Ah yes, because it is so very important to have multiple dash-like punctuation marks of slightly varying lengths, with arbitrarily prescribed uses. Or in some cases the same length, but still technically different glyphs.
I love pointless pedantry as much as anyone, but this whole "a minus is not a hyphen" thing is purely an exercise in masturbation.
The European Union is a free trade agreement between supposedly sovereign nations in the process of surreptitiously morphing into a federal republic in the hope that nobody will notice.
Who said anything about the EU? The OP was talking about Europe the continent, which the UK is most definitely a part of.
You know, kinda like Canada is in North America without being part of the US.
What does this resemble more - "letting them know" or "forcing them to advertise/sell"?
I would certainly say that this falls under "letting them know" that this is the sort of thing that will cause some people to stop doing business with Amazon.
It seems like you are saying that while Amazon has the choice to carry whatever they want, their customers shouldn't have the choice to not buy from them? That'd be kinda weird.
It may be that they will eventually limit themselves to politically correct generic choices that offend no one - but again it's up to them to decide.
And it's up to their customers to let them know when they make bullshit decisions - what's your point? It's not like anyone is suggesting that they be forced to advertise or sell books they don't want to.
Plants grow very well in the Moon, just gotta have your whole Line Family pitch in with drilling the planting corridors and whatnot. Oh, and bartering for ice can be pretty difficult.
The OP may have phrased it poorly, but that's the first thing I though too: these results may just as well indicate that those who are more afraid of death are more likely to be "pious" (as defined in the study, at least).
There are a few "retired" battleships that are basically floating museums now that fit that criteria.
Ooh, yeah! And their outdated tech will allow them to survive the electronic attack that obliterates the rest of the fleet; they will wander the oceans for four years looking for the mythical "Great Britain", and then the last couple of episodes will be really boring.
I think what the parent meant was giving the developers lower spec. machines so that their
TESTING would perform slower, and they would then be more mindful of resource constraints
when developing.
I know what the parent meant, I was just saying that it's a little odd for people who know nothing about a subject to proclaim this sort of smug generalizations.
I think you also forgot another reason for bad software:-
c) Bad Design
I was incorporating that under "incompetent programmers", perhaps I should've said "incompetent developers".
The point was that if performance is a concern, you need to set specific goals and test for them, not cripple the development environment.
Odd as it may seem, efficient implementations are often more complex than naive (slow) ones, which means more subtle code, which means more build-test cycles, which your programmers are less likely to have time for since you've adopted this whole "humility at the expense of productivity" approach.
If this person had been forced to use old garbage computers to develop on I think they might gotten something that would have performed better on normal machines.
I don't see how. That person made design decisions by fiat, without consideration of performance issues, and ended up with something that performs badly - doesn't seem like he cared about performance to begin with.
Besides, as wasteful as all that XML serialization is, it's still dwarfed by the multiple network trips - the client hardware probably wouldn't make much difference either way.
Well, at least for a sufficiently broad definition of "watchable". I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person who didn't read the books at 13, who wasn't bored to tears by the movies.
That way it'll encourage them to write efficient implementations.
That's just stupid - I'm going to write better code because my compiles take longer?
There seem to be a lot of these posts on Slashdot with down-home folk wisdom on how to educate the smug and indifferent programmer, who is so clearly divorced from reality that he doesn't even know what computers his customers use. I get the sneaking suspicion that the authors know very little about actual programming.
There are two reasons for bad software:
a) incompetent programmers
b) bad project management
The latter includes things like unrealistic timelines and ill defined scope and requirements. I'm not sure which one is the bigger culprit, but both are pervasive.
In neither case, though, are you going to fix the problem with gimmicky bullshit like inadequate equipment.
They are useful for rallying and coordinating activities.
Slight correction: they are useful for making people feel like they are rallying and coordinating activities. They provide a nice outlet for people's urge to "stick it to the man" (usually by complaining), without actually accomplishing anything - everybody wins!
If one gathers data from many sources, in order to justify to the US FDA some claim about a drug: how can one certify that those data are accurate?
No, you gather data from many source to formulate the hypothesis that allows you to make that claim - to justify the claim to the FDA you do clinical trials as per usual.
Slashdot Mirror
that a hyphen is not the same thing as an en-dash
Ah yes, because it is so very important to have multiple dash-like punctuation marks of slightly varying lengths, with arbitrarily prescribed uses. Or in some cases the same length, but still technically different glyphs.
I love pointless pedantry as much as anyone, but this whole "a minus is not a hyphen" thing is purely an exercise in masturbation.
You'd probably scrape together every last penny you had and become a first round VC.
Right. Because of all that cash that Twitter is pulling in.
The European Union is a free trade agreement between supposedly sovereign nations in the process of surreptitiously morphing into a federal republic in the hope that nobody will notice.
Who said anything about the EU? The OP was talking about Europe the continent, which the UK is most definitely a part of.
