what happens to us when His mom tells him to shut
down the computer and go outside to play
Hmmm, that kindof reminds me of parachuting class, when a soon-to-be-a-parachuter asked the rather profound question "So, what happens if my reserve 'chute doesn't open?"
:-)
I doubt we'll all turn into 'a human yard-dart', but... similar question.
You have the rights of petitioning the government or taking up arms
<WAY off topic>
No, we do not have the right to take up arms. Not in any useful or practical sense anyway. When that legislation was written, the people really did have that right. A 'well armed militia' used to be a match for the army, but that hasn't been true for at least a century. If you think we have the right to bear the sort of arms it would take to overthow any modern government, you're nuts. We can't legally own any automatic weapon, and no breech loader over 50 cal. You gotta have a license. Hmm, I wonder if the government would give out automatic weapon licenses if they knew a 'well armed malitia' was in the works. Sorry, but the old right to bear arms thing has been chewed up and spit out to the point of complete uselessness. It now means we have the right to go hunting, and little more.
</WAY off topic>
If you burn dead dinosaur farts in your car, you have a solar powered car, just a really horribly inefficient one. It's all solar if you go back far enough. The only viable exception (I think) to this would be using heat from the earth's core. </anal>
I may just download the pirated copy. I may just watch a bit of it too. Before *gasp* even seeing it in the theatre!!!
But here are two things you can be damn sure of:
I WON'T sit here in my office chair and watch an entire movie, and I won't bother making it watchable on the TV either. Even if I did, I would still...
I WILL pay to see it in the theatre. I will wait 'till the rush dies down, and go on a week night so I can get the best seat in the house (the ones down front with a railing in front of the seat, so I have a nice foot rest and no heads in my way:-). I will pay without questioning the price. I will do it more than once. I will also buy the DVD when it comes out.
So in my case, there is no money lost; no matter how many times I may sit and watch an illegal copy of the movie, the movie industry will still get my money as if I hadn't seen this article.
I think the movie industry spends more money bitching about piracy than it loses to actual piracy.
It costs a ton to write really well designed, well implemented, and well tested software. Us developers are always walking a tightrope between what would be ideal and what we have time/money for. This is one reason open-source works so well in many cases. Without a budget or time constraints, you're free to implement something as well as you like.
There is no accountability in the software industry. As soon as software companies are forced to take some responsibility for the code they write, they will write stronger code. Unfortunatly this will also raise the cost of software development even more, along with the barrier to entry.
Are we using the wrong tools (such as C) which do not provide the facilities necessary to write safe software?
I'm tired of hearing this. There is nothing unsafe about C. There are only unsafe API's available for you to use. If you're dumb enough to use them and then give the world access to your software, you deserve to be beaten senseless with a dead salmon. It's ignorance and laziness that causes unsafe code, not language X. Let's not forget that most of those 'safe' languages out there are implemente in C. Of course, that doesn't make C the right language for any given project, but the old 'C is unsafe' chant is nothing more than a poor excuse. If you can't use it properly, don't use it.
"Read the article. It thoroughly explains why you're wrong."
*Ahem*, maybe you should read the article. It does nothing to explain why immutable objects do or do not suck. The article does not explain why the parent post is wrong.
All the article says is that creating a new immutable object is about the same as assigning to an existing one. It strangely avoids demonstrating the use of a concatinate() method on a mutable object, and instead compares concatinating three immutable objects in two slightly different contexts.
The two examples given by the parent post are indeed very different, and do explain nicely why immutable objects can suck when used by a naive programmer.
select() is very decidely a blocking call. It enables you to avoid blocking IO calls, and provides a timeout mechanism, but it certainly blocks.
I've never seen an async or non-blocking API that's as simple and straight forward to use as select(). If your thread does other things besides just IO, you may be forced to use non-blocking calls, but when you can get away with it, select() is sweet.
"Incidentally, the affirmation that there couldn't possibly be a god is a statement of faith."
