Alcoholism is believed, by some, to be genetic as well. Given the attitude of your comments and overuse of emphasis (quotes, bold quotes), you wouldn't be posting this from a bar, would you?:D
So basically you're saying, "With all the money people spent on Mustangs in 1995, it's important to keep them happy until, oh, 2001 or so. After that, the six year rule kicks in, screw 'em!"
Imagine if this was done for Volkswagens. Thousands of poor Phish fans, feet calloused and wretched, thumbing their way to the next show. Oh wait, my bad, that already happens.
Look at it this way though, getting back to Win95... if Microsoft continued to support it, with all the hot fixes that would be continually [re]released, at least we could finally justify 100 gig hard drives.
If you consider organ transplants, cosmetic surgery, et al, we've been playing god for ages. Would you make the same argument if you were in dire need of a heart, kidney, liver?
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[McP]KAAOS
Of course not, he's twice your size, he'd never fit into your clothes. Think before you say these things, Mitch.
...is only as solid as the engineer behind it (and the design behind him/her). A poor design often results in a flaky system, difficult to implement and nearly impossible to predict. That, in turn, can result in very thin error handling. Whether or not a product is commercial has nothing to do with it. The only argument for that could possibly be that in many cases, more careful attention (in the form of testing and code reviews) is taken when a product is a revenue generator (or anything that will affect the perception of the quality of a company's engineering ability).
Ultimately, if the engineer (or team of engineers) is inexperienced, error-handling will be weak, error-recovery nearly non-existant. However, a more senior engineer will generally start from error handling on up, making sure the code is robust before diving too deeply into business logic. The time taken for unit testing plays an especially large role here. The more time spent trying to break the code (negative test cases) the more likely you will have a system that has been revised throughout development to have rock-solid error handling/reporting/recovery.
I've seen sigs like that myself, warning the reader that they should not read the message unless they are the intended recipient. This always brought the same question to mind: Why put it at the end of the message?
Long before games like Everquest or Ultima Online, players payed hard cash for items in Neverwinter Nights (the old SSI engine version on AOL). This was back when you couldn't just item hunt for the goodies, you had to win pearls by questing and participating in game-wide events hosted by the admins. Oh, the memories.;)
At any rate, I don't think you could classify this as a problem. People pay real money for tangible items that are just as ridiculous. Things like, oh I dunno, MS Office (sorry, had to.) Truthfully, there is no more silliness to purchasing a +147 Ring of 1337n355 for some online RPG than say a print of some post-modern turned-up nose artist from Soho. It just all comes down to what someone wishes to burn money on.
It simply reminds me of the old adage, "A fool and his money..."
You've brought up a valid point, but I believe you are hedging a little too closely on the differences between scripting and engineering. Both require different skill sets (though many an engineer knows scripting and vice versa), so you can hardly compare the [dis]advantages of either a scripting language or a truly compiled language (like C/C++). For example, how would you hope to write a device drive in Perl? Or why would you bother to write a basic parsing utility in C? Truth be told, C and C++ are the finest languages for programming ever implemented (notice I didn't say conceived).
With languages as complex and daunting as these, it's up to the coder to get a handle of things. They don't pay us upwards of 6 figures for nothing. I find it interesting, by the way, that you mention C/C++'s intolerance for error. In C there isnt' much you can do aside from check for NULL pointers, etc in hopes of catching situations before they go awry. I'll give you that. In C++, however, we're given a rather robust exception handling mechanism. The only chore involved is learning how to properly use it (and in my time I've noticed few engineers truly do.) Additionally, in C++, your annoyance with pointers are solved by references.
I can tell, however, that you haven't spent much time in assembly. You'd probably bust a vein in your forehead over ASM's intolerance for errors.
Honestly though, you'd be hard-pressed to find any language better suited for a good 99% of all software development problems (and I'm not talking about pretty GUI driven database apps).:D
I sure hope to hell Leno doesn't own one of these. I've riden with him up at the Rockstore in Latigo Canyon (Malibu, CA) on a couple of occasions and I can tell you that he's one hell of a squid. You put him on this bike and he'd high-side it in 10 seconds flat.:) Plus, I don't think this bike would fit very well into his collection of rare and old, restored classics (Indians and the like.) I've never seen him on anything newer than color television.
