"Man: Lord, can I have a penny?" "God: In a minute."
Explanation: If you don't have "penny" in the last part, the whole middle part isn't part of the joke.
[Sorry to be a drag, but I hate bad syllogisim in a mis-told joke... 8-)]
Science is a method, Faith is a position. You can apply a method to a position, you can hold a position on a method, but you cannot disprove one with the other.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: (thus passes the glory of the world.)
Cogito Ergo Spud: (I think, therefor I Yam. 8-)
All else is sound and furry, signifying nothing. [yes, it's a mis-quote... lighten up... 8-)]
Yes, he "doesn't have to" but that isn't the same as "he wont". And even if he is never "know to have" released his changes publically, it doesn't remove the spectre that he *might have*.
In the worst case, you catch someone violating the GPL, they decide that they can fight, comply, or send a letter to Merkley with a $50 check to "get a copy" under the more permissive license.
O they cna just claim that they have it from that provenance but they don't remember how.
Then you'd have to bring Merkley into court to testify that they could not possibly have gotten access to it though him.
I suspect that part of the return-swing of the pendlum of IP will be large numbers of companies deciding/discovering just how useful it would be for a lot of code and information to find itself in the public domain where it belongs.
The watershed events, as I see them, would be
1) Software patents don't pass in Europe.
1a) they pass in Europe and so India and South America, and maybe Asia start kicking economic butt. Signaled by a sharp rise in U.S. and European students rushing abroad to study.
2) Trademark Saturation critical mass in about 15 years, where essentially no useful noun-like words remain viable for even old companies to persue markets without fear of significant legal exposure.
3) The "useful life" of IP workers drops to about eight years due to NDA/no-compete actions causes a serious disruption in the realestate markets.
Then corporations and politicians will begin to fall all over themselves to roll-back the IP boom-time legsliation of the eighties.
(Barring a "proper war" of couse) I figure 22 to 40 years. I may actually live to see it.
One of the big problems is that the BSD license, which is parahprased: take this and do what you want, of some otherwise GPLed code could dangerously muddy waters.
Right now there is one License for Linux, so it is *known* that all Linux is accessible only via that license.
Were you to add a second license then you would add plausable deniability to the war-chest of people determined to "steal" the code (by not allowing access to the source code for "their version.")
In short, you would end up with a bunch of people who could then say "yes, this is Linux, but its from the can-be-secret version of the license."
It just muddies waters *WITHOUT* *NEED*. Since the existing license is sufficent, adding a second provenance to the blood line would only serve to make things complex.
Plus, even the effort would be devicive. You could never _find_ and get the aproval of all the copyright holders in order to create the new provenance.
In a way it would be like a fudal lord having illegitimate idential twins, then deciding to recognize one and not the other. It (1) wouldn't make sense and if you did it, it (2) would only lead to problems.
There is anit-value in even discussing the possibility.
It would be better if Linux got so popular that the big companies decided to fight the movie/music industry to reduce copyright terms. If we were back to the original 14 year terms then in about five years (?) 2.0 would be public domiain anyway. That is how Copyright was _SUPPOSED_ to work in the first place. The ??AA(s) of the world have just managed to really screw the software industry a-priori. If M$ wants Linux, they should just just buy some senators and get the whole thing fixed anyway.
[Side Note: patents cannot let microsoft (etc) steal linux, they could make it mighty uncomfortable, but even if they had a patent on every single concept on every single line, they could never take possession of it for themselves. As long as it can live in free countries like Brazil it will be unkillable. The same unstealability goes for coercing a license change, or buying one. As long as Copyright is at these untenable extremes, everything GPLed is irrevocably public unto the Nth generation. If copyright were back where it belonged M$ (etc) would be "free to innovate" (liberate?) (e.g. steal) some of the older versions in like 2006. If you follow my hyperbole.]
Yes, on re-read I even have errors in the title. Sigh. I furvently wish this site had the nice "check spelling" button like on the bottom of the gmail compose page.
I just cannot seem to keep my dyslexia from misfireing all over anythin I type when I am this pressed for time.
(Slashdot is not work-hours compatable unless I am really fast... 8-)
...is prone to abstruse and glittering generalities.
One must only be *consistent* in one's use of exceptions. I (occasionally) write exception heavy code. That doesn't lead to the proposition that exceptions only exist to defend against things that should "never, ever happen."
Exceptions exist to remove redundant (and so error-prone) checks. If a tree branch is twenty-steps deep, and each step must check the return code on the branch for the error case and handle it and then propigate it back towards its caller, then you nave nineteen redundant code actions and so nineteen opportunities for someone to make a (compundable) mistake in handling the error.
The C++ exception mechanisim provides a means for the compiler to generate all the code to Do The Right Thing(tm) automatically and without _unnecessary_ programmer interaction.
The short version is that if all you classes (objects) do proper semantic cleanup on destruction, and all your call frames are exception safe in their handling of intermediate state, then stack-unwinding *is* proper semantic cleanup. When something more than cleanup is needed, there, and only there, is where you catch the exceptions. This leads to only having to write the error _handling_ code once, in the proper and meaningful context.
The fact that C++ exceptions throw fully-fleshed objects means that the exception itself can communicate more than its mere existence, which makes it even more useful. (I will skip the digression here, but I have used excpetions to "return" references to offending objects into contexts where they can be dealt with, with great success, and without having to burden call semantics for intervening frames. It's an incredibly powerful and readable technique.)
The fact that _many_ programmers "are bad" and don't otherwise maintian "semantic invariants" in their objects; allocate "bare" pointers; and catch exceptions by value instead of reference leads to a lot of people writing marginal exception-based code that is *terrible* and unsustainable. But that is bad art, not bad facility. I have seen similarly disasterous choices in every language I have ever been exposed too. (It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. 8-)
So what?
A lot of people injure themselves using nail-guns each year, which is not a argument against construction equipment, it's just an argument against incompetence.
The sole point of contention is whether the "error" must be an _ERROR_ or if it is sufficent for the "error" to "just" be a "sufficently exceptional condition" to merrit a non-local return.
At least it's not setjump/longjump... 8-)
Personally, I anchor the root of my exception class hierarchy on Exception ==> Fault and Exception ==> Error, with classical errors branched off of "Error" and semantic errors based off of "Fault". I then crash-proof by catching any Excpetion by reference in the last recoverable frame before semantic collapse. (This protects against "unexpected" and other stupid mistakes to which even I, in my infinite wisdom, are subject. 8-)
For instance consider Fault ==> LockFault. I throw a LockFault whenever you/I mess up a lock (unlock a lock you don't hold or "try" a lock and fail to get it). These semantic errors are "common enough" but still deserving of exception status. The LockFault lets me "back off" from deadlocks automatically because I A) hold locks via objects so the destructors release locks during stack unwinding and B) I can catch lock faults in a context where a retry makes sense instead of passing-out state itteratively. This then leaves me "ready to act" in a semnatic frame where a retry can be logically attempted (as opposed to mechanically attempted) in a rational and reasonable manner.
