I think you are missing the point of the phrase. At my place of work we recently had an employee collapse and be rushed to the hospital, after returning he stated "man, it is amazing how religious you can become when you have no control over your fate". He was not religious, but found himself praying almost constantly while he was in the hospital. The no atheist in the foxhole refers not to bravery or willingness to fight for something you believe it, but rather the reaction people have when their fate is taken out of their own hands in awful, grim situations. It's not about wanting heaven, it's about hoping to live.
So what you're saying is, "there's no atheists in foxholes" is an argument against foxholes, not atheism? Truer words were never spoken.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion
on
Religion in Video Games
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby."
One of my favorites:) Here are some more:
If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!
-- Clark Adams
Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
-- Don Hirschberg
Militant agnostic: I don't know, and you don't either.
Which goes along nicely with one of my own creation:
Everyone is an agnostic; no one knows whether god exists or not.
-- Nathan Paul Simons
On top of that, if anyone RTFA, they would see this was just an advertisement for his C++ web framework. Checkout that 'Hello World' app!
If anyone could RTFA. It appears to be slashdotted. I suspected the author had an agenda, but ad hominem is not a valid way to debate the merits of an idea. I'd still like to know where he got his numbers; the language shootout lists the factor of pure CPU bound PHP vs C++ as somewhere between 2x and 96x depending on the algorithm; this is ignoring things like caching, pre-compiling, etc. Also of interest is the fact that it takes anywhere between 1/7 and 1/2 as many lines of code in PHP vs C++ for the same algorithm; which again, does not even take into account the time to debug, eg memory errors.
First: where did these numbers come from? I find it hard to believe them, as I have seen actual benchmarks of PHP, not just WAG of "10 times as slow as C++".
My bad; I can't seem to see TFA right now, but judging from other comments, the author actually did use the language shootout benchmarks. My other points still stand, however, as well as points made by others: how much of Facebook's web serving is CPU (in PHP) bound? Did the author take into account the possibility that with caching, PHP wouldn't be nearly so slow?
In my (admittedly limited) experience as a (mostly) maintenance programmer, the absolute number one priority in writing software should be to write maintainable code, for two reasons: 1) it will have to be maintained, and 2) technology (not just hardware) will improve such that "efficient code" that is unreadable will ultimately become just unreadable; simple, straightforward, maintainable code will be optimized by the interpreter or compiler to be as efficient if not more efficient than the "efficient code".
As they only say that 'the bulk' is running PHP, let's assume this to be 25,000 of the 30,000. If C++ would have been used instead of PHP, then 22,500 servers could be powered down (assuming a conservative ratio of 10 for the efficiency of C++ versus PHP code), or a reduction of 49,000 tons of CO2 per year.
Before I even start, let me just say I am a C/C++ coder, I've never really touched PHP, and if I were going for a more abstract language, PHP probably wouldn't be it (mind you, I've not written off PHP altogether; I rarely do that with programming languages, except for FORTRAN, COBOL and C#). I've got no favoritism towards languages; I use what best fits the task and try to make my software as readable and maintainable as possible.
First: where did these numbers come from? I find it hard to believe them, as I have seen actual benchmarks of PHP, not just WAG of "10 times as slow as C++".
Second: if the author is so worried about PHP being inefficient, why doesn't he help improve the efficiency of the interpreter? Remember, there are no efficient languages, only efficient implementations.
Third: has he even factored in the fact that higher level languages require less total development time? What about all those commuting hours saved by the programmers because they weren't having to run their PHP scripts through valgrind's memcheck?
Fourth: why C++? How about FORTRAN or assembler? FORTRAN compilers are extremely good at optimizing code, and I'm sure you could squeeze out a few more cycles by coding it in assembly.
I think a more interesting question is what do you do if this is readily available, cheap and easy to use? Would you do it? What if you are an active amateur cyclist working your way up the local ranks?
