The poster was being funny, but the idea is interesting. Distribute some of your processing load to unused cycles on user's systems. Not all MMORPGs require all the horsepower a system can provide. It might be a neat feat and it would mean that in some cases, adding users might be a significantly lower drain. This might help with a few of the problems of scalability for MMORPGs. Imagine that you could also earn account hours or credits in game for leaving your PC hooked up when you aren't there if you have a good BW connection so the server can offload some processing onto your machine. Probably a lot of issues involved, but it might offer some interesting lines of investigation.
Maybe someone should patent it? I'm sure the USPO would grant one.
Look at all the features to sell it:
Low startup cost (if you have users, they have the equipment)
Great bandwidth for graphics and info
Realistic interactions with NPCs
Many professions to follow
Realistic Physics Model
Low Lag
On the other hand, advancement is sometimes difficult, your account can suddenly run out without warning, PKing is turned on, and you can't restart if your character sucks.
That's nice that you'll raise your own windows, and I heartily concur you should not have the UI force you into a behaviour you don't want. Similarly, the other poster should probably have his/her prefered method of window navigation also supported. That's the whole point about choice and configurability isn't it?
Unless of course you'd like to install the interface suggested in Dilbert that "hurts the users".....me, I think I like choice.
As an example of anti-choice: In Win2K, I can launch a command prompt from StartBar|Run. So, I start this window... what are the odds I want to do something with it? Pretty good. What does the UI not seem to do? Apply focus to the newly spawned window. Kind of annoying... and then some. But I haven't found a way around this behaviour yet. This illustrates my thought that users are much happier if you give them choice....
In fairness, we avoid Swing and AWT and our UI is done via the openGL rendering (I think, I'm the networking dude, so that's all black box deep magic to me most days). I'm not saying Java has the fastest startup of any application environment. But core server stuff (not standard UI manipulation) is pretty quick.
As to the compilation of byte code to native code, we've use Excelsior's JET Compiler and GCJ. CGJ actually seemed to produce a far tighter (read smaller footprint) executable. The JET Compiler seems to build in its own slimmed down JVM and that seems to give it some bloat. But both produce fast results compared to JARs. And most importantly, obfuscators lose to the various reverse engineering tools so going to an EXE helps gaurd intellectual property (a big concern in some markets like ours).
Glock27 (in addition to a catchy sig) has it right. Java is quite fast. It can be made faster by diligent design practice. Sloppy design can result in wasteful object creation/garbage collection and some of the built in class libraries have bad habits (a few i/o streams come to mind) in this regard also.
Having said that, my company is doing immersive 3D networked technology (which can include FPS games) in Java (with some OpenGL or DX) and we're capable of getting really respectable frame rates even with very busy systems. Part of it is because we allocate once where possible and recycle, rather than continually create and destroy objects. And we avoid some of the utility classes. And we THINK while designing to minimize things like thread counts, class counts, etc. to give quick loading of the app and good performance even on crappy hardware.
Good Java code is as fast as good C++. Good C might be a bit faster, but most C is mediocre and Java can compete with that. Slow Java code is a result of poorly educated programmers and designers doing unwise things (most of which are utterly avoidable).
Plus a few hundred thousand who are there in spirit.
Or perhaps you meant "in spirits"?
It'll be a sad day when some greenie activists get around to declaring the traditional methods of producing a nice peaty single malt to be environmentally unsuitable and go about forcing a change. Some things just weren't meant to be good for us, just good.
I don't like adds. On TV, I generally channel surf to another show, which is kind of annoying in the middle of a movie. I don't buy stuff from ads. Intentionally. At worst, I mute them, but they annoy me.
When, exactly, did it start making sense to annoy your consumers? Some jackarse stuck a Harvey's flyer under my windshield wiper... who told him he could touch my car? If his belt button had scratched the side, I'd have been some p*ssed off. And I made a conscious decision, after having him touch my car without my permission and force me to choose between litter or going looking for a place to dispose of the flyer in an environmentally sound manner, that I would never patronize Harvey's burger-chain again. I've stuck to that. Over my lifespan, given my horrendous eating habits, that'll probably cost them a fair amount of cash.
