I am told that the "Nancy Drew" books are (or once were) constantly being revised and updated to appeal to the current generation of readers.
For example, some of the earlier ones were supposedly downright offensive to modern sensibilities w.r.t. how African American characters were treated (think pre-WWII movies and use your imagination).
I'm not saying that this is right, or a good idea. Just that Lucas wouldn't be the first.
Instead of "unfair", say "illegal":
it's true (ruled on and upheld on appeal),
and it has a nicer ring to it -- "unfair"
sounds a little whiney.
Re:How does this fit in with String theory?
on
Quark Stars
·
· Score: 2
You're talking about black holes preserving
entropy, right?
If we assume that ST is accurate, then I *think*
the theory I heard was that a black hole made
by collapsing a total of n strings would
behave like a point in space containing
a *single* string with a LOT of energy...
But it sounds like you're saying that it
would really behave more like a point in
space where there were
still n strings... and thus sufficient complexity
to account for the information in the original
objects.
Do I have that right?
How does this fit in with String theory?
on
Quark Stars
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I had read once that black holes could be regarded as super-large elementary particles (described by very few parameters: spin, charge, mass). Would "quarks stars" be something like that, or more like a huge Bose-Einstein condensate?
It would probably be cheaper and easier to just give those hungry people soybean products, which:
- contain protein (the best thing about meat),
- can be textured/flavored in a number of ways, and
- are a hell of a lot cheaper/easier to produce in large quantities than 'fish muscle in a can'.
But in agreement, I do think it would be a great way to create meat products which are cruelty-free, untainted by BGH (one would hope), and free of bacteria picked up on the killing floors.
You're not completely wrong. All the classic ingredients of OOP -- messaging syntax, encapsulation, inheritance, etc. -- can be simulated in a non-OO language by consistent use of naming conventions, function-argument-order conventions, etc. In the end, it all reduces to machine code anyway, after all.
But a true OO language makes these things easier, by providing special syntax for message passing, enforcing encapsulation, etc. I'd rather write:
Good points. I would have to add that my ideal protocol would be a one in which, minimally, the server is able to communicate information back to the client while it is servicing a long request (IOW, status messages which can be used by the client to trace service activity).
I can't stand having an RPC call which does something complex, like assembling a database report, go off into la-la land for a minute with no clue as to what progress the remote peer has made.
It's not just for break^H^H^H, er, files anymore
on
Apache Server Nears 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Many sites use Apache as an application server or to serve dynamic-content; e.g., by using mod_perl (to deliver blazingly-fast dynamic content generated by Perl scripts), or as a flexible and solid front-end to Java servlet engines like JServ and Tomcat.
And far from being bloatware, Apache has (at least during 1.*) gotten more modularized over time, making it easier to fine-tune logging, access control, URL rewriting, etc, etc. I don't know squat about 2.x, but I expect good things.
Just the $0.02 of a Perl/Java hacker who uses it extensively...
Inventing a whole new theme will require a lot of time and arguing about how it should look/work/etc. Don't go there. Instead:
IMHO there should be a GNOME/Gtk theme called "KDE" which exactly mimics the most-default KDE theme, and a KDE/Qt theme called "GNOME" which does vice-versa.
Unless of course this is a stpuid idea, in which case, forget I brought it up...
You might want to read a book before posting next time.
You might want to re-read your post before replying next time. Any reply that starts off with an ad hominem assault is certainly not going to kick off a good discussion. However, I will forgive you and answer regardless:
My point was not about the inevitability of capitalism -- I certainly agree with you that systems of exchange, using currency as a proxy (for goods, or power, or time), appear quite naturally. If you re-read my message, you'll see that I was paraphrasing George Will, who was talking about stable capitalist economies on a large scale. As I said:
Will was speaking about laws which require accurate financial disclosure so that people have faith in the market.
Stocks are a high-risk, high-reward investment strategy. But many companies enter the playing field because [in the U.S.] there is a legal requirement of financial transparency which is supposed to make that risk mangeable. That's good: more players means more money circulating, so in general more risks can be taken on new and interesting ways of doing things, and progress is made.
Without a reasonable level of honest disclosure, though, it quite naturally can fall apart. Investors, no longer convinced of their ability to manage their risk, can begin to leave the game, opting for safer investments. Money flows out of the market. Progress slows.
Now, a little advice:
Le Guin once said something like "I can swallow a little accusation or a little inaccuracy, but the combination is poison." Please remember that the next time you flame someone for something they didn't even say. Also, try not to post a message to someone that you wouldn't say to their face in front of your mother.
When George W. Bush was asked what he thought about the Microsoft case [this was a while ago], his reply was [and I think I have the exact words]:
"I believe in innovation, not litigation."
(I almost expected him to follow with "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit". But I digress.)