Speaking as someone who has dabbled (albeit briefly) in sport cycling, and who climbs a bit, I have to say "no". What you typically want is more efficient muscle: muscle that can do the same amount of work for less mass. You don't get this by taking 'roids. Most cyclists (and mountaineers) are always striving for lighter equipment, going so far as comparing ounce by ounce. So if you could drop a pound (a *huge* amount in cycling or mountaineering) of body weight, whether it be fat or unused/useless muscle, you would do it to stay competitive. There's a reason the stunt double for Stallone in "Cliffhanger" bulked up: it wasn't to be a better climber (he was already world class), it was to look like Stallone. Also, for endurance sports, any weight you can shave off is less weight you (and your skeletal system) have to carry for 25, 50, or 100 miles.
Half the time significance isn't even a requirement.
Thankfully. Can you imagine what slashdot in the early days would have been like if they went by Wikipedia's "notability guidelines"? "Pfft, Linux, that's not notable, delete all articles about it.".
I'm glad someone, somewhere, is having this experience. I used Linux on the desktop from 1997 through mid-2003 (switched to Mac), and I switched back to Ubuntu last month. That's one of the things that has not changed: there's always something that doesn't work, and often multiple things that don't work completely (it used to be sound and network, and then it was graphics, wireless, and ACPI that always seemed to not work right, and after installing Ubuntu on my iMac, sure enough, it's the ATI video card and the wireless drivers that don't work correctly (though the gnome-power-manager also gets in the way, turning on my iMac's screen in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and leaving it on, but at least it'll stay killed until the next reboot, even though it doesn't obey the preference to not start on startup).
In the last six years, the Linux desktop has improved quite a lot (Gnome seems a lot more stable and somewhat faster, but not nearly as much faster as my machine is), but drivers are apparently still a major weak spot.
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I'm glad that you at least are understanding and don't approach the topic with a combative or evangelizing attitude; both the Linux and the MacOS communities could use more people like you.
I won't claim that Linux driver support is perfect; hence the 99% rather than 100%, and yes, unfortunately video drivers are still a real sore spot. I'm not much of a gamer anymore, and 3D really isn't important to me; my biggest problems have been crashes due to binary video drivers, so you can understand the POV I'm coming from. As another data point, I recently tried moving my file/print server from i386 to armel, to reduce power usage as it is on 24/7. Everything was going smoothly until I tried to get a Brother MFC laser printer working. Turns out they don't support anything but i386. But if I had the source code, or better yet, if they had contributed a source to the CUPS project, this wouldn't be a problem. The fact that free driver development is offered makes this whole situation even more ludicrous than it should be. Why turn down a free service to support your hardware, done by the people who know the Linux kernel best? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
For now, it's lesson learned: never buy a Brother printer again.
No easy to use binary drivers equals no drivers on CDs,
You know what I do with driver CDs? I throw them out. Without even checking to see if there are "Linux drivers" on them. And how about those drivers for Windows, from some dinky hardware company, that crash the machine anytime you try to push the hardware? We've already seen those happen with binary drivers under Linux.
When I plug in hardware into my Linux machines, I expect it to just work. If it doesn't, I figure there is something wrong with the hardware. 99% of the time I'm correct. Linux has support for so many pieces of hardware out of the box that I don't even *need* a third party driver. I don't have to waste time installing a driver or rebooting. It's wonderful! And you know why this is the case? Because of Linus's unwavering dedication to the principle of eliminating bad code, whether closed source or not. You know what stable kernel ABIs get you? Windows. If I wanted to use Windows I would use Windows. Hardware vendors need to wake up and realize they aren't in the software business; they need to release their drivers as open source for inclusion in the kernel (which means ALL kernels, obviating the need for a "driver CD" and all problems with drivers for different versions). This isn't a Linux problem; I'll agree it also shouldn't be a user problem, but right now the hardware vendors are *making* it a user problem. If you make it a Linux kernel problem (through "stable ABIs"), guess what? It will still be a user problem, because "stable" kernel ABIs necessitate backwards compatibility, which necessitates supporting design decisions that may not have been wise, which leads to unstable, bloated software. Don't even get me started on the fact that most "driver CDs" contain only drivers for i386.