At what point does making the buying public actively dislike you seem to be a good strategy? I've never bought anything from a pop-up add on the Internet. How does this make sense to those purchasing advertising? Are they clueless or is the vast bulk of humanity clueless enough to buy these products foisted on them so odiously?
And why won't these services, failing all other signs of civilized behaviour, charge me $5 or 10 extra a month and let me subscribe to a "commercial free" service? I'm _sure_ a lot of us would pay the premium, and all added together that might compensate for some of the lost add revenues. And it might make their services attractive to people like me who aren't about to buy into a new service if it doesn't offer significant advantages (like commercial deletion) over existing ones. A few more pixels is NOT a sufficient forward step. Content control (and that includes removing annoying ads - ie all of them) might be.
The problem in the escort is that the air coming out of the vent is dehumidified, but the air on the outside of the window and inside the car is not. The cold air rushes up, and moisture immediately condenses on both the inside and outside of the car window resulting in a vision blockage. So you go from having a bit of mist/fog on the windshield to having some ice. Also, the fact that the heat takes a while to come into the air stream doesn't help much as the air spitting out is very cold.
Besides, since when did car users become too dumb to decide if they wanted the AC on or not?
Interestingly, in my Escort, the air conditioning tends to cause the window to freeze up instead of having the salutory effect of taking the moisture out of the air it is blowing up on the windshield. That particular feature seems to be a bit of a pox on a lot of damp cool Canadian fall days. Oh, and since they've thoughtfully wired your A/C to any setting that puts air out over the windshield, you're pretty much screwed unless you pull the A/C fuse. Nice design, that.
Must have glitched some HTML (... yes I should have previewed). The idiot I refer to is not Katz but the movie reviewer who said Spider Man raises the bar.
Campbell may in fact have failed to explain every aspect of every culture, but I don't suppose he ever tried to. Yes, there are some differences between cultures, values, and probably some of the origination of the stories. But at the end of the day, we're all human and have some of the same drives, weaknesses, foibles, and idiosyncracies which is pretty much a lot of what myth uses as a core element. I think you don't give Campbell enough credit.
I am pretty sure I recall hearing that Lucas had studied Campbell and also that Campbell had actually visited him at some point. I don't think it is such a big leap to see Mythic themes in the Star Wars trilogy. It's a loaded with black/white, yin/yang symbolism as you could want, but also then delves nicely into (as someone else said) the fact everyone carries within them the roots of evil and the harder choice is not always the better. And since all great art has been done before, undoubtedly one can draw easy Mythic parallels - even if he ripped off pulp sci-fi, some of it ripped off prior tales, etc. etc. back to the Mythic roots.
I don't think George Lucas is God's Gift to Cinema (witness Ep1). However, I think there is some depth to his work.
And he's an idiot. Spider-Man raised the bar? What utter tripe. I didn't hate the movie, but it did have a certain obviousness, a clunky awkwardness of the actors and their characters, and a very clearly predictable (to the point foreshadowing wasn't even required... you could predict that too...) plot. It was okay escapist entertainment, but it was hardly the reinvention of the Mythic Tale.
Even X-men which was also escapist fantasy had more of a story to tell, the characters had a bit more emotional depth and the actors did a better job of bringing the roles to life. Of the two, it was clearly the better movie. The Villain in it was twisted, but there was at a strong element of sympathy there - even the heroes had to consider the agenda he was espousing in order to reject it.
And if you want the reinvention of the myth, I think Unbreakable was the best telling of a rethought pulp comic/mythic tale I've seen in a long time (let's ignore LOTR for this discussion, it also was good). It brought to life the American superhero character with all the mythic overtones in a way that was both sophisticated and absorbing. Of course, much of that would be lost on the Spider Man fans, and maybe on Katz too, but since when is having a bit of substance or depth a bad thing? Since when is it raising the bar to produce the entertainment equivalent of pablum?
