Re:Only so much carbon...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 4, Funny
The amount of mass being launched is measured in the hundreds of kilograms per year.
The amount of mass falling onto the earth from space is measured in the hundreds of tons per day.
What sorts of stuff are we launching and what sorts of stuff is falling onto the Earth? Maybe we're trading titanium for sand. Not that I think we have to worry - just a thought.
Still, maybe launching yourself into space could prevent you from being brought back to life someday. Then again, maybe you'd be brought back to life to fight some losing battle against aliens...;)
They look the same, but could you use the phony diamonds for industrial uses that real diamonds are used for? ie. diamond-tipped drill bits? Would they hold up?
Did this diamond form based on the same principles as diamonds here on Earth? I thought coal had to be very highly compressed for ages before it became a diamond. Not so?
If something else is actually causing those effects, the whole theoretical edifice would come crashing down.
I don't think so. Our laws work good enough for most situations in our solar system. Just because they aren't 100% correct, doesn't mean they aren't useful. It's like saying you can't do anything with 1st year physics. Sure you can, but to a point. Same goes for our more advanced concepts.
An annoyance with Mozilla is when it prompts you for the application with which to open a file. If I type "kwrite", it complains. I have to enter the full path to the app, even though it is on my path.
Most of the common addictions (nicoteine, alcohol, caffiene) have a short withdrawl period, usually just a couple of days.
Obviously, you have not been a smoker, a drinker, or soda drinker.
Amen to that. Quitting smoking is something many people are not able to ever do despite trying through most of their lives. I was fortunate enough to have only smoked for about 10 years and finally was able to quit and would've went back if it wasn't for my very supportive wife. Sure, maybe I would've lived almost as long had I not quit, but my *quality* of life has improved drastically. I am thankful every day of my final decision to quit. It's been two years and sometimes I still have a craving, but I will never go back, not even the slightest puff.
The times are not unique! Consider daylight savings time.
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you mean. If there is indeed a problem, is there no simple way around it?
this requires 27 bytes (versus 4)
True, but at what cost are you saving bytes? You have to use a fairly recent point in time as the epoch (the year 1970), and you meet the limit of a 32-bit integer within a century if I'm not mistaken.
Okay, so text takes a lot of space. Why not use a 64-bit integer to store time? That's only 8 bytes.
Know your rules of normalization. Storing time is similar to storing a field in a database. The simplest way to achieve that is by using the number of seconds from the epoch. If you write it as YYYY-MM-DD, then you are duplicating information that can be creating more simply.
This has nothing to do with database normalization.
If you count the seconds since the epoch, you are limiting yourself to those date/times which occur *after* the epoch date/time. With a text format, you have no such limitation. I'm not sure why such a limitation is even acceptable.
Something tells me, though, that if people are striving to save 4 bytes by using a 32 bit integer rather than a 64 bit integer (which would be sufficient for a huge amount of time), they probably will not want to expend the extra space for text date/times. It's pretty silly how much work is created for the sake of saving a little space.
Re:epoch == start of time, not duration
on
100 Years of Macintosh
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
quicker execution is almost always the most important factor, the only exception is ease of development,
Think XML: it is not even close to being efficient, but its purpose is not for speed but for portability and flexibility (roughly).
but freform text parsing is much more messy than that to.
Nobody said anything about freeform text parsing. If you define a fixed text pattern to represent date/time, then parsing is extremely easy. ie. All you need to do is look for space separators and separate into tokens. Token1=month, token2=day, token3=year, token4=hour, token5=minute, token6=second, token7=millisecond, token8=GMT offset
Sample: 1 1 2003 7 26 0 0 -8
are you suggesting... standardizing on a certain text format?
Working with date/times is hard enough without having to worry about how it is stored. Why not store it as a text string and be done with it, especially with the huge amounts of RAM and processor speed we have these days.
I think it's a case of people hearing a phrase but never seeing it in print. They know what it means, but can't spell it out....if they did, they would spell it correctly.
I disagree. The meaning of an unknown phrase can be taken from the context in which it is used, not the actual words. You know the phrase "it's just an expression". Expressions often can't be taken literally, so I don't find it hard to believe that the person would just accept the expression's meaning without analyzing the individual words. The reason is that it is common for those individual words to not make sense when used in an expression.
