As I recall, this was the standard method used in the majority of programming degrees: Learn a crapload of programming languages, and infer (with a couple of hints from the prof) the underlying basic principles. OF course the fru-fru courses (boolean algebra et al.) helped.... I always got the impression that there was some sort of basic underlying gestalt that couldn't be taught. You just had to slog through a bazillion different implementations of decision structures (if/then, case, etc.), loop structures (for, do while, repeat until, etc.) and work your way up to intermediate level stuff (recursion, pointers, etc), and only THEN were you ready for the supposed holy grail, the be-all, end-all of programming, OOP. Nuts to that. Personally, I think it would be an amazing resource to have a book that covers the major ideas, or "philosophy" behind programming, and THEN go after the language that implements this in a manner to your liking...
I agree. The question arises, however: If he patents it now, and peer review necessitates radical modifications of the source code / idea / whatever, does that invalidate the patent?
"No matter what choice they made it would be made for politics"
Wow. Good point. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I guess I just like to think that someone should take a stand against the Chinese military industrial complex......Just as long as it isn't me...:-)
Since posting this comment, I've received a bunch of down mods as "Flaimbait" and "Troll". Whether this is in part due to the trollish tone of the last sentence of my comment, or blind down mods on anything that disses RedHat (whither art thou, freedom of speech?), I don't know or care, but I thought I'd try to clarify that my previous arrogant tone stems from my frustration at seeing a "company" that I believed in, and was a big fan of (RedHat), that I always thought of as champion of the little guy (Open Source), buckling under market pressure from an "evil communist regime" ( ...pisses me off.
Interesting story on Kuro5hin. Apparantly, in order to improve sales in China, RedHat removed the Taiwanese flag from the control panel in a modified distro of KDE. Used to be, you wanted to erase a culture from existence, you invaded and destroyed them. Now you just have to apply political pressure. Yay! More supression of free speech, this time from our favorite crippleware!
"As a global company Red Hat must be sensitive to political differences that impact the markets it serves. One of those markets is Mainland China, where the inclusion of the Taiwanese flag would have prevented the introduction of Red Hat Linux 8.0."
Of course their fscking felons! Bad! Bad! But so what? Due process doesn't take a back seat because "I just know that guy is guilty". Your point about warrants is a good one, however. If the fBI had all the warrants and permissions they needed, then why did the case "prompt a sharp rebuke from Moscow"? Why did they have to lure the suspects here under false pretenses in order to arrest them? Don't get me wrong (mandatory disclaimer, before GreyWolf calls me a terrorist), but shouldn't the FBI have gone through the proper channels, and had the culprits arrested, tried and convicted in Russia?
It would be more accurate to say: It's not illegal to break into any system, do any kind of damage, and arrest using entrapment, as long as you're an agent of U.S. law enforcement, since any judge that doesn't support you 100% can later be labeled a "Communist", uh... "Terrorist" sympathizer...
(*slaps forhead in moment of epiphany *) oohhhhh. NOW I get it... And of course, once you have a guaranteed secret one-time pad, you're pretty much home-free (at least I know THAT much..).
...is basically bribing some company to tell everyone your product is secure. This is fine when it comes to, say game reviews in magazines, or advertising, or whatever, but with something as serious as security issues, shouldn't there be some sort of "conflict-of-interest" legislation in place?
Obviously we can't draw direct parallels betwen traditional and quantum computing, but isn't a single bit a little small to transmit a one-time pad? I mean, unless your message is one-bit long... I guess I still don't get it.
Quantum Crypto in general seems like a good idea, but think about it. The "good guys" know if the "bad guys" have intercepted the message (not just if the message is tampered with, but even if it's observed). So what do the bad guys do? Intercept EVERY message. The good guys no longer know which messages are trustworthy, and which are not. The key here would be the ability to differentiate between "This message was intercepted by the enemy", and "This message was intercepted, decoded and READ by the enemy". This is a level of detection that is (as far as I know) not yet available.
Says the money's going to "public and non-profit groups". This is the problem with Class-action lawsuits. The people affected ("victims") never actually see a penny. I mean WHO's been paying these exhorbitant prices for CDs? You and I. And will we see a single red cent from this lawsuit? No. While I'm not exactly a fan of the (RI|MP)AA, and I'm glad to wallow in my schaedenfreud at their expense, mostly this kind of story just makes me sad:-(.
"Arnold said the shafts and doors could be related to ancient Egyptians' religion. Egyptian texts, Hawass said, speak of the pharaoh's soul encountering a series of doors before reaching the rewards of afterlife."
Then goes on to state:
""Don't expect that I can tell you what's behind the stone" door, Arnold said. "We're all stunned. We have no parallel.""
Isn't "Percent difference" completely irrelevant when comparing DNA? I was under the impression that we shared something like 99% of our DNA with invertebrates, plants, and other unexpected, non-humanoid lifeforms.
Opt in? You mean, "Please, PLEASE sell my personal information to the highest bidder! Please make a profit at my expense, without any possible benefit to me!"
Generally, "Opt-in" services are where you pay someone to provide you a service. "Opt-out" is where you bitch at them to stop charging you, or raping and pillaging you, or whatever. I can't see any possible benefit to an "Opt-in" service of this type, unless you are a masochist.
Hmm... I guess it helps that I'm dating a Greek girl, so we got to laugh at the parts that were true, and even moreso at the parts that were outrageously exaggerated.
Just my quick two cents: I totally agree. MBFGW was a thousand times better than that cereal-pushing, merchandise-spawning, whiny-Canadian-Ptretty-Boy-Starring multi-million dollar fiasco.
Slashdot Mirror
So how do you change the battery, when it's so small you can't see it?