The fact that the speedo read 240mph means absolutely nothing. I have had the pleasure of taking a heavily modified Hayabusa that belonged to a good friend of mine (the late Marty Kane of Dragbike.com) at a hair over 200mph clocked. The speedo read over 210mph. It is a widely known fact among riders that speedos, above a certain range, are wildly inaccurate. Hell, my stage 2 GSXR 750 has read over 180 on the speedo several times, but there's not a chance it goes quite that fast. Additionally, it takes a hell of a lot to get a bike to nail those extreme speeds (low 200's). Even top fuel bikes, the fastest drag bikes on the planet, rarely break more than 230 (except for that Spiderman nutbag;), and they are designed for that purpose alone. And for those of you that remember, every bike that's come out has always been 'estimated' at far greater speeds than were actually produced in road tests. Don't hold your breath about this bike hitting 250. Still, for someone that has been riding and racing for quite a few years, this certainly is one of the most impressive ideas for a sport bike I've ever seen.:) Oh, and by the way, there are plenty of radar guns that register speeds above 200mph.
[McP]KAAOS
Re:Interesting slant on the article.
on
Hi-Tech Repo Man
·
· Score: 4
I don't mean to bash on you for what you said, but it is worth mentioning that while this repo-man gets excited when he hears about layoffs, I doubt his motivation is greed. Adrenalin rushes aside, you might think his motivation was the fact that he is a 45 year old man with 3 kids to feed. When you consider the salary range quoted in the article (I think it was 30-60k) and the fact that this man, too, lives in Silicon Valley, you might cut him a little slack and understand he needs every penny he can muster just to support his family.
Slashdot Mirror
Alcoholism is believed, by some, to be genetic as well. Given the attitude of your comments and overuse of emphasis (quotes, bold quotes), you wouldn't be posting this from a bar, would you? :D
------
[McP]KAAOS
So basically you're saying, "With all the money people spent on Mustangs in 1995, it's important to keep them happy until, oh, 2001 or so. After that, the six year rule kicks in, screw 'em!"
Imagine if this was done for Volkswagens. Thousands of poor Phish fans, feet calloused and wretched, thumbing their way to the next show. Oh wait, my bad, that already happens.
Look at it this way though, getting back to Win95... if Microsoft continued to support it, with all the hot fixes that would be continually [re]released, at least we could finally justify 100 gig hard drives.
I should have just gone to bed.
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[McP]KAAOS
Seven!
Wait, no, sorry, I counted ours.
Six!
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[McP]KAAOS
We would be literally playing god
If you consider organ transplants, cosmetic surgery, et al, we've been playing god for ages. Would you make the same argument if you were in dire need of a heart, kidney, liver?
----
[McP]KAAOS
Of course not, he's twice your size, he'd never fit into your clothes. Think before you say these things, Mitch.
What would the equivilent of road rage be? sky-rage? air-rage?
Dog-fights on the 405.
-------------
[McP]KAAOS
...is only as solid as the engineer behind it (and the design behind him/her). A poor design often results in a flaky system, difficult to implement and nearly impossible to predict. That, in turn, can result in very thin error handling. Whether or not a product is commercial has nothing to do with it. The only argument for that could possibly be that in many cases, more careful attention (in the form of testing and code reviews) is taken when a product is a revenue generator (or anything that will affect the perception of the quality of a company's engineering ability).
Ultimately, if the engineer (or team of engineers) is inexperienced, error-handling will be weak, error-recovery nearly non-existant. However, a more senior engineer will generally start from error handling on up, making sure the code is robust before diving too deeply into business logic. The time taken for unit testing plays an especially large role here. The more time spent trying to break the code (negative test cases) the more likely you will have a system that has been revised throughout development to have rock-solid error handling/reporting/recovery.
