Well, that's your opinion, and you're certainly entitled to it. Personally, I love it. I do a lot of text processing (with log files and the like) and Perl's regular expression capabilities makes it damn simple to extract the little bits and pieces that I need and arrange them into a usable form. Compared to what I used to do (bastardized conglomerations of Bourne shell, sed, and awk) Perl is a godsend.
However, if you have ever tried to maintain a perl program, particularly someone else's, then believe me, the fun drains right out of the experience.
Maybe, but it's possible to write shitty code in any language. One of the big promises of COBOL is that it was supposed to be "self-documenting"; a person should be able to take somebody's code, sit down with it, and read it from beginning to end like a Zane Grey novel. Well, anybody who has had the dubious honor to sit down with 100,000 lines or so of a payroll system written by some antisocial mainframe guy with a basement office knows that even a "self-documenting" language can be used to write some pretty nightmarish code.
It's possible to write bad COBOL code. It's possible to write obfuscated C code. And yes, it's very possible to write hard-to-understand Perl code. But that doesn't mean that it's the fault of the language. A good developer can write well-commented, easy-to-follow code in any language.. and that includes Perl.
Now THAT's what I call an effective security fix. If you find a security hole, just tell your customers not to do anything that might take advantage of it! Piece of cake!
But that's pretty much par for the course. Remember when the Pentium F0 0F bug was discovered? Microsoft's advice: "Don't run executables you don't trust." Well, okay. Given the situation, that's about the only advice that they really could give. But it's worth noting that Linux and all of the BSD derivatives had released a workaround patch within 48 hours. It was the difference between "Don't do this" and "It doesn't matter if you do this."
This is one of the areas where open source wins big. You don't have to wait for a software provider to come up with some sort of a proprietary, black-box, binary "Service Pack" to fix a problem. When you get that pack, you don't have to worry about whether or not installing it is going to clash with something else and cause even worse problems. All you've got to do is download and apply the source patch, rebuild and voila.. you're ready to go.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what kind of fix they come up with for this.
The way I figure it, it's a Slashdot bug. Here's what I think happened with my post:
The post was moderated up to +5.
Some other moderator read the post, thought it was overrated, and moderated it as such, bringing it down to +4.
Another moderator moderated it back up to +5.
Then, the Overrated moderator later posted a comment in the same thread, which of course undoes the moderation. Here's where my alleged Slashdot bug comes into play: Slashdot undid the moderation and gave back the point without first checking to see if the post was already at +5. Hence, the +6 post.
That's my theory, anyway. Ahh, fuck it.. it's New Year's Eve.. I'm heading down to the bar to get liquored up.
Ah yes. All right-wingers are evil and don't care about children because they don't support expensive socialist programs that create more problems than before.
No. Right-wingers are hypocritical because their primary concern is getting a baby born. That's it. Once that task is done, they could care less what happens to it. If its junkie mother throws it in the microwave with a bag of butter-flavored Pop Secret.. well, at least they got it born, didn't they? "If it's out of the womb, it's no longer our problem.."
I notice you complain about "expensive socialist programs" without offering any solutions of your own. If you really want to end abortion, the way to do it is to focus on ending (or at least curbing) some of our more pressing societal problems. Until that happens, people will get abortions whether you like it or not, and whether they're legal or not. With the availability of miscarriage-inducing drugs elsewhere in the world, the type of sinister coat-hanger experiments you referred to earlier are rendered obsolete.
Now sit back and relax while we pump your veins full of saline solution and suck your brain from your skull.
Now don't be melodramatic. You know just as well as everybody else that virtually none of the abortions performed on a day-to-day basis are of the partial-birth monstrosity that you just described. That doesn't make the process of abortion any less unpleasant than it already is, but if you're going to argue from emotion, at least argue accurately.
Well shit -- I guess we could just legalize all murder then. It still happens when its outlawed so I guess we can't do anything to stop it.
Nice strawman, but completely beyond the point. Abortion is necessary; murder is not.
We all have a duty to protect innocent human life.
Don't you mean you have a duty to get children born? The "get it born" mentality of most of the right-wingers is almost staggeringly hypocritical. Once the child is born, their duty is done. The child is on its own, circumstances be damned. Maybe the Christian Coalition could prepare a stack of "Welcome to the World" pamphlets that could be presented to newborn babies.
Welcome to the world!
You don't know this yet, but your mother is a cocaine junkie and you've been born with severe birth defects. Your time on Earth will be marked by suffering and pain. Don't worry, though, for your time here will be short; you mother will neglect you and leave you in a cold alley to freeze. But at least you weren't aborted. At least we got you born. What a glorious victory for God, all praise and glory be to Him. Now pardon us; we must go cut your welfare.
