Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than
dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York,
wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck
about in the water having a good time. But conversely the
dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for
precisely the same reasons.
If you're claim things like that, then lets have a reliable source please. A google for "stanley miller" racemized gives 5 results, all for Creationists' pages.
broke down as fast as they were made
What does this mean? Do you mean that they existed for zero time (impossible?), that their breakdown process lasted as long as their creation process (meaningless?), that as more amino acids were created an equal number broke down (not much of a criticism?)
the alternative to a TV license is commercial funding
There are other alternatives. My preference would be to have it paid for out of the general taxation system. That would mean it wouldn't hit low-paid households so hard (particularly some students with 1 person/household) and you'd also avoid the cost of all the paperwork of TV licenses, the cost of checking people without licenses, and the cost of prosecuting those without.
For one thing, there's the performance issue if foo is an object---no need to keep a copy with ++foo
In Java, the domain of the story, this is not an issue of course.
So I take issue with your comment that programmers do, or even should, use the postfix form by default
I think having a default is useful because when you see the special case you immediately know that it's acting differently, that the code is dependent on increment/decrement order, and that there is probably a good reason why it was written that way.
I think the default is postfix form, but I don't know how I can support that - google doesn't seem to like ++i (!) You sound like a primarily C++ programmer (not ++C you notice:) where I expect prefix notation is more prevalent than other languages because of the performance difference.
Yes, I know this! Thanks for pointing out the obvious - I assumed that the world and its dog already knew this. This is why I think people should adhere to convention, not use whichever one they feel like.
for(x=0; x<20; x++)
I hope you've never used this line in an actual program.
The article we are discussing is about Java, so your point about operator overloading is irrelevent. A plain ++x / x++ on its own will compile to the same bytecode.
I'm not sure I follow your argument about loops - I don't at least see any reason why for (int i = 0; i would be any slower than (int i = 0; i foo; ++i) . Unless you're still talking about C++.
Really? I didn't know that. Oh no, wait, I did know that, along with anyone who's ever spent more than 10 minutes coding in a modern programming language. It was my whole point - if you see ++foo in a program, you can usually assume that there's a good reason that the author wanted to pre-increment so you have to be careful changing anything.
x++ is the standard way of writing the statement, used by most coders in preference to ++x (in my experience anyway.) The fact that there is such a convention is reason enough to use it IMHO; if I see ++x in a piece of code, it's a warning that something unusual is going on.
As for your equality test examples, putting assignments in if statements in Java gives you a compile error. Also, it's quite rare to ever put a specific number in an if statement, and if you do it's likeley to be 0.
In a few years time, when storage is cheap enough, I'm going to have a camera permanently strapped to my head (think better minaturisation + wireless tech) recording my life full-time. At moments of boredom I'll be able to relive any part of my life.
How much storage? Say, 500Mb/1hour (better compression as well, hopefully) * 24 * 365 ~= 4.4Tb/year. Doesn't seem that far away...
I currently have a patent pending for walking up to random people in the street and punching them in the face.
Don't patent applications have some sort of requirement for being for the benefit of mankind? Isn't that the idea behind them? To encourage people to invent socially useful things?
...and 10,000 years ago we were hitting each other over the head with rocks. But science develops.
But that's not really relevant; those studies were based on the long term trends (ie millenia), not looking at the short-term effects of industrialisation.
OK, but LEDs give a more diffuse light generally so it's harder to blind someone unless they're looking directly into the LEDs. Plus, your requirement was for duration, which caving lights are obviously designed for. But of course, I'm sure you have a better idea of what you want than I do...
The Singularity is an idea that has been considered several times in sci fi to be fair (I forget who coined the term and I'm too lazy to google it) so I think we can forgive the reviewer that. You'd have found out yourself if you'd googled it.
There are many theories as to where junk DNA and other types of bloat comes from and why. More fault tolerance is one, random mutation is another, helping protect genes during chromosome crossover is another, and several others.
Some DNA seems to be viral, or parasitic - that is, present because it can get itself copied back into new copies of the genome (these sequences may have jumped into our genome from viruses - if so, we are to some degree descended from viruses.)
Interestingly, evolutionary computer programs produce useless DNA in this way, but bacteria generally have quite compact genomes.
Slashdot Mirror
it means you can never make software that is available for sale from anything that has been opened as GPL
Bollocks!
1) There is nothing to stop you selling GPL'd software
2) If you're the copyright holder of the code you can do anything you like with it, including making proprietary derivatives
if you ask a professional programmer. I am one, I know.
Excuse me while I fall down at your feet and beg for your wisdom.
the packaged software industry, is largely unscatched
If you were that professional you would use real words rather than making up your own.
>Do you have a pointer to any papers on this?
Schwartz and Vissing, 2002
I'll leave it up to you to track it down
If you don't feel like it there was an article in New Scientist about it which is probably online
Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.
-- Douglas Adams
Mitochondrial DNA is not always passed from mother to child. A recent study found an individual that had inherited mitochondrial DNA from the father.