But it seems to me that most of the money goes into producing the film itself - not duplicating it in various mediums. The money goes to paying actors, and lighting guys, and directors, and writers, and whoever else... Not to buying blank discs and celluloid.
So I'm really not certain you'd wind up making enough money to break even. I really think that with most of the crap coming out of Hollywood these days, most people would be content with a VCD or DVD. I don't think you'd really see all that many people showing up in the theater or buying the boxed set.
Well, it would seem to me that part of the problem in that expense equation is that you don't need to hire oscar winning actors to portray drunken frat boys. I mean, honestly, did "The Hangover" require the acting talents of whoever was in it? Were their performances really worth what they were paid for them? I think "Jackass" pretty much proved that you don't need high paid actors for "quality" entertainment; most people will be satisfied with actual frat boys kicking each other in the balls (which they will do for enough beer (which is considerably cheaper than actors' salaries)).
On the other hand, I have a Teletype Model 15, designed in 1930 and built during WWII, working. I've even interfaced it to RSS and SMS feeds. Those machines were very well designed, overbuilt, and can run for decades if properly maintained. All mine needed was a thorough cleaning and oiling. All the metal is high quality steel. The main frame parts are steel castings, and all stamped parts are from stock at least 1/16 thick.
Point the first: by your own admission, this is a quality machine. How many computers are (or ever were) designed that well? My wife just recently threw out a plastic vacuum cleaner, and all I could think is "what a waste" as I carted it to the curb, but that thought was quickly followed by "so what? it was a cheap plastic piece of crap. maybe if it had been designed better, using higher quality materials . . . then she probably never would have bought it because it was too expensive". Almost nothing is built to last these days; everything is built to be cheap and disposable (even high price items like cars!), and the only way to get something that will last is to be rich enough to commission it.
Don't overrate mechanical nostalgia, though. Most consumer mechanical devices of that period were not very good. Many contain "pot metal", with a composition so awful that parts shatter if dropped, or simply with age. Early low-end wiring materials didn't last. Early plastics became brittle with age. Those gadgets were discarded long ago. The ones still around are the good ones.
Point the second: again, by your own admission, the reason you still *have* the teletype is not because everything from that time period was built better, it's because the teletype was built better. Much like how many people believe classical music is better because all they hear is the good stuff because everyone has forgotten the bad stuff. Also reminds me of a joke:
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
I can (unhappily) live with that for privately-funded research.
I can't. If you ask me to believe something, I will tell you "I proportion my beliefs to the evidence and it doesn't matter what I believe anyway; the only thing that matters is the evidence; show me the evidence." That being said, I can think of a few reasons to reduce emissions, even if it isn't causing global warming:
I don't like breathing CO2; the more I bike, the less CO2 there will be.
Bicycling to and from work (and other places) reduces my bills.
Bicycling to and from work (and other places) helps keep me healthy.
How do we reconcile this with slamming Apple for trying to maintain 100% control over the OS/hardware combo?
By not falling into the fallacy that everyone on slashdot holds to group consensus? Not all of us are hypocritical fanboys (redundant, I know). Some of us even turn our noses up at Google's Android because it's not open enough (but the N900 might do). Heck, I still don't have a GMail account because I prefer to have as much control over my data as possible (to the point of running my own mail server).
Google does some cool things and they *were* pretty good at the whole "don't be evil" thing, but I think that time may have passed.
Far better to reboot to Windows only to play games than to try to maintain Windows for everything.