Anyway, this statement could have -- and probably DID -- come straight from the mouths of Microsoft's PR department, probably in the same envelope as a campaign contribution
(to be fair, I'll bet Gore got one too).
Our best hope is that the President's advisors listen to intelligent conservative commentators like George Will, who wrote an excellent column in the Washington Post about Enron, in which he made the following point:
Capitalist economies don't spring up automatically, like crabgrass. They are dependent upon a complex set of laws. Capitalism is a government program.
Will was speaking about laws which require accurate financial disclosure so that people have faith in the market. But the same priciples hold for the right to fair competition. Without that right, where the success of a startup [e.g., Netscape] leading to its imminent demise by those seeking to maintain their control [e.g., Microsoft], why would anyone risk their money to enter the marketplace? The result in such a case is stagnation, and the loss of a healthy economy.
Unlike some Windows-based viruses that travel like wildfire using vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program, the new
RST variant is unlikely to spread widely, according to Russell.
One short sentence to compare and contrast
the MS Virus Deployment System with Linux.
I also like the part where he says that most
Linuxers are more "sophisticated" (must be why
our mascot wears a tux).
It's not the paper; it's the wealth of information you get on your way to earning the paper.
I own my own consulting business, and it is true that my day-to-day contracting has a lot to do with the languages I learned after I left academia. BUT:
The problems I have to solve are many and varied, and often I find myself applying knowledge from my CS classes 15 years ago: "hmm... didn't we study a quadtree-like data structure which would be good for that problem?" "isn't that just a binary matrix multiplication?" And so on.
Academic CS is to practical CS what physics is to architecture: you need the theory to make a well-built product, and you need the product to make the theory meaningful.
True, you don't need the piece of paper to get the theory. But the piece of paper usually proves that you've been exposed to it, and even an average student will absorb things by osmosis.
BETHLEHEM (AP): The Christian Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, announced plans to sue Microsoft for using the name "XP" for its new operating system.
"The monogram of My Name, formed of the two first letters when written in Greek, "X" and "P" [Chi and Rho], has been in use for well over a thousand years in numerous countries. I am therefore insisting that Microsoft cease using "XP" on its products, as that is tantamount to Taking My Name In Vain."
Added Christ, "I mean it. Don't make me come down there..."
Microsoft said a new feature of Windows XP, known as "drizzle," can automatically download the free fix, which takes several minutes to download, and prompt consumers to install it.
I bet a dollar that "drizzle" will be
the next big virus backdoor...
Microsoft also is working with
other software companies, such as leading antivirus and firewall vendors, to build protection into their products.
...implying, perhaps, that there hasn't been
any protection up until this point?:-)
News bulletin from 2010:
on
Uplink
·
· Score: 2, Funny
In a massive MS/FBI sting, the last users of the terrorist operating system "Linux" have been simultaneously arrested.
"It was easy," crowed MS/FBI chief Steve Ballmer. "In 2001, we released a game which proported to be a simulation, but was actually a real cracking tool when run on any OS other than XP. After enough evidence had accumulated, we simply rounded up all the perps! I LOVE this company! I LOVE THIS COMPANY!"
I agree. Fortunately, there are several
flies in the ointment for MS if this is their
goal:
For one thing, IBM and some other major players don't want to see Linux fail (have you seen the IBM TV ads touting Linux servers?). If the law requires DRM software, then some moneyed interests will provide. The penguin will not fall on a technicality.
Second: the U.S. is not the world (the chilling caveat here is the new universal copyright enforcement).
Third: Apple's OS X is basically BSD under the hood. So I'll bet there'll be DRM for BSD.
Then maybe, as a bonus, they can get Linux declared illegal as a circumvention device!
I wish this were just a joke, but thanks to the DMCA it may not be. Don't be surprised to hear Redmond begin to attack Linux more publically (and before Congress) as
a "hacker's OS",
a "lawbreaker's OS",
a "cyber-theft tool",
a "favorite of cyber-terrorists",
a "threat to the economic security of the U.S.
If the DMCA becomes firmly entrenched (so that it is as taken for granted as, say, the law which says you can't operate a car without a license) , MS will simply drift all its protocols/formats into new proprietary and copyrighted ones which it will be a crime to reverse-engineer.
At least, that's what I'd do if I were an evil megalomaniacal SOB (or even if I were just running a publically-held company with a lot of powerful shareholders).
I got my master's in Comp Sci at UPenn in '89 (I used to walk past some of the remnants of ENIAC on display there, every day). And I can't help but be saddened by this:
She hoped to major in the field [mathematics] at the University of Pennsylvania but was discouraged by a professor who thought that women belonged at home.
I'm glad she finally got her chance to shine during the war, but who knows what else she might have accomplished, had someone's idiotic prejudices not dissuaded her into working for the Farm Journal?
