Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is
on
Telstar 4 is Down
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· Score: 5, Funny
It's like a bad sci-fi screenplay!
It was a typical Friday at Telstar control: slow. McMurray was at the main console. He was idly thinking about which sandwiches he was going to pick up at Subway on the way home for the family.
Suddenly, an alarm light flashed. McMurray looked at the status screen, and it took a moment to sink in. Telstar 4 had just gone down. "Strange", he thought. "I've never seen a bird go offline just like that."
He punched a few commands to try to contact the satellite, but got no response. He muttered under his breath "It's going to be a long night."
Ok, first things first. He e-mailed his wife to tell her he'd wouldn't be getting dinner after all. He fired off an anonymous story submission about the situation to Slashdot.
At this point, it still looked like a simple electronic failure. There was no hint of impending disaster; no indication of what might happen to the planet in a few short hours. Nobody on earth noticed the tiny deep violet pinpoint that was just now becoming detectable over the northern rim of the full moon. A few bored geeks on Slashdot posted some lame jokes about the Telstar 4 story.
McMurray was just about to reroute the command channel to the eastern uplink station when the entire control center suddenly went black. He sat in stunned silence for a few seconds, then the shockwave hit...
[ To read the rest of this bad screenplay, you must have a premium membership. Log on now to continue. ]
The lawsuit asks for an injunction against the purportedly unfair marketing practices, an order requiring the defendants to disclose their practices to the public, restitution, disgorgement of ill-gotten profits and attorneys' fees.
The hard drive manufacturing industry deserves to have the book thrown at them. They are scoundrels and cads, cheating their customers out of their hard earned dollars.
Let's compare disk drives to a consumer product like CDs. If, since 1985, CDs had advanced along the same sluggish path as the greedy disk drive makers took, we would still only be getting a paltry 40,000 hours of music on each CD and we would have to pay an outrageous $2 to get that music. Can you imagine the uproar if people still had to pay that much for sound recordings?
I hope that the hard drive manufacturers are taken to the cleaners on this one. I have never seen another product that I feel gives me so little value for my money.
It's irresponsible to put these machines on the Net! They're running kernels that haven't been patched in 2 decades. The user always runs as root. Hell, the CPU doesn't even have a privileged mode! How many minutes do you think it will be before a C64 with broadband is cracked?
It's bad enough that people who try putting their C64 on the Internet will probably lose all of their valuable data. What really worries me, though, is a plague of dozens of zombie C64 machines under the control of hackers bringing down valuable services like Google and Yahoo with DDoS attacks.
That works for things in normal orbits. Objects in highly elliptical orbits, OTOH, can be at least as chaotic as the weather.
A while back I read an article (I don't remember where) which explained that the comets in the highest eccentric orbits are only moving a couple of meters per second at the apogee. The tiniest perturbations at this point, including gravitational pulls from nearby stars, drastically affects the actual path the comet will take the next time it swoops through the solar system. (The disturbances get proportionally amplified as the comet accelerates from a few m/s to 30000 m/s or so.) The net effect is that these comets seem to follow a random unpredictable path on each orbit.
Of course, this doesn't really matter that much because we can't detect the comets at that distance, and the orbits are longer than a human lifetime. I just think it's interesting how our planet's long term fate may depend on the tiniest forces tugging on some comet.
During C procedure calls, the return addresses are placed on the stack in predictable locations. Often, people use fixed-size buffers allocated on the stack in their procedures. For example:
By feeding in a string longer than 100 characters, you go up the stack and can overwrite the return address to the call to 'foo'. You might replace the address with a pointer to code you've embedded in the oversized string. When the call returns, it jumps into your code rather than the calling procedure.
Re:Scheme implementation of lisp-fanatic?
on
Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 1
By gosh, you're right. I've been using too much Python.
