*sigh* have you people never heard of runtime optimisations? There are some things you can optimise at runtime (like runtime constants) which are *impossible* to optimise at compile time.
This whole "x is written in y, so x can't be faster than y" rubbish is just that - rubbish.
"My arse" is a good name for this post since that's obviously where your head is stuck - much like the rest of the/. morons with their anti-java-no-matter-what stance.
I used to be a C hacker and a laughed at Java when it came out because of it's poor performance. Times have changed, but the language bigots haven't.
I was thinking that what the US really needs is a STV (single transferable vote) voting system. It would allow voters to vote for non-traditional candidates, Like Nader, without thereby spliting the left's vote and creating an incorrect outcome (Nader votes - votes to the "far" left effectively caused the election to select the rightmost candidate)
The first past the post voting system is appallingly bad for creating incorrect results and helps enshrine the two party system. The only way to get real democracy (i.e.: a representative one) is to change the voting system.
The OP and replies here are such a pack of whinges!
I used PS for a number of years both on Mac and PC. I used GIMP more recently and I struggled at first with its interface, but *as with PS* I read the manual and figured out how the damned thing works.
Now I much prefer the GIMP.
I really cannot believe how lame all these complaints about the GIMPs interface are - no, it doesn't look like a Mac app nor does it look like PS. But FFS! Different != bad.
These programs have very different layouts. PS has a few features that the GIMP doesn't. Other than that they both do the same job very well.
I wasn't commentating on the relative strengths or moral character of the combatants. I was questioning the definition of what constitutes and act of terrorism.
The CIA did legally questionable things because it thought they were the right thing to do in the big picture. I'm sure that the Sept.11 bombers thought the same thing. I'm not saying they're right - nor am I claiming that the Cold War was "unilateral aggression by the USA and CIA against the poor, defenseless USSR and KGB".
Please don't misrepresent my posts (try looking up the phrase "strawman argument")
So the CIA sabotaging and assassinating Russian targets was ok because it was "an evil repressive regime" and Sept.11 wasn't because they were "religious nutters"?
Great justification. Im sure the Sept.11 bombers thought that the US was "an evil repressive regime" and probably "religious nutters" as well.
Since to you being "an evil repressive regime" is justification for taking otherwise illegal actions against a country, you justify the Sept.11 attackers - since that was more or less their motivation as well.
Good post - I agree pretty much accross the board. The point of my original post was mainly that the word "terrorism" could well be validly applied to some of the acts of the CIA during (and probably after) the cold war.
Its a matter of perspective. I don't agree with the Sept. 11 attackers, but I'm sure they saw themselves as freedom fighters. Thats not too different from CIA operatives doing shady things 'because it's for a good cause'.
I think that the US is beoming increasingly hypocritical on the world stage on issues of law, democracy, free trade and the valid use of armed force. Its not the kind of stance that makes friends in the world.
So you'll agree then that the Sept. 11 activities were a fine act of war then - perfectly legal and acceptable. After all, declaring war is the difference between being illegal combatants and ordinary soldiers.
The US had not declared war against the USSR, yet commited acts of sabotage and assassination against Russian targets. Doesn't that make the CIA and the US regiem terrorists?
http://www3.ffii.org/akteure/microsoft/index.en.ht ml
"Responding to questions about the opening-up of the.NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free.NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in.NET, we have so many patents on.NET, which we want to cultivate.""
http://www3.ffii.org/akteure/microsoft/index.en.ht ml
"Responding to questions about the opening-up of the.NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free.NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in.NET, we have so many patents on.NET, which we want to cultivate.""
Microsoft is in the process of applying for a wide-ranging patent that covers a variety of functions related to its.Net initiative.
If approved as is, the patent would cover application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow actions related to accessing the network, handling Extensible Markup Language (XML), and managing data from multiple sources.
The Russians beat the US a very large number of firsts in space. First satellite, first animals in space, first human in space, first safe landings from orbit, first spacewalk, first to the land a probe on Mars, first probe to Venus, first orbital station, first flight around the moon.