Something like that should work nicely.:-)
I say again: if you want to fight abortion, the least you can do is fight the right things.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that you are elected President of the United States. Further assume that you have the power to enact or overturn any piece of legislation and that the Congress will back you up on it. Would you overturn Roe vs. Wade? What sort of effect do you think that would have on the number of abortions performed in the United States?
I think that any reasonable person would agree that the country would be better off if there were fewer abortions. I mean, nobody runs around saying "Gee, we need more abortions in this country!" But legalized abortion, as it exists now, is only a mechanism. If you remove the mechanism without doing anything to address the problem, another mechanism will spring up in its place.
I wish we lived in a country where we didn't have to deal with rape. I wish we lived in a country where we didn't have to deal with incest. Where we didn't have to deal with pregant heroin addicts. Where we didn't have to deal with rampant unsafe, unprotected sex. Where we didn't have to deal with single mothers living in filth and squalor. And on, and on, and on. Yes, I wish we lived in a country like that, but we don't. And it doesn't do anybody a bit of good to pretend that we do.
This is why I'm amused by people like Gary Bauer who sanctimoniously proclaim "If I'm elected president, abortion-on-demand will end!" Beg pardon? How naive can you get? I'll say it again: legalized abortion is only a mechanism, and if you take one mechanism away, another will spring up in its place. All that you've really taken away is the ability of a woman to have access to a safe (albeit unpleasant) medical procedure. If a woman needs the procedure, she'll still be able to get it from some back-alley butcher. Or perhaps a guy that her older brother knows will set her up with some black-market European abortion pill for a couple of Benjamins.
If you want to work to reduce and eventually eliminate abortions, then I say: fine! It's a noble effort. But if you're going to do it, do it right. Work to alleviate the problems that I enumerated above. Stop and ask yourself why women get abortions, and concentrate your efforts on attacking those problems, because if you do that, then abortion becomes superfluous! It would no longer be necessary! But don't say "Hey, I'm going to sign this piece of legislation and that will be it", because I'll tell you what: Women were getting abortions before Roe v. Wade, and if a right-wing president and a right-wing Congress overturns it, they'll still be getting abortions after it, unless you focus on the core problems.
I guess you could call me strongly pro-choice, but strongly anti-abortion.:-)
In this day and age, you almost have to be a moderate to win an election. Consider, as an example, Gary Bauer. Bauer is, by all reasonable observations, a very decent and honorable man. He's an eloquent and passionate speaker. However, he happens to be a hardcore right-winger who would just as soon replace the United States Constitution with the Old Testament. For his positions, Bauer will never, ever be elected President of the United States. The same type of observation can be made about die-hard leftists; I have a very hard time imagining any circumstances where Paul Wellstone (D-MN) would be elected president.
The reason is that there is a difference between regional and national politics. Extreme right-wingers like Bob Barr and Tom DeLay can get elected to Congress because they're not running on the national stage. Their constituents are, for the most part, extreme right-wingers.:-) They don't have to compete for the urban New York vote or the Southern California vote. Similarly, uberliberals like Wellstone can get elected if their constituents are fairly liberally-minded people (as is the case with much of the population of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area.)
But when you're trying to win a national election, you've got to walk a fine line in this day and age. Gone are the days when we have something like a war or a Great Depression motivating the people. These are, for the most part, good times, and people don't want to elect somebody who's going to upset that. For that reason, you are not going to be elected president if you stray too far to the left or to the right.
Look at the front-runners; George W. Bush, despite his claim that he is a "compassionate conservative"; is really a moderate in conservative's clothing. Many right-wing media pundits like to refer to Al Gore and Bill Bradley as rabid liberals, but truthfully, they are far more moderate than some of the more left-leaning members of the Democratic party (i.e., Wellstone.) Bradley is showing a bit of a liberal streak with his proposed health care plan, but that's about it.
This makes it less awkward to use (and more intuitive for somebody reading your code who might be a bit C-handicapped and doesn't understand what you're trying to do.)
Oh, and why srand( 0 );? Why not use the current timestamp as a seed, or better yet, some manipulation of the current timestamp and the current process ID? (This of course, requires you to stray from strictly-portable C code, because it assumes you're on a platform that has process IDs and has integral time_t values.)
Finally, rand() and srand() are typically horribly inadequate in C (and presumably, in Perl as well.) Now obviously, for this joke example, it doesn't really matter.:-) But for applications where good pseudorandom numbers are needed, it's best to use random() or some other facility (but there again, you break strict ISO C portability since random() is not a standard library function.)
How do they come up with these processor names, you ask? An astute question, one that requires some of Intel and AMD's most closely-kept company secrets. A friend of mine who used to work for Intel managed to smuggle the following Perl script out, shortly before he was fired. Here it is:
#!/bin/perl
# Copyright (C) 1997 Intel Corporation # This is a proprietary Intel perl script.
So if we run this script, we can see where the names come from:
sg1 237%./pnames.pl Cortium II sg1 238%./pnames.pl Pentalon IV sg1 239%./pnames.pl Penteres III sg1 240%./pnames.pl Athalon Pro sg1 241%./pnames.pl Pentitan II sg1 242%./pnames-pl Maxymede MMX
Please show discretion when you refer this script to others. It is, after all, an Intel proprietary secret and should therefore only be shared with others on a "need-to-know" basis.
