or some other vegetable else that grows easily in your neighborhood. As an added bonus you'll be healthier.
We have plenty of resources. What we lack is the ability (or will) to use our resources in ways that aren't completely retarded. Making better food choices and cutting population growth (primarily by providing better education to women in developing countries) will suffice in keeping us fed. The last thing we need is excuses to give more money and power to companies like Monsanto.
Yeah, I seem to remember this exact story (or at least one about burn patients playing 'a snow game', if not this exact one) from several years ago, maybe around 2004.
What system do you use to manage your home directories, and how have they worked for you for managing small files (e.g. dot configs) and large (gigabyte binaries of data) together?
I don't know that managing them *together* is all that useful. What I have been doing (and what I think is a more flexible way to manage stuff), is to divide the stuff in your home directory into independent 'projects' (e.g. financial documents, stuff for work, source code of my website, project X, project Y, my photo collection...) and manage each project separately in a way that lends itself well to the kind of file being stored. For a directory of small files that are frequently updated, Git is a great way to go. For synchronizing and backing up large collections of large files (like an MP3 or photo collection) you might try something like ContentCouch (disclaimer: I wrote this tool).
My favorite way to deal with the issue you mentioned with the ambiguity of f (g x, y) was is to base the decision by looking at whitespace. f( g x, y ) is calling f with 2 arguments, while f (g x, y) is calling it with one. This could have something to do with that's how I happen to think about argument lists, anyway, so other people might not agree with that convention.:) Ruby actually treats the 2 expressions the same (both are passing 2 arguments to f), but issues a warning when you use the latter syntax. In Python's case (since f (x, y) is not valid Ruby syntax), f (x, y) could call f with a tuple, while f( x, y ) would call it with 2 arguments.
A simple way to deal with f x, g y, h z would be for the parser to always try to read as much as it can of the current parameter list. So this expression would be parsed as (f x (g y (h z))). You shouldn't write code like that, but I think you can define the rules of the language in a simple way so that at least it is not ambiguous.
All that said, Ruby doesn't handle things quite as I expect.
I forgot to mention that hosting a repository in Freenet actually does have a couple of advantages over having it sit on your (or somewone else's) web server:
Files in freenet are distributed throughout the network, and persist as long as *someone* on the network still has the file.
If you are writing a program that government X doesn't like (for kicks, let's say you're living in China and you're developing a 'democracy simulator'), you can host the program in Freenet anonymously - Freenet is designed to make it extremely difficult for anyone to figure out who inserted a particular file, or even on what computers it is being stored.
Freenet also provides authentication. SSK/USK sites can only be updated by the person who has the insert key. So if you trust the guy that publishes freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySY....nOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/, and you're reasonably sure that nobody else has an insert key, then you can trust that whatever gets put on that Freesite was really put there by him.
Not so much. Git is a revision control system. The linked-to project is about using BitTorrent to distribute Git repositories. The hype at the end of the summary is unrelated and can be totally ignored. It's not likely that anyone would GitTorrent for distributing movies or non-free software. It'd be possible, but silly.
It's funny that this is at the top of the front page just now. Just a few minutes ago I managed to insert my first Git repository into Freenet (that is, the first Git repo that I have inserted into Freenet, but not my first Git repository). Since git supports cloning and pulling over HTTP, it already supports doing the same thing through FProxy (an HTTP proxy that allows you to browse Freenet's content as if it were regular websites).
What this doesn't allow you to do is *push* changes to other people's repositories. What you'd need to do in this case is have every developer insert their own git repository into freenet, which others could pull from, and then incorporate into their own repositories. So the accusation that really, truly distributed version control would allow other people to mess up your repositories is hogwash. If someone makes crappy changes, you don't pull from them.
In case you'd like to try it, the freesite for my program (it's a Ruby implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, not terribly interesting by itself) is here: freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySYQvAWac4LoGfnU~tGVm7xvRCgvyjp3c,bKLoSHTgen8TW6gQpemdCeh4SKCTwVM~qnOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/ . To git it, you'd just run
First thing mentioned on the 'what's new' page (http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html)is that you'll have to change your code from
print x, y, z,
to
print(x, y, z, end="")
I can see the value of making things more consistent, but it seems to me whenever they update things in Python, it's usually to make programming in it a little bit harder.