Further, these locking layers are managing real (unpulgable) devices and real (droppable) network connections. The braided exceptions path is, at first, complex, but after a very-short period of annalysis makes sense, as all three semantic fa
It's like watching an "ex" politicain make an educated statement so that when his tell-all book comes out supporting all his previous statements unchanged, he can say "but look, I've been on both sides now, and I was right all along."
The Innane Mrs. R. is pulling the classic prodigal son routine. She is now straying from her family, to be reunited later. At which time they will kill the fatted DRM Budget for her homecomming.
I don't buy it for a second. When I see her *SUE* the RIAA for being draconian I *consider* taking her seriously. If she wins big and collects and does something socially responsible with the proceeds she'll be "back to zero" and she can then begin working on making a new name for herself.
Between then and now, she is, IMHO, pandering to the press so that her newly-revised-reformed-true-faith position will sell to the intended "compromisers" in the two houses of congress.
Oh for gods sake, if you are going to be a snob, have the guts to not do it AC... 8-)
I'm dyslexic as hell and I typed the whole thing in like four minutes. It's got worse problems (typographically) than an errant/improper "u".
I used the form I chose not to "sound smart" (put on airs) but because, sadly, that is how I speak. Rather than dumb-down my word choice because of my (damaged 8-) spelling.
I have resigned myself to listening to an endless stream of unimaginative A.C.s in my life critizing my delivery because they have no actual input to offer. I don't feel special in this. The complete lack of intellectual viggor in this country means that even if my spelling were perfect the signal-to-noise would still be just as inane.
At least I have the balls to sign my name to my opinions (and my Trolls. 8-)
In one breath you say that the internet was better when people had to know how to use makefiles (programming tools) to gain access to foura.
In the next breath you decry VBScript access by poor programmers.
Then you finally propose limiting access to compilers using price or whatever.
This is not logically junct. The whole first-premise of foura-access having been subject to control by having an effective "entrance exam" of getting the code and compiling it, does nothing to support your later position that access to compilation tools would make things better.
How this is "iunteresting" is beyond me.
You don't make better citizens by removing access to society. So you don't make the net better by bemoaning ready access to compilers. IT ISN'T THE COMPILERS FAULT that the net citizens have a certian "wacko" contingent that thinks it is a game of cops and robbers. Limiting access to compilers "via price" isn't goig to stop the theives from stealing the compilers to do the jobs anyway. They're criminals and they know how to do things like copy compiler CDs.
In point of fact, if everybody on the internet had to get, marginally port, and build their own client and server software people wouldn't take the net for granted so easily. That would be interesting, but it isn't even a practical thing to wish for.
Your "thought" is, by direct allegory: When I first learned to drive we didn't even have to lock our cars. Now days anybody with a coat hanger can unlock a car. Coat hangers should be a controled comodity.
HUA?
The facts are simple.
Some small percentage of people will go where they are not wanted and do unpopular things. We don't know why, because it varies from case to case. We lock our cars and we lock our homes, and we have banks and armored cars.
But the internet is made out of screen doors and cardboard walls, mostly because that is the highest standard of construction most of the people on the internet are happy to have, and they are willing to pay good money for someone to hose the cardboard down for them to make it "soft and easy to work with."
Whenever someone gets all surprised that thier unlocked straight-from-the-box system got "hacked" because they didn't even take the minimum required effort to read the manual and follow the required steps, my heart only bleeds so much before I lose interest.
Don't get me wrong. My home firewall (slackware linux plus customized firewall script I found on the net) takes *dozens* of nominal attacks a minute. In particular there is some script that about 40 different addresses have run against my system in the last five days, sending the same series of user-name-and-password sequences to my sshd. (A new exploit in the field or just a new script-kiddy example of some old one? who cares...) That PISSES ME OFF because I could be using that bandwidth to raise my points-per-hour on UT2004, get my email faster, or whatever, but it is soaked up in these litte bursts of tresspass. I've got the IP addresses of these intruders and I wish there was a way to do something about it. But its a cable modem so what are you going to do? You protect yourself and you wait for the novelty to wear off, or for the *default* security on the net to get good enough for this kind of random IP attack to become sufficently unprofitable and uncommon.
Let's face it, if Microsoft was not such a *crappy* software company, most of these port-scan fishing expeditions would never have even come into existence. It didn't require access to a compiler to figure out that IIS could be owned by adding double-dot elements to a valid URL to reach the root folder on Windows based servers. It doesn't take much at all to make a dictionary attack on a site.
Turing the internet into a vast field of X-Box appliances that can only be accessed by "trusted corporations" isn't a viable direction. And any "lets make it expensive and controlled" to any degree short of complete draconian separation w
I was talking to someone who was in a position to know things about the Biosphere 2 project. (I forget who, but at the time I put a "valid information" mental bookmark on the conversation, how's *that* for a citation? 8-)
The two major reasons for failure of the project were related to plant choice and layout. In short, they chose american-friendly plants and "arranged them attractively" for the press. They made little brookes and tiny farms. In short they tried to "make a little planet of happy foods". They had a "rainforest room" and so on.
This was unforgivable, and purely political (as in political infighting).
I beleive the "major" cuplret was either wheat or rice. Whatever the plant was it grew "too fast" and far too much of the plant produced was "useless" with a long decay period (e.g. it was wasteful and recycled slowly).
Biosphere 2 was not really an attempt at much of anything. The kind of "closed system" needed for space travel isn't that hart to imagine, but it would be pretty ugly. Lots of dark greens, hydroponics, stacked growing racks, fungus, human-waste recycling, etc. Not so much a well-stocked biosphere as a bunch of plants which are geared to supporting one kind of animal (humans, duh 8-) all in a greasy and stark but well lit arangement.
As stated elsewhere, plants are quite predatory (sorry vegans, plants engage in a progrom of murder, life is tough, get over it... 8-) and often toxic. Most of the friendly plants we eat have a whole lot of plant we don't eat made along with each unit of food.
One would almost imagine a lot of sugar-plants and kale and one-each from the staple vitamin producers and a big blender to pulp up a paste. Then 400+ days of paste...
The ubiquetous but boring "food cube" of science fiction.
Then a fliter membrane from hell for the waste-to-water and waste-to-firtilizer transaction without all the nice "dirt".
I'd expect it to reek.
But I'd go. Eating sucks anyway so a uniform diet of paste would be little worse than what some people live with anyway. (can you say 20 years of Ensure, some people can...)
My only limit? No annis (lic.. lik... liqu... whatever... I can't even spell that the name of that nasty black candy, but the flavor sucks...).
One of the odd-out things they will have to invent is the "recycleable" air filter media. Basically you will need "activated charcoal" but you will have refresh it. Actually activated charcoal wouldnt' be that hard to manufacture in a closed system if you used some sort of condensate system to recapture the off-gassed nastyness when "burning" the charcoal. Then filter the air with it and "burry it" but desolving the "used" charcoal in the hydroponic solution.
According to Groklaw none of the eye-witnesses to the hearing in question SAW or HEARD any suck claim. In particular, the SEALED transcript is not available and the "reporter" in question *WAS* *NOT* *PRESENT* for the hearing.
You are all victims of FUD and you can stop with the uninformed pro-SCO Astroturf and rebuts there-of.
