In relational databasee, you don't want the same piece of information in two different place. One will usually be wrong.
Exactly!
Let's get better programming languages that are inherently more readable. It's the wild west out there.
I've found that you can write readable code in pretty much any language. And you can write unreadable glop in any of them as well. Heck, suppose we had a language that was as easy to read as English--you could still write dreck like one of my former client's Corporate Vission Statement (I kid you not--they merged their Corprate Vision and their Mission Statement (both of which were bilge) and made something that you don't want to think about).
Yep. Instead of writing in-house documentation that only we would read, we decided to spend our budgeted documentation hours on WikiWork. My write-up is lagging behind the implementation (as always) but I'm trying to keep up with both.
'fraid I haven't been keeping up with either of the ruby lists though, or half a dozen other interesting things for that matter.
Comments are a maintenence nightmare. They get out of sync with the code, and (especially when the code is bad to begin with) people read them instead of the code.
That means over time the human's understanding of what the program does starts to diverge from the computer's understanding.
This is not good.
If something is too hard to understand the way it is written without comments, it should be rewritten. You will save time in the long run, trust me.
Remember the old adage: Don't get suckered in by the comments--the bug is in the code.
The two candidates who got themselves arrested were'nt sought out by the state for detention to prevent them from participating in the process
They got themselves arrested as part of Performance-art protest
So suppose we work on the theory that they were in fact just doing it to protest something. What do you suppose that that something was?
Maybe it was the fact that they were being excluded from a debate, paid for with their tax dollars (as well as yours and mine), which claimed to be non-partisan, but in fact excluded candidates who were on the ballot?
Or maybe it was the fact that people with guns, again paid for with our tax dollars, were posted to keep them out?
The state didn't need to "seek them out to prevent them from participating in the process"; they had already been prevented from participating--That is what they were protesting!
And at what point does trying to stand up for your rights become "a Performance-art protest"? If you try to stop armed thugs from looting your house, even if you know you can't win, is that just "performancy art"? If lady liberty screams out as she's being raped, do we all just ignore it and call it "performance art"?
Why is it so hard to understand that using the police to silence your oposition is wrong, un-American, and just plain objecionable?
I was saying that the user does have a choice; that doesn't mean that they are all equally good, or that playing into someone else's abuse of monopoly is the best way to decide between them. But you still have a choice.
The control over what webserver you will use is typically limited by your hosting provider. While many provide the choice between Unix-based servers and Windows-based servers, many do not.
Have they gone ahead and implemented that thing about assigning you a hosting provider at birth then? What a shame. Back in my day, we used to be able to pick our hosting provider based on what they provided and what they charged for it.
It's amazing how many whining... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 6:44 26 April 2005 (#12346966) ...leftie douches you come across these days who claim to be "registered Republicans".
[ Reply to This ]
It's amazing that, even after I've ofered to post my voter Registration card and other paperwork showing that I've been registered Republican for well over twenty years online to prove I am who I say I am (and got called, if I recall correctly, a "pinko" for even suggesting it) I still get called a liar by Anonymous Cowards.
But what's most amazing is that I get called these names specifically because I object to being lied to, What's up with that?
Is "Liking to be lied to" the new litmus test for conservatives? If you don't enjoy being lied to, you must be a liberal?
They were being kept out of debates, paid for with their tax dollars, for a "non-partisan" debate. They were candidates, on the ballot, for the office. They had a legal, moral, and ethical right to participate.
Why in the hell should the police have been used to stop them in the first place? If the police are used to rob a bank, does that make it right?
If/. search works back that far, you should be able to find me bitching just as loud about Clinton. I happen to be registered Republican, if it matters to you. But I have this funny quirk--I don't think either side should be pulling this kind of stuff on those of us who pay their salleries.
One point that keeps triggering my sexism detector--look at the gender ratio of the people that have been found culpable in the prisoner torture cases, vs. the gender ration of those that have been publicly acquited.
Now compare these to the ratio for sex offenders in general.
Here's a Link , and there are lots more out there.
Basically, IIRC, they had a court order requiring that they be included in the "non-partisan" debates, since they were on the ballot, but they were arrested for trying to deliver the papers. They were let out after the debate was over (again, IIRC).
I have no mod points, but that is indeed an interesting point. Not only to they exclude people who should have access to venues (e.g. the article at the top of this thread), they let people go places they have no business going--and all, as far as I can see, based only on how much they like them.