You're right, it is a statement of faith. But it is entirely different than faith that a god does exist.
While a strong belief in a god creates a false sense of security, the belief that a god does not exist serves to reject outright that false sense.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but I personally don't believe there is a god. I don't much care one way or the other, but until there is some proof available about a god, I'll go on assuming there isn't one because I think that's the safest approach.
If proof was found that no god exists (pretend that is possible:-), religious people everywhere would be going crazy and committing suicide and all sorts of bad things.
If proof was found that a god does exist, non-religious people everywhere would say something to the affect of 'huh... whadya know about that!'
Water kills most of the people who get tossed in the bay with concrete shoes on, yet people swim all the time with no ill effects.
Sunlight can burn out your retinas, causing permanent blindness, yet millions (billions?) of people walk around in the sun with their eyes open every day.
Smoking pot is wirse than smoking a filtered ciggarette.
I agree that smoking one joint is almost certainly worse for you than one cigarette. But few people smoke 20+ joints a day. Lots of smokers smoke 20+ cigarettes a day.
oh yeah, it's not addictive... just like ciggaretts are not addictive....
It's a totally different drug. Have you ever smoked enough pot to become addicted? Enough cigarettes? Can you cite real evidence that pot is addictive? Just saying that one is because the other is won't wash.
It is generally accepted that cigarettes are addictive, and being an ex-smoker I can tell you... oh hell yes they are. I've also smoked a fair bit of pot and I don't believe it is addictive, and it seems generally accepted that it is not. Some people will exhibit symptoms of addiction, but then some people will become addicted to sex, so I don't think that's at all conclusive.
While the parent poster shows his/her bias on the subject, you show equal ignorance.
I have no idea why American politicians gets so wound up about dope...
Power. Control. Money. What used to be accomplished through the proper application of religion is now done through things like War on Drugs and War on Terrorism. They even tried it with a War on Alcohol a few years back, but that one was way too over the top and it didn't fly. We now have a War on Tobacco ramping up too.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said although there has been great progress in the last year, terrorism still "casts its grim shadow" across the globe.
The War on Terrorism is casting a grim shadow across the globe, and I dare say it's darker than the one terrorism ever cast. I am honestly one hell of a lot more afraid of what this administration will do next than I am of any potential terrorist attack.
Is it just me or is GW the puppet and Rumsfeild the insane puppet master? Or maybe he's got me fooled and they're both insane.
The/. headline went ape shit as usual. This thing isn't intended to replace a PDA, and I wasn't trying to say it will either. Rather, a combination of this thing and other devices could replace the PDA.
The whole point is that you thin down the PDA-shaped thingy and the laptop-shaped thingy and have them use the server device for storage, so you can access your data with the best interface available at the time. You always carry your data around (or usually), and what interface device you bring depends on where you're going, with the option of using your buddy's desktop computer if you like.
Sorry... I forgot to mention that YOU might HAVE YOUR VERY OWN PDA shaped thing. Or laptop shaped thing. Or whatever turns your crank.
And the guy next to you probably isn't using his 100% of the time, so MAYBE you can use it. Maybe he's an asshole and he won't let you. Who knows?
And no the trees don't have compatible interfaces, but they might have compatible uplink devices, and so might the bus, so you can save battery life while accessing the Internet in those areas.
I offered examples. I'm sure you can come up with others.
>> You can't please "all of the people all of the time"
The paradigm the parent talks about makes this problem mostly go away. By removing complexity and therefore cost from the interface device, it becomes easier to choose the one you like best. I'm with you as far as the phone thing goes; give me a simple friggin phone. If I want games I'll buy a Gameboy. If a phone is no more than a small bluetooth device with buttons and a tiny battery (since it only has to transmit a few feet), how much could it cost? That would seem to make it easier for manufacturers to provide more choice.
