There are lots of Reddit apps. A lot of them are free and adless, and have at least as many features as the app made by Reddit itself.
If the official app starts including unblockable ads, that will just encourage people to start using Apollo or Narwhal instead, or one of the other several dozen clones.
Just because two different things are correlated to the same variable, that doesn't mean you can use one to predict the other. It *might* be so, or the two things might affect hippocampus size independently, without any causal link from one to the other.
This is like saying that people who like ice cream tend to gain weight, and people with cancer tend to lose weight, so we can predict whether you like ice cream based on whether you have cancer or not.
We already have technology that does this. We have hand-held devices that shine near-infrared light through the skin and make the veins show up just fine.
They have significant problems, which this system shares. Most importantly, they show *all* veins, including all the ones which can't be cannulated because they are too small, too fragile, or too badly scarred. You have to palpate (feel) the vein to assess whether it's suitable, and if you can palpate it, you don't need to see it at all.
Also, they really only work at all on caucasian skin.
Further, this system is kind of ridiculously expensive. Even though the prices have dropped on commodity displays, microprocessors, 3G and wifi, and all those bells and whistles, it's still a complex piece of gear. We may as well pay for a bedside ultrasound which costs no more, is more precise, and is useful for a lot more than just IV starts.
Perhaps I picked the name because I used to get migraines. Those can come with focal neurological symptoms called "aura," ranging from nausea and vertigo all the way up to hallucinations.
Or maybe I'm a big hippy.
Or else I created the username fifteen years ago, it seeemed to sound good at the time, and I no longer remember the exact reason.
I didn't say it was a miracle. "Miraculous" as an adjective can mean something looks similar to a miracle. It does not necessarily imply that an event is literally due to the intervention of a supernatural divine force.
But hey, thanks for your input anyhow, Easily Offended Overly Dramatic Atheist Guy Who Takes The Slightest Excuse To Announce His Atheist Atheism. I keep hearing stories about you but it's nice to finally meet you in person.
"Miraculous" should be reserved for things that are difficult to believe, or at least wildly improbable. If the satellite fell out of the sky and hit the guy in the face, but he walked off unscathed, then you could say he "miraculously escaped injury."
But being missed by the debris is not a miracle. It just demonstrates how small a target a person is.
Easy there, that makes sense and this is the government we are talking about
Oh, if we're talking about the UK government, that's even easier. Just mention to a local official that the music contains lots of "sharp" notes. They'll spring into nanny mode, and require that all the speakers be entombed in Nerf so that nobody cuts themselves.
"Youths" don't stay young forever. Before very long they'll be adults, with legitimate reasons to be at stores and train stations and bus stops, but they still won't like the music. Any place that continues to play it will be driving away a whole lot of customers.
The RIAA has an additional argument that seems to me to have some validity, namely the expense of obtaining certified copies on an expedited basis. But isn't that actually a basis for a request for a continuance, or for permission to submit the certificates after the start of trial?
Unfortunately they have painted themselves into a corner on that one. The defendant had been asking for delay, because she recently changed attorneys, but RIAA argued strenuously that the hearing date must not be changed. They were successful on that point. But now that they find themselves without these documents they really need, they cannot contradict themselves and start arguing for more time.
When I started working here I requested a trackball, and this is the one they ordered for me. I wouldn't have chosen it myself, but I found it to work really well.
Movement is controlled by the index and middle fingers, and the main buttons and wheel by the thumb. There are two more buttons for the ring and pinky fingers.
About once or twice a month I have to pop the ball out and move some irritating piece of lint off the sensor or the bearings, but every trackball I've ever seen has the same issue.
Your second suggestion is exactly what Guild Wars does. The whole game is instanced, except for towns and such.
When you're in town between quests, you can interact with all other players, trading goods and joining guilds and all that stuff. As soon as you leave town, you enter your own instance of the outside world, and the only people in it are you and your party members. It's impossible for other players to steal your kills or otherwise screw up your adventuring, because they're not in the same instance.
The best I ever did was install the distributed.net client on the live production servers of a MMOG. (Yes, one you've heard of.) It did practically nothing while the game was busy, but it absolutely screamed during the school day when the player count dropped.
But I'm just a software guy; a friend of mine is a mechanical engineer. Most recently, he used the rapid prototyping machine (sometimes called a "3-d printer") to build some miniature props for our D&D game. Teeny little dead monsters and decapitated orcs, out of a machine intended to create aircraft parts.
Otherwise, my statement ( unless you're going to assume I or my fiend are lying, which I'd take issue with ) of fact is quite nearly as good as if it came from the expert themselves, isn't it?
Since you ask: no, it isn't. Unless you can cite something published (even online), or show some credentials that say you know what you're talking about, your opinion is worth exactly the same amount as any other random Slashdot posting. That is to say, we should assume you're talking out your ass.
