Wow, 600 comments and no one's made the appropriate obscure Invader Zim reference. You've really let me down.
Don't you remember? McMeaties burger meat is made of SPAAAAAACE MEAT developed by NASA, though that was too expensive so now they make it from old napkins.
Quite simply, sites that put ads on their page depend on the profit from those ads to support themselves. The page authors chose to put those ads there. If you don't want to see the ads, then you have no right to view the content. If you refuse to see the ads, you should find your content on another website.
Reading the content of a web page is not a right, it is a privilege afforded to you by the website's author and it comes with strings attached, like ads.
It is unfortunate that so many websites choose to use popups and horrible flashy ads that don't entice people to click anyway to make a profit. But you should take that up with the webmasters.
Just like downloading music on a p2p system is a violation of copyright law. You have no social right to listen to that music. You have no social right to see a webpage with its ads filtered out.
You're right, but x86 support for this sucks. In particular:
1) you can only use up to three registers to do this. On average, C functions take three to four arguments, so there will be a lot of stack use anyway. The AMD-64 provides 8 additional registers, so there will be far fewer stack arguments.
2) check out this note direct from the gcc man page:
"Warning: if you use this switch, and num is nonzero, then you must build all modules with the same value, including any libraries. This includes the system libraries and startup modules."
So yeah, you can use regparm on x86 but only if your whole system and all libraries were built with it (i.e. maybe if you use LFS or Gentoo you could get away with it). With the AMD-64, register passing is the documented, expected way to do it, and all AMD-64 Linux distros use it already.
Cool! I had an A 500 as well. As usual, the Amiga line demonstrates its architectural superiority. Such a shame it had to die (let's be honest... it's dead). Finally we see one of its advanced features ported to the x86.
I also know that the MIPS architecture uses register passing. I believe is has up to eight 32-bit registers for argument passing. Quite a lot of architectures use it, it's just that x86 anachronistically held onto its stack passing system since I don't think it had enough GPRs to do it right. Finally, AMD-64 will solve the problem.
The new AMD-64 chips use passing by register to do function calls, leading to a huge speedup. Consider, on an x86, function calls are done on the stack. You push, push, push your arguments onto the stack and then jump to the subroutine that pops them off into registers to do work. It then leaves a return code on the stack and jumps back (I believe).
With the AMD-64 chips compiled with the new 64-bit ABI (i.e. Linux running in 64-bit mode, NOT windows which is currently only 32-bit), the arguments to the next function are stored in general purpose registers. The stack is used only when you run out of registers, and you have quite a few registers to work with. This reduces pushes and pops onto the stack (which are slow operations) and leaves everything in registers where they're going to be used anyway.
The 64-bit-ness has nothing to do with the speedup of AMD-64 processesors for most applications.
>/Sorry, but having an addictive game for kids to play poker and blackjack for more chips doesn't seem very educational to me./
Actually, Neopets is far more than a casino. It's also a fully functioning economic simlation with commerce and stores, a bank with variable interest rates, and a stock market with mutual funds and corporations to invest in. It's a safe way to learn about and get a feel for real-world commerce without losing real money. No textbook can approximate that.
>/I was astonished to see a 20-something kid playing his pocket Nintendo in the middle of a lecture/
I hate that too! It'd be far better if he'd skip the lecture, as I and many of my friends did in school. Y'see, not everyone can learn from lectures (some do better from textbooks) and some profs just regurgitate the textbook, making the content of their lectures close to useless. Many students will skip these forms of lectures, but some profs will make a point of dropping one or two valuable sentences that are required knowledge for the test. It's these profs that end up with classes full of students playing Nintendo, or playing Solitare on their laptops or card games in the back of the class. I've been there.
>/How will they possibly be able to learn to sit through a lecture/
I have faith that if the lecture is useful, then they will sit through it. Really, no lecture should be "sat through", it should be "listened to". There is a difference.
>/Nowhere to go except, of course, for the next weakest link on the internet-based software chain./
Indeed. Still, though no software is perfect, I still think we'd be a lot safer on Firefox or any browser that doesn't so heavily tie itself to ActiveX and the Windows core.
