If YOU actually studied the history of the area, you would understand the real problem.
- When the Moors invaded Spain, they considered Christians and Jews as beneath them. If was a crime worthy of death if they spoke ill of a Muslim, or used the prophet's name in vain.
- When the Jews took their land, which was rightfully theirs, they took the land fair and square the same way anyone else takes land -- with blood. We have as much claim to America as they have to Israel. You can't argue that whoever has the military might to take land owns it. It's a natural fact.
- Would you care to explain how blowing up known terrorists is similar to murdering innocent children whose only crime is to live in a country run by Israelis? I'm sorry, but when I hear that another Palestinian boy has been brainwashed to blow himself up and take several Israelis with him, it breaks my heart. I would to God that those who teach these kids that blowing themselves up is a good thing would pay for their sins earlier rather than later!
- How to you explain the survival of our nation and the world at large through the Cold War? Why hasn't there been a nuclear war? What prevented it? Is it just chance, or are we as a nation actually overcoming these problems with an appropriate response? Or could it be that there is a God who conducts the affairs of this earth, and quite frankly, it's not time for a nuclear war yet, if ever?
What planet are you living on? We've had several terrorist attacks when we had a Clinton and Carter for presidents. I strongly doubt the first thoughts running through the 9/11 hijackers was, "That'll teach the infidels not to elect a president named George W. Bush!"
And you think you can communicate with a group of people that holler at the top of their lungs: "DEATH TO ALL AMERICANS! PRAISE ALLAH!"
They train endlessly: This is how you get on a bus with bombs strapped to your chest. This is how you blow yourself up so that you kill the maximum number of women and children. This is how you put on enemy uniforms and shoot their school-children. This is how you pilot and airplane into a skyscraper. This is how you put the nuclear materials into the bomb to make a dirty bomb.
And you want to talk with them? I'm sorry, Mr. Chamberlain, your strategy failed in the '40's, and it is what got us to where we are now. When the first terrorist struck against American interests, we should've responded the way we are now.
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists. Military estimations said that Israel alone could've taken out Saddam, as well as all neighboring countries who support him. You don't think Israel has nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver all of them on a moments notice?
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one. Ariel Sharon -- the Churchill of Israel -- is preaching restraint, because he knows what is in store for the terrorists at the hands of the Americans. This is the same Ariel Sharon that single-handedly defeated Egypt! He knows Israel is in a far stronger position now, and his enemies are much weaker.
You do not understand the essence of terrorism. You think people flock to terrorists when they see their friends who engage in terrorist acts get mercilessly shredded to black bits of burning flesh by missiles. On the contrary, they run and hide when they hear the soldiers coming down the road. No promise of virgins in the afterlife is worth waking up to a helicopter at your balcony, or facing a squad of American soldiers sending their regards from President Bush. Remember why Saddam said he surrendered peacefully: "Would you want to fight these guys?" Why do you think Libya is coming clean all of a sudden? I am sure it has nothing to do with President Bush's Texas charm or cowboy hat.
Moscow cringed when President Reagan swore he would build up the arsenal and use it if necessary. Hitler squirmed when Churchill announced his resolve to fight at all costs and never surrender. Osama bin Laden is hiding in shame, worrying every day if some soldiers in desert camouflage are going to find him that day, and bring him out to answer for his crimes.
If being slaughtered by the Americans and Israelis is so helpful to terrorists, why aren't they out in the open, encouraging us to launch an all-out frontal assault on their HQ? After all, if we wipe them all out in one grand armaggedon style battle, won't their numbers swell with energetic youths who want to die fighting as well?
They fear retaliation. Their numbers are dropping, and those who are in want out. Look at what is happening in Baghdad and Tikrit. One by one, Saddam's supporters are either dying or promising to lay down their arms. One by one, they see their comrades get shot to pieces or tracked down mercilessly and hunted like rabbits. Soon, there will be no more of Saddam or Osama's supporters in Iraq. If there are, they will be hiding again, no longer setting off car bombs or laying ambushes for supply trucks carrying medicine and school supplies. And when they go back to hiding and stop blowing our children up, then we will have won the war on terror.