You know, kinda like Canada is in North America without being part of the US.
That's one thing I don't get in the various responses to this: would it really make things better if Amazon was also censoring political speech?
What does this resemble more - "letting them know" or "forcing them to advertise/sell"?
I would certainly say that this falls under "letting them know" that this is the sort of thing that will cause some people to stop doing business with Amazon.
It seems like you are saying that while Amazon has the choice to carry whatever they want, their customers shouldn't have the choice to not buy from them? That'd be kinda weird.
It may be that they will eventually limit themselves to politically correct generic choices that offend no one - but again it's up to them to decide.
And it's up to their customers to let them know when they make bullshit decisions - what's your point? It's not like anyone is suggesting that they be forced to advertise or sell books they don't want to.
Anyone who agrees with me should call their congressperson to protest this policy.
Or better yet, text them.
SMS messages are 140 bytes, 7-bit encoded, resulting in an availability of 160 characters.
They reserved 20 characters for twitter metadata (username, for one thing).
Cyberspace. William Gibson, Neuromancer
They said "science", not "online wankery".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
Is it essentially just FreeBSD with APT and gnu userland instead of ports and bsd userland?
So they went from being the Linux with the best package manager to being the BSD with the worst package manager?
So it wasn't about Wolverine like some jackass "speculated" for no reason? Shocking!
Why do nerds always think the world revolves around the stupid crap only they care about? It's embarrassing.
My expectations are that it's going to be a pile of utter shite - should I still be hoping that it lives up to that?
Plants grow very well in the Moon, just gotta have your whole Line Family pitch in with drilling the planting corridors and whatnot. Oh, and bartering for ice can be pretty difficult.
The OP may have phrased it poorly, but that's the first thing I though too: these results may just as well indicate that those who are more afraid of death are more likely to be "pious" (as defined in the study, at least).
Nothing "ignorant" about that.
Why don't they get with the times and Internet it?
Oh, they do even better - they now have holograms.
Oh, so you are saying it's not, in fact, tubes?
Thanks for clearing that up.
It's an unwinnable combination of human nature and rising expectations.
I personally have very low expectations: pretty much as long as they have kick-ass space battles and keep the melodrama to a minimum, I'll be happy.
There are a few "retired" battleships that are basically floating museums now that fit that criteria.
Ooh, yeah! And their outdated tech will allow them to survive the electronic attack that obliterates the rest of the fleet; they will wander the oceans for four years looking for the mythical "Great Britain", and then the last couple of episodes will be really boring.
I think what the parent meant was giving the developers lower spec. machines so that their TESTING would perform slower, and they would then be more mindful of resource constraints when developing.
:-
I know what the parent meant, I was just saying that it's a little odd for people who know nothing about a subject to proclaim this sort of smug generalizations.
I think you also forgot another reason for bad software
c) Bad Design
I was incorporating that under "incompetent programmers", perhaps I should've said "incompetent developers".
The point was that if performance is a concern, you need to set specific goals and test for them, not cripple the development environment.
Odd as it may seem, efficient implementations are often more complex than naive (slow) ones, which means more subtle code, which means more build-test cycles, which your programmers are less likely to have time for since you've adopted this whole "humility at the expense of productivity" approach.
If this person had been forced to use old garbage computers to develop on I think they might gotten something that would have performed better on normal machines.
I don't see how. That person made design decisions by fiat, without consideration of performance issues, and ended up with something that performs badly - doesn't seem like he cared about performance to begin with.
Besides, as wasteful as all that XML serialization is, it's still dwarfed by the multiple network trips - the client hardware probably wouldn't make much difference either way.
Some are watchable, like Lord of the Rings.
Well, at least for a sufficiently broad definition of "watchable". I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person who didn't read the books at 13, who wasn't bored to tears by the movies.
That way it'll encourage them to write efficient implementations.
That's just stupid - I'm going to write better code because my compiles take longer?
There seem to be a lot of these posts on Slashdot with down-home folk wisdom on how to educate the smug and indifferent programmer, who is so clearly divorced from reality that he doesn't even know what computers his customers use. I get the sneaking suspicion that the authors know very little about actual programming.
There are two reasons for bad software:
a) incompetent programmers
b) bad project management
The latter includes things like unrealistic timelines and ill defined scope and requirements. I'm not sure which one is the bigger culprit, but both are pervasive.
In neither case, though, are you going to fix the problem with gimmicky bullshit like inadequate equipment.
They are useful for rallying and coordinating activities.
Slight correction: they are useful for making people feel like they are rallying and coordinating activities. They provide a nice outlet for people's urge to "stick it to the man" (usually by complaining), without actually accomplishing anything - everybody wins!
If one gathers data from many sources, in order to justify to the US FDA some claim about a drug: how can one certify that those data are accurate?
No, you gather data from many source to formulate the hypothesis that allows you to make that claim - to justify the claim to the FDA you do clinical trials as per usual.