Language is a tool, yes, and like other tools it can be wielded by professionals and by non-experts alike. Complicating language is a great deal of context which is interpreted differently by different people and their unique experiences and perspectives, which I think is why legal contracts are worded the way they are. Would you have everyone talk like lawyers to be exactly correct and leave no room for misinterpretation? That would be pretty boring.
I agree with you, especially with the "intensive purposes". I think people say that because they can see a purpose as being intensive, while they cannot see intents and purposes.
I think it's a case of people hearing a phrase but never seeing it in print. They know what it means, but can't spell it out. Pretty common, knowwhatImean?;)
This sounds a lot like the argument where people who host websites should accept whatever traffic it gets, including a slashdotting.
Should web surfers be held to the same rationale? That whatever processing power the website requires of the client be granted, large or small?
Perhaps this comes down to "acceptable use" which is sort of a gray area on the net, IMO. I'm sure lots of people would like to scrape stock websites, search engine results, etc.. but bots seem to be always prohibited. On the other hand, search engines scrape the web to get their information for their benefit. The more I think about it, the more this system doesn't make much sense.
What if I'm writing a program to display a work under copyright or trade secret restriction? How can I be sure that the system calls haven't been patched with the cooperation of the owner of the machine to leak the work to a third party?
You can't be sure that someone hasn't tampered with the machine. I don't think this is in the realm of what normal applications should have to worry about.
Nonetheless, if you do have trade secrets and you are worried about them getting out, only use your machine, don't plug it into any networks, and disable wireless or other access points to the machine. You should also encrypt the filesystem with a strong password in case the machine falls into the wrong hands. Set up a password protected screen saver that times out after 1 minute. This should keep most people away from your trade secrets, but I'm no expert on this.
The point of the article was that input can come from unexpected sources like environment variables, and that an attacker can sometimes subvert these inputs.
Yes, I completely agree. But the article also says that program which do not take any input are useless. It is *my* point to refute this claim.
The cpu meter, bg, fg, ps, top, logout, and clock programs all take input, in the form of system and library calls.
What do you propose? That software developers don't even trust the system calls of the OS they are running on? What if someone is able to modify your binary before you even run? Should you check that as well? What if the CPU is actually a fake and has instructions embedded to contact the world and send your personal information out? How do you defend against that?
Some of them also read input from configuration files.
Granted, but in their basic form, none of these applications need to *require* any input from network, file, or user. Each can be accomplished using only system calls.
there are 7000 turbines, so that makes little over 3 birds killed per turbine in 20 years, or 0.157... birds/year/turbine!...
As a quick comparison, in the past year, three birds have died after running into the living-room window in my house. Those turbines are downright safe!
Yes, but this is just running statistics and not thinking of the details. Probably, most of those birds are hitting the same exterior turbines -- they aren't hitting each turbine equally.
If you put a large silhouette of a giant bird around the permiter of the turbine farm, I'd bet there would be a noticeable reduction in the number of birds killed.
Sadly, the (obviously intentional) human suicide rate globally is many, many times higher. Poor, poor people, that they think nobody loves them. We should spend more resources helping our brothers and sisters get through life.
Am I the only one that thinks you can't possibly rule out every method of these GM'ed fish escaping...
No way you're the only one! The root cause of these oversights - I can't think of anything else to explain it - is human greed. The answer is so obvious it's sickening, yet those in power choose to ignore the fact that the 'experts' might be wrong (and there is proof that they often are). Tunnel vision, because they get what they want if they proceed. Oh well, let's fuck up the planet. It's only where we live and our children and their children will live.
That information can be contained inside a constant and compiled into the final executable.
Can, yes, can. But they wouldn't be very useful.
Not very useful? Here are examples which require no input and which I think are useful:
- a cpu meter (no input, just system calls). - an aquarium simulation screen saver. - one-off applications which produce a static output from hard-coded input. - complex mathematical calculations - true, false, bg, fg, ps, top, logout commands/utilities in Linux - a clock display application
Slashdot Mirror
The amount of mass being launched is measured in the hundreds of kilograms per year.
;)
The amount of mass falling onto the earth from space is measured in the hundreds of tons per day.
What sorts of stuff are we launching and what sorts of stuff is falling onto the Earth? Maybe we're trading titanium for sand. Not that I think we have to worry - just a thought.
Still, maybe launching yourself into space could prevent you from being brought back to life someday. Then again, maybe you'd be brought back to life to fight some losing battle against aliens...