But they are functional (your program is based around functions)
Every language has functions. That doesn't make them "functional languages". At the very minimum, a functional language needs to treat functions as a first-class data type and support closures. These concepts are the distinguishing characteristics of funtional programming; just "calling functions" isn't sufficient. C, C++ and Java do not support the features required to qualify as functional languages.
Functional programming is a well defined technical term; it's not just academic. (FWIW, I'm not an academic type, and I'm not a big fan of purely functional programming either.)
The software on it's not your property. It's MS'. You simply have a license to use it.
The software is your property unless you have signed a contract that says otherwise. Microsoft owns the copyright on the software. This means that they retain the sole right to make and distribute new copies of the software. But you own your copy of the software. You can do anything you like with it as long as you don't make new copies of it.
The EULA is an attempt to change this situation to where Microsoft retains ownership of the software itself in addition to the copyright. However, as many have pointed out, the legality of EULAs has not been firmly established. Moreover, the parent post mentioned the possibility of an XBox owner under the age of 18, for whom the legality of a EULA is even more suspect.
If a contract that you've never signed, that you're not old enough to sign, and that haven't seen until you complete your purchase and open the box is found to be unenforceable, then you do indeed own the software.
Re:And both generics and templates are kiddy toys.
on
Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 1
(define (lisp-fanatic? username body sig) (and (map (lambda (text) (string-index text "lisp")) (list username body sig))))
Re:Languages are not application-neutral
on
Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Comparing C, C++, and C# is like comparing a wrench and a screw driver.
Moreover, languages like C and C++ can be used in very different ways, depending on the circumstances. You can code the "safe convenient" way using tools like STL or glib to manage strings, containers, etc. I've found that the overall performance of such an application often is in the same ballpark of a Java implementation (other than Java's obnoxious startup time).
However, C and C++ also allow you to write in a "masochistic balls-to-the-wall" mode that gives you much higher performance in exchange for 10X the programming effort. To do this, you often have to analyze your algorithms over and over until you can implement them using only stack and static structures. You avoid malloc() at all costs, avoid copying any data unless absolutely necessary, etc. You might disassemble the compiler output, run profilers and arrange data in cache-friendly patterns to squeeze out even more performance. The implementation will be much more brittle and prone to bugs, but you can often get a 10X or more speed improvement over the "natural" C or C++ implementation. Obviously, very few problems warrant this kind of attention, but making blanket statements about "comparing" other languages to C/C++ really should acknowlege the large range of performance that these languages can cover.
It had a lot of shit to go through in 45,000 years.
Not really. The interstellar medium has about 0.1 atoms per cm^3. This is about 1e20 times less then our atmosphere. 45000 light years is 4.2e22 cm, so it only had to go through the equivalent of 4.2 meters of our atmosphere.
So it's only the same amount of shit as it would encounter on a trip across your living room.
Ultimately, Dyson is confident her team's solar cells can reach nearly 100 percent efficiency -- compared with typical solar panels' conversion rate of less than 20 percent.
If by some miracle that claim is true, it could change the world. People have been striving for decades to eke out a couple more percent efficiency out of solar collectors. This would be a major breakthrough. The last thing anybody would worry about is sticking these >90% efficient cells in a window shade; they'd be deploying massive arrays of them in the desert for power production at costs below conventional power plants.
However, since they seem to be focusing on windows, something tells me that the claim is less than accurate.
It might have been mostly dumb luck. I did mount them on a custom fixture by soldering them to two concentric rings of copper house wire (not while they were in the engines, of course:). I think that I also taped them very securely to each engine, and I used far more voltage than the ignitors required.
I was a little surprised that all six of them fired on the first try.
You just need more horsepower and a bigger parachute. Decades ago when I was a jr. highschool punk, I built a rocket that was powered by a cluster of 6 Estes "D" engines; it was 7 feet tall and weighed several pounds. It probably could have hoisted a small camcorder. It made a flawless gentle landing with a 48-inch parachute sewn out of plastic garbage bags.