Why not make print a function, but then change the language to not require parentheses for any function call? You'd still have to use them when calling a function with zero arguments, and in sub-expressions, but to not require parens for top-level function calls would, if nothing else, make playing around in interactive mode or with short scripts a lot more pleasant.
Granted, I come from a Ruby background, so I may not know what I'm talking about. My experience with Python is trying to write some scripts on my OLPC, where the craptacular rubber keyboard made typing parentheses all the more agonizing. I finally caved and installed Ruby so I could get some work done. Maybe people who prefer Python really like typing parens. And underscores.
I got quite a taste of a few Java frameworks from my last job (Hibernate and Tapestry, to be precise, and given my experience, I'm inclined to agree with the 'hibernatesucks' tag. If you had mentioned Tapestry I would have agreed even more with a 'tapestrysucks' tag, because Tapestry does suck, hardcore. Hibernate I can at least see being semi-useful in some situations).
My view is this: If you're making a simple project, implement it in a simple way. You've got to expect new requirements to come in, so don't go choosing *any* sort of 'framework' right off the bat.
<tangent>
Unfortunately you do have to choose a programming language -- I'm not too thrilled with any of the offerings right now. PHP is hosted everywhere, but in 3 different incompatible versions. I use Ruby, but in order to ensure it works on whatever web host, you've got to use it with CGI, so hope your site doesn't get a lot of traffic! If you have a host that lets you run Java servlets and whatnot (despite my old job I'm not especially familiar with how Java applications get hosted), then I'd say Java's a good choice - not my favorite language, but it's fast and stable.
</tangent>
Only when your program (/web site) actually needs to do complex things that would take a lot of time to implement (graphics libraries, hardware drivers, complete xml parsers come to mind) should you start bringing in external libraries. And note that I said "libraries", not "frameworks". 'Frameworks', in my view, provide 2 things:
A standard set of libraries
A standard way to structure your code
If you can use those libraries that you need without a framework, it's going to be in your best interest not to include the extra frameworky stuff in your project that you don't need (get to the why in a minute). Importing a standard way to structure your code from a widely-used framework can be useful if you're working on a project with several other developers who would otherwise either argue about what made-up in-house standard to use or follow no standards at all, but if you're doing this thing by yourself, you can probably fulfill the needs of your project more simply by doing it yourself.
Even when you're importing functionality that will be controlled by your program (a library), and not the other way around (a framework), I would encourage you to try to implement it yourself, first. You know the specific needs of this project better than the people who wrote any libraries, so you may be in many cases be able to write something vastly simpler that gets the same job done in a way that makes more sense to you (not to mention that many libraries are simply crap, such as the ruby-git wrapper I recently downloaded before writing my own version that bothered to escape arguments to shell commands). If you do this enough times you will find that things you thought were difficult to implement are not so bad, and will wonder why so many people think they need a library.
To summarize, I agree with the guy who said "It's knowing when". Also, for the most part, with Chuck Moore, even though I'm not a Forth programmer;)
Looks like people are trying to touch the candidate's NAME, which is at the very top of his 'box' on the screen. Of course, since the boxes are so close together and people's fingers are so fat, the machine registered a touch at the bottom of McCain's box, which is just above Obama's. I can see some recent CS graduate designing this thing and just *assuming* that voters would know to touch the center of the box, not to aim for the candidate's name.
So I would say it's not a calibration issue, just bad UI design. That something so important wasn't more thoroughly tested with the target audience doesn't say much for ES&S (the dumb company that made these things).
My biggest reason for switching to Git was that it makes backing up repositories vastly simpler.
In subversion I had to set up a repository with svnsync, and that repository couldn't be used interchangably with the original. And I would constantly have to go in and figure out how to unlock the destination repo. Lots of problems.