>/the only way to stop the malware is to stop the malware authors. Bounties work, but to really stop them, we would have to sacrifice a lot of privacy which the internet still (sort of) affords./
Well, yeah, but let's not go the way of Homeland Security for the sake of tracking down script kiddies. One important step would be to require all code coming in from the Internet be signed. Now, you would have to know who published the code before we would install it. Also, any system that allows stuff to be installed in the background with no warning is dangerous. Windows could do like Mac OS X and require the user to enter their password before any system-level actions could be attempted. Also, they could use the Java sandbox idea where untrusted code is locked down.
The problem is not that dangerous code/can/ be written, nor that script kiddies can write dangerous code. The problem is that dangerous code can slip deep into your operating system without providing any notice.
Well, Shareaza's protocols were already open; the Gnutella network spec and eDonkey network spec are already documented, even if the code isn't available.
The big boys generally don't look at the data coming over the wire since it's too much of a hassle. It's far easier if they actually participate in the network and then watch who downloads from them.
If you're really paranoid about it, though, you could engineer some crypto into the networks... assuming you can trust your peers and they agree to the same crypto. Security by obscurity of protocol rarely works.
I don't know who's telling you that Eclipse is fast. Whoever they are, tell them to stop it. Eclipse isn't fast, but it is good. If you ever work on a Java project and need to, say, rename a variable, or find out who is calling a certain function, or just don't want to manage your hundreds of import lines, then Eclipse is what you need. Sure, a 3Ghz processor and 512MB of ram is pretty high requirements. But if you think Microsoft Visual Studio (or whatever it's called now) will run fast on your l33t pentium-pro, think again. Eclipse and Microsoft's IDE have about the same feature sets and hardware requirements.
I guess what I mean about Swing being fast is that Swing is fast 'enough'. That is, for a cross-platform toolkit that can display the same everywhere, or take on the native look, it's pretty damn fast.
Oh yeah, Eclipse uses SWT, which is not the same as Swing, so it's not the same thing.
The main reason Java failed on the desktop was that there didn't used to be a Java Web Start program. But now we have one and it works great.
Also, it used to be difficult to install the Java VM, and the Microsoft version that came with Windows was a buggy piece of crap. However, that's been solved too. Visit www.java.com in IE and click download. It's as easy as installing FlashPlayer.
Other issues: AWT was too sluggish. Well, the new Swing UI is pretty slick. There was no good Java IDE. Now, Eclipse kicks ass and is the best IDE evar IMHO.
And as for Applets being mostly useless, that's not true. If you sign your code you can do anything with an Applet that you can do with a Web Start application.
We have great success with Java on the desktop. The only snag is that we have to tell our customers to download the Java VM, but once they've done it, everything's good.
> MS will start to churn out all it's products as.NET apps, meaning they *will* run unchanged on Linux. Mono is the new Wine:-)
Running unchanged on Linux? Yeah, sure... as long as the Mono implementation is a fully complete implementation of the Microsoft libraries... including the magic undocumented ones that Microsoft doesn't tell you about. Oh, and don't forget... don't trample any patents on the way in.
The only.NET apps that will run on Linux are the ones that Microsoft will want to run on Linux. i.e. Hey look! IIS.NET beats Apache on Linux! Everyone move over to our new product, and you don't even have to change your server OS! Of course, if you do change it'll be even better... yadda yadda
Food, shelter, etc. should be a right in our society. However, you wouldn't get the best quality for free. For free, you should get a cruddy one or two room apartment... while those who work can buy houses and mansions. For free you'd get boxes of macaroni and cheese and basic veggies and meat... while those who work can eat steak.
It should be possible that everyone can survive without working, but they wouldn't necessarily enjoy it as much as those who work.
As for automation freeing us... it's not automation limiting us, it's our culture. Over the years automation has reduced the difficulty of certain chores. And yet we've just increased the number of chores we do. Case in point, the computer reduces paperwork and makes accounting a breeze. So, we make accounting more difficult, with more options and tax types and places to put the money etc. etc. because now we can. We make more paperwork and we fill out more reports because beforehand it was too much work to process all those reports. Now, it's easy so we do more of them.
You know, in France they have seven-hour work days and 40 holidays a year! They're really relaxed over there; restaurants don't post hours. They open when they feel like it and close when the employees are tired. The question is, why are we choosing to make our workdays longer and longer in North America? I'd much prefer to hang out with friends more... wouldn't you?