The whole notion that the US "won the space race" is an interesting bit of spin. The fact is that the USSR notched up a very large number of firsts and could equally argue that they won the race if the finishing line hadn't been arbitraly decided to be a manned mission to the moon (and you can bet that it wasn't the Russians who decided that that was the only feat which mattered).
The US won the cold war over the USSR, or more to the point, outlasted the USSR, because the USSR ran out of money. Ultimately the Soviet system was a poor means of running a country, so they lost their super power status... but that hardly means they lost the space race.
As Napolean said: history is a lie made up by the victors.
I've read/. for quite some time now, and I've found the US posters to be largely bullish supporters of capitalism.
Now the invisible hand is favouring India and all of a sudden capitalism isn't all so good? Hmmm...
Perhaps it's self interest that Americans are really committed too, rather than capitalism or free trade?
Not that I mind - it's your country after all - I'd just like you contrary buggers to be consistent. I don't mind you deciding that perhaps allowing corporate anarchy is not such a great idea when you look at the human costs just so long as you stop trying convince the rest of the world that it's the way to go. Case in point: the US preaches free trade but has tarrifs all over the place and does not trade freely even with its allies.
Given that the US has reaped the benefit of capitalism for hundreds of years which has seen them (and the rest of the first world) exploit the third world ruthlessly, do you not find it hypocrytical that US IT workers are now complaining about receiving 'the back of the invisible hand'?
This is kind of my point - it makes no sense that people invest in companies which make no money, yet people do. Conversely, as I said, people don't invest in good companies (good == "making shitloads of money" in this case) because those companies are in a sector they have been told is "bad"
Investors don't always make sense and a high stock price proves that a company is percieved to be worthwhile, not that it actually is.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* have you people never heard of runtime optimisations? There are some things you can optimise at runtime (like runtime constants) which are *impossible* to optimise at compile time.
This whole "x is written in y, so x can't be faster than y" rubbish is just that - rubbish.
You're measuring startup time, not execution speed.
Duh.
"My arse" is a good name for this post since that's obviously where your head is stuck - much like the rest of the /. morons with their anti-java-no-matter-what stance.
I used to be a C hacker and a laughed at Java when it came out because of it's poor performance. Times have changed, but the language bigots haven't.
Yes, I fully agree.
I was thinking that what the US really needs is a STV (single transferable vote) voting system. It would allow voters to vote for non-traditional candidates, Like Nader, without thereby spliting the left's vote and creating an incorrect outcome (Nader votes - votes to the "far" left effectively caused the election to select the rightmost candidate)
The first past the post voting system is appallingly bad for creating incorrect results and helps enshrine the two party system. The only way to get real democracy (i.e.: a representative one) is to change the voting system.
The OP and replies here are such a pack of whinges!
I used PS for a number of years both on Mac and PC. I used GIMP more recently and I struggled at first with its interface, but *as with PS* I read the manual and figured out how the damned thing works.
Now I much prefer the GIMP.
I really cannot believe how lame all these complaints about the GIMPs interface are - no, it doesn't look like a Mac app nor does it look like PS. But FFS! Different != bad.
These programs have very different layouts. PS has a few features that the GIMP doesn't. Other than that they both do the same job very well.
C# is crap. Its like Java without the portability, consistency and a zillion annoying hard to read features added.
Anyone know how the WMV and DivX file sizes compared?
"but terrorism-like acts certainly were no uni-lateral thing."
Point out where I claimed otherwise
I wasn't commentating on the relative strengths or moral character of the combatants. I was questioning the definition of what constitutes and act of terrorism.
The CIA did legally questionable things because it thought they were the right thing to do in the big picture. I'm sure that the Sept.11 bombers thought the same thing. I'm not saying they're right - nor am I claiming that the Cold War was "unilateral aggression by the USA and CIA against the poor, defenseless USSR and KGB".
Please don't misrepresent my posts (try looking up the phrase "strawman argument")
uhuh.