With git, I just clone the original repository and do a pull once in a while. And if I want, I can easily switch my clients to use the alternate repository (e.g., if a server goes offline).
I've been using msysgit for months and have had no issues with it. I don't quite understand the argument that 'git is terrible on windows'.
By my reading of the Wikipedia article it's only 'browser based' in that it is launched by a web browser, but it uses the Quake III Arena engine. I'm guessing you click 'join this game' on a web page and the Quake Live desktop app starts up and takes you directly into that game.
Using an older game engine like that has the advantage that it probably starts up relatively quickly on modern computers, so clicking on a link to start the program wouldn't be as slow and frustrating as starting up (say) Crysis, making it *feel* more like it's actually integrated with the web site.
Which is probably fine, since I don't imagine playing Quake in a web browser window would be as much fun as playing it fullscreen, anyway. ~__~
> Unify the country? Why is that considered a good thing? > A significant portion of the American public are in favour of > the Bush administration, the Iraq war and torture. > You aren't going to change their minds.
I know it ain't exactly clear from all his grand speeches, but what Obama means when he talks about 'unifying' the country is really just 'talking some sense into some of those 50% that voted for Bush'. Sure, there's room for disagreement, but the idea is that if those people were more informed, we could at least agree on some very basic things, such as that we shouldn't go off on random wars that leave the whole world (including us) worse off. So, the hope is that we can, after all, change their minds.
If you look beyond his slogans and sound bites and read his book or the opinions on his web site, you'll find that he is the canditate of rationality and common sense. Even if you don't agree with all his policies, you'll see that he has thought them through, admits that it's not always obvious what is right, and goes out of his way to talk to people to make sure that what he is doing is right. People look up to him because he seems to be one of us, and puts what so many of us knew all along into words. His ability to talk straight and listen to people without offending them is what makes him a 'unifier'.
The whole point of Habeas Corpus is that it must be applied to *everyone*.
How do you know they are "illegal combatants on foreign soils who are bombing innocents" if they are not even given a trial?
"They don't deserve a trial because they're terrorists" is a good example of a logical fallacy called "begging the question" (not to be confused with the phrase people around here commonly use to mean something completely different).
Right. Because using up our natural resources as fast and inefficiently as possible while causing catastrophic climate change is a *great* way to improve our quality of life.
I use this method for all my applicatoins, and it works great. I never have to worry about data corruption, it's easy to browse and make sense of the data without having dependencies on particular applications or libraries, it's easy to make backups, and all the stuff fedorowp said.
You might run into trouble if you have tens of thousands of records, but for your 'keeping track of wireless hotspots' project, this is probably the easiest solution in all ways that I can think of.
Aha, I guess this is also why skyboxes work - the image is flat-projected onto a flat surface, which then happens to be distorted to exactly compensate for the previous distortion!
I never really thought about that working on a flat screen though - my frustration is with people that talk as if having a screen that wraps around your head would by itself allow > 180 FOV - I can see now that having a really large, flat monitor *would* allow you to approach 180 degree FOV using flat projection without distortion...provided your head is in the right place.
The fact that you must project onto a flat monitor for the projection to be correct also helps illustrate why it's impossible to show a full 180 degrees or more - the flat monitor, no matter how large it is, will never appear behind you, but only come closer and closer to filling one hemisphere as it gets exponentially larger. Using a fisheye projection on a curved monitor would make much more efficient use of pixels (since it doesn't have to strech to infinity), and would allow arbitrarily large FOVs up to 360 degrees (since it can wrap around to the back of your head).
Slashdot Mirror
or some other vegetable else that grows easily in your neighborhood. As an added bonus you'll be healthier.
We have plenty of resources. What we lack is the ability (or will) to use our resources in ways that aren't completely retarded. Making better food choices and cutting population growth (primarily by providing better education to women in developing countries) will suffice in keeping us fed. The last thing we need is excuses to give more money and power to companies like Monsanto.
Yeah, I seem to remember this exact story (or at least one about burn patients playing 'a snow game', if not this exact one) from several years ago, maybe around 2004.