As I recall, this was the standard method used in the majority of programming degrees: Learn a crapload of programming languages, and infer (with a couple of hints from the prof) the underlying basic principles. OF course the fru-fru courses (boolean algebra et al.) helped.... I always got the impression that there was some sort of basic underlying gestalt that couldn't be taught. You just had to slog through a bazillion different implementations of decision structures (if/then, case, etc.), loop structures (for, do while, repeat until, etc.) and work your way up to intermediate level stuff (recursion, pointers, etc), and only THEN were you ready for the supposed holy grail, the be-all, end-all of programming, OOP. Nuts to that. Personally, I think it would be an amazing resource to have a book that covers the major ideas, or "philosophy" behind programming, and THEN go after the language that implements this in a manner to your liking...
I agree. The question arises, however: If he patents it now, and peer review necessitates radical modifications of the source code / idea / whatever, does that invalidate the patent?
"No matter what choice they made it would be made for politics"
...Just as long as it isn't me... :-)
Wow. Good point. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I guess I just like to think that someone should take a stand against the Chinese military industrial complex...
Since posting this comment, I've received a bunch of down mods as "Flaimbait" and "Troll". Whether this is in part due to the trollish tone of the last sentence of my comment, or blind down mods on anything that disses RedHat (whither art thou, freedom of speech?), I don't know or care, but I thought I'd try to clarify that my previous arrogant tone stems from my frustration at seeing a "company" that I believed in, and was a big fan of (RedHat), that I always thought of as champion of the little guy (Open Source), buckling under market pressure from an "evil communist regime" (
...pisses me off.
Of course their fscking felons! Bad! Bad! But so what? Due process doesn't take a back seat because "I just know that guy is guilty". Your point about warrants is a good one, however. If the fBI had all the warrants and permissions they needed, then why did the case "prompt a sharp rebuke from Moscow"? Why did they have to lure the suspects here under false pretenses in order to arrest them? Don't get me wrong (mandatory disclaimer, before GreyWolf calls me a terrorist), but shouldn't the FBI have gone through the proper channels, and had the culprits arrested, tried and convicted in Russia?
Gee, I must be a terrorist...
"A Russian hacker, lured to the United States by the FBI under the ruse of a job interview"
IANAL, so maybe "entrapment" is not the correct legal term. But you have to admit, this isn't fair pool.
It would be more accurate to say: It's not illegal to break into any system, do any kind of damage, and arrest using entrapment, as long as you're an agent of U.S. law enforcement, since any judge that doesn't support you 100% can later be labeled a "Communist", uh... "Terrorist" sympathizer...
(*slaps forhead in moment of epiphany *) oohhhhh. NOW I get it... And of course, once you have a guaranteed secret one-time pad, you're pretty much home-free (at least I know THAT much..).
...is basically bribing some company to tell everyone your product is secure. This is fine when it comes to, say game reviews in magazines, or advertising, or whatever, but with something as serious as security issues, shouldn't there be some sort of "conflict-of-interest" legislation in place?
Obviously we can't draw direct parallels betwen traditional and quantum computing, but isn't a single bit a little small to transmit a one-time pad? I mean, unless your message is one-bit long... I guess I still don't get it.
Quantum Crypto in general seems like a good idea, but think about it. The "good guys" know if the "bad guys" have intercepted the message (not just if the message is tampered with, but even if it's observed). So what do the bad guys do? Intercept EVERY message. The good guys no longer know which messages are trustworthy, and which are not. The key here would be the ability to differentiate between "This message was intercepted by the enemy", and "This message was intercepted, decoded and READ by the enemy". This is a level of detection that is (as far as I know) not yet available.
The same story twice in the same day! This is a first, even for Slashdot.
Says the money's going to "public and non-profit groups". This is the problem with Class-action lawsuits. The people affected ("victims") never actually see a penny. I mean WHO's been paying these exhorbitant prices for CDs? You and I. And will we see a single red cent from this lawsuit? No. While I'm not exactly a fan of the (RI|MP)AA, and I'm glad to wallow in my schaedenfreud at their expense, mostly this kind of story just makes me sad :-(.
Pretty goddamn wordy. There's more disclaimer than story here...
Isn't it obvious? It's HEAVEN!!!
Isn't "Percent difference" completely irrelevant when comparing DNA? I was under the impression that we shared something like 99% of our DNA with invertebrates, plants, and other unexpected, non-humanoid lifeforms.
Opt in? You mean, "Please, PLEASE sell my personal information to the highest bidder! Please make a profit at my expense, without any possible benefit to me!"
Generally, "Opt-in" services are where you pay someone to provide you a service. "Opt-out" is where you bitch at them to stop charging you, or raping and pillaging you, or whatever. I can't see any possible benefit to an "Opt-in" service of this type, unless you are a masochist.
The ultimate Star-Trek plot!
1) Alien (identifiable as such by spots/third nostril/forehead ridges, but otherwise human) on the lamb turns out to be a HUMAN with a NOSE JOB!
Touché
Was that meta? Or meta-meta? I think my brain just exploded...
..some of the people some of the time...
This sounds like an (always inadvisable) attempt to please everybody.
Such attempts invariably fail.
Hmm... I guess it helps that I'm dating a Greek girl, so we got to laugh at the parts that were true, and even moreso at the parts that were outrageously exaggerated.
:-)
Maybe it's a niche audience
Just my quick two cents: I totally agree. MBFGW was a thousand times better than that cereal-pushing, merchandise-spawning, whiny-Canadian-Ptretty-Boy-Starring multi-million dollar fiasco.
That said, I'm still going to see Episode 3
I mean, come on. It's STAR WARS, people!