While I realize that "Top-n"-style lists like this are subjective, I find it amusing that the Earth Science section mentioned the (relatively insignificant) fact that people sweated out tornadoes in concrete rooms, while ignoring the launches of the Landsat 7 and TERRA spacecraft. The Landsat 7 spacecraft's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus instrument and the TERRA spacecraft's vast array of instruments will be invaluable to Earth scientists studying climate change, urban sprawl, deforestation, drought, famine prediction, and dozens of other scientific disciplines.
I'm not saying that any of the items listed in the review are not noteworthy; I'm just pointing out that the list does not appear to be particularly exhaustive.
I don?t see why people won?t stop bitching about Katz?s articles. There?s nothing wrong with them. If they look funny, it?s probably your fault. You?re probably aware of this anyway. Now stop complaining, for Christ?s sake.
Katz's book is really entitled Greeks. It's a well-thought-out tome that explains what life was life back in ancient Athens. Quite an interesting read, actually.
Why can't people just understand that "Merry Christmas" is, 99% of the time, just an expression of wishes and good will, and is rarely said in malice?
As a militant agnostic, I couldn't agree more.:-)
While I'm not at all convinced that Christmas has any religious significance whatsoever, I enjoy participating in some of the trappings of the season (i.e., putting up and decorating a live tree in the living room, putting up Christmas lights outside, buying presents, watching holiday movies and specials on TV, throwing a few dollars here and there into Salvation Army kettles, etc.) Most of these traditions, in their general sense, have nothing to do with any particular religion whatsoever. And with that in mind, the name "Christmas" does not, and should not, be taken as a direct reference to or advertisement for any particular religion, either.
People who get their panties in a bunch about "Merry Christmas" really need to get a life. "Peace on Earth and goodwill to men?" Horrors! We wouldn't want anything like that to catch on and spread!
NEWS: Richard Stallman Missing
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
·
· Score: 3
RICHARD STALLMAN IS MISSING Open Source Superstar "Nowhere To Be Found," Report Police
CAMBRIDGE, MA (AP) - Richard M. Stallman, better known as "RMS" by the open source software (OSS) community, has apparently vanished off the face of the planet. After missing several speaking appointments and coding commitments, many of his fans have begun to ask questions about his whereabouts. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project, which is dedicated to providing free, open source software to the computing world.
Eunice Bleyfeld, Stallman's neighbor, seemed surprised by Stallman's absence. "I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary," she commented to the Associated Press. "He wasn't acting strangely or anything like that the last time that I saw him." However, Mrs. Bleyfeld recounted a strange incident that took place in the middle of the night a few days ago. "I woke up and heard what sounded like an altercation at Mr. Stallman's," she said. "He shouted something like 'I'll frag your ass.' Minutes later, I heard him yell something to the effect of 'Eat my pineapple, bitch!'"
Police psychologists were puzzled by Stallman's alleged ravings. In the meantime, Stallman's apartment door remains locked and phone calls are greeted with a constant busy signal. "We think the phone must have gotten knocked off the hook," explained Cambridge police chief Samuel Breckenridge. "That explains the busy signals. Beyond that, we're not quite sure what to do," continued Breckenridge. "The guy is quite literally nowhere to be found. We're sure that he's not at home, because if he was, you'd think that he would answer the door."
Police have placed Stallman's picture on the side of cartons of CD-Rs and DIMMs nationwide, along with the caption "Have You Seen This Coder?" The hope is that somebody will recognize the missing open source icon and report a sighting to the authorities.
Stallman is famous for his refusal to use anything except free software. In particular, Stallman is a fan of his GPL license, which provides for unrestricted modification and distribution of software.
.. when you're talking about long-duration space flights (rotations aboard the International Space Station, trips to Mars, etc.) it would be silly to avoid the issue of sex altogether. I mean, let's be honest.. we are human beings, after all, and a period of six months or so is an awfully long dry spell.:-)
If NASA hasn't specifically addressed and planned for space sex, then you have to hope that at least they've stocked plenty of Kleenex on-board.;-) Cleanliness is a virtue, after all.
NEWS: NASA Announces New Strategy
on
Sex in Space
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· Score: 5
NASA ANNOUNCES NEW STRATEGIC VISION First Porno Made In Space Will Fetch "Billions", Says Administrator Goldin
GREENBELT, MD (UPI) - After suffering several embarassing setbacks, including the loss of the Mars Polar Lander, Climate Orbiter, and XR-2300 Space Modulator, NASA has announced that it has decided to undertake a major shift in its funding paradigm and accept large donations from the private sector. This paradigm shift comes on the heels of sweeping condemnation from several key members of Congress, who have vowed to eliminate the agency from the federal government.