Sure... Snow tires on the back of a front wheel drive. Any truck with enough lift-kits to need a mounting ladder. A paint job that costs more than the chassis is worth. (Sadly stock) "Flare side" pickup trucks where the _manufacturer_ has thrown away several cubic feet of space to make it look like the wheel-wells stick out. Anybody commuting to their desk job in a duallie-axle turbo desil pickup. Anybody bragging about their mod, when you can still see the primer and the bondo. [A spoiler on *any* street car, my point was it wasn't a sign of "particular" stupidity on a front wheel drive car, you think your car is hot, keep it off the streets and take it to a track... 8-)]
Actually go ahead and make fun of any "street modded" car, virtually all of that stuff is little more than the kind of mating display you see on the Discovery Channel.
For instance I was talking to this guy at Quizno's. He was complaining about having to take the bus. He couldn't drive his car casually any more because he kept getting tickets for "display" (chirping his wheels). He'd actually installed a mod on his powertrain (I forget what it's called, a "torque limiter"? that doesn't sound right) that wouldn't let the transmission apply power to the wheels until the input torque was above a certian threshold.
He couldn't do "stop-and-go" without a chirp every "go".
On his street car.
How smart is that?
For all that the stupid exterior things are stupid, they are at least an honest display, an attempt to "look cool". The *really* stupid stuff is so often under the hood.
So I secretly laugh hardest when people want to "lift their hood and show me their engine." It's like a line in bad gay porn... 8-)
[ASIDE: I actually do undestand this sort of thing. I personally over-buy my computer stuff. But I am man enough to keep it to myself as a "secret shame." I don't feel the need to invite guys over to my house and "show them my tool." 8-)]
Sorry, My bad... I actually knew that (not the HDLC-esque part, but the IP frame "goo" part 8-) but for some reason this whole other thing came leaking out of my head. 8-)
"/" is read as "over"
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Replacing TCP?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It is the old-math speak usage of "/" as in "three over four" is "3/4"
So TCP/IP is "Transmission control protocol over internet protocol" or just "TCP over IP".
While you don't see it much, this also inferrs "HTTP/TCP/IP" and so forth.
So just as "voice over IP" doesn't make voice and IP the same, TCP over IP doesn't really relate one to the other.
After all, if you use dialup, the first hop of your connection is typically TCP or UDP over PPP (Point to Point Protocol) and the ISP acts as a gateway from the PPP to the IP semantics.
(I'm guessing the immediate parent knew this, but this reply "hangs best" here in the thread. 8-)
Where did I mention "larger size rear wheels"? What *are* you reading?
I have yet to see rear wheels that are "enough larger" (heavy enough) to make up for the absence of a drive-shaft, rear differential, and rear axle.
If you are on a nice track, or closed corse, and you aren't just some street-modded idiot, its fine to have a little rear-end slide-out helping you come around. Unfortunately these street modding idiots are driving around in real-world conditions with minimal training and they don't usually have the luxuary of knowing that they can freely slide their back end "just so" to help them get around a tight bend.
In the real world, there are obsticals like, um, curbs and uneven pavement, debris on the shoulders, water, ice, oil deposits, mail boxes, children playing, soft shoulders, and regular people who are driving responsibly. All of these things can "complicate" evryone's day when a sloppy back-end comes a lolling on by.
So a well-controlled slide-out will let you come around faster _IF_ you know what you are doing _AND_ you have the room. Meanwhile, a lack of down-force and an outside turn on a crowned road will lead you to visiting mister culvert-by-the-side-of-the-road more broad-sided than you may want.
I used to live near just such a chump-trap.
You also don't want to _see_ what happens when someone gets the benefit of your opportunity to "turn faster" when there is a one-inch seam at the edge of the pavement. It can be spectacular.
Just as there are techniques for dealing with each kind of circumstance, there is good reason to want to stick the back end of a front wheel drive car right down to the road. Just because it's not the way *you* would do it doesn't mean its inappropriate to the experience the owner of the vehicle wants to produce.
That winged civic is "no more an idiot" than any other modder. He's either done it for a reason or not, so he's not stupid or he is. It's not a A begets B certianty. It's just not the car *you* would want to take to *your* grave.
Most of us wish you would all get a clue and stop making our roads any stupider than they already have to be.
I get the same feeling seeing a spoiler on a front-wheel-drive street car that I get when I see a spoiler on a rear-wheel drive street car, or a super-charger: "Look, a Damn Fool with more Money than Brains."
The FWD + spoiler or - spoiler debate is "vi vs emacs" for gear-heads.../sigh...
Especially in street racing (which I don't do) any number of factors [porly crowned roads, inclined roads, surface irregularities, cross wind, moisture, botts-dots (the bumps installed in lane markers)] [and weight transfer for a down-shift can do as much to your composit vector as breaking] "threaten" traction. In a front wheel drive car there is nothing in the back end to mitigate any mistakes or environmental influences.
If someone is stupid enough to drive their car near the limits on a public street, we _ALL_ need any edge they can manufacture. It goes without saying that these people need driving lessons, elsewise they wouldn't think to drive so fast and irresponsible. That is just as true for the people who _don't_ think they will break traction on... (hint hint hint...)
I think *most* street mods are pretty dumb. Putting a spoiler on the back of a front-wheel drive car is far-and-away more useful than, say, putting spoked-rim low-profile tires on a Land Rover (there is one of these around here, looks like the thing is on bycicle tires... surreal... 8-); or "lowering" a four-by so that it will high-center on a speed bump or bottom-out on a driveway.
The physics are simple, down-force equals stability. Flat undercarrage plus sloped roof equals lift. Spoiler useful at speed. Any car. Any design. Any powerplant. Heck, one of the reasons to "lift" the back end (the "it's faster because it's always going down hill" look) is to increase down-force and disrupt lift by creating a small low-pressure area under the chassis.
This is physics, not technique. You know, "wind-tunnel 101". Good technique mitigates physics by understanding the limits and probable outcomes. But hedging the physics when possible isn't contraindicated by improved technique.
[Aside: I ma not a car kid, and don't advocate "thump thump thump" but...]
A rear spoiler on a front wheel drive car still makes sense, it possibley makse *more* sense. It *is* classically (mis)understood that the down-force provided by a spoiler is to improve traction of "the drive wheels" to improve power delivery and prevent high-speed power skids.
In point of fact, the typical modern car, is effectively a marginal lifting body (look it up, the air passing over the car goes further/faster and so the air passing under the car generates some lift). The name "spoiler" come from the fact that the airfoil "spoils" that lift.
In all front-engine cars the front doesn't need a spoiler because the engine weight is sufficent to the task of maintainting contact. The back end is left to kite around.
In a front wheel drive car, that lift is still present, and even if those rear wheels are not doing anything to make the car go faster, they *are* important to keeping the car under control. If you don't beleive you need the back end to control your movements, I recommend having a rear tire seize-up on you some time. It can be _very_ enlightening... 8-)
In fact, in a front wheel drive car, there is so _little_ weight in the back that the tendency to "lose the back end" while cornering at speed is rather increased. A rear spoiler combats that lack of weight and improves the manuverability of the speeding car.