OTOH, you're probably wise to not put expensive equipment in a rocket, given that I probably crashed more rockets than I recovered back in those days.
It would be cool if they could put a small but powerful gas turbine on the rear axle of otherwise wimpy economy cars just for the 0.1% of the time when you want to punch it. You might get 14 second (or better) quarter miles that way.
The thing would probably only need to be rated for a few hours of operation over the lifetime of an average car. A jet engine like sound might be pretty cool, to boot.
Re:You should be embarrassed
on
Beatles Bite Apple
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· Score: 2, Insightful
" Right now I am embarrassed to say that the Beatles are my favorite music group."
That would be embarassing regardless of any lawsuits.
I mean, its like sayiing "Glen Miller" is my favorite group. Both are equally relevant to today's music scene.
Which is unfortunate, as it may explain why today's music scene is comprised almost exclusively of crap. Today's music is at a low point worse than that of the late 70s, and there's nothing new coming on the horizon to bail it out.
Re:These agreements can really screw you up
on
Beatles Bite Apple
·
· Score: 3, Funny
World Wrestling Federation had to change their name to World Wrestling Entertainment
But why did they have to pick the unfortunate choice of Entertainment? Saying that an athletic contest is just mere entertainment is a gross oversimplification. It just serves to cheapen the image of all of the dedicated athletes through history who have strived against adversity to be the best they could be. Surely the WW"E" could have honored their athletes better, along with all of the world's athletes regardless of their sport, by picking a name more fitting of their noble purpose.
A little off the subject here, but what would be compelling proof to you? Better video of it? That could just be a higher quality hoax. Sending you there in person? There will always be those who refuse to belive. I'm not flaming you, just curious - what would it take to convince you?
It would take Martin Landau.
You would need to get Martin Landau to meet with me in person, so I could sit down with him and review every issue I have with the authenticity of his moonbase. If he could clearly explain to me why my doubts are misplaced for each of the dozens of questions I have about moonbase alpha, its spacecraft and its crew, then I might change my mind. Most importantly, he would need to explain to me why when I look up in the sky today I still seem to see the moon right up there in Earth's orbit where it's always been.
Until then, unfortunately, I must remain a nonbeliever.
why this would be necessary when we already have the Eagles used on Moonbase Alpha? I mean, they were built more then four years ago and they're still going strong
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but after recently reviewing the film footage from Moonbase Alpha, I've joined the group of people who believe that the whole thing was a hoax.
I'd love it just as much as the next guy if our government really had built a moonbase, and Eagles, and everything else back in 1999. However, if you carefully look at the coverage of the events at the moonbase, there are just too many inconsistencies that can't be explained away: Serious violations of physics; handwaving passing for engineering; predictable news stories that seem contrived; people with stilted behaviours (as if they were bad actors) who wear clothes that have never been in fashion; images that just basically look faked.
I've read the websites that cast doubt on the whole scenario, and I have to say that I agree with what they're saying. Until somebody shows me some real compelling proof, I highly doubt that any of that stuff actually existed.
Slashdot Mirror
It was a typical Friday at Telstar control: slow. McMurray was at the main console. He was idly thinking about which sandwiches he was going to pick up at Subway on the way home for the family.
Suddenly, an alarm light flashed. McMurray looked at the status screen, and it took a moment to sink in. Telstar 4 had just gone down. "Strange", he thought. "I've never seen a bird go offline just like that."
He punched a few commands to try to contact the satellite, but got no response. He muttered under his breath "It's going to be a long night."
Ok, first things first. He e-mailed his wife to tell her he'd wouldn't be getting dinner after all. He fired off an anonymous story submission about the situation to Slashdot.
At this point, it still looked like a simple electronic failure. There was no hint of impending disaster; no indication of what might happen to the planet in a few short hours. Nobody on earth noticed the tiny deep violet pinpoint that was just now becoming detectable over the northern rim of the full moon. A few bored geeks on Slashdot posted some lame jokes about the Telstar 4 story.