Would it make you feel better if I'd read about it in a book?!??
As long as you can cite a book and a page reference, sure. Then I could go to the library and look it up-- or email the library reference department and ask them to check for me. But without a cite, all we've got is your word.
Please understand, I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just calling you some random stranger on the Internet. The fact that you registered a username on Slashdot is not proof that you have any idea what you're talking about.
In order to play HL2 at all, you must have connected at least once, to authenticate and unlock the game. Only after that happens are you able to play offline.
If Steam goes away, you will not be able to unlock the game. That means you will not be able to install the game on a new machine, nor reinstall to fix problems. Existing installs will still work-- but only as long as that particular hard drive and filesystem lasts.
Your post is only accurate for "regular" multiplayer games. In a massively multiplayer game, the server already controls everything. A player's machine is only running a client interface that interacts with the server's game state.
The delay involved makes creating a reflex-dependent MMO game difficult, but it's quite doable. Case in point: Planetside.
Planetside is a first-person shooter, but still all the important code runs on the server. When you fire a weapon, of course you see bullets go flying immediately, but that's just a special effect generated by the client. Actually you're just sending a "fire gun" message to the server. The server does collision detection and damage based on where you're *really* standing and facing-- which may not be the same as the location your client has. It does take some input on what the clent thinks you're aiming at (to compsensate for network latency), but a client too far out of line gets ignored (to prevent cheating).
There's no reason a sports game couldn't use a similar method. The real problem would be convincing a major developer to invest the money in a new genre.
Actually, java has the potential (and I think in many cases this potential is already realized) to be just as fast as equivalent C++ programs.
For math-intensive applications? Um... not to be a jerk or anything, but can you prove that?
My experience with Java math shows it to be 20-50% slower than the C++ equivalent. I'm willing to be proven wrong, though, if you can show me a benchmark in which Java comes out ahead.
(Of course you can make Java much faster by writing native code, or maybe by using deep Java mojo that I'm not aware of, but then you're increasing programmer workload again...)
That's kind of the point, isn't it? Interpreting a line that looks like an actual equation, where all the parentheses are mathematically meaningful, is easy.
When all the operations are turned into function calls, it gets much harder to debug. That's partly because of all the extra parens, and also partly because your brain has to interpret mathematics and English words at the same time. (That kind of thing tends to be harder than working with one or the other.) If you then split the equation out onto multiple lines it gets a little easier, but is still not as straightforward as the plain-looking math.
Of course there may be behind-the-scenes problems either way, because "a + b" or a.add(b) can represent a function of arbitrary complexity. But if your operators are hiding really complicated stuff, or especially if they have side effects, that's a strong sign that your design needs to be reworked.
Matlab may be slower than C++, but then so is Java, and Java is what the original question is asking about.
I've never seen a side-by-side comparison of Java to Matlab, but if forced to guess I'd definitely really Java to be faster. However, Java is definitely not designed for any kind of mathematical work, so coding and maintenance would end up being a pain. (Trust me, I've been there.)
If you want ease of coding for mathematics, do what this post's grandparent said, and get yourself a dedicated mathematical package. If you want raw execution speed, write in C++ or C or assembler, depending on how much you value speed over maintainability.
Don't get me wrong, I like Java, but in this situation it's the wrong compromise. It doesn't have enough coder-friendliness (for math applications) to make up for its lack of speed, nor enough speed to make it worth the trouble.
In this particular case, since you know that all your critical emails show up with a certain type of file attached, you'd just tell the filter never to ditch anything with that attachment type. Presto, no false positives on the important stuff. (Theoretically you'd start getting false negatives too, but not many; how often does a spam contain a PDF attachment?)
More generally, you'll want to make sure your clients know email is unreliable. No matter what precautions you take, there is ALWAYS a positive chance that some server error causes the message to be lost. Tell your clients that if they don't receive a human acknowledgement within N business days, they need to assume the mail never arrived.
If these "very wealthy individuals" insisted on sending you important legal documents by USPS without proof of delivery, you'd think they were nuts. Why should email be considered any different?
Slashdot Mirror
There are lots of Reddit apps. A lot of them are free and adless, and have at least as many features as the app made by Reddit itself.
If the official app starts including unblockable ads, that will just encourage people to start using Apollo or Narwhal instead, or one of the other several dozen clones.
Just because two different things are correlated to the same variable, that doesn't mean you can use one to predict the other. It *might* be so, or the two things might affect hippocampus size independently, without any causal link from one to the other.
This is like saying that people who like ice cream tend to gain weight, and people with cancer tend to lose weight, so we can predict whether you like ice cream based on whether you have cancer or not.