As for Communism banning religion. Yeah, I think you're right. However, I would add that the government shouldn't get involved with religion, period. It embarrasing that Dubya ends his speeches with "God bless us". As a person he can be a Christian, but as President he shouldn't throw about his private beliefs. It's downright indecent.
I find that Gnome's apps are far more primitive than KDE's, and behind the times. Let's take a look at your examples:
The Gimp: Well, it uses Gtk+, but it isn't officially a part of the Gnome platform, is it? It doesn't use too many other Gnome libraries. I don't really count it as a Gnome app. And, er, why was it in development for three frickin' years to get to 2.0?
Gaim: Yes, Gaim is very good, but you should see the new Kopete messenger in KDE 3.2. Very slick, supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and IRC, with a plugin interface, XSLT to generate the chat windows, etc. etc. It's at least comparable to Gaim.
Rhythmbox: Hmm, looks like a pretty nice music player. But have you seen the new JuK in KDE 3.2? Very serviceable, and very solid MP3 player. It even looks similar to Rhythmbox. On the other hand, it lacks net Radio... maybe in the next version?
Galeon: Umm... Galeon is just a wrapper around Mozilla, the 10-thousand pound gorilla of a web browser. I prefer Konqueror and the KHTML widget. KHTML, though not perfect at CSS, is way faster, and is far easier to embed that Mozilla. It now supports mouse gestures with KHotKeys, and conforms properly to your UI theme.
And look, I seriously have to point out that Konqueror beats Nautilus. The KIOSlave system means drag-and-drop "just works" across many protocols (ftp, sftp, fish, audiocd ripping, http, samba (smb protocol)). I have yet to see Nautilus do anything like this, except with CD Burning (but KDE has K3b, so I don't mind).
KDE is an extremely capable desktop with many more mature applications than Gnome. Plus, most companies prefer dealing with standard C++ for GUI apps, as opposed to learning some weird custom OO model like glib, even if they have to pay a bit.
Yes, I was just joking. I wasn't trying to troll maliciously, though I guess it's hard to tell these days.:-)
I guess my comments were more directed about functional languages in general. i.e. wouldn't set! not be tolerated in a purely functional program? Lisp is not purely functional (afaik). The ! means 'side-effect' does it not? Are those considered bad?
Actually, it's pretty easy to cover up a case of mad cow. The method is "shoot, shovel, and shut up" as Alberta's Premier said. (Boy did he put his foot in his mouth on that one.)
Cattle that look "sick" (called downer cattle) were until recently just slaughtered like all the others... only earlier on so that they didn't die of whatever they had.
Doesn't the BSE prion take years to show up in a cow or human? Don't know if it's infectious until then, though.
Global organizations, especially those dominated by third-countries (or soon to be third-world countries like France), are notorious for using the fascade of internationalism as a mask for the pursuit of their own selfish interests.
Well, yeah, and so is the U.S. The U.S. has done lots of stuff in their own self-interest under the guise of globalization through the WTO. For instance, Canada tried to ban a fuel additive that scientists believed to be a carcinogen. This ban meant that they could no longer buy gasoline from the U.S., where that chemical was added to all gas. Result: the U.S. dragged Canada into the WTO Trade Court, and won claiming that the ban was illegally favouring Canadian fuel suppliers. Canada had to pay massive fines, and would have to continue to pay fines if it banned the chemical.
Then, a few years later, the U.S. bans Canadian beef saying that it's all "mad cow". Wake up! Canada actually has better industry controls than the U.S., and has already banned using animal-remnants (offal?) in feed. At least we actually FOUND our cases of mad cow. The U.S. is in for a little surprise if it thinks it's lilly-white on the mad cow epidemic. The evidence used to back the Canadian cattle blockade is just as good as that used to block the fuel additive.
And that is why we have a kettle/black situation. All countries are out for their own gain, including and especially the U.S. Greed is not an acceptible defense for these actions.
That's why I said it would be "good, only if it works". Obviously, this does not work. And do you think people are going to voluntarily shell out 50-100$ for a virus scanner before they can use their previously-cheap internet access? I doubt the plan will fly. So relax!
Getting new syntax into Python is tough. You have to write a PEP and submit it to the newsgroup where it will get picked on, critiqued, slandered, and trashed. Then, if it survives, months later it may get voted on, and given Guido van Rossum's official stamp of approval. And Guido is very hard to please! Given the nature of the changes in Prothon, it would have taken years to agree on anything. In most cases, this is a good thing because it keeps the language stable as opposed to changing every month.