Slashdot Mirror
At 55.54 (down from its 52-wk high of 76.15). I don't think many typical MSFT investors are celebrating...
I think they also could have gone further *in*. I mean, come on... a proton? I wanted to see a Planck-length string!
I am told that the "Nancy Drew" books are (or once were) constantly being revised and updated to appeal to the current generation of readers.
For example, some of the earlier ones were supposedly downright offensive to modern sensibilities w.r.t. how African American characters were treated (think pre-WWII movies and use your imagination).
I'm not saying that this is right, or a good idea. Just that Lucas wouldn't be the first.
MS line of reasoning:
"The judge found us guilty... that *proves* they were biased against us!"
Identical twins.
Instead of "unfair", say "illegal": it's true (ruled on and upheld on appeal), and it has a nicer ring to it -- "unfair" sounds a little whiney.
If we assume that ST is accurate, then I *think* the theory I heard was that a black hole made by collapsing a total of n strings would behave like a point in space containing a *single* string with a LOT of energy...
But it sounds like you're saying that it would really behave more like a point in space where there were still n strings... and thus sufficient complexity to account for the information in the original objects.
Do I have that right?
I had read once that black holes could be regarded as super-large elementary particles (described by very few parameters: spin, charge, mass). Would "quarks stars" be something like that, or more like a huge Bose-Einstein condensate?
Jes curious....
Now MSWord can bring up the Paperclip animation even faster...
It would probably be cheaper and easier to just give those hungry people soybean products, which:
- contain protein (the best thing about meat),
- can be textured/flavored in a number of ways, and
- are a hell of a lot cheaper/easier to produce in large quantities than 'fish muscle in a can'.
But in agreement, I do think it would be a great way to create meat products which are cruelty-free, untainted by BGH (one would hope), and free of bacteria picked up on the killing floors.
You're not completely wrong. All the classic ingredients of OOP -- messaging syntax, encapsulation, inheritance, etc. -- can be simulated in a non-OO language by consistent use of naming conventions, function-argument-order conventions, etc. In the end, it all reduces to machine code anyway, after all.
But a true OO language makes these things
easier, by providing special syntax for message passing, enforcing encapsulation, etc. I'd rather write:
somePerson.setName("Foo")
than:
person_setName(somePerson, "Foo")
Good points. I would have to add that my ideal protocol would be a one in which, minimally, the server is able to communicate information back to the client while it is servicing a long request (IOW, status messages which can be used by the client to trace service activity).
I can't stand having an RPC call which does something complex, like assembling a database report, go off into la-la land for a minute with no clue as to what progress the remote peer has made.
Many sites use Apache as an application server or to serve dynamic-content; e.g., by using mod_perl (to deliver blazingly-fast dynamic content generated by Perl scripts), or as a flexible and solid front-end to Java servlet engines like JServ and Tomcat.
And far from being bloatware, Apache has (at least during 1.*) gotten more modularized over time, making it easier to fine-tune logging, access control, URL rewriting, etc, etc. I don't know squat about 2.x, but I expect good things.
Just the $0.02 of a Perl/Java hacker who uses it extensively...
Inventing a whole new theme will require a lot of time and arguing about how it should look/work/etc. Don't go there. Instead:
IMHO there should be a GNOME/Gtk theme called "KDE" which exactly mimics the most-default KDE theme, and a KDE/Qt theme called "GNOME" which does vice-versa.
Unless of course this is a stpuid idea, in which case, forget I brought it up...
You might want to read a book before posting next time.
You might want to re-read your post before replying next time. Any reply that starts off with an ad hominem assault is certainly not going to kick off a good discussion. However, I will forgive you and answer regardless:
My point was not about the inevitability of capitalism -- I certainly agree with you that systems of exchange, using currency as a proxy (for goods, or power, or time), appear quite naturally. If you re-read my message, you'll see that I was paraphrasing George Will, who was talking about stable capitalist economies on a large scale. As I said:
Stocks are a high-risk, high-reward investment strategy. But many companies enter the playing field because [in the U.S.] there is a legal requirement of financial transparency which is supposed to make that risk mangeable. That's good: more players means more money circulating, so in general more risks can be taken on new and interesting ways of doing things, and progress is made.
Without a reasonable level of honest disclosure, though, it quite naturally can fall apart. Investors, no longer convinced of their ability to manage their risk, can begin to leave the game, opting for safer investments. Money flows out of the market. Progress slows.
Now, a little advice:
Le Guin once said something like "I can swallow a little accusation or a little inaccuracy, but the combination is poison." Please remember that the next time you flame someone for something they didn't even say. Also, try not to post a message to someone that you wouldn't say to their face in front of your mother.
"I believe in innovation, not litigation."
(I almost expected him to follow with "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit". But I digress.)