So the CIA sabotaging and assassinating Russian targets was ok because it was "an evil repressive regime" and Sept.11 wasn't because they were "religious nutters"?
Great justification. Im sure the Sept.11 bombers thought that the US was "an evil repressive regime" and probably "religious nutters" as well.
Since to you being "an evil repressive regime" is justification for taking otherwise illegal actions against a country, you justify the Sept.11 attackers - since that was more or less their motivation as well.
Good post - I agree pretty much accross the board. The point of my original post was mainly that the word "terrorism" could well be validly applied to some of the acts of the CIA during (and probably after) the cold war.
Its a matter of perspective. I don't agree with the Sept. 11 attackers, but I'm sure they saw themselves as freedom fighters. Thats not too different from CIA operatives doing shady things 'because it's for a good cause'.
I think that the US is beoming increasingly hypocritical on the world stage on issues of law, democracy, free trade and the valid use of armed force. Its not the kind of stance that makes friends in the world.
Still think it's quaint?
The US had not declared war against the USSR, yet commited acts of sabotage and assassination against Russian targets. Doesn't that make the CIA and the US regiem terrorists?
Bullshit. M$ completely broke VB when they .NET'ed it. VB is used by millions of developers but they had no qualms about breaking all their code.
DirectX code broke between versions 5/6/7.
http://www3.ffii.org/akteure/microsoft/index.en.ht ml
.NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free .NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate.""
"Responding to questions about the opening-up of the
http://www3.ffii.org/akteure/microsoft/index.en.ht ml
.NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free .NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate.""
"Responding to questions about the opening-up of the
Since you beleive in a benevolent M$, read this too:
x .e n.html
"Microsoft bars GNU software from interoperating with CIFS"
http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/cifs/inde
URL: http://www.silicon.com/software/applications/0,39
When Balmer was asked about .NET on Unix he responded that M$ weren't keen on it and had a large patent base which they intended to use.
The Russians beat the US a very large number of firsts in space. First satellite, first animals in space, first human in space, first safe landings from orbit, first spacewalk, first to the land a probe on Mars, first probe to Venus, first orbital station, first flight around the moon.
The whole notion that the US "won the space race" is an interesting bit of spin. The fact is that the USSR notched up a very large number of firsts and could equally argue that they won the race if the finishing line hadn't been arbitraly decided to be a manned mission to the moon (and you can bet that it wasn't the Russians who decided that that was the only feat which mattered).
The US won the cold war over the USSR, or more to the point, outlasted the USSR, because the USSR ran out of money. Ultimately the Soviet system was a poor means of running a country, so they lost their super power status... but that hardly means they lost the space race.
As Napolean said: history is a lie made up by the victors.
Um... that seems about right to me
I've read /. for quite some time now, and I've found the US posters to be largely bullish supporters of capitalism.
Now the invisible hand is favouring India and all of a sudden capitalism isn't all so good? Hmmm...
Perhaps it's self interest that Americans are really committed too, rather than capitalism or free trade?
Not that I mind - it's your country after all - I'd just like you contrary buggers to be consistent. I don't mind you deciding that perhaps allowing corporate anarchy is not such a great idea when you look at the human costs just so long as you stop trying convince the rest of the world that it's the way to go. Case in point: the US preaches free trade but has tarrifs all over the place and does not trade freely even with its allies.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion. - Jed Babbin"
Well France were right - no WMD. Your glorious leader lied to the world.
Celebrate your deceipt if that seems worthwhile to you.
My Q:
Given that the US has reaped the benefit of capitalism for hundreds of years which has seen them (and the rest of the first world) exploit the third world ruthlessly, do you not find it hypocrytical that US IT workers are now complaining about receiving 'the back of the invisible hand'?
This is kind of my point - it makes no sense that people invest in companies which make no money, yet people do. Conversely, as I said, people don't invest in good companies (good == "making shitloads of money" in this case) because those companies are in a sector they have been told is "bad"
Investors don't always make sense and a high stock price proves that a company is percieved to be worthwhile, not that it actually is.