Anyone who thinks Spider Man raises the bar for mythic stories even on the Hollywood Big Screen seriously needs to get out more.
Interestingly, my company just had some dialog with a high technical muckety muck involved in X-box development. Interestingly, they demand (and I assume it is backed up in the licensing) that everyone use THEIR billing system for X-box stuff. No alternatives. Also, they don't seem to interested in supporting other technologies (unsurprisingly) - not supporting even the old Java VM most MS products support, no C# crosscompiler from Java, etc. Yet again, they go out of their way to plant their boot on everyone's neck.
Just imagine, even assuming the X-box has laggy sales (it does have some cool games), the fiscal impact of getting a cut on every e-commerce transaction systems like this may eventually handle. ARGH! And MS already has more money than God....
Interstingly, the real danger path for alternating current for a human is through the heart. This is one reason some folks working on custom video boards and monitors and such do so with one hand tucked in the back of the belt. That way a worst case path is through the hand, through the body, through the leg, to ground. Not good, but better than one hand to the other by way of the chest.
I recall being taught that the most lethal currents are alternating, in the 100-200 mA range. (Now, obviously an UberCurrent is gonna blow chunks out of you...). Also, for AC, the most dangerous frequency is supposed to be around the same frequency the heart beats. Standard 120 Vac will setup a wonderful fibrilation. For some reason I recall power mowers being dangerous as they'll lock your hands to them if you somehow cut into the cord in such a way as to cause a problem.
Electricity is neat... and most varieties (ie car batteries, etc) are pretty harmless. But some things (like a main from the street or high voltage) you don't screw with. At least not twice...
Interestingly, some people have very high resistance. I've met electricians who could lick a finger, slap a hot 120 line and not get much of a jolt out of it (due I presume to some natural character, enhanced by calluses/etc). And I've met people who could just get a bit of a tingle out of a spark plug. I suspect they'd go very slowly in this game. Wouldn't the kinda folks who get fairly nervous and sweat electolytes (hence enhanced conductivity) be the best at this?
Re:Not so good ideas...
on
Agile Modeling
·
· Score: 3, Informative
No. But a lot of times refactoring is slightly more complex than something that can be done in a couple of hours. Especially if you enjoy the "joy" of having inherited part of a large multi-platform project with multiple applications that have to interop. Assuming the whole thing has been assembled, many times perhaps to satisfy requirements for rapid demonstrations, etc. in order to acquire sales leads, etc, then refactoring becomes a large task in and of itself.
Of course, in a perfect world, this would never happen. If you happen to live in one, let me know where and I'll emmigrate.
The definition of bite you in the ass later is: Costs you more to fix later than it would have to do right in the first place.
This hinges on several factors:
1) That, by the time you later refactor, your own knowledge of the situation/requirements/code/etc hasn't improved drastically
2) or that by the time you refactor, some change hasn't altered your requirements radically thus making your refactor actually a redesign (so if you'd refactored before, perhaps you wasted your time and money)
3) or that a dollar today and a dollar six months down the road are equal - which isn't true in many cases... a dollar now may be something scarce and so refactoring time is VERY expensive, and later that same dollar (or even two given it will be harder to refactor) may be less problematic and more affordable
I distinctly recall drawing the distinction that it depends on situation. In some cases, it makes sense to refactor always. In some cases (especially where you inherit a large, convoluted code base but have to start working on features without uptake time), refactoring immediately is a dumb idea. In an emerging market, refactoring immediately may well be wasting your time as that entire feature set or product direction may be entirely abandoned.
So, although I support refactoring, I think the real world shows us places where it takes on a semblance of creeping elegance. I myself do it fairly regularly (mostly to make things easier for me and those following to understand), but I've seen the time hit this can incur trying to unravel a messy class heirarchy and I've seen the severing of whole feature sets as marketing/sales scramble for market position. That's why the real world isn't like the inside of any textbook.
you've got some good ideas, but let me point out that refactoring time is often lost to time pressure. Many times, code that is "okay" or "not so great" is sufficient (depends on environment, mind you - an Internet startup looking to get a product out versus a contract software house doing MilSpec stuff) and it is more important to get on to other things than it is to optimize and clean up. Of course, in the end, it bites you on the ass and then you have to do more painful refactoring.... but if you did it up front, you might not get to the later as your company runs out of VC....