I always thought of that being something that only two-bit bannana republics did.
Spying on your neighbor programs ("Information Awareness")
Arresting people and holding them with due process ("The War on Terror")
...and occasionally torturing them (ditto)
...that sometimes leading to them dying (oops)
Supression of dissent ("Free Speech Zones")
Orwellean double-speak (see above)
Supression of opposition (Locking the opposition out of the legislature)
Arresting opposing party candidates weeks before the election (Clark & Badnarik)
Manipulation of the media (including paying analysts to "support" their policies)
Fibing to start wars
Ask yourself this: do you suppose the average Hanz Six-pack circa 1940 thought his country was anything like the country we now can't discuss without invoking Goodwin's law?
Personally, I think they've earned an exemption...
When I implemented this sort of thing for a project in Ruby a few years back, I just grabbed all the CLOS nomenclature because I was familiar with it. I didn't even realize I was using "AOP with funny names" until someone reading the code mentioned it. When he asked why I didn't use the "standard" terminology, I lent him a copy of "Object Oriented Programing in Common Lisp" (c) 1988, and asked why the AOP people had to invent new words for everything.
It's worth a look, if only for an insight into how far the technology has come in the last ten years. I never suspected you could embed pop-up ads in a PDF.
One rule I used to use: before I would assign a design to a team to even think about coding, it had to be "cogent," by which we meant:
Every word/term/acronym in it had to either
Be listed in the Oxford English dictionary in the intended sense
Defined in the design document's glossary
Defined by reference (e.g. a URL or RFC#) within the design document and so indexed
Ditto for file layouts, protocols, etc.
Conflicting acronyms were not allowed (AI means something very different to a farmer and a game developer; if they are both going to be using the document, it will have to be spelled out).
Any objects or processes alluded to in the document had to be fully defined within the document or by reference ("the EOM batch job"? Whose, HR's, Finance's, or the cron-job-of-holding the development team owns?)
Any subjective criteria (e.g. "reasonable response time") had to be quantified.
Any subjective criteria (e.g. "an atractive layout") that could not be quantified had to be tied to an individual or group that would sign off on it.
There had to be a decent index
A good test would be to give it to someone reasonably intelligent who knows nothing about the subject, and let them red-pen in their questions.
One of the criticisms frequently leveled against proponents of O'Neil-style can-city space colonies is that they irrationally assume that life will be better and that somehow many problems (such as crime) will be left behind on Earth.
But it may well be that they aren't being as idealistic as the cynics claim. Not only will the a-priori odds of a there being a sociopath in any given 100,000-person colony be rather low, they may be even lower because people with "sociopathic tendancies" will be discouraged from developing them by the sort of social pressures you describe. It may be that people intuitively sense that "crime doesn't pay" is much more true in small communities.
Let's count the unsupported assertions in this post, shall we?
When dealing with stuff like this, broken is broken.
According to whom? And on what basis?
There's no degree of broken.
How about "number of features correctly implemented" / "total number of features in spec"?
It's not like Opera and FireFox can claim "well, when we break, there's only 25% degradation."
Why not? I think it's very likely that they'll claim exactly that.
In other words, just because the face was a little more legible in Opera or FireFox than IE, doesn't mean that in the real world, they'll at least be readable where IE absolutely will not.
How's this for a reason: if all of the features that fail in Opera and Firefox also fail in IE, no one will use them; this means that pages written to the subset that works in at least some of the browsers may well work 100% correctly in Opera or Firefox and still fail horribly in IE. This is at least a plausible counter example to unsupported claim #4.
Parent poster was right, that was anti-MS FUD.
The fact that you share his oppinion does not make hiim right. FUD is a fairly specific charge to lay against someone, and in this case seems hard to justify. Editorial bias perhaps?
If FireFox was more disappointing, it wouldn't ahve been mentioned at all.
And you know this how?
Slashdot Mirror
In relational databasee, you don't want the same piece of information in two different place. One will usually be wrong.
Exactly!
Let's get better programming languages that are inherently more readable. It's the wild west out there.
I've found that you can write readable code in pretty much any language. And you can write unreadable glop in any of them as well. Heck, suppose we had a language that was as easy to read as English--you could still write dreck like one of my former client's Corporate Vission Statement (I kid you not--they merged their Corprate Vision and their Mission Statement (both of which were bilge) and made something that you don't want to think about).