Forking your own branch means you can do what you want. And I have a feeling Prothon's features wouldn't have made it into Python. IMHO.
Lisp? Are you joking? Why would I use anything so needlessly complex?! You know, all any programmer really needs is a Turing machine.
What does any language have above Lisp? Easier to read, easier to understand, faster to code in. Lisp is a language for masochists who don't believe in variables. There! I've said it!/ducks a giant flying lambda
Interesting... well I suppose the only solution is then to create our own internet.
What I'm saying is that if there is a public backlash, then something will be done. TC on the router level to prevent viruses and spam would be very good (* provided it works... doubtful). However if all of a sudden people are no longer able to access the internet, download MP3s for cheap, or do whatever they want to do, then they will find a way around it. And it's the hackers who will know the path.
All I'm trying to say is that government or corporate control only goes so far. When it affects day-to-day life, people will revolt, sabotage, or circumvent these measures. Us computer geeks are just more alarmed because we can see the problems coming, and are more sensitive to them than the "general public".
2 'Programs and computers can prove they are the other computer/program' Seems to me that we can do that too in software.. SSH verifies the other computer when you connect. It's called keeping the private key private..
Ah, yes... but a user could conceivably steal the private key from another PC, install it on their own PC, and then pretend to be the other computer. With Palladium or whatever, that key will be in a location that no user (even root) can modify. So, it will be impossible to falsify the private key in the first place. We no longer need to trust system administrators or any unreliable human! Now we just trust Microsoft... er, hey, wait.
Note however that the scheme depends on the key being uncorruptable and out of the user's reach. Even with the currently described system, this is unlikely. Nothing is unhackable... it's just more difficult now.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, 600 comments and no one's made the appropriate obscure Invader Zim reference. You've really let me down.
Don't you remember? McMeaties burger meat is made of SPAAAAAACE MEAT developed by NASA, though that was too expensive so now they make it from old napkins.
Maybe it's just me, but I thought TigerDirect owns the trademark "TigerDirect".
Quite simply, sites that put ads on their page depend on the profit from those ads to support themselves. The page authors chose to put those ads there. If you don't want to see the ads, then you have no right to view the content. If you refuse to see the ads, you should find your content on another website.
Reading the content of a web page is not a right, it is a privilege afforded to you by the website's author and it comes with strings attached, like ads.
It is unfortunate that so many websites choose to use popups and horrible flashy ads that don't entice people to click anyway to make a profit. But you should take that up with the webmasters.
Just like downloading music on a p2p system is a violation of copyright law. You have no social right to listen to that music. You have no social right to see a webpage with its ads filtered out.
You're right, but x86 support for this sucks. In particular:
1) you can only use up to three registers to do this. On average, C functions take three to four arguments, so there will be a lot of stack use anyway. The AMD-64 provides 8 additional registers, so there will be far fewer stack arguments.
2) check out this note direct from the gcc man page:
"Warning: if you use this switch, and num is nonzero, then you must build all modules with the same value, including any libraries. This includes the system libraries and startup modules."
So yeah, you can use regparm on x86 but only if your whole system and all libraries were built with it (i.e. maybe if you use LFS or Gentoo you could get away with it). With the AMD-64, register passing is the documented, expected way to do it, and all AMD-64 Linux distros use it already.
Cool! I had an A 500 as well. As usual, the Amiga line demonstrates its architectural superiority. Such a shame it had to die (let's be honest... it's dead). Finally we see one of its advanced features ported to the x86.
I also know that the MIPS architecture uses register passing. I believe is has up to eight 32-bit registers for argument passing. Quite a lot of architectures use it, it's just that x86 anachronistically held onto its stack passing system since I don't think it had enough GPRs to do it right. Finally, AMD-64 will solve the problem.
The new AMD-64 chips use passing by register to do function calls, leading to a huge speedup. Consider, on an x86, function calls are done on the stack. You push, push, push your arguments onto the stack and then jump to the subroutine that pops them off into registers to do work. It then leaves a return code on the stack and jumps back (I believe).