I've also worked on complex enough systems that in order to get working even _basically_ you had to do a lot of work. Sometimes (and with some problems) there IS no convenient way to parcel it into smaller pieces and so you just have to bite the bullet, spend the time, and write the code that needs written to give you the smallest useful chunk. That can still be a fair size.
Examples I've run across that come to mind are some network related things that just don't do _anything_ till you get them right and that requires a certain minimum infrastructure.
Also, in some situations, the required effort to test jig a piece of code or to subdivide the task effectively doubles the amount of work required (or more) and thus isn't economically viable. For certain applications, the key tests are integration test results, NOT unit tests. Yes, you do leave yourself open to getting bit in the ass later... but it work a fair percentage of the time.
But, having raised those "real world" comments, I think the discipline proposed is an awesome idea!
Now really, how would any of this classify you ask? It is accessible to students (at least I recall accessing a fair amount of it), it changed the way people think (at least about beer, and your eyes are opened to the wonderous presence of physics in everyday life), and if all else fails, you can usually drink your experimental supplies, which would be a damn risky proposition in many other experimental situations....
I can create a hyperlink to something without knowing more about it than where it is. No copy is made.
And on the Google front, haven't people in fact went after them?
Here's an odd thought: Deny permission for anyone to download an image (thus making a copy in memory of their computer) then post it on the web somewhere. Everyone who views it is in violation of your copyright. Then just try to collect....
I submit that in the post-war period, where soldiers and yeoman militias essentially had the same weaponry, this amendment would create the intended deterrent to government action.
However, in the modern age, we've come to realize information has as much (nay, more) power than guns. So control of the media, something the government has a hand in, of the intelligence agencies, of the police, etc. all translates to the government being able to do what it thinks is appropriate regardless of the presence of arms in the citizenry.
Additionally, I submit that the arms that can be borne by the citizenry (which does not, for the most part, include tanks, laser guided smart bombs and stealth fighters, etc) would fare very poorly (as would the citizenry) in a general revolt in which they were opposed by the military. Revolution isn't the simple matter it once was, nor is it perhaps even relevant in the same manner anymore.
On the other hand, the epidemic violent crime in America may be far more directly relevant.
Of course, that's just me criticising. The ultimate defence for the ownership of some (I do not believe I need to own a recoilless rifle for example) firearms seems to me to be the lack of need to abrogate that right. If I'm a gun enthusiast who takes all requisite precautions, there really isn't any reason the government needs to legislate away my ownership (at least for safety reasons). My own competence and diligence will keep my weapons safely out of the hands of miscreants.
This is very hopeful! Be your own best friend.... lose some weight via liposuction (get healthier, if the surgery doesn't kill you) and at the same time create a pool of stem cells that can be used to help regenerate yourself and other people (potentially, if everything works out). Now, I'm assuming your own stem cells are most likely more compatible with your own body chemistry, so they'd be the most use in healing you.
Gee, I hope this pans out....:) Thin and healthy in one (slightly complex) step....
Some of us who consider ourselves right of center on many matters (fiscal matters, matters of law and authority, individual freedoms) may not be part of the "right-to-life" crowd. Please let us try to keep that in mind! I acknowledge the right of the "right-to-life" crowd to characterize an embryo as a "human being" and thus decide that any work on embryos (or destruction of same) isn't acceptable to them, but that doesn't mean that everyone on the "right" of the political spectrum agrees!
I agree that it would be a good thing (because of the stand some people have on embryonic work) to have an alternative. I too hope this pans out.