On the other hand, you wouldn't need as much choice in server devices, since they would have less room for difference (seems like, anyway). Sure, battery size could vary, or storage capacity, etc., but you wouldn't have the games/no games choice, or the camera/no camera choice (buy a camera if you want a camera).
>> More power consumption if all these pieces have to wirelessly chat with each other
Overall, yes, I suppose so. But the client devices would need to talk only bluetooth over a few feet, so at least your phone could be much smaller and lighter.
>> risk of interference breaking off communications
That seems like a non-issue. But if it isn't, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to provide a wired interface. Doesn't seem so bad to have a thin wire connecting your phone to your server when you enter a high-interference area.
Slashdot Mirror
>> Hormail
Was that intentional? That's the funniest typo I've see all day!
>> I didn't know the Declaration of Independence had been revoked.
Odd indeed. I didn't know the Declaration of Independence had anything to do with it.
I doubt we'll all turn into 'a human yard-dart', but... similar question.
No, we do not have the right to take up arms. Not in any useful or practical sense anyway. When that legislation was written, the people really did have that right. A 'well armed militia' used to be a match for the army, but that hasn't been true for at least a century. If you think we have the right to bear the sort of arms it would take to overthow any modern government, you're nuts. We can't legally own any automatic weapon, and no breech loader over 50 cal. You gotta have a license. Hmm, I wonder if the government would give out automatic weapon licenses if they knew a 'well armed malitia' was in the works. Sorry, but the old right to bear arms thing has been chewed up and spit out to the point of complete uselessness. It now means we have the right to go hunting, and little more.
</WAY off topic>
Compression. Take lots of cold gas and dust and compress it into a little ball (such as the earth) and it gets really hot.
If you burn dead dinosaur farts in your car, you have a solar powered car, just a really horribly inefficient one. It's all solar if you go back far enough. The only viable exception (I think) to this would be using heat from the earth's core.
</anal>
See how they're all marked Funny? Looks like you're the one who missed an obvious joke :-)
I may just download the pirated copy. I may just watch a bit of it too. Before *gasp* even seeing it in the theatre!!!
:-). I will pay without questioning the price. I will do it more than once. I will also buy the DVD when it comes out.
But here are two things you can be damn sure of:
I WON'T sit here in my office chair and watch an entire movie, and I won't bother making it watchable on the TV either. Even if I did, I would still...
I WILL pay to see it in the theatre. I will wait 'till the rush dies down, and go on a week night so I can get the best seat in the house (the ones down front with a railing in front of the seat, so I have a nice foot rest and no heads in my way
So in my case, there is no money lost; no matter how many times I may sit and watch an illegal copy of the movie, the movie industry will still get my money as if I hadn't seen this article.
I think the movie industry spends more money bitching about piracy than it loses to actual piracy.
Now if someone can figure out how to get an ant farm to actually power the PC (think the Matrix), I'll be really interested :-)
Plus it would be fun to try and implement an entire ant society in software.
Yes, you're a hacker. And also a witch. Therefore you are a TERRORIST!!! Burn the TERRORIST HACKER WITCH!!!
Please re-elect me.
-GW
There is no accountability in the software industry. As soon as software companies are forced to take some responsibility for the code they write, they will write stronger code. Unfortunatly this will also raise the cost of software development even more, along with the barrier to entry.
I'm tired of hearing this. There is nothing unsafe about C. There are only unsafe API's available for you to use. If you're dumb enough to use them and then give the world access to your software, you deserve to be beaten senseless with a dead salmon. It's ignorance and laziness that causes unsafe code, not language X. Let's not forget that most of those 'safe' languages out there are implemente in C. Of course, that doesn't make C the right language for any given project, but the old 'C is unsafe' chant is nothing more than a poor excuse. If you can't use it properly, don't use it.All the article says is that creating a new immutable object is about the same as assigning to an existing one. It strangely avoids demonstrating the use of a concatinate() method on a mutable object, and instead compares concatinating three immutable objects in two slightly different contexts.