So don't laugh. The rear spoiler is actually slightly *more* important on a front wheel drive car.
With a rear-wheel drive car it helps you accelerate when you are already going fast. With a front wheel drive car, it keeps you from experiencing a catstrophic loss of control at high speed.
/sigh.... and to think I _game_ online using "[Dead_Weight]"...
We were discussing intellectual and political framing, not population. If we dare continue to generalize about whole continents...
While it is sad to see what is happening in Africa socially (and yes, I know all about it) one of the side effects will be a systemic collapse of many of the totalitarian and "conservative" governmental policies there.
The _main_ reasons AIDS spread in Africa were two-fold. One, the governmental media and cultural mores there suppressed effective action because "condoms promote promisucity" etc. And two, social conditioning and policies of "secret shames" prevent people seeking proper care. How close do you think we came to that in "the west"? (you're wrong, it was much closer than that, we *almost* had medical concentration camps...)
I actually expect a politicial colpase of epic proportions in Africa, followed by "enclaveisim" and the effective return of the city-state; even where those states will still technically be part of larger countires.
Much suffering will be had by all.
Then there will be profiteering and an invasion of "charitable interests."
But durring all that, the companies and interests will be drawn to the lawlessness, and will bring to those enclaves the persuits of (messy) science and unrestrained markets (no law, no drm, no patents etc) in intellectual property. There will be a "new industrial colonialisim." You just watch. The interests involved will have a "shame about the whole AIDS thing" attitude, but they'll go anyway.
Heck, Africa is one of the only good pieces of stable and dry bedrock on which to anchor a space elevator; or run a dry-land spaceport. Its so... equatroial; and in about 15 to 20 years it will be seriously depopulated.
There is going to be a land-rush.
Meanwhile, if you take a look at the draconian political bent of the "typical" African state these last couple of decades, with their blind-eye morlaisim (which *is* how AIDS got so well established there), it is a perfect model of "the new moralisim" that has been steadly increasing in this country all my life. If AIDS were breaking out in the U.S.A. today (it _is_ re-surging, but it is a known thing) the "don't question, it's unamerican" ivory-tower politics would probably have ActUp, GMHC and god knows whoever else, in Cuba as Terrorists by now.
Politically speaking, we are railroading ahead to be Africa-in-the-seventies, or maybe eighties.
Quite frankly, if it weren't for several accidents of Geology which net us _easily_ exploitable resources, we'd alrealy be quite far gone. Global warming should redress that some, so should our NIMBY attitudes.
No matter how you phrase it, we are setting ourselves up to be "the third world of the new mellinum", and many third world countries are poised to rally surprisingly well.
If you couldn't figure it out form the Shakespeare reference...
look up "meet" at die.net (your aparent dictionary of choice), scroll all the way to the bottom...
now go up two:
Meet \Meet\, a. [OE. mete fitting, moderate, scanty, AS. m?te
moderate; akin to gemet fit, meet, metan to mete, and G.
m["a]ssig moderate, gem["a]ss fitting. See Mete.]
Suitable; fit; proper; appropriate; qualified; convenient.
So it technically isn't even old english, even if it is somewhat archaic...
And don't be such a snobb...
May I *never* be required...
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Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 2, Insightful
... to rely on your code.
Choice of operators is as much an art as choice of words.
Bad artists make bad art. The "programming is not an art" people make bad code because they don't understand the nuance of their craft. [Some *are* artists despite themselves, but that is the profound exception.]
If you beleive that given the same plan, the same requriements, and the same docmuentation; twelve programmers of similar skill will each produce the same program, you are sadly mistaken.
Even the choice of the "non functional" bits, like choice of identifier names, is a *necessary* part of the art. Two people can produce two largely identical programs, and one can *still* be "better" because of excelence of craft. I have been forced to maintian code written by very smart programmers who were otherwise bereft of art. It was hell simply because "the nicities" were all wrong.
There are also cultural differences between various programs that do the same thing.
Programs instruct the computer and communicate with the user.
Doing that well is art, no matter what your egotistical opinion of "artists as inferiors" leads you to think. And you will likely never be much of a programmer as long as you think otherwise.
Hey, dyslexic as hell, but "meet" was a deliberate use of old english. Clearly our ofspring would be "meat" and we wouldn't need to repeat the obvious.
On the other hand, saying it is a good thing to eat one's children is an act of denial as profound as those happening to day.
Don't understand the Phrase? I suggest googling it:
"is meet" shakespeare
And yes, you need the quotes around the first two words.
(Now if only slashdot had any spelling checker, let alone one as effective as the one in gmail...)
Plus, I had like five minutes to think up, type in, and proof that while thing because I was wasting time at work. 8-)
You still got most of the point with all six spelling errors, and one inability on your part to catch a cultural reference.
so, (...ahem...)
bite me...
8-)
Missed it by that much...
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Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'd relpace "hacker" with "artist" (particularly writer) and then accept that what is good about "hackers" is what has always been good about artists.
This would, of course, inflame those who have invested ego in the idea that programming is "a science" instead of an art.
They, in turn make bad scientists too, because good science is an art too.
Basically, anybody who understands how much their daily work depends on the exchange of information will be drawn into odd persuits and will "sense totalitarianisim like animals sense an oncomming thunderstorm." (or whatever the quote was.)
To lionize "hackers" over, say "sound techs" or "teachers" is huberous.
The problem is that the world is full of machinests and sheep. Machinests want the world to conform to plans, and sheep want someone else to handle it. Between those two large groups, it is hard to get an artistic thought in edgewise.
So South America or Aferica will "be the next America" and it is almost too late to do anything about that. Europe has learned to turn-on-a-dime and will hopefully maintian a stolid bullwork in the current first-world economic structure. America will be the new Africa (but with some good natural resources to totally exploit into garbage) whith increasingly "Bushist", "we cannot possibly be wrong" tendencies to ossification that will ride us deeply into hunta-styled default and decay.
Then who knows?
As a side note, wihout space, as in outer space, as a frontier, expansionisim cannot be sustained; and all we humans are expansionest. We have until the count of "no cheap fuel" to get off this planet, elsewise we will have to eat our own offspring and call it meet. So all this short term lionizing means little, and the real issues remain. Will the machinists hold us to the ground and kill us all, or will we escape?
Screw the hackers, lets get the artists and the scientists moving again. If some of that art is computer programming, all the better.
If you want to talk about how Halo 2 is "the suck" you want to find someone like me who doesn't even care to _Own_ and X Box and funnel your opinions through him...
The "we'll lock out your gamer tags" bit is _just_ like the "no benchmarks" clause.
Yes, the actual leak is a case of Jackass and Barn Door; but the threatening of your potential audience with putative sanctions is just bad business.
I, personally, were I even a member of the target audience, would have decided on that threat alone to exit said audience.
Who do these people think they are? Only the **AA is allowd to get away with suing or threatening their future customers into submission. They cross-license patents on the business method...
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't seem to take into account the "split" on Mane. E.g. Mane doesn't vote all its electoral votes in a block.
/sigh/
So that is currntly a toss-up.