With comments from the readership of Hustler magazine guiding him, NASA adminstrator Dan Goldin laid out a plan to shoot the first space-based pornographic movie. "We are confident," explained Goldin, "that space pornos can provide NASA with the funding that we need to explore the solar system and the rest of the Universe." Goldin continued: "It will make billions!"
And perhaps Goldin is right. The American Taxpayer's Union, a Congressional watchdog organization, conducted a study on the effect of having American pornography revenue pumped directly into NASA. "Our figures indicate," explained group spokesman Terry Schmidt, "that if NASA were to go ahead with this plan, we could build a colony on Mars the size of Cleveland by the year 2002."
Goldin's comments were made at the Press Briefing Room of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. His sentiments are also shared by U.S. president William Jefferson Clinton, who addressed the issue in his annual State of the Union speech before Congress.
"I believe that we as a nation should commit ourselves to achieving the following goals," said Clinton. "First; I believe it should be the goal of this nation to film a porno in space before this decade is out, and return it safely to Earth." Clinton's comments were briefly drowned out by applause. "We choose to film the first orgy in space!" vowed Clinton. "We choose to film the first orgy in space.. not because it is limp, but because it is hard!"
NASA insiders confirmed that adult film stars Ron Jeremy and Christi Canyon have been signed to a three-film deal with the space agency. The first film, tentatively entitled "Hot And Heavy Weightless Love", will be shot aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in the fall of the year 2000.
"The agency that brought you microwave ovens and Tang is also going to be the agency that brings you the world's first zero-gee cumshot," beamed an ecstatic Goldin. "What a great time to be alive!"
Larry Flynt contributed to this story.
This story contained material unsuitable for children and should not have been read by any individuals under the age of 18.
Outlandish, interspecies dog breeding is not a particularly new concept. For example, the Taco Bell restaurant chain recently bred Cheech Marin and a chihuahua to produce their latest mascot.
Actually, it's my fault for not prefacing the post with "THIS IS A JOKE" surrounded by color and blink tags. Such steps are increasingly necessary in order to convey information to some of Slashdot's more dim-witted moderators.
What makes you think that Apache is licensed under the GPL?
Some more news: Amazon doesn't really have a spokeswoman named Amanda Dickenson, and Amazon isn't really announcing a free software embargo. Lighten up, dude, it's a joke.:-)
AMAZON.COM CALLS FOR RICHARD STALLMAN BOYCOTT gcc, emacs, Other Free Software "No Longer Allowed" At Online Bookseller
SHINOLA, PA (UPI) - In response to a plea by free-software pioneer Richard Stallman to boycott Amazon.com, the world's largest and most successful online retailer is calling for a general boycott of free software released under the GNU Public License (GPL). To demonstrate that it is serious about its boycott, Amazon.com is announcing that it will no longer use such free software to support its highly-successful electronic commerce site. The company is encouraging other Internet retailers to follow suit in protest of the boycott announced by Stallman.
"Such software is no longer allowed," stated Amazon spokeswoman Amanda Dickenson.
As part of Amazon's protest, the open-source Apache web servers that serve up millions of pages per day will be replaced with Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) running on that company's Windows 2000 operating system. In addition, Amazon's developers will no longer use the emacs text editor to write code. Instead, they will use a different editor targeted towards the Windows environment.
"We found a neat program called CuteWrite on www.winfiles.com," explained Dickenson. "It's really nifty. It has colored menus and everything." Dickenson demoed the program to a select group of reporters at the news conference. "We can use this program for thirty days, after which we must send in a $29.95 registration fee," said Dickenson. However, Dickenson reassured Amazon stockholders who might have an "if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it" attitude. "We also get a printed manual when we register," she explained. In addition, Amazon developers will get a short e-mail every time a new version of CuteWrite is released.
Reaction to the Amazon announcement was mixed. While Microsoft president Steve Ballmer hailed it as the "last nail in the coffin for the pinko commie free software movement", regular Amazon customers were unsure about the company's changes. "I've been trying to get into Amazon for the past three hours," explained dental hygenist Richard Abernathy. "To be quite honest, I'm getting a bit sick of this fucking 'Site Too Busy' error message. I just want to buy some books."
Amazon stock was off 39-1/2 points in midday trading.
Slashdot Mirror
Perl sucks.
.. and that includes Perl.
Well, that's your opinion, and you're certainly entitled to it. Personally, I love it. I do a lot of text processing (with log files and the like) and Perl's regular expression capabilities makes it damn simple to extract the little bits and pieces that I need and arrange them into a usable form. Compared to what I used to do (bastardized conglomerations of Bourne shell, sed, and awk) Perl is a godsend.