The two examples given by the parent post are indeed very different, and do explain nicely why immutable objects can suck when used by a naive programmer.
select() is very decidely a blocking call. It enables you to avoid blocking IO calls, and provides a timeout mechanism, but it certainly blocks.
I've never seen an async or non-blocking API that's as simple and straight forward to use as select(). If your thread does other things besides just IO, you may be forced to use non-blocking calls, but when you can get away with it, select() is sweet.
And set the research back by how many years? Better to stick with the rats.
While a strong belief in a god creates a false sense of security, the belief that a god does not exist serves to reject outright that false sense.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but I personally don't believe there is a god. I don't much care one way or the other, but until there is some proof available about a god, I'll go on assuming there isn't one because I think that's the safest approach.
If proof was found that no god exists (pretend that is possible :-), religious people everywhere would be going crazy and committing suicide and all sorts of bad things.
If proof was found that a god does exist, non-religious people everywhere would say something to the affect of 'huh... whadya know about that!'
Big difference!
*duck*
Water kills most of the people who get tossed in the bay with concrete shoes on, yet people swim all the time with no ill effects.
:-)
Sunlight can burn out your retinas, causing permanent blindness, yet millions (billions?) of people walk around in the sun with their eyes open every day.
All things in moderation...
It is generally accepted that cigarettes are addictive, and being an ex-smoker I can tell you... oh hell yes they are. I've also smoked a fair bit of pot and I don't believe it is addictive, and it seems generally accepted that it is not. Some people will exhibit symptoms of addiction, but then some people will become addicted to sex, so I don't think that's at all conclusive.
While the parent poster shows his/her bias on the subject, you show equal ignorance.
Is it just me or is GW the puppet and Rumsfeild the insane puppet master? Or maybe he's got me fooled and they're both insane.
The /. headline went ape shit as usual. This thing isn't intended to replace a PDA, and I wasn't trying to say it will either. Rather, a combination of this thing and other devices could replace the PDA.
The whole point is that you thin down the PDA-shaped thingy and the laptop-shaped thingy and have them use the server device for storage, so you can access your data with the best interface available at the time. You always carry your data around (or usually), and what interface device you bring depends on where you're going, with the option of using your buddy's desktop computer if you like.
Hmm, it sounds like a good interface device for a personal server, or a PDA maybe. Nice idea, but at a different level.
Sorry... I forgot to mention that YOU might HAVE YOUR VERY OWN PDA shaped thing. Or laptop shaped thing. Or whatever turns your crank.
And the guy next to you probably isn't using his 100% of the time, so MAYBE you can use it. Maybe he's an asshole and he won't let you. Who knows?
And no the trees don't have compatible interfaces, but they might have compatible uplink devices, and so might the bus, so you can save battery life while accessing the Internet in those areas.
I offered examples. I'm sure you can come up with others.
>> You can't please "all of the people all of the time"
The paradigm the parent talks about makes this problem mostly go away. By removing complexity and therefore cost from the interface device, it becomes easier to choose the one you like best. I'm with you as far as the phone thing goes; give me a simple friggin phone. If I want games I'll buy a Gameboy. If a phone is no more than a small bluetooth device with buttons and a tiny battery (since it only has to transmit a few feet), how much could it cost? That would seem to make it easier for manufacturers to provide more choice.
On the other hand, you wouldn't need as much choice in server devices, since they would have less room for difference (seems like, anyway). Sure, battery size could vary, or storage capacity, etc., but you wouldn't have the games/no games choice, or the camera/no camera choice (buy a camera if you want a camera).
>> More power consumption if all these pieces have to wirelessly chat with each other
Overall, yes, I suppose so. But the client devices would need to talk only bluetooth over a few feet, so at least your phone could be much smaller and lighter.
>> risk of interference breaking off communications
That seems like a non-issue. But if it isn't, there doesn't seem to be a reason not to provide a wired interface. Doesn't seem so bad to have a thin wire connecting your phone to your server when you enter a high-interference area.