Slashdot Mirror
The poster was being funny, but the idea is interesting. Distribute some of your processing load to unused cycles on user's systems. Not all MMORPGs require all the horsepower a system can provide. It might be a neat feat and it would mean that in some cases, adding users might be a significantly lower drain. This might help with a few of the problems of scalability for MMORPGs. Imagine that you could also earn account hours or credits in game for leaving your PC hooked up when you aren't there if you have a good BW connection so the server can offload some processing onto your machine. Probably a lot of issues involved, but it might offer some interesting lines of investigation.
Maybe someone should patent it? I'm sure the USPO would grant one.
Look at all the features to sell it:
Low startup cost (if you have users, they have the equipment)
Great bandwidth for graphics and info
Realistic interactions with NPCs
Many professions to follow
Realistic Physics Model
Low Lag
On the other hand, advancement is sometimes difficult, your account can suddenly run out without warning, PKing is turned on, and you can't restart if your character sucks.
That's nice that you'll raise your own windows, and I heartily concur you should not have the UI force you into a behaviour you don't want. Similarly, the other poster should probably have his/her prefered method of window navigation also supported. That's the whole point about choice and configurability isn't it?
Unless of course you'd like to install the interface suggested in Dilbert that "hurts the users".....me, I think I like choice.
As an example of anti-choice: In Win2K, I can launch a command prompt from StartBar|Run. So, I start this window... what are the odds I want to do something with it? Pretty good. What does the UI not seem to do? Apply focus to the newly spawned window. Kind of annoying... and then some. But I haven't found a way around this behaviour yet. This illustrates my thought that users are much happier if you give them choice....
In fairness, we avoid Swing and AWT and our UI is done via the openGL rendering (I think, I'm the networking dude, so that's all black box deep magic to me most days). I'm not saying Java has the fastest startup of any application environment. But core server stuff (not standard UI manipulation) is pretty quick.
As to the compilation of byte code to native code, we've use Excelsior's JET Compiler and GCJ. CGJ actually seemed to produce a far tighter (read smaller footprint) executable. The JET Compiler seems to build in its own slimmed down JVM and that seems to give it some bloat. But both produce fast results compared to JARs. And most importantly, obfuscators lose to the various reverse engineering tools so going to an EXE helps gaurd intellectual property (a big concern in some markets like ours).
Glock27 (in addition to a catchy sig) has it right. Java is quite fast. It can be made faster by diligent design practice. Sloppy design can result in wasteful object creation/garbage collection and some of the built in class libraries have bad habits (a few i/o streams come to mind) in this regard also.
Having said that, my company is doing immersive 3D networked technology (which can include FPS games) in Java (with some OpenGL or DX) and we're capable of getting really respectable frame rates even with very busy systems. Part of it is because we allocate once where possible and recycle, rather than continually create and destroy objects. And we avoid some of the utility classes. And we THINK while designing to minimize things like thread counts, class counts, etc. to give quick loading of the app and good performance even on crappy hardware.
Good Java code is as fast as good C++. Good C might be a bit faster, but most C is mediocre and Java can compete with that. Slow Java code is a result of poorly educated programmers and designers doing unwise things (most of which are utterly avoidable).
Plus a few hundred thousand who are there in spirit.
Or perhaps you meant "in spirits"?
It'll be a sad day when some greenie activists get around to declaring the traditional methods of producing a nice peaty single malt to be environmentally unsuitable and go about forcing a change. Some things just weren't meant to be good for us, just good.
I don't like adds. On TV, I generally channel surf to another show, which is kind of annoying in the middle of a movie. I don't buy stuff from ads. Intentionally. At worst, I mute them, but they annoy me.
When, exactly, did it start making sense to annoy your consumers? Some jackarse stuck a Harvey's flyer under my windshield wiper... who told him he could touch my car? If his belt button had scratched the side, I'd have been some p*ssed off. And I made a conscious decision, after having him touch my car without my permission and force me to choose between litter or going looking for a place to dispose of the flyer in an environmentally sound manner, that I would never patronize Harvey's burger-chain again. I've stuck to that. Over my lifespan, given my horrendous eating habits, that'll probably cost them a fair amount of cash.
