems as I see it: the users, not the software. If I were to hire a professional contractor, he'd tell me exactly why my place is falling apart: I didn't hire a contractor and tried to do it myself. One has to be reasonable and learn what to do by oneself and what to hire a professional to do. To too many people, computers are simply toys to fool around with. When their operating system crashes, they get annoyed. It's like a screaming baby crying over its new yellow rubber-ducky. "Honey, it broke because you ripped its head off." Don't expect the baby to understand.
I'm not saying that the majority of users are like this (if I did, concider the statement retracted), but I definately know a LOT of people who fit the description. Windows machines tend to be treated as toys, for MS Windows is the most common pre-packaged operating system out there. Linux, on the other hand, is not used as a toy. It takes a conscious decision to switch to Linux (or any *nix for that matter), usually requiring the deleting of a nice fat Win32 partition, and takes knowledge and know-how and a clue to get started. It's like buying a fully furnished house versus buying an empty house in a small, slowly growing, semi-isolated community. It's a lot easier to play around in a house with the cool furniture and a stocked fridge than it is to play around in a house with quasi-built bookcases, nails scatterred all over the floor, and a sign where the fridge should be which says "Cook it Yourself!" All in all, I bet that if Linux ever becomes as mainstream as Windows, and typical users have root privleges, the exact same problems will arise as have arisen with windows. Do you know how many new Linux users look stunned when I tell them they should never log into their system as root? Hell, I had that shocked look the first time someone told it to me.
Hope I made some sense. If I'm wrong, don't flame me, correct me.
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You certainly make a good point. I was thinking more along the lines of activites geared towards those students who felt left out (damnit, I know I was one). I didn't even realize that what I said could be interpreted as meaning a reprogramming camp.
I'm not saying I have a solution (I don't), but what I was trying to say is that the government should look into constructive ways of helping children, as opposed to just banning anything and everything they feel might be a bad influence. I say ban alcoholics from the presidency. [Sue me, I have a horrible sense of humor. Thanks dad!]
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I once heard someone speak about the government's obsession with declaring "war" on everything it tries to deal with. The Federal Government's most prolific war is the "War on Drugs". "War" seems to be a buzzword which drives people to rally behind a cause.
Unforunately, most of the times these wars are completely inappropriate. This war on video games, specifically of the point and shoot variety, is one of these inappropriate wars. The legislators are missing the point entirely.
Instead of banning video games, why not appropriate money to schools to adequately pay guidance counselors or set up after-school programs taillered to making outcasts fit in?
Personally, I use video games as a stress reliever. If I wasn't shooting some wierd alien from another dimension and releasing my frustration, maybe then I'd be more likely to shoot up a school, not the other way around. I'm not sure if that's clear, so let me offer an analogy: banning these video games is akin to banning stress relief balls from the office place because they reduce productivity.
Now, I understand that there are some people for whom video games are an encouragement. What people (specifically legislatures) fail to realize is that people with these said tendencies will find another way to motivate themselves if not through video games. Try banning Guns and Ammo before Quake 3 or The Matrix.
I think I've said more than enough, even though I have much more to say. [Note: I am not advocating banning Guns and Ammo, it was just an example.]
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C++'s fallback is that it is a bloated language with too many frivolous constructs. For anyone who doesn't believe me, take a look at section 3.8 of The Practice of Programming by Kernighan and Pike. Repeating them is a waste of space and my time (and you might as well pick up the book and read the whole thing while you're at it =]).
Therefore, I think that the best thing (well, at least an important thing) to do with the next incarnation of C++ is to move a lot of the bloated architecture into external libraries, so that what is necessary can easily be loaded, and so that execution time would speed up incredibly. Of course, I'm not saying this is easy to do or even really possible, I'm just saying that it should probably be looked at pretty carefully.
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Your position is barely thought out, and you ignore one key fact: there is a serious drug problem in the United States and around the world. Okay great, you make a game. At best, this will distract people from the real problem at hand.
Now, I disagree with how this "war" on drugs is being fought, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it has a noble, worthwhile end. Drugs are a problem. It's a simple as that. This game idea trivializes that fact into Cyberdemons being a problem on Phobos. Give me a break.