Or hell, just ditch the games altogether and find something better to do. I finally canceled my WoW account after realizing I hadn't logged on in months because I had been too busy hiking and climbing. Now I only run a Windows machine in VirtualBox to test cross-compiles for software I make for friends and family who don't run Linux or BSD. Unfortunately, one of them has an iPhone and wants me to make him an app. I told him, first version will be web based (but still in ObjC), and we'll see where we want to go from there.
You can't honestly tell me if you came up with some idea (no matter how stupid) and convinced someone to buy it at the height of a bubble. You wouldn't take your billions and have a ball. Spending the rest of your life drinking, flying around in your jet, yelling at professional sports officials, supporting any cause you thought was cool.
No, actually I wouldn't do many of those things. First, this guy did get lucky, I don't care how you rationalize his "entrepreneurial endeavors". That's not news; you can be the hardest working businessman and still fail nine times out of ten; then only factor seems to be the whim of the market. Second, everyone is nicer in person. He may be a reasonable guy, and it's nice that he donates to charity. But yelling at professional sports officials? That's not behavior to be imitated or admired; it's the behavior of a five year old child, and a misbehaving one at that. That, and things like the idea in this article and other hair-brained ideas he throws around convince me that he's not the brightest bulb in the box. The only reason anyone listens to him is that he's rich, and quite frankly that doesn't impress me or make me look anymore favorably upon his ideas.
How about a standard name-mangling scheme, can we fix that please? Now I know I'm probably about the bazillionth person to bitch about this, but how fucking hard can it be to say "everyone will decorate their names this way so we can link against libraries made by other compilers."? I mean, this wouldn't bother me so much except that Stroustrup actually *encourages* different name mangling in the standard. All props to the man, and I love C++ above C, but WTF was he thinking? I know, I should just get the source/release the source, but sometimes I don't always have that option.
. . . much like most other diet "news". How closely were they monitoring the subjects food intake? If they weren't keeping track of every calorie, then I'm willing to bet a fiver the subjects were cheating. Now, granted, exercise doesn't really burn that many calories, but all it takes is a net deficit of 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. Of course, to burn 500 calories with exercise, you usually have to do some heavy exercise for about 60 minutes, and a candy bar and a soda for a snack afterwards will (almost) completely negate that. I say "almost" because the exercise will up your metabolism for a short while afterwards (I've found the effects last about a whole day for me after doing a hard 60min workout). I'll also be the first to admit that the ~30lb I've lost were almost entirely due to diet. OTOH, exercise actually suppresses my appetite for a while, it ups my metabolism all day, and even if it didn't do both those things I would still keep doing it because it makes me feel damn good, both physically and mentally. I also credit the exercise to helping me keep the weight off. In any case, you can't just diet to lose the weight, then start pigging out again. If you want to keep the weight off, you have to make some lifestyle changes. Thankfully, there are ways to eat healthy while still nourishing your soul. It just takes more effort than some people are willing to put out. Also, exercise might not help you lose weight fast, but it sure wouldn't hurt. If you are fat, increasing your amount (not intensity!) of exercise will not hurt you.
Things get rejected from the kernel all the time -- because not all things are good, useful, well coded, or solve a problem that needs solving. It's not new in any way.
This is so true and people don't seem to make the connection - in order to have high quality, you have to discriminate. All these people hear how wonderful Linux is, and they think, "I've got a great idea to make it better!". Then when they get turned away, they whine about it like they're the only ones it ever happened to. Perhaps their idea just wasn't well designed, or it's badly coded, or it doesn't solve a problem. Or maybe it does just plain suck. Sorry, but Linux didn't get to be good by accepting every hair-brained non-solution to a non-problem that came along. People who whine about having their submissions rejected from the Linux kernel are probably the same types that would try to start a business with a "great idea", then whine when no one buys it.
Sometimes when you're smart, and things come easy to you, when you have to do something challenging it seems impossible. Not necessarily because you are incapable of the task, but because you are not used to being challenged.