At what point does making the buying public actively dislike you seem to be a good strategy? I've never bought anything from a pop-up add on the Internet. How does this make sense to those purchasing advertising? Are they clueless or is the vast bulk of humanity clueless enough to buy these products foisted on them so odiously?
And why won't these services, failing all other signs of civilized behaviour, charge me $5 or 10 extra a month and let me subscribe to a "commercial free" service? I'm _sure_ a lot of us would pay the premium, and all added together that might compensate for some of the lost add revenues. And it might make their services attractive to people like me who aren't about to buy into a new service if it doesn't offer significant advantages (like commercial deletion) over existing ones. A few more pixels is NOT a sufficient forward step. Content control (and that includes removing annoying ads - ie all of them) might be.
But that might just be to revolutionary....
The problem in the escort is that the air coming out of the vent is dehumidified, but the air on the outside of the window and inside the car is not. The cold air rushes up, and moisture immediately condenses on both the inside and outside of the car window resulting in a vision blockage. So you go from having a bit of mist/fog on the windshield to having some ice. Also, the fact that the heat takes a while to come into the air stream doesn't help much as the air spitting out is very cold.
Besides, since when did car users become too dumb to decide if they wanted the AC on or not?
Sure, Germans know how to build cars (and tanks and just about anything an engineer can lay hands to). But what's with that flower on all the Beetles?
Interestingly, in my Escort, the air conditioning tends to cause the window to freeze up instead of having the salutory effect of taking the moisture out of the air it is blowing up on the windshield. That particular feature seems to be a bit of a pox on a lot of damp cool Canadian fall days. Oh, and since they've thoughtfully wired your A/C to any setting that puts air out over the windshield, you're pretty much screwed unless you pull the A/C fuse. Nice design, that.
Must have glitched some HTML (... yes I should have previewed). The idiot I refer to is not Katz but the movie reviewer who said Spider Man raises the bar.
Campbell may in fact have failed to explain every aspect of every culture, but I don't suppose he ever tried to. Yes, there are some differences between cultures, values, and probably some of the origination of the stories. But at the end of the day, we're all human and have some of the same drives, weaknesses, foibles, and idiosyncracies which is pretty much a lot of what myth uses as a core element. I think you don't give Campbell enough credit.
I am pretty sure I recall hearing that Lucas had studied Campbell and also that Campbell had actually visited him at some point. I don't think it is such a big leap to see Mythic themes in the Star Wars trilogy. It's a loaded with black/white, yin/yang symbolism as you could want, but also then delves nicely into (as someone else said) the fact everyone carries within them the roots of evil and the harder choice is not always the better. And since all great art has been done before, undoubtedly one can draw easy Mythic parallels - even if he ripped off pulp sci-fi, some of it ripped off prior tales, etc. etc. back to the Mythic roots.
I don't think George Lucas is God's Gift to Cinema (witness Ep1). However, I think there is some depth to his work.
And he's an idiot. Spider-Man raised the bar? What utter tripe. I didn't hate the movie, but it did have a certain obviousness, a clunky awkwardness of the actors and their characters, and a very clearly predictable (to the point foreshadowing wasn't even required... you could predict that too...) plot. It was okay escapist entertainment, but it was hardly the reinvention of the Mythic Tale.
Even X-men which was also escapist fantasy had more of a story to tell, the characters had a bit more emotional depth and the actors did a better job of bringing the roles to life. Of the two, it was clearly the better movie. The Villain in it was twisted, but there was at a strong element of sympathy there - even the heroes had to consider the agenda he was espousing in order to reject it.
And if you want the reinvention of the myth, I think Unbreakable was the best telling of a rethought pulp comic/mythic tale I've seen in a long time (let's ignore LOTR for this discussion, it also was good). It brought to life the American superhero character with all the mythic overtones in a way that was both sophisticated and absorbing. Of course, much of that would be lost on the Spider Man fans, and maybe on Katz too, but since when is having a bit of substance or depth a bad thing? Since when is it raising the bar to produce the entertainment equivalent of pablum?