Our country is apparently a simulation of random stupidity...
"Man: Lord, can I have a penny?"
"God: In a minute."
Explanation: If you don't have "penny" in the last part, the whole middle part isn't part of the joke.
[Sorry to be a drag, but I hate bad syllogisim in a mis-told joke... 8-)]
Science is a method, Faith is a position. You can apply a method to a position, you can hold a position on a method, but you cannot disprove one with the other.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi: (thus passes the glory of the world.)
Cogito Ergo Spud: (I think, therefor I Yam. 8-)
All else is sound and furry, signifying nothing. [yes, it's a mis-quote... lighten up... 8-)]
Yes, he "doesn't have to" but that isn't the same as "he wont". And even if he is never "know to have" released his changes publically, it doesn't remove the spectre that he *might have*.
In the worst case, you catch someone violating the GPL, they decide that they can fight, comply, or send a letter to Merkley with a $50 check to "get a copy" under the more permissive license.
O they cna just claim that they have it from that provenance but they don't remember how.
Then you'd have to bring Merkley into court to testify that they could not possibly have gotten access to it though him.
Etc.
Very ugly and untennable.
yes, like I said, or meant to imply anyway... 8-)
I suspect that part of the return-swing of the pendlum of IP will be large numbers of companies deciding/discovering just how useful it would be for a lot of code and information to find itself in the public domain where it belongs.
The watershed events, as I see them, would be
1) Software patents don't pass in Europe.
1a) they pass in Europe and so India and South America, and maybe Asia start kicking economic butt. Signaled by a sharp rise in U.S. and European students rushing abroad to study.
2) Trademark Saturation critical mass in about 15 years, where essentially no useful noun-like words remain viable for even old companies to persue markets without fear of significant legal exposure.
3) The "useful life" of IP workers drops to about eight years due to NDA/no-compete actions causes a serious disruption in the realestate markets.
Then corporations and politicians will begin to fall all over themselves to roll-back the IP boom-time legsliation of the eighties.
(Barring a "proper war" of couse) I figure 22 to 40 years. I may actually live to see it.
One of the big problems is that the BSD license, which is parahprased: take this and do what you want, of some otherwise GPLed code could dangerously muddy waters.
Right now there is one License for Linux, so it is *known* that all Linux is accessible only via that license.
Were you to add a second license then you would add plausable deniability to the war-chest of people determined to "steal" the code (by not allowing access to the source code for "their version.")
In short, you would end up with a bunch of people who could then say "yes, this is Linux, but its from the can-be-secret version of the license."
It just muddies waters *WITHOUT* *NEED*. Since the existing license is sufficent, adding a second provenance to the blood line would only serve to make things complex.
Plus, even the effort would be devicive. You could never _find_ and get the aproval of all the copyright holders in order to create the new provenance.
In a way it would be like a fudal lord having illegitimate idential twins, then deciding to recognize one and not the other. It (1) wouldn't make sense and if you did it, it (2) would only lead to problems.
There is anit-value in even discussing the possibility.
It would be better if Linux got so popular that the big companies decided to fight the movie/music industry to reduce copyright terms. If we were back to the original 14 year terms then in about five years (?) 2.0 would be public domiain anyway. That is how Copyright was _SUPPOSED_ to work in the first place. The ??AA(s) of the world have just managed to really screw the software industry a-priori. If M$ wants Linux, they should just just buy some senators and get the whole thing fixed anyway.
[Side Note: patents cannot let microsoft (etc) steal linux, they could make it mighty uncomfortable, but even if they had a patent on every single concept on every single line, they could never take possession of it for themselves. As long as it can live in free countries like Brazil it will be unkillable. The same unstealability goes for coercing a license change, or buying one. As long as Copyright is at these untenable extremes, everything GPLed is irrevocably public unto the Nth generation. If copyright were back where it belonged M$ (etc) would be "free to innovate" (liberate?) (e.g. steal) some of the older versions in like 2006. If you follow my hyperbole.]
Yes, on re-read I even have errors in the title. Sigh. I furvently wish this site had the nice "check spelling" button like on the bottom of the gmail compose page.
I just cannot seem to keep my dyslexia from misfireing all over anythin I type when I am this pressed for time.
(Slashdot is not work-hours compatable unless I am really fast... 8-)
...is prone to abstruse and glittering generalities.
One must only be *consistent* in one's use of exceptions. I (occasionally) write exception heavy code. That doesn't lead to the proposition that exceptions only exist to defend against things that should "never, ever happen."
Exceptions exist to remove redundant (and so error-prone) checks. If a tree branch is twenty-steps deep, and each step must check the return code on the branch for the error case and handle it and then propigate it back towards its caller, then you nave nineteen redundant code actions and so nineteen opportunities for someone to make a (compundable) mistake in handling the error.
The C++ exception mechanisim provides a means for the compiler to generate all the code to Do The Right Thing(tm) automatically and without _unnecessary_ programmer interaction.
The short version is that if all you classes (objects) do proper semantic cleanup on destruction, and all your call frames are exception safe in their handling of intermediate state, then stack-unwinding *is* proper semantic cleanup. When something more than cleanup is needed, there, and only there, is where you catch the exceptions. This leads to only having to write the error _handling_ code once, in the proper and meaningful context.
The fact that C++ exceptions throw fully-fleshed objects means that the exception itself can communicate more than its mere existence, which makes it even more useful. (I will skip the digression here, but I have used excpetions to "return" references to offending objects into contexts where they can be dealt with, with great success, and without having to burden call semantics for intervening frames. It's an incredibly powerful and readable technique.)
The fact that _many_ programmers "are bad" and don't otherwise maintian "semantic invariants" in their objects; allocate "bare" pointers; and catch exceptions by value instead of reference leads to a lot of people writing marginal exception-based code that is *terrible* and unsustainable. But that is bad art, not bad facility. I have seen similarly disasterous choices in every language I have ever been exposed too. (It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. 8-)
So what?
A lot of people injure themselves using nail-guns each year, which is not a argument against construction equipment, it's just an argument against incompetence.
The sole point of contention is whether the "error" must be an _ERROR_ or if it is sufficent for the "error" to "just" be a "sufficently exceptional condition" to merrit a non-local return.
At least it's not setjump/longjump... 8-)
Personally, I anchor the root of my exception class hierarchy on Exception ==> Fault and Exception ==> Error, with classical errors branched off of "Error" and semantic errors based off of "Fault". I then crash-proof by catching any Excpetion by reference in the last recoverable frame before semantic collapse. (This protects against "unexpected" and other stupid mistakes to which even I, in my infinite wisdom, are subject. 8-)
For instance consider Fault ==> LockFault. I throw a LockFault whenever you/I mess up a lock (unlock a lock you don't hold or "try" a lock and fail to get it). These semantic errors are "common enough" but still deserving of exception status. The LockFault lets me "back off" from deadlocks automatically because I A) hold locks via objects so the destructors release locks during stack unwinding and B) I can catch lock faults in a context where a retry makes sense instead of passing-out state itteratively. This then leaves me "ready to act" in a semnatic frame where a retry can be logically attempted (as opposed to mechanically attempted) in a rational and reasonable manner.