They look the same, but could you use the phony diamonds for industrial uses that real diamonds are used for? ie. diamond-tipped drill bits? Would they hold up?
Did this diamond form based on the same principles as diamonds here on Earth? I thought coal had to be very highly compressed for ages before it became a diamond. Not so?
If something else is actually causing those effects, the whole theoretical edifice would come crashing down.
I don't think so. Our laws work good enough for most situations in our solar system. Just because they aren't 100% correct, doesn't mean they aren't useful. It's like saying you can't do anything with 1st year physics. Sure you can, but to a point. Same goes for our more advanced concepts.
we had to tell them that they had poor line quality and thus have lower bandwidth
Did anyone ever have their line uncapped as a result of usage returning to an 'average' level?
An annoyance with Mozilla is when it prompts you for the application with which to open a file. If I type "kwrite", it complains. I have to enter the full path to the app, even though it is on my path.
You can only cut back so much before you just don't have enough resources to get the job done.
Just curious: Do you believe this applies to software development in general?
I already know it. I resisted the urge to write about it. Too busy entering the PIC 9 lotto.
Most of the common addictions (nicoteine, alcohol, caffiene) have a short withdrawl period, usually just a couple of days.
Obviously, you have not been a smoker, a drinker, or soda drinker.
Amen to that. Quitting smoking is something many people are not able to ever do despite trying through most of their lives. I was fortunate enough to have only smoked for about 10 years and finally was able to quit and would've went back if it wasn't for my very supportive wife. Sure, maybe I would've lived almost as long had I not quit, but my *quality* of life has improved drastically. I am thankful every day of my final decision to quit. It's been two years and sometimes I still have a craving, but I will never go back, not even the slightest puff.
The times are not unique!
Consider daylight savings time.
Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what you mean. If there is indeed a problem, is there no simple way around it?
this requires 27 bytes (versus 4)
True, but at what cost are you saving bytes? You have to use a fairly recent point in time as the epoch (the year 1970), and you meet the limit of a 32-bit integer within a century if I'm not mistaken.
Okay, so text takes a lot of space. Why not use a 64-bit integer to store time? That's only 8 bytes.
Know your rules of normalization. Storing time is similar to storing a field in a database. The simplest way to achieve that is by using the number of seconds from the epoch. If you write it as YYYY-MM-DD, then you are duplicating information that can be creating more simply.
This has nothing to do with database normalization.
If you count the seconds since the epoch, you are limiting yourself to those date/times which occur *after* the epoch date/time. With a text format, you have no such limitation. I'm not sure why such a limitation is even acceptable.
Something tells me, though, that if people are striving to save 4 bytes by using a 32 bit integer rather than a 64 bit integer (which would be sufficient for a huge amount of time), they probably will not want to expend the extra space for text date/times. It's pretty silly how much work is created for the sake of saving a little space.
quicker execution is almost always the most important factor, the only exception is ease of development,
Think XML: it is not even close to being efficient, but its purpose is not for speed but for portability and flexibility (roughly).
but freform text parsing is much more messy than that to.
Nobody said anything about freeform text parsing. If you define a fixed text pattern to represent date/time, then parsing is extremely easy. ie. All you need to do is look for space separators and separate into tokens. Token1=month, token2=day, token3=year, token4=hour, token5=minute, token6=second, token7=millisecond, token8=GMT offset
Sample: 1 1 2003 7 26 0 0 -8
are you suggesting... standardizing on a certain text format?
Exactly.
Working with date/times is hard enough without having to worry about how it is stored. Why not store it as a text string and be done with it, especially with the huge amounts of RAM and processor speed we have these days.
Sorry for all the bold type... forgot the /b tag.
I think it's a case of people hearing a phrase but never seeing it in print. They know what it means, but can't spell it out. ...if they did, they would spell it correctly.
I disagree. The meaning of an unknown phrase can be taken from the context in which it is used, not the actual words. You know the phrase "it's just an expression". Expressions often can't be taken literally, so I don't find it hard to believe that the person would just accept the expression's meaning without analyzing the individual words. The reason is that it is common for those individual words to not make sense when used in an expression.