However, if you have ever tried to maintain a perl program, particularly someone else's, then believe me, the fun drains right out of the experience.
Maybe, but it's possible to write shitty code in any language. One of the big promises of COBOL is that it was supposed to be "self-documenting"; a person should be able to take somebody's code, sit down with it, and read it from beginning to end like a Zane Grey novel. Well, anybody who has had the dubious honor to sit down with 100,000 lines or so of a payroll system written by some antisocial mainframe guy with a basement office knows that even a "self-documenting" language can be used to write some pretty nightmarish code.
It's possible to write bad COBOL code. It's possible to write obfuscated C code. And yes, it's very possible to write hard-to-understand Perl code. But that doesn't mean that it's the fault of the language. A good developer can write well-commented, easy-to-follow code in any language
Now THAT's what I call an effective security fix. If you find a security hole, just tell your customers not to do anything that might take advantage of it! Piece of cake!
.. you're ready to go.
But that's pretty much par for the course. Remember when the Pentium F0 0F bug was discovered? Microsoft's advice: "Don't run executables you don't trust." Well, okay. Given the situation, that's about the only advice that they really could give. But it's worth noting that Linux and all of the BSD derivatives had released a workaround patch within 48 hours. It was the difference between "Don't do this" and "It doesn't matter if you do this."
This is one of the areas where open source wins big. You don't have to wait for a software provider to come up with some sort of a proprietary, black-box, binary "Service Pack" to fix a problem. When you get that pack, you don't have to worry about whether or not installing it is going to clash with something else and cause even worse problems. All you've got to do is download and apply the source patch, rebuild and voila
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what kind of fix they come up with for this.
When I first read this headline, I thought it said:
:-)
Uri Geller sues Natalie Portman
Only for a split-second, mind you.
However, as a way to go I reckon autoerotic asphyxiation has yet to be beaten (so to speak).
:-)
*groan*
I must say, that pun was a stroke of genius!
The way I figure it, it's a Slashdot bug. Here's what I think happened with my post:
- The post was moderated up to +5.
- Some other moderator read the post, thought it was overrated, and moderated it as such, bringing it down to +4.
- Another moderator moderated it back up to +5.
- Then, the Overrated moderator later posted a comment in the same thread, which of course undoes the moderation. Here's where my alleged Slashdot bug comes into play: Slashdot undid the moderation and gave back the point without first checking to see if the post was already at +5. Hence, the +6 post.
That's my theory, anyway. Ahh, fuck itAh yes. All right-wingers are evil and don't care about children because they don't support expensive socialist programs that create more problems than before.
.. well, at least they got it born, didn't they? "If it's out of the womb, it's no longer our problem .."
No. Right-wingers are hypocritical because their primary concern is getting a baby born. That's it. Once that task is done, they could care less what happens to it. If its junkie mother throws it in the microwave with a bag of butter-flavored Pop Secret
I notice you complain about "expensive socialist programs" without offering any solutions of your own. If you really want to end abortion, the way to do it is to focus on ending (or at least curbing) some of our more pressing societal problems. Until that happens, people will get abortions whether you like it or not, and whether they're legal or not. With the availability of miscarriage-inducing drugs elsewhere in the world, the type of sinister coat-hanger experiments you referred to earlier are rendered obsolete.
Now sit back and relax while we pump your veins full of saline solution and suck your brain from your skull.
Now don't be melodramatic. You know just as well as everybody else that virtually none of the abortions performed on a day-to-day basis are of the partial-birth monstrosity that you just described. That doesn't make the process of abortion any less unpleasant than it already is, but if you're going to argue from emotion, at least argue accurately.
Nice strawman, but completely beyond the point. Abortion is necessary; murder is not.
We all have a duty to protect innocent human life.
Don't you mean you have a duty to get children born? The "get it born" mentality of most of the right-wingers is almost staggeringly hypocritical. Once the child is born, their duty is done. The child is on its own, circumstances be damned. Maybe the Christian Coalition could prepare a stack of "Welcome to the World" pamphlets that could be presented to newborn babies.
Something like that should work nicely.
I say again: if you want to fight abortion, the least you can do is fight the right things.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that you are elected President of the United States. Further assume that you have the power to enact or overturn any piece of legislation and that the Congress will back you up on it. Would you overturn Roe vs. Wade? What sort of effect do you think that would have on the number of abortions performed in the United States?
:-)
I think that any reasonable person would agree that the country would be better off if there were fewer abortions. I mean, nobody runs around saying "Gee, we need more abortions in this country!" But legalized abortion, as it exists now, is only a mechanism. If you remove the mechanism without doing anything to address the problem, another mechanism will spring up in its place.