Anyone who thinks Spider Man raises the bar for mythic stories even on the Hollywood Big Screen seriously needs to get out more.
Interestingly, my company just had some dialog with a high technical muckety muck involved in X-box development. Interestingly, they demand (and I assume it is backed up in the licensing) that everyone use THEIR billing system for X-box stuff. No alternatives. Also, they don't seem to interested in supporting other technologies (unsurprisingly) - not supporting even the old Java VM most MS products support, no C# crosscompiler from Java, etc. Yet again, they go out of their way to plant their boot on everyone's neck.
Just imagine, even assuming the X-box has laggy sales (it does have some cool games), the fiscal impact of getting a cut on every e-commerce transaction systems like this may eventually handle. ARGH! And MS already has more money than God....
Interstingly, the real danger path for alternating current for a human is through the heart. This is one reason some folks working on custom video boards and monitors and such do so with one hand tucked in the back of the belt. That way a worst case path is through the hand, through the body, through the leg, to ground. Not good, but better than one hand to the other by way of the chest.
I recall being taught that the most lethal currents are alternating, in the 100-200 mA range. (Now, obviously an UberCurrent is gonna blow chunks out of you...). Also, for AC, the most dangerous frequency is supposed to be around the same frequency the heart beats. Standard 120 Vac will setup a wonderful fibrilation. For some reason I recall power mowers being dangerous as they'll lock your hands to them if you somehow cut into the cord in such a way as to cause a problem.
Electricity is neat... and most varieties (ie car batteries, etc) are pretty harmless. But some things (like a main from the street or high voltage) you don't screw with. At least not twice...
Interestingly, some people have very high resistance. I've met electricians who could lick a finger, slap a hot 120 line and not get much of a jolt out of it (due I presume to some natural character, enhanced by calluses/etc). And I've met people who could just get a bit of a tingle out of a spark plug. I suspect they'd go very slowly in this game. Wouldn't the kinda folks who get fairly nervous and sweat electolytes (hence enhanced conductivity) be the best at this?
No. But a lot of times refactoring is slightly more complex than something that can be done in a couple of hours. Especially if you enjoy the "joy" of having inherited part of a large multi-platform project with multiple applications that have to interop. Assuming the whole thing has been assembled, many times perhaps to satisfy requirements for rapid demonstrations, etc. in order to acquire sales leads, etc, then refactoring becomes a large task in and of itself.
Of course, in a perfect world, this would never happen. If you happen to live in one, let me know where and I'll emmigrate.
The definition of bite you in the ass later is: Costs you more to fix later than it would have to do right in the first place.
This hinges on several factors:
1) That, by the time you later refactor, your own knowledge of the situation/requirements/code/etc hasn't improved drastically
2) or that by the time you refactor, some change hasn't altered your requirements radically thus making your refactor actually a redesign (so if you'd refactored before, perhaps you wasted your time and money)
3) or that a dollar today and a dollar six months down the road are equal - which isn't true in many cases... a dollar now may be something scarce and so refactoring time is VERY expensive, and later that same dollar (or even two given it will be harder to refactor) may be less problematic and more affordable
I distinctly recall drawing the distinction that it depends on situation. In some cases, it makes sense to refactor always. In some cases (especially where you inherit a large, convoluted code base but have to start working on features without uptake time), refactoring immediately is a dumb idea. In an emerging market, refactoring immediately may well be wasting your time as that entire feature set or product direction may be entirely abandoned.
So, although I support refactoring, I think the real world shows us places where it takes on a semblance of creeping elegance. I myself do it fairly regularly (mostly to make things easier for me and those following to understand), but I've seen the time hit this can incur trying to unravel a messy class heirarchy and I've seen the severing of whole feature sets as marketing/sales scramble for market position. That's why the real world isn't like the inside of any textbook.
you've got some good ideas, but let me point out that refactoring time is often lost to time pressure. Many times, code that is "okay" or "not so great" is sufficient (depends on environment, mind you - an Internet startup looking to get a product out versus a contract software house doing MilSpec stuff) and it is more important to get on to other things than it is to optimize and clean up. Of course, in the end, it bites you on the ass and then you have to do more painful refactoring.... but if you did it up front, you might not get to the later as your company runs out of VC....