IMHO, the problem isn't the languages.
--MarkusQ
Yep. Instead of writing in-house documentation that only we would read, we decided to spend our budgeted documentation hours on WikiWork. My write-up is lagging behind the implementation (as always) but I'm trying to keep up with both.
'fraid I haven't been keeping up with either of the ruby lists though, or half a dozen other interesting things for that matter.
*sigh/laugh* Now I feel guilty for reading /.
--MarkusQ
Comments are a maintenence nightmare. They get out of sync with the code, and (especially when the code is bad to begin with) people read them instead of the code.
That means over time the human's understanding of what the program does starts to diverge from the computer's understanding.
This is not good.
If something is too hard to understand the way it is written without comments, it should be rewritten. You will save time in the long run, trust me.
Remember the old adage: Don't get suckered in by the comments--the bug is in the code.
--MarkusQ
I was just skimming, saw your nick, and thought "I'll bet that has something to do with Ruby!"
--MarkusQ
So suppose we work on the theory that they were in fact just doing it to protest something. What do you suppose that that something was?
Maybe it was the fact that they were being excluded from a debate, paid for with their tax dollars (as well as yours and mine), which claimed to be non-partisan, but in fact excluded candidates who were on the ballot?
Or maybe it was the fact that people with guns, again paid for with our tax dollars, were posted to keep them out?
The state didn't need to "seek them out to prevent them from participating in the process"; they had already been prevented from participating--That is what they were protesting!
And at what point does trying to stand up for your rights become "a Performance-art protest"? If you try to stop armed thugs from looting your house, even if you know you can't win, is that just "performancy art"? If lady liberty screams out as she's being raped, do we all just ignore it and call it "performance art"?
Why is it so hard to understand that using the police to silence your oposition is wrong, un-American, and just plain objecionable?
--MarkusQ
--MarkusQ
Have they gone ahead and implemented that thing about assigning you a hosting provider at birth then? What a shame. Back in my day, we used to be able to pick our hosting provider based on what they provided and what they charged for it.
Ah, the good ol' 1900's.
--MarkusQ
It's amazing that, even after I've ofered to post my voter Registration card and other paperwork showing that I've been registered Republican for well over twenty years online to prove I am who I say I am (and got called, if I recall correctly, a "pinko" for even suggesting it) I still get called a liar by Anonymous Cowards.
But what's most amazing is that I get called these names specifically because I object to being lied to, What's up with that?
Is "Liking to be lied to" the new litmus test for conservatives? If you don't enjoy being lied to, you must be a liberal?
--MarkusQ
It may not be a troll. But since there isn't a moderation category for True Believer, they did the best they could and modded it as a troll.
--MarkusQ
Thanks. --MarkusQ
They were being kept out of debates, paid for with their tax dollars, for a "non-partisan" debate. They were candidates, on the ballot, for the office. They had a legal, moral, and ethical right to participate.
Why in the hell should the police have been used to stop them in the first place? If the police are used to rob a bank, does that make it right?
--MarkusQ
If
--MarkusQ
Yes.
If you think there is a "good major party" and an "evil major party" they've already got you hoodwinked.
--MarkusQ
One point that keeps triggering my sexism detector--look at the gender ratio of the people that have been found culpable in the prisoner torture cases, vs. the gender ration of those that have been publicly acquited.
Now compare these to the ratio for sex offenders in general.
Smells awful fishy to me.
--MarkusQ
P.S. Either Bush or Kerry could have cinched my vote by simply objecting that night, on national television, to the arrest.
Neither of the sock puppets deviated from their scripts, even when it might have saved democracy.
--MarkusQ
Google is your friend, but then so am I.
Here's a Link , and there are lots more out there.
Basically, IIRC, they had a court order requiring that they be included in the "non-partisan" debates, since they were on the ballot, but they were arrested for trying to deliver the papers. They were let out after the debate was over (again, IIRC).
--MarkusQ
I have no mod points, but that is indeed an interesting point. Not only to they exclude people who should have access to venues (e.g. the article at the top of this thread), they let people go places they have no business going--and all, as far as I can see, based only on how much they like them.
I always thought of that being something that only two-bit bannana republics did.