This is so spot on, it's not even funny. I'm no genius, but I think I wouldn't be boasting to say I'm "above average" on the IQ scale, and I never had to work very hard in school. I pretty much coasted, and never really had to learn how to work hard because nothing was "hard". It's a hard lesson I've had to learn, to make myself do something I may not want to do or that may be difficult for me. Probably one of the smartest things Einstein ever said was that success = 1 part inspiration + 99 parts perspiration.
From a very smart person, I give you Why Nerds are Unpopular. Short version: because it's unimportant. Smart people are - surprise! - smart enough to figure out what is really important, and it's not social skills or any of the other humdrum that makes up everyday life. Also very succinctly and eloquently paraphrased in this comment.
He may be unpleasant, but he's a VERY useful person to have around, even if you aren't running a BSD. (Which I'm not. I can't even remember for certain which BSD Theo is associated with. It doesn't matter to *me*, as a Linux user. What matters is that Theo made a criticism that Slashdot picked up, and which various people came up with reasons for and solutions as to how to handle.)
Theo is the project leader for OpenBSD, you know, the one with a fantastic security record? Theo's "unpleasantness" is, IMHO, just a side effect (or necessary?) result of his rabid dedication to security: being unwilling to compromise on any one issue is generally seen as a bad thing, but that particular stance often ignores the issue being defended. That being said, I admire and respect people like Theo and DJB. Hell, even if they are a bit more abrasive than necessary, at least they aren't sexists (that I am aware of).
You'll have so much energy bursting out of every muscle after 2 days off you truly will think you are superman. Incredible feeling.
Shoot, I feel that way *after* I exercise, hence part of the reason I try to get the exercise in early in the morning before work. I used to have problems staying awake at work; can't say I'm *always* perfectly alert now, but I notice a difference when I get my daily exercise, and even after a long day, I still come home energized.
So get out there and do something - you don't have to be coordinated, or good at it. Especially running - just do it. Karate takes a little more, but you can suck at it at first. At least it isn't acrobatic like Judo or Jujitsu - you keep your feet on the ground (almost always). Keep with it and you'd be amazed.
I personally got sick of Karate - I'd much prefer to continue with Taijutsu or pick up Aikido. But even if they were offered where I live, I don't think I'd have the time between training for mountain rescue. Hiking and climbing keep me and my metabolism amped way up. Point is, though, whatever your taste, you can find some athletic activity to keep you happy and healthy.
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So what you're saying is, "there's no atheists in foxholes" is an argument against foxholes, not atheism? Truer words were never spoken.
One of my favorites :) Here are some more:
Which goes along nicely with one of my own creation:
If anyone could RTFA. It appears to be slashdotted. I suspected the author had an agenda, but ad hominem is not a valid way to debate the merits of an idea. I'd still like to know where he got his numbers; the language shootout lists the factor of pure CPU bound PHP vs C++ as somewhere between 2x and 96x depending on the algorithm; this is ignoring things like caching, pre-compiling, etc. Also of interest is the fact that it takes anywhere between 1/7 and 1/2 as many lines of code in PHP vs C++ for the same algorithm; which again, does not even take into account the time to debug, eg memory errors.
My bad; I can't seem to see TFA right now, but judging from other comments, the author actually did use the language shootout benchmarks. My other points still stand, however, as well as points made by others: how much of Facebook's web serving is CPU (in PHP) bound? Did the author take into account the possibility that with caching, PHP wouldn't be nearly so slow?
In my (admittedly limited) experience as a (mostly) maintenance programmer, the absolute number one priority in writing software should be to write maintainable code, for two reasons: 1) it will have to be maintained, and 2) technology (not just hardware) will improve such that "efficient code" that is unreadable will ultimately become just unreadable; simple, straightforward, maintainable code will be optimized by the interpreter or compiler to be as efficient if not more efficient than the "efficient code".
Before I even start, let me just say I am a C/C++ coder, I've never really touched PHP, and if I were going for a more abstract language, PHP probably wouldn't be it (mind you, I've not written off PHP altogether; I rarely do that with programming languages, except for FORTRAN, COBOL and C#). I've got no favoritism towards languages; I use what best fits the task and try to make my software as readable and maintainable as possible.