The best strategy in war is to avoid war is possible, but when that strategy fails, the next best thing is to win overwhelmingly. Bury the brave ones. Take out their captains and generals. Leave only the cowards who refused to fight. Send them back to repopulate their country, and raise a generation of cowards who won't dare oppose you again. And make certain that the country becomes your ally so that they don't plot against you again.
C is a standard, like English or SMTP. It's not going away, not anytime soon. Anyone that thinks so is a fool. Both English and SMTP satisfy a pressing need: In the case of English, the need to communicate between two people. In the case of SMTP, the need to send email from one place to another. In the case of C, to write assembler code efficiently.
If you could look at a graph with the vertical or y axis being "amount of code generated per unit time" and the x axis being "efficiency of code", and plotted all languages that compile into assembler code, you would find C would stand out in the upper right hand corner as supreme. It allows the programmer to generate vast amounts of highly optimized and efficient code with minimal time.
C++ may fail. It has forgotten its roots and tried to abstract too much, leaving the details between the assembler code and the C++ code up to the compiler. Currently, *NO* C++ compiler has gotten everything right.
C, however, is a perfect fit, and the compilers are simple enough that most of the attention is spent on optimizing the resulting assembler code.
Is C harder than perl, python, C#, and Java? Of course it is. But do perl, python, C#, or Java compile to assembler instructions? No. Comparing C to them is like comparing a forklift with a VW Bug. Sure, it may be easier to drive a Bug, but you can't load trucks with it!
I'll tell you why Java does not prosper on Linux: It sucks.
When you come from a C / Perl / Python background, you quickly notice a few misfeatures of Java:
(1) It's huge (2) The code-compile-test cycle takes too long (3) It's hard to use (4) Did I mention it is huge? (5) It's slow and resource-hungry (6) It is difficult to debug
The only reason Java is around today in any significant proportion is because Sun has convinced several PHBs that Java is good, Perl is bad. That was enough to convince several companies to adopt J2EE and drop mod_perl. In most cases, the companies have regretted the decision.
Ask the developers. They will tell you that the debug-compile-test cycle has been significantly slowed. They will show you the POs for new servers needed to handle the same load that the mod_perl servers were handling.
Linux is a breeding ground for good concepts that work. Java is not one of them, hence, it is floundering. Mono will be DOA.
Before you go ripping me about my opinions on Java, ask yourself: Can you program in Perl or Python? Have you done any significant work in either language? Generally, Java enthusiasts have either learned Java in college as the "one true way", or have converted to Java from Microsoft Visual Studio. I've not found a Java enthusiast yet that has a deep knowledge of perl or python.
Remember, Perl and Python are there not because they have huge PR campaigns and million dollar budgets. They are there because they survived where others couldn't. They are there because they deserve to be there on their merits alone.
No new features until every current feature works perfectly.
It's a good thing the Mozilla team is smarter than this. While it's a noble goal to make "perfect" software, it is an impossible one. First of all, who defines perfect? Second of all, is it more important to iron out some wrinkles or is it more important to move on?
I for one love the innovation that Netscape / Mozilla have done. I encourage them to move forward, be bold, and don't pay attention to bad advice like this.
I would hold onto your democracy or republic or whatever you got. We in America live under a dictatorship. Unelected judges determine what I can or cannot buy in the store. They determine what I can wear, say, eat or drink. They punish me for perfectly legal things, and let criminals walk free.
If your elected officials thwart the will of the people, you can always elect new ones. We have made it too difficult to remove judges, and so now they run our country.
I think it is readily apparent to any sane, thoughtful person that our justice system in the US is broken.
We have too many ideologues on the bench, trying to legislate when they should merely consider the facts and the law.