I thought he was making fun of reporters when they try to talk about computers.
Indeed. "What the hell" summarizes US politics pretty well.
So there's only one party in USA, it seems...
As of next January that will be true, but at the moment we have two parties: The Republicrats and Russ Feingold.
Threw the baby out with the bathwater, we did.
How else would one use a garbage collector?
Hell yes. Someone with points +1 this plz.
This one too, while you're at it :) http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1491360&cid=30573884
I don't know that managing them *together* is all that useful. What I have been doing (and what I think is a more flexible way to manage stuff), is to divide the stuff in your home directory into independent 'projects' (e.g. financial documents, stuff for work, source code of my website, project X, project Y, my photo collection...) and manage each project separately in a way that lends itself well to the kind of file being stored. For a directory of small files that are frequently updated, Git is a great way to go. For synchronizing and backing up large collections of large files (like an MP3 or photo collection) you might try something like ContentCouch (disclaimer: I wrote this tool).
While we're at it, let's stop attacking people's ideas with straw man arguments.
My favorite way to deal with the issue you mentioned with the ambiguity of f (g x, y) was is to base the decision by looking at whitespace. f( g x, y ) is calling f with 2 arguments, while f (g x, y) is calling it with one. This could have something to do with that's how I happen to think about argument lists, anyway, so other people might not agree with that convention. :) Ruby actually treats the 2 expressions the same (both are passing 2 arguments to f), but issues a warning when you use the latter syntax. In Python's case (since f (x, y) is not valid Ruby syntax), f (x, y) could call f with a tuple, while f( x, y ) would call it with 2 arguments.
A simple way to deal with f x, g y, h z would be for the parser to always try to read as much as it can of the current parameter list. So this expression would be parsed as (f x (g y (h z))). You shouldn't write code like that, but I think you can define the rules of the language in a simple way so that at least it is not ambiguous.
All that said, Ruby doesn't handle things quite as I expect.
I forgot to mention that hosting a repository in Freenet actually does have a couple of advantages over having it sit on your (or somewone else's) web server:
Files in freenet are distributed throughout the network, and persist as long as *someone* on the network still has the file.
If you are writing a program that government X doesn't like (for kicks, let's say you're living in China and you're developing a 'democracy simulator'), you can host the program in Freenet anonymously - Freenet is designed to make it extremely difficult for anyone to figure out who inserted a particular file, or even on what computers it is being stored.
Freenet also provides authentication. SSK/USK sites can only be updated by the person who has the insert key. So if you trust the guy that publishes freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySY....nOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/, and you're reasonably sure that nobody else has an insert key, then you can trust that whatever gets put on that Freesite was really put there by him.
> Was I close?
Not so much. Git is a revision control system. The linked-to project is about using BitTorrent to distribute Git repositories. The hype at the end of the summary is unrelated and can be totally ignored. It's not likely that anyone would GitTorrent for distributing movies or non-free software. It'd be possible, but silly.
It's funny that this is at the top of the front page just now. Just a few minutes ago I managed to insert my first Git repository into Freenet (that is, the first Git repo that I have inserted into Freenet, but not my first Git repository). Since git supports cloning and pulling over HTTP, it already supports doing the same thing through FProxy (an HTTP proxy that allows you to browse Freenet's content as if it were regular websites).
What this doesn't allow you to do is *push* changes to other people's repositories. What you'd need to do in this case is have every developer insert their own git repository into freenet, which others could pull from, and then incorporate into their own repositories. So the accusation that really, truly distributed version control would allow other people to mess up your repositories is hogwash. If someone makes crappy changes, you don't pull from them.