With the AMD-64 chips compiled with the new 64-bit ABI (i.e. Linux running in 64-bit mode, NOT windows which is currently only 32-bit), the arguments to the next function are stored in general purpose registers. The stack is used only when you run out of registers, and you have quite a few registers to work with. This reduces pushes and pops onto the stack (which are slow operations) and leaves everything in registers where they're going to be used anyway.
The 64-bit-ness has nothing to do with the speedup of AMD-64 processesors for most applications.
> /Sorry, but having an addictive game for kids to play poker and blackjack for more chips doesn't seem very educational to me./
/I was astonished to see a 20-something kid playing his pocket Nintendo in the middle of a lecture/
/How will they possibly be able to learn to sit through a lecture/
Actually, Neopets is far more than a casino. It's also a fully functioning economic simlation with commerce and stores, a bank with variable interest rates, and a stock market with mutual funds and corporations to invest in. It's a safe way to learn about and get a feel for real-world commerce without losing real money. No textbook can approximate that.
>
I hate that too! It'd be far better if he'd skip the lecture, as I and many of my friends did in school. Y'see, not everyone can learn from lectures (some do better from textbooks) and some profs just regurgitate the textbook, making the content of their lectures close to useless. Many students will skip these forms of lectures, but some profs will make a point of dropping one or two valuable sentences that are required knowledge for the test. It's these profs that end up with classes full of students playing Nintendo, or playing Solitare on their laptops or card games in the back of the class. I've been there.
>
I have faith that if the lecture is useful, then they will sit through it. Really, no lecture should be "sat through", it should be "listened to". There is a difference.
> /Nowhere to go except, of course, for the next weakest link on the internet-based software chain./
/the only way to stop the malware is to stop the malware authors. Bounties work, but to really stop them, we would have to sacrifice a lot of privacy which the internet still (sort of) affords./
/can/ be written, nor that script kiddies can write dangerous code. The problem is that dangerous code can slip deep into your operating system without providing any notice.
Indeed. Still, though no software is perfect, I still think we'd be a lot safer on Firefox or any browser that doesn't so heavily tie itself to ActiveX and the Windows core.
>
Well, yeah, but let's not go the way of Homeland Security for the sake of tracking down script kiddies. One important step would be to require all code coming in from the Internet be signed. Now, you would have to know who published the code before we would install it. Also, any system that allows stuff to be installed in the background with no warning is dangerous. Windows could do like Mac OS X and require the user to enter their password before any system-level actions could be attempted. Also, they could use the Java sandbox idea where untrusted code is locked down.
The problem is not that dangerous code
It means that if you don't like the way it works, the onus is on you to fix it the way you like. You can't just blame the company anymore.
Well, Shareaza's protocols were already open; the Gnutella network spec and eDonkey network spec are already documented, even if the code isn't available.
The big boys generally don't look at the data coming over the wire since it's too much of a hassle. It's far easier if they actually participate in the network and then watch who downloads from them.
If you're really paranoid about it, though, you could engineer some crypto into the networks... assuming you can trust your peers and they agree to the same crypto. Security by obscurity of protocol rarely works.
I don't know who's telling you that Eclipse is fast. Whoever they are, tell them to stop it. Eclipse isn't fast, but it is good. If you ever work on a Java project and need to, say, rename a variable, or find out who is calling a certain function, or just don't want to manage your hundreds of import lines, then Eclipse is what you need. Sure, a 3Ghz processor and 512MB of ram is pretty high requirements. But if you think Microsoft Visual Studio (or whatever it's called now) will run fast on your l33t pentium-pro, think again. Eclipse and Microsoft's IDE have about the same feature sets and hardware requirements.
I guess what I mean about Swing being fast is that Swing is fast 'enough'. That is, for a cross-platform toolkit that can display the same everywhere, or take on the native look, it's pretty damn fast.
Oh yeah, Eclipse uses SWT, which is not the same as Swing, so it's not the same thing.
The main reason Java failed on the desktop was that there didn't used to be a Java Web Start program. But now we have one and it works great.
Also, it used to be difficult to install the Java VM, and the Microsoft version that came with Windows was a buggy piece of crap. However, that's been solved too. Visit www.java.com in IE and click download. It's as easy as installing FlashPlayer.
Other issues: AWT was too sluggish. Well, the new Swing UI is pretty slick. There was no good Java IDE. Now, Eclipse kicks ass and is the best IDE evar IMHO.