[McP]KAAOS
Damn your timing, you beat me by 4 minutes ;D
I've seen sigs like that myself, warning the reader that they should not read the message unless they are the intended recipient. This always brought the same question to mind: Why put it at the end of the message?
Long before games like Everquest or Ultima Online, players payed hard cash for items in Neverwinter Nights (the old SSI engine version on AOL). This was back when you couldn't just item hunt for the goodies, you had to win pearls by questing and participating in game-wide events hosted by the admins. Oh, the memories. ;)
At any rate, I don't think you could classify this as a problem. People pay real money for tangible items that are just as ridiculous. Things like, oh I dunno, MS Office (sorry, had to.) Truthfully, there is no more silliness to purchasing a +147 Ring of 1337n355 for some online RPG than say a print of some post-modern turned-up nose artist from Soho. It just all comes down to what someone wishes to burn money on.
It simply reminds me of the old adage, "A fool and his money..."
[McP]KAAOS
You've brought up a valid point, but I believe you are hedging a little too closely on the differences between scripting and engineering. Both require different skill sets (though many an engineer knows scripting and vice versa), so you can hardly compare the [dis]advantages of either a scripting language or a truly compiled language (like C/C++). For example, how would you hope to write a device drive in Perl? Or why would you bother to write a basic parsing utility in C? Truth be told, C and C++ are the finest languages for programming ever implemented (notice I didn't say conceived).
:D
With languages as complex and daunting as these, it's up to the coder to get a handle of things. They don't pay us upwards of 6 figures for nothing. I find it interesting, by the way, that you mention C/C++'s intolerance for error. In C there isnt' much you can do aside from check for NULL pointers, etc in hopes of catching situations before they go awry. I'll give you that. In C++, however, we're given a rather robust exception handling mechanism. The only chore involved is learning how to properly use it (and in my time I've noticed few engineers truly do.) Additionally, in C++, your annoyance with pointers are solved by references.
I can tell, however, that you haven't spent much time in assembly. You'd probably bust a vein in your forehead over ASM's intolerance for errors.
Honestly though, you'd be hard-pressed to find any language better suited for a good 99% of all software development problems (and I'm not talking about pretty GUI driven database apps).
-[McP]KAAOS
I sure hope to hell Leno doesn't own one of these. I've riden with him up at the Rockstore in Latigo Canyon (Malibu, CA) on a couple of occasions and I can tell you that he's one hell of a squid. You put him on this bike and he'd high-side it in 10 seconds flat. :)
Plus, I don't think this bike would fit very well into his collection of rare and old, restored classics (Indians and the like.) I've never seen him on anything newer than color television.
[McP]KAAOS
The fact that the speedo read 240mph means absolutely nothing. I have had the pleasure of taking a heavily modified Hayabusa that belonged to a good friend of mine (the late Marty Kane of Dragbike.com) at a hair over 200mph clocked. The speedo read over 210mph. It is a widely known fact among riders that speedos, above a certain range, are wildly inaccurate. Hell, my stage 2 GSXR 750 has read over 180 on the speedo several times, but there's not a chance it goes quite that fast. ;), and they are designed for that purpose alone. :)
Additionally, it takes a hell of a lot to get a bike to nail those extreme speeds (low 200's). Even top fuel bikes, the fastest drag bikes on the planet, rarely break more than 230 (except for that Spiderman nutbag
And for those of you that remember, every bike that's come out has always been 'estimated' at far greater speeds than were actually produced in road tests. Don't hold your breath about this bike hitting 250.
Still, for someone that has been riding and racing for quite a few years, this certainly is one of the most impressive ideas for a sport bike I've ever seen.
Oh, and by the way, there are plenty of radar guns that register speeds above 200mph.
[McP]KAAOS
I don't mean to bash on you for what you said, but it is worth mentioning that while this repo-man gets excited when he hears about layoffs, I doubt his motivation is greed. Adrenalin rushes aside, you might think his motivation was the fact that he is a 45 year old man with 3 kids to feed. When you consider the salary range quoted in the article (I think it was 30-60k) and the fact that this man, too, lives in Silicon Valley, you might cut him a little slack and understand he needs every penny he can muster just to support his family.