In case you'd like to try it, the freesite for my program (it's a Ruby implementation of the Freenet Client Protocol, not terribly interesting by itself) is here: freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySYQvAWac4LoGfnU~tGVm7xvRCgvyjp3c,bKLoSHTgen8TW6gQpemdCeh4SKCTwVM~qnOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/ . To git it, you'd just run
git clone http://localhost:8888/freenet:USK@IdWcgxE2jxySYQvAWac4LoGfnU~tGVm7xvRCgvyjp3c,bKLoSHTgen8TW6gQpemdCeh4SKCTwVM~qnOtKZyFY40,AQACAAE/TOGoSFCP/2/TOGoSFCP.git/
Of course, you need Freenet installed in order to be able to resolve that URL ~_~
First thing mentioned on the 'what's new' page (http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html)is that you'll have to change your code from
print x, y, z,
to
print(x, y, z, end="")
I can see the value of making things more consistent, but it seems to me whenever they update things in Python, it's usually to make programming in it a little bit harder.
Why not make print a function, but then change the language to not require parentheses for any function call? You'd still have to use them when calling a function with zero arguments, and in sub-expressions, but to not require parens for top-level function calls would, if nothing else, make playing around in interactive mode or with short scripts a lot more pleasant.
Granted, I come from a Ruby background, so I may not know what I'm talking about. My experience with Python is trying to write some scripts on my OLPC, where the craptacular rubber keyboard made typing parentheses all the more agonizing. I finally caved and installed Ruby so I could get some work done. Maybe people who prefer Python really like typing parens. And underscores.
I got quite a taste of a few Java frameworks from my last job (Hibernate and Tapestry, to be precise, and given my experience, I'm inclined to agree with the 'hibernatesucks' tag. If you had mentioned Tapestry I would have agreed even more with a 'tapestrysucks' tag, because Tapestry does suck, hardcore. Hibernate I can at least see being semi-useful in some situations).
My view is this: If you're making a simple project, implement it in a simple way. You've got to expect new requirements to come in, so don't go choosing *any* sort of 'framework' right off the bat.
<tangent> Unfortunately you do have to choose a programming language -- I'm not too thrilled with any of the offerings right now. PHP is hosted everywhere, but in 3 different incompatible versions. I use Ruby, but in order to ensure it works on whatever web host, you've got to use it with CGI, so hope your site doesn't get a lot of traffic! If you have a host that lets you run Java servlets and whatnot (despite my old job I'm not especially familiar with how Java applications get hosted), then I'd say Java's a good choice - not my favorite language, but it's fast and stable. </tangent>
Only when your program (/web site) actually needs to do complex things that would take a lot of time to implement (graphics libraries, hardware drivers, complete xml parsers come to mind) should you start bringing in external libraries. And note that I said "libraries", not "frameworks". 'Frameworks', in my view, provide 2 things:
If you can use those libraries that you need without a framework, it's going to be in your best interest not to include the extra frameworky stuff in your project that you don't need (get to the why in a minute). Importing a standard way to structure your code from a widely-used framework can be useful if you're working on a project with several other developers who would otherwise either argue about what made-up in-house standard to use or follow no standards at all, but if you're doing this thing by yourself, you can probably fulfill the needs of your project more simply by doing it yourself.
Even when you're importing functionality that will be controlled by your program (a library), and not the other way around (a framework), I would encourage you to try to implement it yourself, first. You know the specific needs of this project better than the people who wrote any libraries, so you may be in many cases be able to write something vastly simpler that gets the same job done in a way that makes more sense to you (not to mention that many libraries are simply crap, such as the ruby-git wrapper I recently downloaded before writing my own version that bothered to escape arguments to shell commands). If you do this enough times you will find that things you thought were difficult to implement are not so bad, and will wonder why so many people think they need a library.
To summarize, I agree with the guy who said "It's knowing when". Also, for the most part, with Chuck Moore, even though I'm not a Forth programmer ;)
Looks like people are trying to touch the candidate's NAME, which is at the very top of his 'box' on the screen. Of course, since the boxes are so close together and people's fingers are so fat, the machine registered a touch at the bottom of McCain's box, which is just above Obama's. I can see some recent CS graduate designing this thing and just *assuming* that voters would know to touch the center of the box, not to aim for the candidate's name.
So I would say it's not a calibration issue, just bad UI design. That something so important wasn't more thoroughly tested with the target audience doesn't say much for ES&S (the dumb company that made these things).