We already have technology that does this. We have hand-held devices that shine near-infrared light through the skin and make the veins show up just fine.
They have significant problems, which this system shares. Most importantly, they show *all* veins, including all the ones which can't be cannulated because they are too small, too fragile, or too badly scarred. You have to palpate (feel) the vein to assess whether it's suitable, and if you can palpate it, you don't need to see it at all.
Also, they really only work at all on caucasian skin.
Further, this system is kind of ridiculously expensive. Even though the prices have dropped on commodity displays, microprocessors, 3G and wifi, and all those bells and whistles, it's still a complex piece of gear. We may as well pay for a bedside ultrasound which costs no more, is more precise, and is useful for a lot more than just IV starts.
Perhaps I picked the name because I used to get migraines. Those can come with focal neurological symptoms called "aura," ranging from nausea and vertigo all the way up to hallucinations.
Or maybe I'm a big hippy.
Or else I created the username fifteen years ago, it seeemed to sound good at the time, and I no longer remember the exact reason.
What's the difference?
I didn't say it was a miracle. "Miraculous" as an adjective can mean something looks similar to a miracle. It does not necessarily imply that an event is literally due to the intervention of a supernatural divine force.
But hey, thanks for your input anyhow, Easily Offended Overly Dramatic Atheist Guy Who Takes The Slightest Excuse To Announce His Atheist Atheism. I keep hearing stories about you but it's nice to finally meet you in person.
"Miraculous" should be reserved for things that are difficult to believe, or at least wildly improbable. If the satellite fell out of the sky and hit the guy in the face, but he walked off unscathed, then you could say he "miraculously escaped injury."
But being missed by the debris is not a miracle. It just demonstrates how small a target a person is.
Easy there, that makes sense and this is the government we are talking about
Oh, if we're talking about the UK government, that's even easier. Just mention to a local official that the music contains lots of "sharp" notes. They'll spring into nanny mode, and require that all the speakers be entombed in Nerf so that nobody cuts themselves.
"Youths" don't stay young forever. Before very long they'll be adults, with legitimate reasons to be at stores and train stations and bus stops, but they still won't like the music. Any place that continues to play it will be driving away a whole lot of customers.
The RIAA has an additional argument that seems to me to have some validity, namely the expense of obtaining certified copies on an expedited basis. But isn't that actually a basis for a request for a continuance, or for permission to submit the certificates after the start of trial?
Unfortunately they have painted themselves into a corner on that one. The defendant had been asking for delay, because she recently changed attorneys, but RIAA argued strenuously that the hearing date must not be changed. They were successful on that point. But now that they find themselves without these documents they really need, they cannot contradict themselves and start arguing for more time.
Seriously, once you notice the resemblance it's impossible to see it as anything else.
http://gizmodo.com/5273445/psp-go-a-dead-ringer-for-south-parks-eric-cartman
If your computer is playing it to you, you obviously did download it, and it obviously resides somewhere in your system's memory.
They thought about that. The audio data itself never actually gets to your computer; it all resides on the server and is played from there.
They just need really, really big speakers so you can hear the music from your house.
However, this absolutely sucks for Sony, who is now only going to make money through the sale of the Eye and the game itself.
Oh, how will they ever survive? No video game company has ever made a profit just by selling video games!
When I started working here I requested a trackball, and this is the one they ordered for me. I wouldn't have chosen it myself, but I found it to work really well.
Movement is controlled by the index and middle fingers, and the main buttons and wheel by the thumb. There are two more buttons for the ring and pinky fingers.
About once or twice a month I have to pop the ball out and move some irritating piece of lint off the sensor or the bearings, but every trackball I've ever seen has the same issue.
Your second suggestion is exactly what Guild Wars does. The whole game is instanced, except for towns and such.
When you're in town between quests, you can interact with all other players, trading goods and joining guilds and all that stuff. As soon as you leave town, you enter your own instance of the outside world, and the only people in it are you and your party members. It's impossible for other players to steal your kills or otherwise screw up your adventuring, because they're not in the same instance.
The best I ever did was install the distributed.net client on the live production servers of a MMOG. (Yes, one you've heard of.) It did practically nothing while the game was busy, but it absolutely screamed during the school day when the player count dropped.
But I'm just a software guy; a friend of mine is a mechanical engineer. Most recently, he used the rapid prototyping machine (sometimes called a "3-d printer") to build some miniature props for our D&D game. Teeny little dead monsters and decapitated orcs, out of a machine intended to create aircraft parts.
Otherwise, my statement ( unless you're going to assume I or my fiend are lying, which I'd take issue with ) of fact is quite nearly as good as if it came from the expert themselves, isn't it?