Further, these locking layers are managing real (unpulgable) devices and real (droppable) network connections. The braided exceptions path is, at first, complex, but after a very-short period of annalysis makes sense, as all three semantic fa
It's like watching an "ex" politicain make an educated statement so that when his tell-all book comes out supporting all his previous statements unchanged, he can say "but look, I've been on both sides now, and I was right all along."
The Innane Mrs. R. is pulling the classic prodigal son routine. She is now straying from her family, to be reunited later. At which time they will kill the fatted DRM Budget for her homecomming.
I don't buy it for a second. When I see her *SUE* the RIAA for being draconian I *consider* taking her seriously. If she wins big and collects and does something socially responsible with the proceeds she'll be "back to zero" and she can then begin working on making a new name for herself.
Between then and now, she is, IMHO, pandering to the press so that her newly-revised-reformed-true-faith position will sell to the intended "compromisers" in the two houses of congress.
Oh for gods sake, if you are going to be a snob, have the guts to not do it AC... 8-)
I'm dyslexic as hell and I typed the whole thing in like four minutes. It's got worse problems (typographically) than an errant/improper "u".
I used the form I chose not to "sound smart" (put on airs) but because, sadly, that is how I speak. Rather than dumb-down my word choice because of my (damaged 8-) spelling.
I have resigned myself to listening to an endless stream of unimaginative A.C.s in my life critizing my delivery because they have no actual input to offer. I don't feel special in this. The complete lack of intellectual viggor in this country means that even if my spelling were perfect the signal-to-noise would still be just as inane.
At least I have the balls to sign my name to my opinions (and my Trolls. 8-)
so... (...ahem...)
Bite Me...
err...
s/This is not logically junct/This is logically junct/
In one breath you say that the internet was better when people had to know how to use makefiles (programming tools) to gain access to foura.
In the next breath you decry VBScript access by poor programmers.
Then you finally propose limiting access to compilers using price or whatever.
This is not logically junct. The whole first-premise of foura-access having been subject to control by having an effective "entrance exam" of getting the code and compiling it, does nothing to support your later position that access to compilation tools would make things better.
How this is "iunteresting" is beyond me.
You don't make better citizens by removing access to society. So you don't make the net better by bemoaning ready access to compilers. IT ISN'T THE COMPILERS FAULT that the net citizens have a certian "wacko" contingent that thinks it is a game of cops and robbers. Limiting access to compilers "via price" isn't goig to stop the theives from stealing the compilers to do the jobs anyway. They're criminals and they know how to do things like copy compiler CDs.
In point of fact, if everybody on the internet had to get, marginally port, and build their own client and server software people wouldn't take the net for granted so easily. That would be interesting, but it isn't even a practical thing to wish for.
Your "thought" is, by direct allegory: When I first learned to drive we didn't even have to lock our cars. Now days anybody with a coat hanger can unlock a car. Coat hangers should be a controled comodity.
HUA?
The facts are simple.
Some small percentage of people will go where they are not wanted and do unpopular things. We don't know why, because it varies from case to case. We lock our cars and we lock our homes, and we have banks and armored cars.
But the internet is made out of screen doors and cardboard walls, mostly because that is the highest standard of construction most of the people on the internet are happy to have, and they are willing to pay good money for someone to hose the cardboard down for them to make it "soft and easy to work with."
Whenever someone gets all surprised that thier unlocked straight-from-the-box system got "hacked" because they didn't even take the minimum required effort to read the manual and follow the required steps, my heart only bleeds so much before I lose interest.
Don't get me wrong. My home firewall (slackware linux plus customized firewall script I found on the net) takes *dozens* of nominal attacks a minute. In particular there is some script that about 40 different addresses have run against my system in the last five days, sending the same series of user-name-and-password sequences to my sshd. (A new exploit in the field or just a new script-kiddy example of some old one? who cares...) That PISSES ME OFF because I could be using that bandwidth to raise my points-per-hour on UT2004, get my email faster, or whatever, but it is soaked up in these litte bursts of tresspass. I've got the IP addresses of these intruders and I wish there was a way to do something about it. But its a cable modem so what are you going to do? You protect yourself and you wait for the novelty to wear off, or for the *default* security on the net to get good enough for this kind of random IP attack to become sufficently unprofitable and uncommon.
Let's face it, if Microsoft was not such a *crappy* software company, most of these port-scan fishing expeditions would never have even come into existence. It didn't require access to a compiler to figure out that IIS could be owned by adding double-dot elements to a valid URL to reach the root folder on Windows based servers. It doesn't take much at all to make a dictionary attack on a site.
Turing the internet into a vast field of X-Box appliances that can only be accessed by "trusted corporations" isn't a viable direction. And any "lets make it expensive and controlled" to any degree short of complete draconian separation w
I was talking to someone who was in a position to know things about the Biosphere 2 project. (I forget who, but at the time I put a "valid information" mental bookmark on the conversation, how's *that* for a citation? 8-)
The two major reasons for failure of the project were related to plant choice and layout. In short, they chose american-friendly plants and "arranged them attractively" for the press. They made little brookes and tiny farms. In short they tried to "make a little planet of happy foods". They had a "rainforest room" and so on.
This was unforgivable, and purely political (as in political infighting).
I beleive the "major" cuplret was either wheat or rice. Whatever the plant was it grew "too fast" and far too much of the plant produced was "useless" with a long decay period (e.g. it was wasteful and recycled slowly).
Biosphere 2 was not really an attempt at much of anything. The kind of "closed system" needed for space travel isn't that hart to imagine, but it would be pretty ugly. Lots of dark greens, hydroponics, stacked growing racks, fungus, human-waste recycling, etc. Not so much a well-stocked biosphere as a bunch of plants which are geared to supporting one kind of animal (humans, duh 8-) all in a greasy and stark but well lit arangement.
As stated elsewhere, plants are quite predatory (sorry vegans, plants engage in a progrom of murder, life is tough, get over it... 8-) and often toxic. Most of the friendly plants we eat have a whole lot of plant we don't eat made along with each unit of food.
One would almost imagine a lot of sugar-plants and kale and one-each from the staple vitamin producers and a big blender to pulp up a paste. Then 400+ days of paste...
The ubiquetous but boring "food cube" of science fiction.
Then a fliter membrane from hell for the waste-to-water and waste-to-firtilizer transaction without all the nice "dirt".
I'd expect it to reek.
But I'd go. Eating sucks anyway so a uniform diet of paste would be little worse than what some people live with anyway. (can you say 20 years of Ensure, some people can...)
My only limit? No annis (lic.. lik... liqu... whatever... I can't even spell that the name of that nasty black candy, but the flavor sucks...).
One of the odd-out things they will have to invent is the "recycleable" air filter media. Basically you will need "activated charcoal" but you will have refresh it. Actually activated charcoal wouldnt' be that hard to manufacture in a closed system if you used some sort of condensate system to recapture the off-gassed nastyness when "burning" the charcoal. Then filter the air with it and "burry it" but desolving the "used" charcoal in the hydroponic solution.
eh... maybe...