I've also worked on complex enough systems that in order to get working even _basically_ you had to do a lot of work. Sometimes (and with some problems) there IS no convenient way to parcel it into smaller pieces and so you just have to bite the bullet, spend the time, and write the code that needs written to give you the smallest useful chunk. That can still be a fair size.
Examples I've run across that come to mind are some network related things that just don't do _anything_ till you get them right and that requires a certain minimum infrastructure.
Also, in some situations, the required effort to test jig a piece of code or to subdivide the task effectively doubles the amount of work required (or more) and thus isn't economically viable. For certain applications, the key tests are integration test results, NOT unit tests. Yes, you do leave yourself open to getting bit in the ass later... but it work a fair percentage of the time.
But, having raised those "real world" comments, I think the discipline proposed is an awesome idea!
From the Tap Room.
From Scientific American.
And one from Science News.
Now really, how would any of this classify you ask? It is accessible to students (at least I recall accessing a fair amount of it), it changed the way people think (at least about beer, and your eyes are opened to the wonderous presence of physics in everyday life), and if all else fails, you can usually drink your experimental supplies, which would be a damn risky proposition in many other experimental situations....
I can create a hyperlink to something without knowing more about it than where it is. No copy is made.
And on the Google front, haven't people in fact went after them?
Here's an odd thought: Deny permission for anyone to download an image (thus making a copy in memory of their computer) then post it on the web somewhere. Everyone who views it is in violation of your copyright. Then just try to collect....
I submit that in the post-war period, where soldiers and yeoman militias essentially had the same weaponry, this amendment would create the intended deterrent to government action.
However, in the modern age, we've come to realize information has as much (nay, more) power than guns. So control of the media, something the government has a hand in, of the intelligence agencies, of the police, etc. all translates to the government being able to do what it thinks is appropriate regardless of the presence of arms in the citizenry.
Additionally, I submit that the arms that can be borne by the citizenry (which does not, for the most part, include tanks, laser guided smart bombs and stealth fighters, etc) would fare very poorly (as would the citizenry) in a general revolt in which they were opposed by the military. Revolution isn't the simple matter it once was, nor is it perhaps even relevant in the same manner anymore.
On the other hand, the epidemic violent crime in America may be far more directly relevant.
Of course, that's just me criticising. The ultimate defence for the ownership of some (I do not believe I need to own a recoilless rifle for example) firearms seems to me to be the lack of need to abrogate that right. If I'm a gun enthusiast who takes all requisite precautions, there really isn't any reason the government needs to legislate away my ownership (at least for safety reasons). My own competence and diligence will keep my weapons safely out of the hands of miscreants.
This is very hopeful! Be your own best friend.... lose some weight via liposuction (get healthier, if the surgery doesn't kill you) and at the same time create a pool of stem cells that can be used to help regenerate yourself and other people (potentially, if everything works out). Now, I'm assuming your own stem cells are most likely more compatible with your own body chemistry, so they'd be the most use in healing you.
:) Thin and healthy in one (slightly complex) step....
Gee, I hope this pans out....
Some of us who consider ourselves right of center on many matters (fiscal matters, matters of law and authority, individual freedoms) may not be part of the "right-to-life" crowd. Please let us try to keep that in mind! I acknowledge the right of the "right-to-life" crowd to characterize an embryo as a "human being" and thus decide that any work on embryos (or destruction of same) isn't acceptable to them, but that doesn't mean that everyone on the "right" of the political spectrum agrees!
I agree that it would be a good thing (because of the stand some people have on embryonic work) to have an alternative. I too hope this pans out.
That's like outlawing guns because someone might get shot!
Isn't that what they've been doing gradually for the past few years now?