Umm, no.I don't think this position has any credence whatsoever. This position has been shown in a multitude of movies and other video games. <sarcasm>Haven't you noticed how most video game zombies appear to be high on something?</sarcasm> People know that drugs are bad for them. Ask anyone who smokes cigarettes, "Yeah, it's bad for me, but . .
I could rant on, and I have much more to say, but I think I've made my main point, so I'll stop and let this sink in.
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'Nuff said.
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The first is Sphereland, written in 1960 by Dionys Burger. The English translation I have has a forward by Isaac Asimov [cool little useless tidbit].
The second is Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension, written by Rudolf v. B. Rucker in 1977. Aside from the <sarcasm>eloquent title</sarcasm> it follows in the same format as the previous two.
The following is part of the blurb from Sphereland:
And Geomerty, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension:---
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Honestly, I think you've summed up the situation pretty well. As a contractor, I have no problem letting people open-source code which contains nothing relevent to the company. Obviously, some code we cannot allow to be open-sourced, and employees have to sign NDAs before working on it. Our lawyers insist on it, and our company has been screwed before we beefed up policies. Unfortunate, but necessary.
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Wow, Shoeboy has a troll following.
This scares me. Where's BlackParrot's troll following?
Damnit. Where's mine?
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I have a quick question.
My experience with Comaq has been pretty piss-poor. In fact, I've said in the past that I would never, ever buy anything from Compaq again. I've held to this promise for over five years now.
So my question is, how does the IPAQ rate? I've heard lots of random stuff, but nothing definitive. People seem to like it. But it's from Compaq. How does this balance out? Is it worth calling off my vendetta against Compaq because they have actually come out with a decent product?
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Honestly, it depends on the subject of the email and how the body is phrased.
.", I summarily delete. Ones in math, physics, complex systems, or computer science I read. So, in a sense, you truly are spamming all those people who have no interests in what you're mailling about.
As a student, I get emails all the time from friends and professors, etc. Emails which start "English department looking for . .
On the other hand, maybe if you got the email addresses of all the students within your department, possibly those who have already declared it as their major, then in no way could it be conciderred spam. Just don't turn it into a mailling list. One clean, clear mailling is fine. Mailling any more frequently than absolutely necessary (once per term maybe), turns it into spam.
In other words, circumstances determine whether the mail you're sending is spam or not. Spam to me might not be spam to you, and vica versa. As long as what you're mailling about is predominantly clear and your sending it to people who have some affiliation to you, your professor's request isn't that farfetched.
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I agree with what you say, but I have one counter-example: speed. I know people who can read braille much faster than I can read text (and I'm a pretty fast reader). It makes it that much more efficient for the blind. I could also rant about text-to-speech synthesis and processor utilization, but that's irrelevant.
Also, with text-to-braille one can control the speed at which they read, if they skip text, etc. Fast braille is very different than listening to a chipmunk.
In other words, I think both approaches have their uses.
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I'm wonderring about this in a slightly different fashion. "Feeling" graphics aside, I wonder how this could be used to help the blind read web pages. Couldn't this technology be used just as easily to scan the ascii character at the cursor and render it in brail, litterally at the person's fingertips?
I can see many uses for this technology. If nothing else, it would make things like USENET directly accessable to the blind.
Now, of course, I have a vested interest in this, because my grandfather was both blind and brilliant, and would have substantially benefitted from technology like this.
Of couse, there are a bunch of technical problems with turning a web page into brail, like, how does one find the start of the text? How can one be expected to drag the mouse in a straight line over the text so as to not scramble the contents of what they're reading? But I think these questions can be solved. I truly think this holds vast potential, so congrats to the company behind this!
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So I spoke out of my ass again. For that, I apologize.
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Umm, I beg to differ. I bought the scsi version, and I most certainly have the click of death. The drive worked superbly for three years, and now most of my backed-up data is lost.
With my zip-drive, the click of death did two very specific things. First, it made it impossible to read/write any data to/from zip disks. But what really upset me was the second thing it did. Any disk I placed in the zip drive was destroyed! I don't know what physical malfunction caused the click of death, but my guess is that it was some instrument scraping against the media within the disk. I lost a lot of important backup data (thankfully the originals still existed in some cases) because after the click of death, no other functional zip drives could read my zip disks.
It is incredibly annoying (and this is an understatement) when you go to read backup data, and have that backup data destroyed instead.
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My question then becomes what happens to places like Stuy which are not four years colleges but which do have a
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So if you had a
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