I wish we lived in a country where we didn't have to deal with rape. I wish we lived in a country where we didn't have to deal with incest. Where we didn't have to deal with pregant heroin addicts. Where we didn't have to deal with rampant unsafe, unprotected sex. Where we didn't have to deal with single mothers living in filth and squalor. And on, and on, and on. Yes, I wish we lived in a country like that, but we don't. And it doesn't do anybody a bit of good to pretend that we do.
This is why I'm amused by people like Gary Bauer who sanctimoniously proclaim "If I'm elected president, abortion-on-demand will end!" Beg pardon? How naive can you get? I'll say it again: legalized abortion is only a mechanism, and if you take one mechanism away, another will spring up in its place. All that you've really taken away is the ability of a woman to have access to a safe (albeit unpleasant) medical procedure. If a woman needs the procedure, she'll still be able to get it from some back-alley butcher. Or perhaps a guy that her older brother knows will set her up with some black-market European abortion pill for a couple of Benjamins.
If you want to work to reduce and eventually eliminate abortions, then I say: fine! It's a noble effort. But if you're going to do it, do it right. Work to alleviate the problems that I enumerated above. Stop and ask yourself why women get abortions, and concentrate your efforts on attacking those problems, because if you do that, then abortion becomes superfluous! It would no longer be necessary! But don't say "Hey, I'm going to sign this piece of legislation and that will be it", because I'll tell you what: Women were getting abortions before Roe v. Wade, and if a right-wing president and a right-wing Congress overturns it, they'll still be getting abortions after it, unless you focus on the core problems.
I guess you could call me strongly pro-choice, but strongly anti-abortion.
Personally, I'm pretty moderate (slightly left-leaning), but moderates don't win elections.
:-)
:-) They don't have to compete for the urban New York vote or the Southern California vote. Similarly, uberliberals like Wellstone can get elected if their constituents are fairly liberally-minded people (as is the case with much of the population of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area.)
You're kidding, right?
In this day and age, you almost have to be a moderate to win an election. Consider, as an example, Gary Bauer. Bauer is, by all reasonable observations, a very decent and honorable man. He's an eloquent and passionate speaker. However, he happens to be a hardcore right-winger who would just as soon replace the United States Constitution with the Old Testament. For his positions, Bauer will never, ever be elected President of the United States. The same type of observation can be made about die-hard leftists; I have a very hard time imagining any circumstances where Paul Wellstone (D-MN) would be elected president.
The reason is that there is a difference between regional and national politics. Extreme right-wingers like Bob Barr and Tom DeLay can get elected to Congress because they're not running on the national stage. Their constituents are, for the most part, extreme right-wingers.
But when you're trying to win a national election, you've got to walk a fine line in this day and age. Gone are the days when we have something like a war or a Great Depression motivating the people. These are, for the most part, good times, and people don't want to elect somebody who's going to upset that. For that reason, you are not going to be elected president if you stray too far to the left or to the right.
Look at the front-runners; George W. Bush, despite his claim that he is a "compassionate conservative"; is really a moderate in conservative's clothing. Many right-wing media pundits like to refer to Al Gore and Bill Bradley as rabid liberals, but truthfully, they are far more moderate than some of the more left-leaning members of the Democratic party (i.e., Wellstone.) Bradley is showing a bit of a liberal streak with his proposed health care plan, but that's about it.
I typically declare an ARRAY_SIZE function-like macro in my project header to avoid some of the code duplication you've got above.
:-) But for applications where good pseudorandom numbers are needed, it's best to use random() or some other facility (but there again, you break strict ISO C portability since random() is not a standard library function.)
#define ARRAY_SIZE(x) ( sizeof( x ) / sizeof( x[0] ) )
This makes it less awkward to use (and more intuitive for somebody reading your code who might be a bit C-handicapped and doesn't understand what you're trying to do.)
Oh, and why srand( 0 );? Why not use the current timestamp as a seed, or better yet, some manipulation of the current timestamp and the current process ID? (This of course, requires you to stray from strictly-portable C code, because it assumes you're on a platform that has process IDs and has integral time_t values.)
Finally, rand() and srand() are typically horribly inadequate in C (and presumably, in Perl as well.) Now obviously, for this joke example, it doesn't really matter.
I sure hope the anonymous Intel employee that wrote that script is reading this! :-)
(He's most likely not a Perl programmer by nature.)
How do they come up with these processor names, you ask? An astute question, one that requires some of Intel and AMD's most closely-kept company secrets. A friend of mine who used to work for Intel managed to smuggle the following Perl script out, shortly before he was fired. Here it is:
./pnames.pl ./pnames.pl ./pnames.pl ./pnames.pl ./pnames.pl ./pnames-pl
#!/bin/perl
# Copyright (C) 1997 Intel Corporation
# This is a proprietary Intel perl script.
@prefix = ( "Pent", "It", "Max", "Ath", "Cort", "Trit" );
@suffix = ( "ium", "alon", "ex", "anium", "oricon", "agon",
"on", "eres", "obos", "ymede", "itan", "erion" );
@tag = ( "II", "III", "IV", "Pro", "MMX", "Deluxe" );
srand;
printf( "%s%s %s\n", $prefix[rand 6], $suffix[rand 12], $tag[rand 6] );
So if we run this script, we can see where the names come from:
sg1 237%
Cortium II
sg1 238%
Pentalon IV
sg1 239%
Penteres III
sg1 240%
Athalon Pro
sg1 241%
Pentitan II
sg1 242%
Maxymede MMX
Please show discretion when you refer this script to others. It is, after all, an Intel proprietary secret and should therefore only be shared with others on a "need-to-know" basis.