The courts regularly overturn the constitution. Where in the world did they find the "right" for a woman to have an abortion? Did they totally ignore the 10th amendment?
Too many judges give lenient punishments. Some do it because they don't believe that punishment is the best thing to do. Others do it because they are afraid of being overturned by a higher court.
Too many criminals walk away scott-free. Take a look at this Joseph Smith character. He committed a crime he was already convicted of.
We should be impeaching a lot more judges than we do now. We should have a more powerful president who refuses to enforce unjust decisions. We shouldn't let the judicial branch make decisions for the executive branch or the legislative branch. There has to be a balance between the three.
Right now, judges issue executive orders. Judges write new law, or they order new laws to be written. They disobey current laws.
Our system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Whatdoyabet that this marriage amendment gets passed, gets ratified, gets adopted, and they overturn it anyway? Heck, it's happened to the 10th and the 2nd, why not the 28th?
What recourse will the people have then, if we can't even amend the constitution to hold the courts in check?
Why do we send non-violent criminals to prison to bunk with violent criminals?
I'm sorry, but if you believe that using force to commit crime is a good idea, I don't think you belong on the earth anymore. I certainly won't miss anyone who brings a gun into a store and threatens to kill someone if they don't hand them a wad of cash. I will feel a lot safer knowing that somewhere down the road, said criminal won't be getting out on "good behavior". In fact, said criminal won't even get a chance to execute his elaborate escape scheme.
Prison time is useful -- it's a way to send a message to people that no matter how much money you have, you only have so much time, and if you want to spend that time ruining other people's lives, you're going to pay with your time.
But when you threaten someone else's life, or take a life, you are going to pay with your life. It's that simple.
The jury knew the consequences of their decisions, and they weighed the facts and opinions and emotions better than anyone else could. In the end, they knew without a shadow of a doubt that the criminal was guilty, and they put him down for good. The jury will be held accountable in their own way, whether in their conscience or in the afterlife. But there is no more just way of trial than by jury or your peers.
I have no idea how the Greek government works. However, it sounds like the courts don't carry nearly as much power as they do in the states.
It could be that courts aren't allowed to overturn laws. It could also be that the enforcement arm of the government is run at a local level, and not subject to the national government.
I won't comment on the Greek system, because I do no know it. But I certainly won't form an opinion based on our country's heritage and traditions.
Now, if only we had more governors and presidents who would openly flaunt the will of activist judges, willing to put their job on the line if it ever comes to impeachment, then we might have a more cautious and obedient justice branch.
Look into the fields of program manager or business management. I work around these people all the time, and while they spend a great deal of time trying to understand what we the coders do, and trying to get us on board with the rest of the company, they also have time to dabble with computers and enjoy the highlights of the field.
You may want to exercise the artist in you and look at computer graphics. I work with a web designer who hasn't the foggiest what is happening behind the scenes, but is expert in how users will use the system, what colors and layouts are most pleasing, and things like that. These are all things that are really quite interesting to study, and even more fun to apply.
Finally, never discount the value of being a good lawyer, doctor, or accountant. These are tried and true professions, and they require you to think and nowadays to use computers heavily. I have worked with doctors writing software for them, and I have worked with accountants as well, and these careers are anything but dry and boring.
There are currently 3 solutions competing on the internet. Only one actually works right now as we speak.
(1) Caller ID is Microsoft's big proposal. Domain owners put XML in the TXT records in their domain. Receiving email systems can determine if a message is valid only after seeing all of the headers.
(2) SPF (http://spf.pobox.com/) is already implemented and is already blocking joe-jobs and phishing schemes. It relies only on the envelope FROM and the owners of the domain publishing a short TXT record. Currently, aol.com and many more domains (around 6,000?) publish SPF records. Implementations for filtering based on SPF exist in perl, python, C, and for Exim, postfix, qmail and sendmail.