McMurray was just about to reroute the command channel to the eastern uplink station when the entire control center suddenly went black. He sat in stunned silence for a few seconds, then the shockwave hit...
[ To read the rest of this bad screenplay, you must have a premium membership. Log on now to continue. ]
The hard drive manufacturing industry deserves to have the book thrown at them. They are scoundrels and cads, cheating their customers out of their hard earned dollars.
Let's compare disk drives to a consumer product like CDs. If, since 1985, CDs had advanced along the same sluggish path as the greedy disk drive makers took, we would still only be getting a paltry 40,000 hours of music on each CD and we would have to pay an outrageous $2 to get that music. Can you imagine the uproar if people still had to pay that much for sound recordings?
I hope that the hard drive manufacturers are taken to the cleaners on this one. I have never seen another product that I feel gives me so little value for my money.
It's bad enough that people who try putting their C64 on the Internet will probably lose all of their valuable data. What really worries me, though, is a plague of dozens of zombie C64 machines under the control of hackers bringing down valuable services like Google and Yahoo with DDoS attacks.
A while back I read an article (I don't remember where) which explained that the comets in the highest eccentric orbits are only moving a couple of meters per second at the apogee. The tiniest perturbations at this point, including gravitational pulls from nearby stars, drastically affects the actual path the comet will take the next time it swoops through the solar system. (The disturbances get proportionally amplified as the comet accelerates from a few m/s to 30000 m/s or so.) The net effect is that these comets seem to follow a random unpredictable path on each orbit.
Of course, this doesn't really matter that much because we can't detect the comets at that distance, and the orbits are longer than a human lifetime. I just think it's interesting how our planet's long term fate may depend on the tiniest forces tugging on some comet.
By feeding in a string longer than 100 characters, you go up the stack and can overwrite the return address to the call to 'foo'. You might replace the address with a pointer to code you've embedded in the oversized string. When the call returns, it jumps into your code rather than the calling procedure.
By gosh, you're right. I've been using too much Python.
Every language has functions. That doesn't make them "functional languages". At the very minimum, a functional language needs to treat functions as a first-class data type and support closures. These concepts are the distinguishing characteristics of funtional programming; just "calling functions" isn't sufficient. C, C++ and Java do not support the features required to qualify as functional languages.
Functional programming is a well defined technical term; it's not just academic. (FWIW, I'm not an academic type, and I'm not a big fan of purely functional programming either.)
The software is your property unless you have signed a contract that says otherwise. Microsoft owns the copyright on the software. This means that they retain the sole right to make and distribute new copies of the software. But you own your copy of the software. You can do anything you like with it as long as you don't make new copies of it.
The EULA is an attempt to change this situation to where Microsoft retains ownership of the software itself in addition to the copyright. However, as many have pointed out, the legality of EULAs has not been firmly established. Moreover, the parent post mentioned the possibility of an XBox owner under the age of 18, for whom the legality of a EULA is even more suspect.
If a contract that you've never signed, that you're not old enough to sign, and that haven't seen until you complete your purchase and open the box is found to be unenforceable, then you do indeed own the software.
(define (lisp-fanatic? username body sig)
(and (map (lambda (text) (string-index text "lisp")) (list username body sig))))
Moreover, languages like C and C++ can be used in very different ways, depending on the circumstances. You can code the "safe convenient" way using tools like STL or glib to manage strings, containers, etc. I've found that the overall performance of such an application often is in the same ballpark of a Java implementation (other than Java's obnoxious startup time).
However, C and C++ also allow you to write in a "masochistic balls-to-the-wall" mode that gives you much higher performance in exchange for 10X the programming effort. To do this, you often have to analyze your algorithms over and over until you can implement them using only stack and static structures. You avoid malloc() at all costs, avoid copying any data unless absolutely necessary, etc. You might disassemble the compiler output, run profilers and arrange data in cache-friendly patterns to squeeze out even more performance. The implementation will be much more brittle and prone to bugs, but you can often get a 10X or more speed improvement over the "natural" C or C++ implementation. Obviously, very few problems warrant this kind of attention, but making blanket statements about "comparing" other languages to C/C++ really should acknowlege the large range of performance that these languages can cover.