First: where did these numbers come from? I find it hard to believe them, as I have seen actual benchmarks of PHP, not just WAG of "10 times as slow as C++".
Second: if the author is so worried about PHP being inefficient, why doesn't he help improve the efficiency of the interpreter? Remember, there are no efficient languages, only efficient implementations.
Third: has he even factored in the fact that higher level languages require less total development time? What about all those commuting hours saved by the programmers because they weren't having to run their PHP scripts through valgrind's memcheck?
Fourth: why C++? How about FORTRAN or assembler? FORTRAN compilers are extremely good at optimizing code, and I'm sure you could squeeze out a few more cycles by coding it in assembly.
Speaking as someone who has dabbled (albeit briefly) in sport cycling, and who climbs a bit, I have to say "no". What you typically want is more efficient muscle: muscle that can do the same amount of work for less mass. You don't get this by taking 'roids. Most cyclists (and mountaineers) are always striving for lighter equipment, going so far as comparing ounce by ounce. So if you could drop a pound (a *huge* amount in cycling or mountaineering) of body weight, whether it be fat or unused/useless muscle, you would do it to stay competitive. There's a reason the stunt double for Stallone in "Cliffhanger" bulked up: it wasn't to be a better climber (he was already world class), it was to look like Stallone. Also, for endurance sports, any weight you can shave off is less weight you (and your skeletal system) have to carry for 25, 50, or 100 miles.
Thankfully. Can you imagine what slashdot in the early days would have been like if they went by Wikipedia's "notability guidelines"? "Pfft, Linux, that's not notable, delete all articles about it.".
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I'm glad that you at least are understanding and don't approach the topic with a combative or evangelizing attitude; both the Linux and the MacOS communities could use more people like you.
I won't claim that Linux driver support is perfect; hence the 99% rather than 100%, and yes, unfortunately video drivers are still a real sore spot. I'm not much of a gamer anymore, and 3D really isn't important to me; my biggest problems have been crashes due to binary video drivers, so you can understand the POV I'm coming from. As another data point, I recently tried moving my file/print server from i386 to armel, to reduce power usage as it is on 24/7. Everything was going smoothly until I tried to get a Brother MFC laser printer working. Turns out they don't support anything but i386. But if I had the source code, or better yet, if they had contributed a source to the CUPS project, this wouldn't be a problem. The fact that free driver development is offered makes this whole situation even more ludicrous than it should be. Why turn down a free service to support your hardware, done by the people who know the Linux kernel best? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
For now, it's lesson learned: never buy a Brother printer again.
You know what I do with driver CDs? I throw them out. Without even checking to see if there are "Linux drivers" on them. And how about those drivers for Windows, from some dinky hardware company, that crash the machine anytime you try to push the hardware? We've already seen those happen with binary drivers under Linux.
When I plug in hardware into my Linux machines, I expect it to just work. If it doesn't, I figure there is something wrong with the hardware. 99% of the time I'm correct. Linux has support for so many pieces of hardware out of the box that I don't even *need* a third party driver. I don't have to waste time installing a driver or rebooting. It's wonderful! And you know why this is the case? Because of Linus's unwavering dedication to the principle of eliminating bad code, whether closed source or not. You know what stable kernel ABIs get you? Windows. If I wanted to use Windows I would use Windows. Hardware vendors need to wake up and realize they aren't in the software business; they need to release their drivers as open source for inclusion in the kernel (which means ALL kernels, obviating the need for a "driver CD" and all problems with drivers for different versions). This isn't a Linux problem; I'll agree it also shouldn't be a user problem, but right now the hardware vendors are *making* it a user problem. If you make it a Linux kernel problem (through "stable ABIs"), guess what? It will still be a user problem, because "stable" kernel ABIs necessitate backwards compatibility, which necessitates supporting design decisions that may not have been wise, which leads to unstable, bloated software. Don't even get me started on the fact that most "driver CDs" contain only drivers for i386.