According to Groklaw none of the eye-witnesses to the hearing in question SAW or HEARD any suck claim. In particular, the SEALED transcript is not available and the "reporter" in question *WAS* *NOT* *PRESENT* for the hearing.
You are all victims of FUD and you can stop with the uninformed pro-SCO Astroturf and rebuts there-of.
Sure... Snow tires on the back of a front wheel drive. Any truck with enough lift-kits to need a mounting ladder. A paint job that costs more than the chassis is worth. (Sadly stock) "Flare side" pickup trucks where the _manufacturer_ has thrown away several cubic feet of space to make it look like the wheel-wells stick out. Anybody commuting to their desk job in a duallie-axle turbo desil pickup. Anybody bragging about their mod, when you can still see the primer and the bondo. [A spoiler on *any* street car, my point was it wasn't a sign of "particular" stupidity on a front wheel drive car, you think your car is hot, keep it off the streets and take it to a track... 8-)]
Actually go ahead and make fun of any "street modded" car, virtually all of that stuff is little more than the kind of mating display you see on the Discovery Channel.
For instance I was talking to this guy at Quizno's. He was complaining about having to take the bus. He couldn't drive his car casually any more because he kept getting tickets for "display" (chirping his wheels). He'd actually installed a mod on his powertrain (I forget what it's called, a "torque limiter"? that doesn't sound right) that wouldn't let the transmission apply power to the wheels until the input torque was above a certian threshold.
He couldn't do "stop-and-go" without a chirp every "go".
On his street car.
How smart is that?
For all that the stupid exterior things are stupid, they are at least an honest display, an attempt to "look cool". The *really* stupid stuff is so often under the hood.
So I secretly laugh hardest when people want to "lift their hood and show me their engine." It's like a line in bad gay porn... 8-)
[ASIDE: I actually do undestand this sort of thing. I personally over-buy my computer stuff. But I am man enough to keep it to myself as a "secret shame." I don't feel the need to invite guys over to my house and "show them my tool." 8-)]
Sorry, My bad... I actually knew that (not the HDLC-esque part, but the IP frame "goo" part 8-) but for some reason this whole other thing came leaking out of my head. 8-)
It is the old-math speak usage of "/" as in "three over four" is "3/4"
So TCP/IP is "Transmission control protocol over internet protocol" or just "TCP over IP".
While you don't see it much, this also inferrs "HTTP/TCP/IP" and so forth.
So just as "voice over IP" doesn't make voice and IP the same, TCP over IP doesn't really relate one to the other.
After all, if you use dialup, the first hop of your connection is typically TCP or UDP over PPP (Point to Point Protocol) and the ISP acts as a gateway from the PPP to the IP semantics.
(I'm guessing the immediate parent knew this, but this reply "hangs best" here in the thread. 8-)
Where did I mention "larger size rear wheels"? What *are* you reading?
/sigh...
I have yet to see rear wheels that are "enough larger" (heavy enough) to make up for the absence of a drive-shaft, rear differential, and rear axle.
If you are on a nice track, or closed corse, and you aren't just some street-modded idiot, its fine to have a little rear-end slide-out helping you come around. Unfortunately these street modding idiots are driving around in real-world conditions with minimal training and they don't usually have the luxuary of knowing that they can freely slide their back end "just so" to help them get around a tight bend.
In the real world, there are obsticals like, um, curbs and uneven pavement, debris on the shoulders, water, ice, oil deposits, mail boxes, children playing, soft shoulders, and regular people who are driving responsibly. All of these things can "complicate" evryone's day when a sloppy back-end comes a lolling on by.
So a well-controlled slide-out will let you come around faster _IF_ you know what you are doing _AND_ you have the room. Meanwhile, a lack of down-force and an outside turn on a crowned road will lead you to visiting mister culvert-by-the-side-of-the-road more broad-sided than you may want.
I used to live near just such a chump-trap.
You also don't want to _see_ what happens when someone gets the benefit of your opportunity to "turn faster" when there is a one-inch seam at the edge of the pavement. It can be spectacular.
Just as there are techniques for dealing with each kind of circumstance, there is good reason to want to stick the back end of a front wheel drive car right down to the road. Just because it's not the way *you* would do it doesn't mean its inappropriate to the experience the owner of the vehicle wants to produce.
That winged civic is "no more an idiot" than any other modder. He's either done it for a reason or not, so he's not stupid or he is. It's not a A begets B certianty. It's just not the car *you* would want to take to *your* grave.
Most of us wish you would all get a clue and stop making our roads any stupider than they already have to be.
I get the same feeling seeing a spoiler on a front-wheel-drive street car that I get when I see a spoiler on a rear-wheel drive street car, or a super-charger: "Look, a Damn Fool with more Money than Brains."
The FWD + spoiler or - spoiler debate is "vi vs emacs" for gear-heads...
Especially in street racing (which I don't do) any number of factors [porly crowned roads, inclined roads, surface irregularities, cross wind, moisture, botts-dots (the bumps installed in lane markers)] [and weight transfer for a down-shift can do as much to your composit vector as breaking] "threaten" traction. In a front wheel drive car there is nothing in the back end to mitigate any mistakes or environmental influences.
If someone is stupid enough to drive their car near the limits on a public street, we _ALL_ need any edge they can manufacture. It goes without saying that these people need driving lessons, elsewise they wouldn't think to drive so fast and irresponsible. That is just as true for the people who _don't_ think they will break traction on... (hint hint hint...)
I think *most* street mods are pretty dumb. Putting a spoiler on the back of a front-wheel drive car is far-and-away more useful than, say, putting spoked-rim low-profile tires on a Land Rover (there is one of these around here, looks like the thing is on bycicle tires... surreal... 8-); or "lowering" a four-by so that it will high-center on a speed bump or bottom-out on a driveway.
The physics are simple, down-force equals stability. Flat undercarrage plus sloped roof equals lift. Spoiler useful at speed. Any car. Any design. Any powerplant. Heck, one of the reasons to "lift" the back end (the "it's faster because it's always going down hill" look) is to increase down-force and disrupt lift by creating a small low-pressure area under the chassis.
This is physics, not technique. You know, "wind-tunnel 101". Good technique mitigates physics by understanding the limits and probable outcomes. But hedging the physics when possible isn't contraindicated by improved technique.
[Aside: I ma not a car kid, and don't advocate "thump thump thump" but...]
A rear spoiler on a front wheel drive car still makes sense, it possibley makse *more* sense. It *is* classically (mis)understood that the down-force provided by a spoiler is to improve traction of "the drive wheels" to improve power delivery and prevent high-speed power skids.
In point of fact, the typical modern car, is effectively a marginal lifting body (look it up, the air passing over the car goes further/faster and so the air passing under the car generates some lift). The name "spoiler" come from the fact that the airfoil "spoils" that lift.
In all front-engine cars the front doesn't need a spoiler because the engine weight is sufficent to the task of maintainting contact. The back end is left to kite around.