There is a small problem in forwarding email properly, but that is being resolved with SRS (same website).
(3) DomainKeys (Yahoo!'s solution) is still being researched and is looking more and more like S/MIME or PGP but for an entire domain. The domain owners would publish the public key via DNS (probably a TXT record as well) and receving mail servers can verify that the message is indeed from said domain. There are some severe limitations: If someone gets your domain private key, you are screwed. It's also subject to a replay attack. The attacker would send a valid email to themselves through a server using domain keys, and then replay that message to the rest of the internet.
Both SPF and Caller ID can't work around DNS poisoning or IP spoofing. But they both limit the number of machines that are allowed to send email for a domain.
It is important that if you own a domain, that you publish SPF records - even if it is only "v=spf1 !all" or "I don't send any email for this domain". SPF, if it is going to be adopted, is going to be adopted at an exponential rate.
Caller ID is mostly Microsoft's response to the rapid success of SPF. They want to own the solution to spam, and they want to take credit for cleaning up your email box, even though their idea is really other people's ideas + XML. The protocol is heavy, burdensome, and subject to the whims of the XML interpreters out there right now. Plus, it is a huge proposal that is detailed and complicated, ripe for incompatibilities that could force users of Sendmail, Exim, Postfix, or Qmail to "upgrade" to Exchange.
The earth is a tremendously complicated system and anyone that pretends to understand it completely is lying. We only understand very small bits of it, and we're like the blind men trying to ascertain what an elephant is. Some see a small part of it and get worried that we're turning the planet into an ice world. Others worry about a water world. Others say we are going to turn it into a tropical paradise. There were people running around in the 70's claiming that the world would be so full of people that there wouldn't be enough food in 2000!
If you look around, you will find plenty of examples of CO2 "sinks". One popular example is limestone deposits at the bottom of the ocean. A little research will turn up several others.
But otherwise, pay these "prophets" no mind. They are out there to stir up controversy and profit from it.
You'll find any study that espouses global warming to be light on the details and any empirical numbers.
No one ever compares the actual amounts of energy or chemicals, nor do they estimate the CO2 sinks in the world that are natural.
It's kind of like the traffic studies that say "If we build another lane, people will just fill it up, so why do it?" rather than "Building one more lane will increase traffic flow by X0 and decrease travel time by X1, which is estimated to increase the economy by Y, and it will cost Z to build it."
The ISPs are looking at any and all possibilities. This is one of them, and the one that is probably only being pushed by management.
The one that is most likely to get implemented the fastest is SPF. It is already deployed in numerous places, and participating is as easy as putting a TXT record in your domain name. It's so simple AOL is doing it!
But Microsoft's Caller ID and Yahoo's Domain Keys are probably also going to get implemented in 2004.
I know at my major retailer, we are 100% going to deploy SPF, likely this week, and we are 90% likely to do/both/ Domain Keys AND Caller ID. On top of that, we are likely to start using S/MIME on all external messages. I think when we finally issue a press release, it will be big news, and everyone and their grandmother will join in.
This idea of charging for email is just one option among many. I'll tell you one thing, it's not a popular one, because it requires legitimate "spammers" to pay to get their email through. Who'd be the gullible ones to implement this first? It's not worth it, and it doesn't solve the most serious problems with email: authenticity and identity.
Organisms escaping earth and settling on Europa?
on
Europa's Acid Ice Fields
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· Score: 3, Interesting
If it is possible for organisms to survive this kind of acid here on earth, are there organisms that can survive zero pressure, low temperatures, and high background radiation?
What if some bacteria escaped earth's atmosphere -- maybe a meteor kicked it up, or it was randomly carried by wind up and out of the reach of earth -- and settled on Europa, Mars, Venus, or some other planets?