And as for Applets being mostly useless, that's not true. If you sign your code you can do anything with an Applet that you can do with a Web Start application.
We have great success with Java on the desktop. The only snag is that we have to tell our customers to download the Java VM, but once they've done it, everything's good.
> MS will start to churn out all it's products as .NET apps, meaning they *will* run unchanged on Linux. Mono is the new Wine :-)
.NET apps that will run on Linux are the ones that Microsoft will want to run on Linux. i.e. Hey look! IIS.NET beats Apache on Linux! Everyone move over to our new product, and you don't even have to change your server OS! Of course, if you do change it'll be even better... yadda yadda
Running unchanged on Linux? Yeah, sure... as long as the Mono implementation is a fully complete implementation of the Microsoft libraries... including the magic undocumented ones that Microsoft doesn't tell you about. Oh, and don't forget... don't trample any patents on the way in.
The only
/ not trolling, but being really negative.
Food, shelter, etc. should be a right in our society. However, you wouldn't get the best quality for free. For free, you should get a cruddy one or two room apartment... while those who work can buy houses and mansions. For free you'd get boxes of macaroni and cheese and basic veggies and meat... while those who work can eat steak.
It should be possible that everyone can survive without working, but they wouldn't necessarily enjoy it as much as those who work.
As for automation freeing us... it's not automation limiting us, it's our culture. Over the years automation has reduced the difficulty of certain chores. And yet we've just increased the number of chores we do. Case in point, the computer reduces paperwork and makes accounting a breeze. So, we make accounting more difficult, with more options and tax types and places to put the money etc. etc. because now we can. We make more paperwork and we fill out more reports because beforehand it was too much work to process all those reports. Now, it's easy so we do more of them.
You know, in France they have seven-hour work days and 40 holidays a year! They're really relaxed over there; restaurants don't post hours. They open when they feel like it and close when the employees are tired. The question is, why are we choosing to make our workdays longer and longer in North America? I'd much prefer to hang out with friends more... wouldn't you?
As for Communism banning religion. Yeah, I think you're right. However, I would add that the government shouldn't get involved with religion, period. It embarrasing that Dubya ends his speeches with "God bless us". As a person he can be a Christian, but as President he shouldn't throw about his private beliefs. It's downright indecent.
Hmm... you know "Eschew Obfuscation" would be a good first and middle name for a kid!
I find that Gnome's apps are far more primitive than KDE's, and behind the times. Let's take a look at your examples:
The Gimp: Well, it uses Gtk+, but it isn't officially a part of the Gnome platform, is it? It doesn't use too many other Gnome libraries. I don't really count it as a Gnome app. And, er, why was it in development for three frickin' years to get to 2.0?
Gaim: Yes, Gaim is very good, but you should see the new Kopete messenger in KDE 3.2. Very slick, supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and IRC, with a plugin interface, XSLT to generate the chat windows, etc. etc. It's at least comparable to Gaim.
Rhythmbox: Hmm, looks like a pretty nice music player. But have you seen the new JuK in KDE 3.2? Very serviceable, and very solid MP3 player. It even looks similar to Rhythmbox. On the other hand, it lacks net Radio... maybe in the next version?
Galeon: Umm... Galeon is just a wrapper around Mozilla, the 10-thousand pound gorilla of a web browser. I prefer Konqueror and the KHTML widget. KHTML, though not perfect at CSS, is way faster, and is far easier to embed that Mozilla. It now supports mouse gestures with KHotKeys, and conforms properly to your UI theme.
And look, I seriously have to point out that Konqueror beats Nautilus. The KIOSlave system means drag-and-drop "just works" across many protocols (ftp, sftp, fish, audiocd ripping, http, samba (smb protocol)). I have yet to see Nautilus do anything like this, except with CD Burning (but KDE has K3b, so I don't mind).
KDE is an extremely capable desktop with many more mature applications than Gnome. Plus, most companies prefer dealing with standard C++ for GUI apps, as opposed to learning some weird custom OO model like glib, even if they have to pay a bit.
Yes, I was just joking. I wasn't trying to troll maliciously, though I guess it's hard to tell these days. :-)
I guess my comments were more directed about functional languages in general. i.e. wouldn't set! not be tolerated in a purely functional program? Lisp is not purely functional (afaik). The ! means 'side-effect' does it not? Are those considered bad?