Since you ask: no, it isn't. Unless you can cite something published (even online), or show some credentials that say you know what you're talking about, your opinion is worth exactly the same amount as any other random Slashdot posting. That is to say, we should assume you're talking out your ass.
Would it make you feel better if I'd read about it in a book?!??
As long as you can cite a book and a page reference, sure. Then I could go to the library and look it up-- or email the library reference department and ask them to check for me. But without a cite, all we've got is your word.
Please understand, I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just calling you some random stranger on the Internet. The fact that you registered a username on Slashdot is not proof that you have any idea what you're talking about.
In order to play HL2 at all, you must have connected at least once, to authenticate and unlock the game. Only after that happens are you able to play offline.
If Steam goes away, you will not be able to unlock the game. That means you will not be able to install the game on a new machine, nor reinstall to fix problems. Existing installs will still work-- but only as long as that particular hard drive and filesystem lasts.
Your post is only accurate for "regular" multiplayer games. In a massively multiplayer game, the server already controls everything. A player's machine is only running a client interface that interacts with the server's game state.
The delay involved makes creating a reflex-dependent MMO game difficult, but it's quite doable. Case in point: Planetside.
Planetside is a first-person shooter, but still all the important code runs on the server. When you fire a weapon, of course you see bullets go flying immediately, but that's just a special effect generated by the client. Actually you're just sending a "fire gun" message to the server. The server does collision detection and damage based on where you're *really* standing and facing-- which may not be the same as the location your client has. It does take some input on what the clent thinks you're aiming at (to compsensate for network latency), but a client too far out of line gets ignored (to prevent cheating).
There's no reason a sports game couldn't use a similar method. The real problem would be convincing a major developer to invest the money in a new genre.
Does that mean you mean you assume your company employees to be 100% trustworthy, honest, and ethical at all times?
If you answered no, then I wonder why you trust an outside contractor so very much less than your internal people.
If you answered yes, you're not very familiar with human nature.
Actually, java has the potential (and I think in many cases this potential is already realized) to be just as fast as equivalent C++ programs.
For math-intensive applications? Um... not to be a jerk or anything, but can you prove that?
My experience with Java math shows it to be 20-50% slower than the C++ equivalent. I'm willing to be proven wrong, though, if you can show me a benchmark in which Java comes out ahead.
(Of course you can make Java much faster by writing native code, or maybe by using deep Java mojo that I'm not aware of, but then you're increasing programmer workload again...)
That's kind of the point, isn't it? Interpreting a line that looks like an actual equation, where all the parentheses are mathematically meaningful, is easy.
When all the operations are turned into function calls, it gets much harder to debug. That's partly because of all the extra parens, and also partly because your brain has to interpret mathematics and English words at the same time. (That kind of thing tends to be harder than working with one or the other.) If you then split the equation out onto multiple lines it gets a little easier, but is still not as straightforward as the plain-looking math.
Of course there may be behind-the-scenes problems either way, because "a + b" or a.add(b) can represent a function of arbitrary complexity. But if your operators are hiding really complicated stuff, or especially if they have side effects, that's a strong sign that your design needs to be reworked.
Matlab may be slower than C++, but then so is Java, and Java is what the original question is asking about.
I've never seen a side-by-side comparison of Java to Matlab, but if forced to guess I'd definitely really Java to be faster. However, Java is definitely not designed for any kind of mathematical work, so coding and maintenance would end up being a pain. (Trust me, I've been there.)
If you want ease of coding for mathematics, do what this post's grandparent said, and get yourself a dedicated mathematical package. If you want raw execution speed, write in C++ or C or assembler, depending on how much you value speed over maintainability.
Don't get me wrong, I like Java, but in this situation it's the wrong compromise. It doesn't have enough coder-friendliness (for math applications) to make up for its lack of speed, nor enough speed to make it worth the trouble.
In this particular case, since you know that all your critical emails show up with a certain type of file attached, you'd just tell the filter never to ditch anything with that attachment type. Presto, no false positives on the important stuff. (Theoretically you'd start getting false negatives too, but not many; how often does a spam contain a PDF attachment?)
More generally, you'll want to make sure your clients know email is unreliable. No matter what precautions you take, there is ALWAYS a positive chance that some server error causes the message to be lost. Tell your clients that if they don't receive a human acknowledgement within N business days, they need to assume the mail never arrived.
If these "very wealthy individuals" insisted on sending you important legal documents by USPS without proof of delivery, you'd think they were nuts. Why should email be considered any different?
I managed to get to the article. All it took was hitting Reload a few times, just like a normal slashdotting.
The article hasn't been taken down.
Here's the problem though, have you seen a P2P client that has a "no, don't use my entire bandwidth, I want to download at 2400bps" option?
Of course. The problem user has one already, assuming his version of eDonkey is reasonably current.