See http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html for details.
Well, it would seem to me that part of the problem in that expense equation is that you don't need to hire oscar winning actors to portray drunken frat boys. I mean, honestly, did "The Hangover" require the acting talents of whoever was in it? Were their performances really worth what they were paid for them? I think "Jackass" pretty much proved that you don't need high paid actors for "quality" entertainment; most people will be satisfied with actual frat boys kicking each other in the balls (which they will do for enough beer (which is considerably cheaper than actors' salaries)).
Sounds like a problem with the wireless carriers to me.
Point the first: by your own admission, this is a quality machine. How many computers are (or ever were) designed that well? My wife just recently threw out a plastic vacuum cleaner, and all I could think is "what a waste" as I carted it to the curb, but that thought was quickly followed by "so what? it was a cheap plastic piece of crap. maybe if it had been designed better, using higher quality materials . . . then she probably never would have bought it because it was too expensive". Almost nothing is built to last these days; everything is built to be cheap and disposable (even high price items like cars!), and the only way to get something that will last is to be rich enough to commission it.
Point the second: again, by your own admission, the reason you still *have* the teletype is not because everything from that time period was built better, it's because the teletype was built better. Much like how many people believe classical music is better because all they hear is the good stuff because everyone has forgotten the bad stuff. Also reminds me of a joke:
Considering that Stephenson has written more than a couple of his longer books using a fountain pen, I don't think his desktop or laptop would go for much. Thanks for not even bothering to look that up, though, and just throwing out his name to try and get geek cred.
I can't. If you ask me to believe something, I will tell you "I proportion my beliefs to the evidence and it doesn't matter what I believe anyway; the only thing that matters is the evidence; show me the evidence." That being said, I can think of a few reasons to reduce emissions, even if it isn't causing global warming:
By not falling into the fallacy that everyone on slashdot holds to group consensus? Not all of us are hypocritical fanboys (redundant, I know). Some of us even turn our noses up at Google's Android because it's not open enough (but the N900 might do). Heck, I still don't have a GMail account because I prefer to have as much control over my data as possible (to the point of running my own mail server).
Google does some cool things and they *were* pretty good at the whole "don't be evil" thing, but I think that time may have passed.
Or hell, just ditch the games altogether and find something better to do. I finally canceled my WoW account after realizing I hadn't logged on in months because I had been too busy hiking and climbing. Now I only run a Windows machine in VirtualBox to test cross-compiles for software I make for friends and family who don't run Linux or BSD. Unfortunately, one of them has an iPhone and wants me to make him an app. I told him, first version will be web based (but still in ObjC), and we'll see where we want to go from there.
How about =jvZ|3J(B!+Zmu#^B~:I as a password? That's not one of my current passwords, but most of mine are like that.
No, actually I wouldn't do many of those things. First, this guy did get lucky, I don't care how you rationalize his "entrepreneurial endeavors". That's not news; you can be the hardest working businessman and still fail nine times out of ten; then only factor seems to be the whim of the market. Second, everyone is nicer in person. He may be a reasonable guy, and it's nice that he donates to charity. But yelling at professional sports officials? That's not behavior to be imitated or admired; it's the behavior of a five year old child, and a misbehaving one at that. That, and things like the idea in this article and other hair-brained ideas he throws around convince me that he's not the brightest bulb in the box. The only reason anyone listens to him is that he's rich, and quite frankly that doesn't impress me or make me look anymore favorably upon his ideas.
How about a standard name-mangling scheme, can we fix that please? Now I know I'm probably about the bazillionth person to bitch about this, but how fucking hard can it be to say "everyone will decorate their names this way so we can link against libraries made by other compilers."? I mean, this wouldn't bother me so much except that Stroustrup actually *encourages* different name mangling in the standard. All props to the man, and I love C++ above C, but WTF was he thinking? I know, I should just get the source/release the source, but sometimes I don't always have that option.