In a front wheel drive car, that lift is still present, and even if those rear wheels are not doing anything to make the car go faster, they *are* important to keeping the car under control. If you don't beleive you need the back end to control your movements, I recommend having a rear tire seize-up on you some time. It can be _very_ enlightening... 8-)
In fact, in a front wheel drive car, there is so _little_ weight in the back that the tendency to "lose the back end" while cornering at speed is rather increased. A rear spoiler combats that lack of weight and improves the manuverability of the speeding car.
So don't laugh. The rear spoiler is actually slightly *more* important on a front wheel drive car.
With a rear-wheel drive car it helps you accelerate when you are already going fast. With a front wheel drive car, it keeps you from experiencing a catstrophic loss of control at high speed.
/sigh.... and to think I _game_ online using "[Dead_Weight]"...
We were discussing intellectual and political framing, not population. If we dare continue to generalize about whole continents...
While it is sad to see what is happening in Africa socially (and yes, I know all about it) one of the side effects will be a systemic collapse of many of the totalitarian and "conservative" governmental policies there.
The _main_ reasons AIDS spread in Africa were two-fold. One, the governmental media and cultural mores there suppressed effective action because "condoms promote promisucity" etc. And two, social conditioning and policies of "secret shames" prevent people seeking proper care. How close do you think we came to that in "the west"? (you're wrong, it was much closer than that, we *almost* had medical concentration camps...)
I actually expect a politicial colpase of epic proportions in Africa, followed by "enclaveisim" and the effective return of the city-state; even where those states will still technically be part of larger countires.
Much suffering will be had by all.
Then there will be profiteering and an invasion of "charitable interests."
But durring all that, the companies and interests will be drawn to the lawlessness, and will bring to those enclaves the persuits of (messy) science and unrestrained markets (no law, no drm, no patents etc) in intellectual property. There will be a "new industrial colonialisim." You just watch. The interests involved will have a "shame about the whole AIDS thing" attitude, but they'll go anyway.
Heck, Africa is one of the only good pieces of stable and dry bedrock on which to anchor a space elevator; or run a dry-land spaceport. Its so... equatroial; and in about 15 to 20 years it will be seriously depopulated.
There is going to be a land-rush.
Meanwhile, if you take a look at the draconian political bent of the "typical" African state these last couple of decades, with their blind-eye morlaisim (which *is* how AIDS got so well established there), it is a perfect model of "the new moralisim" that has been steadly increasing in this country all my life. If AIDS were breaking out in the U.S.A. today (it _is_ re-surging, but it is a known thing) the "don't question, it's unamerican" ivory-tower politics would probably have ActUp, GMHC and god knows whoever else, in Cuba as Terrorists by now.
Politically speaking, we are railroading ahead to be Africa-in-the-seventies, or maybe eighties.
Quite frankly, if it weren't for several accidents of Geology which net us _easily_ exploitable resources, we'd alrealy be quite far gone. Global warming should redress that some, so should our NIMBY attitudes.
No matter how you phrase it, we are setting ourselves up to be "the third world of the new mellinum", and many third world countries are poised to rally surprisingly well.
If you couldn't figure it out form the Shakespeare reference...
look up "meet" at die.net (your aparent dictionary of choice), scroll all the way to the bottom...
now go up two:
Meet \Meet\, a. [OE. mete fitting, moderate, scanty, AS. m?te
moderate; akin to gemet fit, meet, metan to mete, and G.
m["a]ssig moderate, gem["a]ss fitting. See Mete.]
Suitable; fit; proper; appropriate; qualified; convenient.
So it technically isn't even old english, even if it is somewhat archaic...
And don't be such a snobb...
... to rely on your code.
Choice of operators is as much an art as choice of words.
Bad artists make bad art. The "programming is not an art" people make bad code because they don't understand the nuance of their craft. [Some *are* artists despite themselves, but that is the profound exception.]
If you beleive that given the same plan, the same requriements, and the same docmuentation; twelve programmers of similar skill will each produce the same program, you are sadly mistaken.
Even the choice of the "non functional" bits, like choice of identifier names, is a *necessary* part of the art. Two people can produce two largely identical programs, and one can *still* be "better" because of excelence of craft. I have been forced to maintian code written by very smart programmers who were otherwise bereft of art. It was hell simply because "the nicities" were all wrong.
There are also cultural differences between various programs that do the same thing.
Programs instruct the computer and communicate with the user.
Doing that well is art, no matter what your egotistical opinion of "artists as inferiors" leads you to think. And you will likely never be much of a programmer as long as you think otherwise.
Hey, dyslexic as hell, but "meet" was a deliberate use of old english. Clearly our ofspring would be "meat" and we wouldn't need to repeat the obvious.
On the other hand, saying it is a good thing to eat one's children is an act of denial as profound as those happening to day.
Don't understand the Phrase? I suggest googling it:
"is meet" shakespeare
And yes, you need the quotes around the first two words.
(Now if only slashdot had any spelling checker, let alone one as effective as the one in gmail...)
Plus, I had like five minutes to think up, type in, and proof that while thing because I was wasting time at work. 8-)
You still got most of the point with all six spelling errors, and one inability on your part to catch a cultural reference.
so, (...ahem...)
bite me...
8-)
I'd relpace "hacker" with "artist" (particularly writer) and then accept that what is good about "hackers" is what has always been good about artists.
This would, of course, inflame those who have invested ego in the idea that programming is "a science" instead of an art.
They, in turn make bad scientists too, because good science is an art too.
Basically, anybody who understands how much their daily work depends on the exchange of information will be drawn into odd persuits and will "sense totalitarianisim like animals sense an oncomming thunderstorm." (or whatever the quote was.)
To lionize "hackers" over, say "sound techs" or "teachers" is huberous.
The problem is that the world is full of machinests and sheep. Machinests want the world to conform to plans, and sheep want someone else to handle it. Between those two large groups, it is hard to get an artistic thought in edgewise.
So South America or Aferica will "be the next America" and it is almost too late to do anything about that. Europe has learned to turn-on-a-dime and will hopefully maintian a stolid bullwork in the current first-world economic structure. America will be the new Africa (but with some good natural resources to totally exploit into garbage) whith increasingly "Bushist", "we cannot possibly be wrong" tendencies to ossification that will ride us deeply into hunta-styled default and decay.
Then who knows?
As a side note, wihout space, as in outer space, as a frontier, expansionisim cannot be sustained; and all we humans are expansionest. We have until the count of "no cheap fuel" to get off this planet, elsewise we will have to eat our own offspring and call it meet. So all this short term lionizing means little, and the real issues remain. Will the machinists hold us to the ground and kill us all, or will we escape?
Screw the hackers, lets get the artists and the scientists moving again. If some of that art is computer programming, all the better.
But I ramble... 8-)
If you want to talk about how Halo 2 is "the suck" you want to find someone like me who doesn't even care to _Own_ and X Box and funnel your opinions through him...
The "we'll lock out your gamer tags" bit is _just_ like the "no benchmarks" clause.
Yes, the actual leak is a case of Jackass and Barn Door; but the threatening of your potential audience with putative sanctions is just bad business.
I, personally, were I even a member of the target audience, would have decided on that threat alone to exit said audience.
Who do these people think they are? Only the **AA is allowd to get away with suing or threatening their future customers into submission. They cross-license patents on the business method...