While I realize that "Top-n"-style lists like this are subjective, I find it amusing that the Earth Science section mentioned the (relatively insignificant) fact that people sweated out tornadoes in concrete rooms, while ignoring the launches of the Landsat 7 and TERRA spacecraft. The Landsat 7 spacecraft's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus instrument and the TERRA spacecraft's vast array of instruments will be invaluable to Earth scientists studying climate change, urban sprawl, deforestation, drought, famine prediction, and dozens of other scientific disciplines.
I'm not saying that any of the items listed in the review are not noteworthy; I'm just pointing out that the list does not appear to be particularly exhaustive.
I don?t see why people won?t stop bitching about Katz?s articles. There?s nothing wrong with them. If they look funny, it?s probably your fault. You?re probably aware of this anyway. Now stop complaining, for Christ?s sake.
Katz's book is really entitled Greeks. It's a well-thought-out tome that explains what life was life back in ancient Athens. Quite an interesting read, actually.
Why can't people just understand that "Merry Christmas" is, 99% of the time, just an expression of wishes and good will, and is rarely said in malice?
:-)
As a militant agnostic, I couldn't agree more.
While I'm not at all convinced that Christmas has any religious significance whatsoever, I enjoy participating in some of the trappings of the season (i.e., putting up and decorating a live tree in the living room, putting up Christmas lights outside, buying presents, watching holiday movies and specials on TV, throwing a few dollars here and there into Salvation Army kettles, etc.) Most of these traditions, in their general sense, have nothing to do with any particular religion whatsoever. And with that in mind, the name "Christmas" does not, and should not, be taken as a direct reference to or advertisement for any particular religion, either.
People who get their panties in a bunch about "Merry Christmas" really need to get a life. "Peace on Earth and goodwill to men?" Horrors! We wouldn't want anything like that to catch on and spread!
RICHARD STALLMAN IS MISSING
Open Source Superstar "Nowhere To Be Found," Report Police
CAMBRIDGE, MA (AP) - Richard M. Stallman, better known as "RMS" by the open source software (OSS) community, has apparently vanished off the face of the planet. After missing several speaking appointments and coding commitments, many of his fans have begun to ask questions about his whereabouts. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project, which is dedicated to providing free, open source software to the computing world.
Eunice Bleyfeld, Stallman's neighbor, seemed surprised by Stallman's absence. "I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary," she commented to the Associated Press. "He wasn't acting strangely or anything like that the last time that I saw him." However, Mrs. Bleyfeld recounted a strange incident that took place in the middle of the night a few days ago. "I woke up and heard what sounded like an altercation at Mr. Stallman's," she said. "He shouted something like 'I'll frag your ass.' Minutes later, I heard him yell something to the effect of 'Eat my pineapple, bitch!'"
Police psychologists were puzzled by Stallman's alleged ravings. In the meantime, Stallman's apartment door remains locked and phone calls are greeted with a constant busy signal. "We think the phone must have gotten knocked off the hook," explained Cambridge police chief Samuel Breckenridge. "That explains the busy signals. Beyond that, we're not quite sure what to do," continued Breckenridge. "The guy is quite literally nowhere to be found. We're sure that he's not at home, because if he was, you'd think that he would answer the door."
Police have placed Stallman's picture on the side of cartons of CD-Rs and DIMMs nationwide, along with the caption "Have You Seen This Coder?" The hope is that somebody will recognize the missing open source icon and report a sighting to the authorities.
Stallman is famous for his refusal to use anything except free software. In particular, Stallman is a fan of his GPL license, which provides for unrestricted modification and distribution of software.
John Carmack contributed to this story.
Stop it, you're killing me! :-)
.. when you're talking about long-duration space flights (rotations aboard the International Space Station, trips to Mars, etc.) it would be silly to avoid the issue of sex altogether. I mean, let's be honest .. we are human beings, after all, and a period of six months or so is an awfully long dry spell. :-)
;-) Cleanliness is a virtue, after all.
If NASA hasn't specifically addressed and planned for space sex, then you have to hope that at least they've stocked plenty of Kleenex on-board.
NASA ANNOUNCES NEW STRATEGIC VISION
.. not because it is limp, but because it is hard!"