. . . much like most other diet "news". How closely were they monitoring the subjects food intake? If they weren't keeping track of every calorie, then I'm willing to bet a fiver the subjects were cheating. Now, granted, exercise doesn't really burn that many calories, but all it takes is a net deficit of 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. Of course, to burn 500 calories with exercise, you usually have to do some heavy exercise for about 60 minutes, and a candy bar and a soda for a snack afterwards will (almost) completely negate that. I say "almost" because the exercise will up your metabolism for a short while afterwards (I've found the effects last about a whole day for me after doing a hard 60min workout). I'll also be the first to admit that the ~30lb I've lost were almost entirely due to diet. OTOH, exercise actually suppresses my appetite for a while, it ups my metabolism all day, and even if it didn't do both those things I would still keep doing it because it makes me feel damn good, both physically and mentally. I also credit the exercise to helping me keep the weight off. In any case, you can't just diet to lose the weight, then start pigging out again. If you want to keep the weight off, you have to make some lifestyle changes. Thankfully, there are ways to eat healthy while still nourishing your soul. It just takes more effort than some people are willing to put out. Also, exercise might not help you lose weight fast, but it sure wouldn't hurt. If you are fat, increasing your amount (not intensity!) of exercise will not hurt you.
This is so true and people don't seem to make the connection - in order to have high quality, you have to discriminate. All these people hear how wonderful Linux is, and they think, "I've got a great idea to make it better!". Then when they get turned away, they whine about it like they're the only ones it ever happened to. Perhaps their idea just wasn't well designed, or it's badly coded, or it doesn't solve a problem. Or maybe it does just plain suck. Sorry, but Linux didn't get to be good by accepting every hair-brained non-solution to a non-problem that came along. People who whine about having their submissions rejected from the Linux kernel are probably the same types that would try to start a business with a "great idea", then whine when no one buys it.
This is so spot on, it's not even funny. I'm no genius, but I think I wouldn't be boasting to say I'm "above average" on the IQ scale, and I never had to work very hard in school. I pretty much coasted, and never really had to learn how to work hard because nothing was "hard". It's a hard lesson I've had to learn, to make myself do something I may not want to do or that may be difficult for me. Probably one of the smartest things Einstein ever said was that success = 1 part inspiration + 99 parts perspiration.
From a very smart person, I give you Why Nerds are Unpopular. Short version: because it's unimportant. Smart people are - surprise! - smart enough to figure out what is really important, and it's not social skills or any of the other humdrum that makes up everyday life. Also very succinctly and eloquently paraphrased in this comment.
Theo is the project leader for OpenBSD, you know, the one with a fantastic security record? Theo's "unpleasantness" is, IMHO, just a side effect (or necessary?) result of his rabid dedication to security: being unwilling to compromise on any one issue is generally seen as a bad thing, but that particular stance often ignores the issue being defended. That being said, I admire and respect people like Theo and DJB. Hell, even if they are a bit more abrasive than necessary, at least they aren't sexists (that I am aware of).
Shoot, I feel that way *after* I exercise, hence part of the reason I try to get the exercise in early in the morning before work. I used to have problems staying awake at work; can't say I'm *always* perfectly alert now, but I notice a difference when I get my daily exercise, and even after a long day, I still come home energized.
I personally got sick of Karate - I'd much prefer to continue with Taijutsu or pick up Aikido. But even if they were offered where I live, I don't think I'd have the time between training for mountain rescue. Hiking and climbing keep me and my metabolism amped way up. Point is, though, whatever your taste, you can find some athletic activity to keep you happy and healthy.
PS - I found something interesting while checking out Rotten Tomatoes' journey through SciFi. I'd be interested in trying "Parkour" out, but again, what do I give up? So many things to do, so little time . . .