Recently, the internal web application I built I built exclusively for Mozilla, then I tweaked the CSS and some tables and some images to make it work in both Mozilla and IE. The end result is clean and flawless, using mostly divs and tables only for tabular data. (Hint: "float: right" does wonders! But both browsers have problems if it's taller than the content that is to the left.)
It's perfectly harmless to IE, but it makes rounded borders a billion times easier in Mozilla.
Note: There are still a few bugs. Try putting content in a rounded border when you don't have enough padding. You'll get square corners poking out of the rounded corners.
TwistedPython runs everything from a single thread. Even if you have multiple threads, only one thread can be running at a time due to Python's GIL (Global Interpreter Lock).
Diregard the fact that TwistedPython is still in its infancy and thus immature compared to its rivals.
The fundamental problem with it is that it will not scale well to multiple processors because all of the python threads must interact and share the same memory. It's not like Apache which has one master process that handles incoming connections, and several children distributed across the processors, using seperate sections of memory - it is only a single process with multiple Python threads, forced to run one after another thanks to the GIL.
Apache scales far better than TwistedPython. When you have a properly scaleable database backend, or some kind of application logic layer that can scale, then it behaves very well as the load increases and on more advanced hardware.
Understand that I'm not saying that "TwistedPython Sux!" I am saying that I won't be using it for an application server that must scale. Once Python overcomes the GIL problem (and offers shared memory for Python objects) then TwistedPython may begin to have some hope of actually scaling.
The last thing you want to do is tarnish your reputation with a lawsuit against your employer.
Your next potential employer is going to call your last employer. Your last employer is not going to say nice things about you. Your chances of getting hired are going to be much lower, particularly in an industry with such a high rate of unemployment.
I'd sit down and resolve this out of court, amicably, and leave on terms where they wouldn't mind hiring you back. This doesn't mean "bend over", it means work it out like adults and figure out a solution that suits you both and makes you both happy. You'll find your employers are just as human as you are, and would rather make a friend than an enemy. (They don't need an engineer running around telling people what a sweatshop their hole is, either! See, it goes both ways!)
And next job you get, get overtime conditions in the contract if you really want it. Don't rely on federal or state law to back you up, work it out like adults. Treat the employer not as a "proletariat", but as a business partner. They are giving you cash and you're giving them your time, talents, and sweat. It really is a business negotiation and not slavery.
I'm surprised your lawyer hasn't clued you in on this. Maybe he smells blood in the water and is willing to sacrifice you for it. The best lawyers I've met have always resolved things out of court farily and without hard feelings between the parties. Heck, they actually would encourage me to make the call because (1) they charge big $$$ for it and (2) things work out better when the parties talk to each other directly.
The other lawyers are out for the cash and don't give a damn about their clients. Is he representing your long-term interests or does he only see the payola?
And just to decimate my karma even more, I would remind anyone who is inclined to think of America as an unusually heroic military force that they have never won a significant military victory without superior numbers or equipment. I don't believe any other nation in history has that distinction.
You're right. I am proud to be a member of a country that has lost few if any wars. I'm also proud that when our country mobilizes for war, we don't play games. Put it another way, if war were football, we sould show up on the gridiron with thirty thousand marines, air support, and a couple of nukes just in case it got really bad.
I believe the US should abide by that treaty, but make no mistake: It will be broken.
I predict:
(a) The treaty will be broken sooner not later
(b) It will be broken by either the Chinese or the North Koreans
When's the last time a Communist abided by any rules, let alone a treaty? Go read your communist manifesto one more time and note well that rule keeping is not one of the virtues.
You're forgetting the one selling point to the moon for the military. The military likes bases in hard to reach places where no one lives.
(A) It's hard for the enemy to get to you.
(B) When they do get to you, there is no nearby city to take damage.
Unlike Saddam Hussein, we do not put missile silos next to orphanages, we do not put our troops into childrens hospitals, and we don't use commercial airports for military craft. The only reason Saddam did that was because he could get the reporters to take pictures of the children with their eyes gouged out from shrapnel and broadcast it to the world showing how horrible the US is for attacking an orphanarium.