Recent technology advances have addressed your "con" issue.
More precisely, the baby test determines if the patent application is nonobvious.
t ") .read()
Here is the algorithm (implemented in Python) for determining patent novelty:
def is_novel(pending_claims):
prior_art = file("all_issued_us_patent_claims_concatenated.tx
return prior_art.find(pending_claims) < 0
Likewise,
def is_useful(pending_claims):
return True
Thanks for the tip, Mozart. Looks like I need a new piano.
Not really. The interstellar medium has about 0.1 atoms per cm^3. This is about 1e20 times less then our atmosphere. 45000 light years is 4.2e22 cm, so it only had to go through the equivalent of 4.2 meters of our atmosphere.
So it's only the same amount of shit as it would encounter on a trip across your living room.
No, it wouldn't.
That's begging the question. What was being discussed is the possibility that SCO doesn't own the code because of where it came from.
If by some miracle that claim is true, it could change the world. People have been striving for decades to eke out a couple more percent efficiency out of solar collectors. This would be a major breakthrough. The last thing anybody would worry about is sticking these >90% efficient cells in a window shade; they'd be deploying massive arrays of them in the desert for power production at costs below conventional power plants.
However, since they seem to be focusing on windows, something tells me that the claim is less than accurate.
I was a little surprised that all six of them fired on the first try.
OTOH, you're probably wise to not put expensive equipment in a rocket, given that I probably crashed more rockets than I recovered back in those days.
The thing would probably only need to be rated for a few hours of operation over the lifetime of an average car. A jet engine like sound might be pretty cool, to boot.
That would be embarassing regardless of any lawsuits.
I mean, its like sayiing "Glen Miller" is my favorite group. Both are equally relevant to today's music scene.
Which is unfortunate, as it may explain why today's music scene is comprised almost exclusively of crap. Today's music is at a low point worse than that of the late 70s, and there's nothing new coming on the horizon to bail it out.
But why did they have to pick the unfortunate choice of Entertainment? Saying that an athletic contest is just mere entertainment is a gross oversimplification. It just serves to cheapen the image of all of the dedicated athletes through history who have strived against adversity to be the best they could be. Surely the WW"E" could have honored their athletes better, along with all of the world's athletes regardless of their sport, by picking a name more fitting of their noble purpose.
Will this program apply to individual developers as well as products? I think I could qualify because many people have told me that I'm certifiable.
It would take Martin Landau.
You would need to get Martin Landau to meet with me in person, so I could sit down with him and review every issue I have with the authenticity of his moonbase. If he could clearly explain to me why my doubts are misplaced for each of the dozens of questions I have about moonbase alpha, its spacecraft and its crew, then I might change my mind. Most importantly, he would need to explain to me why when I look up in the sky today I still seem to see the moon right up there in Earth's orbit where it's always been.
Until then, unfortunately, I must remain a nonbeliever.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but after recently reviewing the film footage from Moonbase Alpha, I've joined the group of people who believe that the whole thing was a hoax.
I'd love it just as much as the next guy if our government really had built a moonbase, and Eagles, and everything else back in 1999. However, if you carefully look at the coverage of the events at the moonbase, there are just too many inconsistencies that can't be explained away: Serious violations of physics; handwaving passing for engineering; predictable news stories that seem contrived; people with stilted behaviours (as if they were bad actors) who wear clothes that have never been in fashion; images that just basically look faked.
I've read the websites that cast doubt on the whole scenario, and I have to say that I agree with what they're saying. Until somebody shows me some real compelling proof, I highly doubt that any of that stuff actually existed.