Well, Canada passed a law banning that particular fuel additive, because they felt it was unsafe (caused disease).
The U.S. banned gambling because it can cause addiction (a disease of a different sort).
What's the diff?
Actually, it's pretty easy to cover up a case of mad cow. The method is "shoot, shovel, and shut up" as Alberta's Premier said. (Boy did he put his foot in his mouth on that one.)
Cattle that look "sick" (called downer cattle) were until recently just slaughtered like all the others... only earlier on so that they didn't die of whatever they had.
Doesn't the BSE prion take years to show up in a cow or human? Don't know if it's infectious until then, though.
Global organizations, especially those dominated by third-countries (or soon to be third-world countries like France), are notorious for using the fascade of internationalism as a mask for the pursuit of their own selfish interests.
Well, yeah, and so is the U.S. The U.S. has done lots of stuff in their own self-interest under the guise of globalization through the WTO. For instance, Canada tried to ban a fuel additive that scientists believed to be a carcinogen. This ban meant that they could no longer buy gasoline from the U.S., where that chemical was added to all gas. Result: the U.S. dragged Canada into the WTO Trade Court, and won claiming that the ban was illegally favouring Canadian fuel suppliers. Canada had to pay massive fines, and would have to continue to pay fines if it banned the chemical.
Then, a few years later, the U.S. bans Canadian beef saying that it's all "mad cow". Wake up! Canada actually has better industry controls than the U.S., and has already banned using animal-remnants (offal?) in feed. At least we actually FOUND our cases of mad cow. The U.S. is in for a little surprise if it thinks it's lilly-white on the mad cow epidemic. The evidence used to back the Canadian cattle blockade is just as good as that used to block the fuel additive.
And that is why we have a kettle/black situation. All countries are out for their own gain, including and especially the U.S. Greed is not an acceptible defense for these actions.
Double fast reply!
That's why I said it would be "good, only if it works". Obviously, this does not work. And do you think people are going to voluntarily shell out 50-100$ for a virus scanner before they can use their previously-cheap internet access? I doubt the plan will fly. So relax!
Getting new syntax into Python is tough. You have to write a PEP and submit it to the newsgroup where it will get picked on, critiqued, slandered, and trashed. Then, if it survives, months later it may get voted on, and given Guido van Rossum's official stamp of approval. And Guido is very hard to please! Given the nature of the changes in Prothon, it would have taken years to agree on anything. In most cases, this is a good thing because it keeps the language stable as opposed to changing every month.
Forking your own branch means you can do what you want. And I have a feeling Prothon's features wouldn't have made it into Python. IMHO.
Lisp? Are you joking? Why would I use anything so needlessly complex?! You know, all any programmer really needs is a Turing machine.
/ducks a giant flying lambda
What does any language have above Lisp? Easier to read, easier to understand, faster to code in. Lisp is a language for masochists who don't believe in variables. There! I've said it!
Interesting... well I suppose the only solution is then to create our own internet.
What I'm saying is that if there is a public backlash, then something will be done. TC on the router level to prevent viruses and spam would be very good (* provided it works... doubtful). However if all of a sudden people are no longer able to access the internet, download MP3s for cheap, or do whatever they want to do, then they will find a way around it. And it's the hackers who will know the path.
All I'm trying to say is that government or corporate control only goes so far. When it affects day-to-day life, people will revolt, sabotage, or circumvent these measures. Us computer geeks are just more alarmed because we can see the problems coming, and are more sensitive to them than the "general public".
It is never impossible to refuse to submit!
2 'Programs and computers can prove they are the other computer/program'
Seems to me that we can do that too in software.. SSH verifies the other computer when you connect. It's called keeping the private key private..
Ah, yes... but a user could conceivably steal the private key from another PC, install it on their own PC, and then pretend to be the other computer. With Palladium or whatever, that key will be in a location that no user (even root) can modify. So, it will be impossible to falsify the private key in the first place. We no longer need to trust system administrators or any unreliable human! Now we just trust Microsoft... er, hey, wait.
Note however that the scheme depends on the key being uncorruptable and out of the user's reach. Even with the currently described system, this is unlikely. Nothing is unhackable... it's just more difficult now.