Exactly what I thought the first time I heard this. The cost of maintaining it increase over time, and people start wanting to put something better up in its place. I bet that NASA is working on the next generation, with all kinds of fancy gizmos that the original Hubble team only dreamed about.
They ran the numbers and they've probably showed congress a graph of how much money it would cost to keep maintaining Hubble vs. how much money it would cost to build Hubble 2. Congress liked the numbers for Hubble 2, and so the EOL of Hubble approached.
One thing I remember about the professors at University of Washington discussing Hubble was all the mistakes they made and how they'll get it right the next time with what they know now.
Slashdot Mirror
If YOU actually studied the history of the area, you would understand the real problem.
- When the Moors invaded Spain, they considered Christians and Jews as beneath them. If was a crime worthy of death if they spoke ill of a Muslim, or used the prophet's name in vain.
- When the Jews took their land, which was rightfully theirs, they took the land fair and square the same way anyone else takes land -- with blood. We have as much claim to America as they have to Israel. You can't argue that whoever has the military might to take land owns it. It's a natural fact.
- Would you care to explain how blowing up known terrorists is similar to murdering innocent children whose only crime is to live in a country run by Israelis? I'm sorry, but when I hear that another Palestinian boy has been brainwashed to blow himself up and take several Israelis with him, it breaks my heart. I would to God that those who teach these kids that blowing themselves up is a good thing would pay for their sins earlier rather than later!
- How to you explain the survival of our nation and the world at large through the Cold War? Why hasn't there been a nuclear war? What prevented it? Is it just chance, or are we as a nation actually overcoming these problems with an appropriate response? Or could it be that there is a God who conducts the affairs of this earth, and quite frankly, it's not time for a nuclear war yet, if ever?
What planet are you living on? We've had several terrorist attacks when we had a Clinton and Carter for presidents. I strongly doubt the first thoughts running through the 9/11 hijackers was, "That'll teach the infidels not to elect a president named George W. Bush!"
And you think you can communicate with a group of people that holler at the top of their lungs: "DEATH TO ALL AMERICANS! PRAISE ALLAH!"
They train endlessly: This is how you get on a bus with bombs strapped to your chest. This is how you blow yourself up so that you kill the maximum number of women and children. This is how you put on enemy uniforms and shoot their school-children. This is how you pilot and airplane into a skyscraper. This is how you put the nuclear materials into the bomb to make a dirty bomb.
And you want to talk with them? I'm sorry, Mr. Chamberlain, your strategy failed in the '40's, and it is what got us to where we are now. When the first terrorist struck against American interests, we should've responded the way we are now.
Israel has yet to open a can of you-know-what on the terrorists. Military estimations said that Israel alone could've taken out Saddam, as well as all neighboring countries who support him. You don't think Israel has nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver all of them on a moments notice?
The US has been pleading with Israel for restraint from day one. We are still hypocritically encouraging them to be calm, promising them that an American response will be more effective than a Zionist one. Ariel Sharon -- the Churchill of Israel -- is preaching restraint, because he knows what is in store for the terrorists at the hands of the Americans. This is the same Ariel Sharon that single-handedly defeated Egypt! He knows Israel is in a far stronger position now, and his enemies are much weaker.
You do not understand the essence of terrorism. You think people flock to terrorists when they see their friends who engage in terrorist acts get mercilessly shredded to black bits of burning flesh by missiles. On the contrary, they run and hide when they hear the soldiers coming down the road. No promise of virgins in the afterlife is worth waking up to a helicopter at your balcony, or facing a squad of American soldiers sending their regards from President Bush. Remember why Saddam said he surrendered peacefully: "Would you want to fight these guys?" Why do you think Libya is coming clean all of a sudden? I am sure it has nothing to do with President Bush's Texas charm or cowboy hat.