Anyway, this statement could have -- and probably DID -- come straight from the mouths of Microsoft's PR department, probably in the same envelope as a campaign contribution (to be fair, I'll bet Gore got one too).
Our best hope is that the President's advisors listen to intelligent conservative commentators like George Will, who wrote an excellent column in the Washington Post about Enron, in which he made the following point:
Capitalist economies don't spring up automatically, like crabgrass. They are dependent upon a complex set of laws. Capitalism is a government program.
Will was speaking about laws which require accurate financial disclosure so that people have faith in the market. But the same priciples hold for the right to fair competition. Without that right, where the success of a startup [e.g., Netscape] leading to its imminent demise by those seeking to maintain their control [e.g., Microsoft], why would anyone risk their money to enter the marketplace? The result in such a case is stagnation, and the loss of a healthy economy.
Unlike some Windows-based viruses that travel like wildfire using vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program, the new RST variant is unlikely to spread widely, according to Russell.
One short sentence to compare and contrast the MS Virus Deployment System with Linux. I also like the part where he says that most Linuxers are more "sophisticated" (must be why our mascot wears a tux).
It's not the paper; it's the wealth of information you get on your way to earning the paper.
I own my own consulting business, and it is true that my day-to-day contracting has a lot to do with the languages I learned after I left academia. BUT:
The problems I have to solve are many and varied, and often I find myself applying knowledge from my CS classes 15 years ago: "hmm... didn't we study a quadtree-like data structure which would be good for that problem?" "isn't that just a binary matrix multiplication?" And so on.
Academic CS is to practical CS what physics is to architecture: you need the theory to make a well-built product, and you need the product to make the theory meaningful.
True, you don't need the piece of paper to get the theory. But the piece of paper usually proves that you've been exposed to it, and even an average student will absorb things by osmosis.
BETHLEHEM (AP): The Christian Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, announced plans to sue Microsoft for using the name "XP" for its new operating system.
"The monogram of My Name, formed of the two first letters when written in Greek, "X" and "P" [Chi and Rho], has been in use for well over a thousand years in numerous countries. I am therefore insisting that Microsoft cease using "XP" on its products, as that is tantamount to Taking My Name In Vain."
Added Christ, "I mean it. Don't make me come down there..."
Microsoft said a new feature of Windows XP, known as "drizzle," can automatically download the free fix, which takes several minutes to download, and prompt consumers to install it.
I bet a dollar that "drizzle" will be the next big virus backdoor...
Microsoft also is working with other software companies, such as leading antivirus and firewall vendors, to build protection into their products.
...implying, perhaps, that there hasn't been any protection up until this point? :-)
In a massive MS/FBI sting, the last users of the terrorist operating system "Linux" have been simultaneously arrested.
"It was easy," crowed MS/FBI chief Steve Ballmer. "In 2001, we released a game which proported to be a simulation, but was actually a real cracking tool when run on any OS other than XP. After enough evidence had accumulated, we simply rounded up all the perps! I LOVE this company! I LOVE THIS COMPANY!"
I agree. Fortunately, there are several
flies in the ointment for MS if this is their
goal:
For one thing, IBM and some other major players don't want to see Linux fail (have you seen the IBM TV ads touting Linux servers?). If the law requires DRM software, then some moneyed interests will provide. The penguin will not fall on a technicality.
Second: the U.S. is not the world (the chilling caveat here is the new universal copyright enforcement).
Third: Apple's OS X is basically BSD under the hood. So I'll bet there'll be DRM for BSD.
I wish this were just a joke, but thanks to the DMCA it may not be. Don't be surprised to hear Redmond begin to attack Linux more publically (and before Congress) as
If the DMCA becomes firmly entrenched (so that it is as taken for granted as, say, the law which says you can't operate a car without a license) , MS will simply drift all its protocols/formats into new proprietary and copyrighted ones which it will be a crime to reverse-engineer.
At least, that's what I'd do if I were an evil megalomaniacal SOB (or even if I were just running a publically-held company with a lot of powerful shareholders).
I got my master's in Comp Sci at UPenn in '89 (I used to walk past some of the remnants of ENIAC on display there, every day). And I can't help but be saddened by this:
She hoped to major in the field [mathematics] at the University of Pennsylvania but was discouraged by a professor who thought that women belonged at home.
I'm glad she finally got her chance to shine during the war, but who knows what else she might have accomplished, had someone's idiotic prejudices not dissuaded her into working for the Farm Journal?
Stupid git.
Then again, maybe he just meant /home...
- /opt/package/foo is a link to
/opt/package/foo-1.2 ...
- and
/usr/local/bin/food is a link to /opt/package/foo/bin/food ...
- and you can re-generate
/usr/local/bin from scratch with a simple script when things change.
For our software , we also separate...