My biggest reason for switching to Git was that it makes backing up repositories vastly simpler.
In subversion I had to set up a repository with svnsync, and that repository couldn't be used interchangably with the original. And I would constantly have to go in and figure out how to unlock the destination repo. Lots of problems.
With git, I just clone the original repository and do a pull once in a while. And if I want, I can easily switch my clients to use the alternate repository (e.g., if a server goes offline).
I've been using msysgit for months and have had no issues with it. I don't quite understand the argument that 'git is terrible on windows'.
Arguing about aborting is a stupid waste of time.
By my reading of the Wikipedia article it's only 'browser based' in that it is launched by a web browser, but it uses the Quake III Arena engine. I'm guessing you click 'join this game' on a web page and the Quake Live desktop app starts up and takes you directly into that game.
Using an older game engine like that has the advantage that it probably starts up relatively quickly on modern computers, so clicking on a link to start the program wouldn't be as slow and frustrating as starting up (say) Crysis, making it *feel* more like it's actually integrated with the web site.
Which is probably fine, since I don't imagine playing Quake in a web browser window would be as much fun as playing it fullscreen, anyway. ~__~
> Unify the country? Why is that considered a good thing?
> A significant portion of the American public are in favour of
> the Bush administration, the Iraq war and torture.
> You aren't going to change their minds.
I know it ain't exactly clear from all his grand speeches, but what Obama means when he talks about 'unifying' the country is really just 'talking some sense into some of those 50% that voted for Bush'. Sure, there's room for disagreement, but the idea is that if those people were more informed, we could at least agree on some very basic things, such as that we shouldn't go off on random wars that leave the whole world (including us) worse off. So, the hope is that we can, after all, change their minds.
If you look beyond his slogans and sound bites and read his book or the opinions on his web site, you'll find that he is the canditate of rationality and common sense. Even if you don't agree with all his policies, you'll see that he has thought them through, admits that it's not always obvious what is right, and goes out of his way to talk to people to make sure that what he is doing is right. People look up to him because he seems to be one of us, and puts what so many of us knew all along into words. His ability to talk straight and listen to people without offending them is what makes him a 'unifier'.
The whole point of Habeas Corpus is that it must be applied to *everyone*.
How do you know they are "illegal combatants on foreign soils who are bombing innocents" if they are not even given a trial?
"They don't deserve a trial because they're terrorists" is a good example of a logical fallacy called "begging the question" (not to be confused with the phrase people around here commonly use to mean something completely different).
Right. Because using up our natural resources as fast and inefficiently as possible while causing catastrophic climate change is a *great* way to improve our quality of life.
Someone please mod this up.
I use this method for all my applicatoins, and it works great. I never have to worry about data corruption, it's easy to browse and make sense of the data without having dependencies on particular applications or libraries, it's easy to make backups, and all the stuff fedorowp said.
You might run into trouble if you have tens of thousands of records, but for your 'keeping track of wireless hotspots' project, this is probably the easiest solution in all ways that I can think of.
Aha, I guess this is also why skyboxes work - the image is flat-projected onto a flat surface, which then happens to be distorted to exactly compensate for the previous distortion!
I never really thought about that working on a flat screen though - my frustration is with people that talk as if having a screen that wraps around your head would by itself allow > 180 FOV - I can see now that having a really large, flat monitor *would* allow you to approach 180 degree FOV using flat projection without distortion...provided your head is in the right place.
The fact that you must project onto a flat monitor for the projection to be correct also helps illustrate why it's impossible to show a full 180 degrees or more - the flat monitor, no matter how large it is, will never appear behind you, but only come closer and closer to filling one hemisphere as it gets exponentially larger. Using a fisheye projection on a curved monitor would make much more efficient use of pixels (since it doesn't have to strech to infinity), and would allow arbitrarily large FOVs up to 360 degrees (since it can wrap around to the back of your head).
I'm no apt-get whiz, but "apt-get dist-upgrade openssl" seemed to do the trick for me.