--MarkusQ
My question is, what exactly do they have to do to get an exception to Goodwin's law passed? I mean, so far we've got documented evidence of:
- Internal travel documents/no fly lists ("Transportation safety")
- Spying on your neighbor programs ("Information Awareness")
- Arresting people and holding them with due process ("The War on Terror")
- ...and occasionally torturing them (ditto)
- ...that sometimes leading to them dying (oops)
- Supression of dissent ("Free Speech Zones")
- Orwellean double-speak (see above)
- Supression of opposition (Locking the opposition out of the legislature)
- Arresting opposing party candidates weeks before the election (Clark & Badnarik)
- Manipulation of the media (including paying analysts to "support" their policies)
- Fibing to start wars
Ask yourself this: do you suppose the average Hanz Six-pack circa 1940 thought his country was anything like the country we now can't discuss without invoking Goodwin's law?Personally, I think they've earned an exemption...
--MarkusQExactly.
When I implemented this sort of thing for a project in Ruby a few years back, I just grabbed all the CLOS nomenclature because I was familiar with it. I didn't even realize I was using "AOP with funny names" until someone reading the code mentioned it. When he asked why I didn't use the "standard" terminology, I lent him a copy of "Object Oriented Programing in Common Lisp" (c) 1988, and asked why the AOP people had to invent new words for everything.
I have yet to get an answer.
--MarkusQ
You can pick up an easy bonus point if you spell "kudos" correctly (hint: it's from Greek).
--MarkusQ
It's worth a look, if only for an insight into how far the technology has come in the last ten years. I never suspected you could embed pop-up ads in a PDF.
--MarkusQ
Tabbed browsing has really reduced my need for bookmarks. Instead of bookmarking things, I just open them in another tab.
When the tabs get too small to see the icons I just open another window.
When there are too many windows to keep track of, I just switch to a new desktop.
I would recommend investing in a good UPS if you plan to adopt this system though.
--MarkusQ
One rule I used to use: before I would assign a design to a team to even think about coding, it had to be "cogent," by which we meant:
- Every word/term/acronym in it had to either
- Be listed in the Oxford English dictionary in the intended sense
- Defined in the design document's glossary
- Defined by reference (e.g. a URL or RFC#) within the design document and so indexed
- Ditto for file layouts, protocols, etc.
- Conflicting acronyms were not allowed (AI means something very different to a farmer and a game developer; if they are both going to be using the document, it will have to be spelled out).
- Any objects or processes alluded to in the document had to be fully defined within the document or by reference ("the EOM batch job"? Whose, HR's, Finance's, or the cron-job-of-holding the development team owns?)
- Any subjective criteria (e.g. "reasonable response time") had to be quantified.
- Any subjective criteria (e.g. "an atractive layout") that could not be quantified had to be tied to an individual or group that would sign off on it.
- There had to be a decent index
A good test would be to give it to someone reasonably intelligent who knows nothing about the subject, and let them red-pen in their questions.--MarkusQ
One of the criticisms frequently leveled against proponents of O'Neil-style can-city space colonies is that they irrationally assume that life will be better and that somehow many problems (such as crime) will be left behind on Earth.
But it may well be that they aren't being as idealistic as the cynics claim. Not only will the a-priori odds of a there being a sociopath in any given 100,000-person colony be rather low, they may be even lower because people with "sociopathic tendancies" will be discouraged from developing them by the sort of social pressures you describe. It may be that people intuitively sense that "crime doesn't pay" is much more true in small communities.
--MarkusQ
Let's count the unsupported assertions in this post, shall we?
- When dealing with stuff like this, broken is broken.
- There's no degree of broken.
- It's not like Opera and FireFox can claim "well, when we break, there's only 25% degradation."
- In other words, just because the face was a little more legible in Opera or FireFox than IE, doesn't mean that in the real world, they'll at least be readable where IE absolutely will not.
- Parent poster was right, that was anti-MS FUD.
- If FireFox was more disappointing, it wouldn't ahve been mentioned at all.
--MarkusQAccording to whom? And on what basis?
How about "number of features correctly implemented" / "total number of features in spec"?
Why not? I think it's very likely that they'll claim exactly that.
How's this for a reason: if all of the features that fail in Opera and Firefox also fail in IE, no one will use them; this means that pages written to the subset that works in at least some of the browsers may well work 100% correctly in Opera or Firefox and still fail horribly in IE. This is at least a plausible counter example to unsupported claim #4.
The fact that you share his oppinion does not make hiim right. FUD is a fairly specific charge to lay against someone, and in this case seems hard to justify. Editorial bias perhaps?
And you know this how?