If you're claim things like that, then lets have a reliable source please. A google for "stanley miller" racemized gives 5 results, all for Creationists' pages.
broke down as fast as they were made
What does this mean? Do you mean that they existed for zero time (impossible?), that their breakdown process lasted as long as their creation process (meaningless?), that as more amino acids were created an equal number broke down (not much of a criticism?)
the alternative to a TV license is commercial funding
There are other alternatives. My preference would be to have it paid for out of the general taxation system. That would mean it wouldn't hit low-paid households so hard (particularly some students with 1 person/household) and you'd also avoid the cost of all the paperwork of TV licenses, the cost of checking people without licenses, and the cost of prosecuting those without.
For one thing, there's the performance issue if foo is an object---no need to keep a copy with ++foo
:) where I expect prefix notation is more prevalent than other languages because of the performance difference.
In Java, the domain of the story, this is not an issue of course.
So I take issue with your comment that programmers do, or even should, use the postfix form by default
I think having a default is useful because when you see the special case you immediately know that it's acting differently, that the code is dependent on increment/decrement order, and that there is probably a good reason why it was written that way.
I think the default is postfix form, but I don't know how I can support that - google doesn't seem to like ++i (!) You sound like a primarily C++ programmer (not ++C you notice
Yes, I know this! Thanks for pointing out the obvious - I assumed that the world and its dog already knew this. This is why I think people should adhere to convention, not use whichever one they feel like.
for(x=0; x<20; x++)
I hope you've never used this line in an actual program.
Damn /., stripping out my angle brackets! first for loop should have i++, second should have ++i
The article we are discussing is about Java, so your point about operator overloading is irrelevent. A plain ++x / x++ on its own will compile to the same bytecode.
I'm not sure I follow your argument about loops - I don't at least see any reason why for (int i = 0; i would be any slower than (int i = 0; i foo; ++i) . Unless you're still talking about C++.
Really? I didn't know that. Oh no, wait, I did know that, along with anyone who's ever spent more than 10 minutes coding in a modern programming language. It was my whole point - if you see ++foo in a program, you can usually assume that there's a good reason that the author wanted to pre-increment so you have to be careful changing anything.
Inally, as in my other note, good IDEs like IntelliJ provide very convenient ways to auto-generate these things
Still jams up the source code though.
x++ is the standard way of writing the statement, used by most coders in preference to ++x (in my experience anyway.) The fact that there is such a convention is reason enough to use it IMHO; if I see ++x in a piece of code, it's a warning that something unusual is going on.
As for your equality test examples, putting assignments in if statements in Java gives you a compile error. Also, it's quite rare to ever put a specific number in an if statement, and if you do it's likeley to be 0.
In a few years time, when storage is cheap enough, I'm going to have a camera permanently strapped to my head (think better minaturisation + wireless tech) recording my life full-time. At moments of boredom I'll be able to relive any part of my life.
How much storage? Say, 500Mb/1hour (better compression as well, hopefully) * 24 * 365 ~= 4.4Tb/year. Doesn't seem that far away...
NWN is a top-flight game and now Linux users can enjoy it
Providing you have a Windows installation to copy the files from, and you don't mind not using the toolset.
This was a blatant bait-and-switch, whether through planning or incompetency.
I currently have a patent pending for walking up to random people in the street and punching them in the face.
Don't patent applications have some sort of requirement for being for the benefit of mankind? Isn't that the idea behind them? To encourage people to invent socially useful things?
According to the unratified Kyoto Treaty
Is this the same treaty that has been ratified by more than 100 countries?
I like Jamie Zawinski's solution to improving cubicles.
Wear artificial fabrics. Apeskin didn't appeal much anyway.
...and 10,000 years ago we were hitting each other over the head with rocks. But science develops.
But that's not really relevant; those studies were based on the long term trends (ie millenia), not looking at the short-term effects of industrialisation.
Try the Senfu Super Box. I have one, and I think it's very useful. I keep a screwdriver in there, spare floppy, jumpers, pen for labelling CDs etc.
OK, but LEDs give a more diffuse light generally so it's harder to blind someone unless they're looking directly into the LEDs. Plus, your requirement was for duration, which caving lights are obviously designed for. But of course, I'm sure you have a better idea of what you want than I do...
Have you considered caving torches?
The Singularity is an idea that has been considered several times in sci fi to be fair (I forget who coined the term and I'm too lazy to google it) so I think we can forgive the reviewer that. You'd have found out yourself if you'd googled it.
There are many theories as to where junk DNA and other types of bloat comes from and why. More fault tolerance is one, random mutation is another, helping protect genes during chromosome crossover is another, and several others.
Some DNA seems to be viral, or parasitic - that is, present because it can get itself copied back into new copies of the genome (these sequences may have jumped into our genome from viruses - if so, we are to some degree descended from viruses.)
Interestingly, evolutionary computer programs produce useless DNA in this way, but bacteria generally have quite compact genomes.