Language is a tool, yes, and like other tools it can be wielded by professionals and by non-experts alike. Complicating language is a great deal of context which is interpreted differently by different people and their unique experiences and perspectives, which I think is why legal contracts are worded the way they are. Would you have everyone talk like lawyers to be exactly correct and leave no room for misinterpretation? That would be pretty boring.
I agree with you, especially with the "intensive purposes". I think people say that because they can see a purpose as being intensive, while they cannot see intents and purposes.
;)
I think it's a case of people hearing a phrase but never seeing it in print. They know what it means, but can't spell it out. Pretty common, knowwhatImean?
This sounds a lot like the argument where people who host websites should accept whatever traffic it gets, including a slashdotting.
Should web surfers be held to the same rationale? That whatever processing power the website requires of the client be granted, large or small?
Perhaps this comes down to "acceptable use" which is sort of a gray area on the net, IMO. I'm sure lots of people would like to scrape stock websites, search engine results, etc.. but bots seem to be always prohibited. On the other hand, search engines scrape the web to get their information for their benefit. The more I think about it, the more this system doesn't make much sense.
She sees the swarm of slashdot referral log entries on her server.... "Ewww!!!!" and pulls the plug.
So I wonder if the cop who spotted her naughtly little secret is going to own up?
You can certainly trust most system calls
What if I'm writing a program to display a work under copyright or trade secret restriction? How can I be sure that the system calls haven't been patched with the cooperation of the owner of the machine to leak the work to a third party?
You can't be sure that someone hasn't tampered with the machine. I don't think this is in the realm of what normal applications should have to worry about.
Nonetheless, if you do have trade secrets and you are worried about them getting out, only use your machine, don't plug it into any networks, and disable wireless or other access points to the machine. You should also encrypt the filesystem with a strong password in case the machine falls into the wrong hands. Set up a password protected screen saver that times out after 1 minute. This should keep most people away from your trade secrets, but I'm no expert on this.
The point of the article was that input can come from unexpected sources like environment variables, and that an attacker can sometimes subvert these inputs.
Yes, I completely agree. But the article also says that program which do not take any input are useless. It is *my* point to refute this claim.
The cpu meter, bg, fg, ps, top, logout, and clock programs all take input, in the form of system and library calls.
What do you propose? That software developers don't even trust the system calls of the OS they are running on? What if someone is able to modify your binary before you even run? Should you check that as well? What if the CPU is actually a fake and has instructions embedded to contact the world and send your personal information out? How do you defend against that?
Some of them also read input from configuration files.
Granted, but in their basic form, none of these applications need to *require* any input from network, file, or user. Each can be accomplished using only system calls.
there are 7000 turbines, so that makes little over 3 birds killed per turbine in 20 years, or 0.157... birds/year/turbine!...
As a quick comparison, in the past year, three birds have died after running into the living-room window in my house. Those turbines are downright safe!
Yes, but this is just running statistics and not thinking of the details. Probably, most of those birds are hitting the same exterior turbines -- they aren't hitting each turbine equally.
If you put a large silhouette of a giant bird around the permiter of the turbine farm, I'd bet there would be a noticeable reduction in the number of birds killed.
Sadly, the (obviously intentional) human suicide rate globally is many, many times higher. Poor, poor people, that they think nobody loves them. We should spend more resources helping our brothers and sisters get through life.
Ever see a flock of birds stuck to a giant fan?
;)
No, but I bet Gary Larson could conjure something up.
Am I the only one that thinks you can't possibly rule out every method of these GM'ed fish escaping...
No way you're the only one! The root cause of these oversights - I can't think of anything else to explain it - is human greed. The answer is so obvious it's sickening, yet those in power choose to ignore the fact that the 'experts' might be wrong (and there is proof that they often are). Tunnel vision, because they get what they want if they proceed.
Oh well, let's fuck up the planet. It's only where we live and our children and their children will live.
That information can be contained inside a constant and compiled into the final executable.
Can, yes, can. But they wouldn't be very useful.
Not very useful? Here are examples which require no input and which I think are useful:
- a cpu meter (no input, just system calls).
- an aquarium simulation screen saver.
- one-off applications which produce a static output from hard-coded input.
- complex mathematical calculations
- true, false, bg, fg, ps, top, logout commands/utilities in Linux
- a clock display application
What good is a program that calculates pi if you cannot specify how many digits?
What good is a simulation if you cannot specify which parameters to use, and how long you want to run it?
That information can be contained inside a constant and compiled into the final executable.