First Porno Made In Space Will Fetch "Billions", Says Administrator Goldin
GREENBELT, MD (UPI) - After suffering several embarassing setbacks, including the loss of the Mars Polar Lander, Climate Orbiter, and XR-2300 Space Modulator, NASA has announced that it has decided to undertake a major shift in its funding paradigm and accept large donations from the private sector. This paradigm shift comes on the heels of sweeping condemnation from several key members of Congress, who have vowed to eliminate the agency from the federal government.
With comments from the readership of Hustler magazine guiding him, NASA adminstrator Dan Goldin laid out a plan to shoot the first space-based pornographic movie. "We are confident," explained Goldin, "that space pornos can provide NASA with the funding that we need to explore the solar system and the rest of the Universe." Goldin continued: "It will make billions!"
And perhaps Goldin is right. The American Taxpayer's Union, a Congressional watchdog organization, conducted a study on the effect of having American pornography revenue pumped directly into NASA. "Our figures indicate," explained group spokesman Terry Schmidt, "that if NASA were to go ahead with this plan, we could build a colony on Mars the size of Cleveland by the year 2002."
Goldin's comments were made at the Press Briefing Room of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. His sentiments are also shared by U.S. president William Jefferson Clinton, who addressed the issue in his annual State of the Union speech before Congress.
"I believe that we as a nation should commit ourselves to achieving the following goals," said Clinton. "First; I believe it should be the goal of this nation to film a porno in space before this decade is out, and return it safely to Earth." Clinton's comments were briefly drowned out by applause. "We choose to film the first orgy in space!" vowed Clinton. "We choose to film the first orgy in space
NASA insiders confirmed that adult film stars Ron Jeremy and Christi Canyon have been signed to a three-film deal with the space agency. The first film, tentatively entitled "Hot And Heavy Weightless Love", will be shot aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in the fall of the year 2000.
"The agency that brought you microwave ovens and Tang is also going to be the agency that brings you the world's first zero-gee cumshot," beamed an ecstatic Goldin. "What a great time to be alive!"
Larry Flynt contributed to this story.
This story contained material unsuitable for children and should not have been read by any individuals under the age of 18.
Where are my moderator points when I need them? :-)
Outlandish, interspecies dog breeding is not a particularly new concept. For example, the Taco Bell restaurant chain recently bred Cheech Marin and a chihuahua to produce their latest mascot.
.. Dave's not here"
"Drop the chalupa, man
Remoderate - this was 'funny', not a 'troll'.
Actually, it's my fault for not prefacing the post with "THIS IS A JOKE" surrounded by color and blink tags. Such steps are increasingly necessary in order to convey information to some of Slashdot's more dim-witted moderators.
What makes you think that Apache is licensed under the GPL?
:-)
Some more news: Amazon doesn't really have a spokeswoman named Amanda Dickenson, and Amazon isn't really announcing a free software embargo. Lighten up, dude, it's a joke.
AMAZON.COM CALLS FOR RICHARD STALLMAN BOYCOTT
gcc, emacs, Other Free Software "No Longer Allowed" At Online Bookseller
SHINOLA, PA (UPI) - In response to a plea by free-software pioneer Richard Stallman to boycott Amazon.com, the world's largest and most successful online retailer is calling for a general boycott of free software released under the GNU Public License (GPL). To demonstrate that it is serious about its boycott, Amazon.com is announcing that it will no longer use such free software to support its highly-successful electronic commerce site. The company is encouraging other Internet retailers to follow suit in protest of the boycott announced by Stallman.
"Such software is no longer allowed," stated Amazon spokeswoman Amanda Dickenson.
As part of Amazon's protest, the open-source Apache web servers that serve up millions of pages per day will be replaced with Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) running on that company's Windows 2000 operating system. In addition, Amazon's developers will no longer use the emacs text editor to write code. Instead, they will use a different editor targeted towards the Windows environment.
"We found a neat program called CuteWrite on www.winfiles.com," explained Dickenson. "It's really nifty. It has colored menus and everything." Dickenson demoed the program to a select group of reporters at the news conference. "We can use this program for thirty days, after which we must send in a $29.95 registration fee," said Dickenson. However, Dickenson reassured Amazon stockholders who might have an "if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it" attitude. "We also get a printed manual when we register," she explained. In addition, Amazon developers will get a short e-mail every time a new version of CuteWrite is released.
Reaction to the Amazon announcement was mixed. While Microsoft president Steve Ballmer hailed it as the "last nail in the coffin for the pinko commie free software movement", regular Amazon customers were unsure about the company's changes. "I've been trying to get into Amazon for the past three hours," explained dental hygenist Richard Abernathy. "To be quite honest, I'm getting a bit sick of this fucking 'Site Too Busy' error message. I just want to buy some books."
Amazon stock was off 39-1/2 points in midday trading.
Family PC Magazine contributed to this story.