Moscow cringed when President Reagan swore he would build up the arsenal and use it if necessary. Hitler squirmed when Churchill announced his resolve to fight at all costs and never surrender. Osama bin Laden is hiding in shame, worrying every day if some soldiers in desert camouflage are going to find him that day, and bring him out to answer for his crimes.
If being slaughtered by the Americans and Israelis is so helpful to terrorists, why aren't they out in the open, encouraging us to launch an all-out frontal assault on their HQ? After all, if we wipe them all out in one grand armaggedon style battle, won't their numbers swell with energetic youths who want to die fighting as well?
They fear retaliation. Their numbers are dropping, and those who are in want out. Look at what is happening in Baghdad and Tikrit. One by one, Saddam's supporters are either dying or promising to lay down their arms. One by one, they see their comrades get shot to pieces or tracked down mercilessly and hunted like rabbits. Soon, there will be no more of Saddam or Osama's supporters in Iraq. If there are, they will be hiding again, no longer setting off car bombs or laying ambushes for supply trucks carrying medicine and school supplies. And when they go back to hiding and stop blowing our children up, then we will have won the war on terror.
The best strategy in war is to avoid war is possible, but when that strategy fails, the next best thing is to win overwhelmingly. Bury the brave ones. Take out their captains and generals. Leave only the cowards who refused to fight. Send them back to repopulate their country, and raise a generation of cowards who won't dare oppose you again. And make certain that the country becomes your ally so that they don't plot against you again.
C is a standard, like English or SMTP. It's not going away, not anytime soon. Anyone that thinks so is a fool. Both English and SMTP satisfy a pressing need: In the case of English, the need to communicate between two people. In the case of SMTP, the need to send email from one place to another. In the case of C, to write assembler code efficiently.
If you could look at a graph with the vertical or y axis being "amount of code generated per unit time" and the x axis being "efficiency of code", and plotted all languages that compile into assembler code, you would find C would stand out in the upper right hand corner as supreme. It allows the programmer to generate vast amounts of highly optimized and efficient code with minimal time.
C++ may fail. It has forgotten its roots and tried to abstract too much, leaving the details between the assembler code and the C++ code up to the compiler. Currently, *NO* C++ compiler has gotten everything right.
C, however, is a perfect fit, and the compilers are simple enough that most of the attention is spent on optimizing the resulting assembler code.
Is C harder than perl, python, C#, and Java? Of course it is. But do perl, python, C#, or Java compile to assembler instructions? No. Comparing C to them is like comparing a forklift with a VW Bug. Sure, it may be easier to drive a Bug, but you can't load trucks with it!
I'll tell you why Java does not prosper on Linux: It sucks.
When you come from a C / Perl / Python background, you quickly notice a few misfeatures of Java:
(1) It's huge
(2) The code-compile-test cycle takes too long
(3) It's hard to use
(4) Did I mention it is huge?
(5) It's slow and resource-hungry
(6) It is difficult to debug
The only reason Java is around today in any significant proportion is because Sun has convinced several PHBs that Java is good, Perl is bad. That was enough to convince several companies to adopt J2EE and drop mod_perl. In most cases, the companies have regretted the decision.
Ask the developers. They will tell you that the debug-compile-test cycle has been significantly slowed. They will show you the POs for new servers needed to handle the same load that the mod_perl servers were handling.
Linux is a breeding ground for good concepts that work. Java is not one of them, hence, it is floundering. Mono will be DOA.
Before you go ripping me about my opinions on Java, ask yourself: Can you program in Perl or Python? Have you done any significant work in either language? Generally, Java enthusiasts have either learned Java in college as the "one true way", or have converted to Java from Microsoft Visual Studio. I've not found a Java enthusiast yet that has a deep knowledge of perl or python.
Remember, Perl and Python are there not because they have huge PR campaigns and million dollar budgets. They are there because they survived where others couldn't. They are there because they deserve to be there on their merits alone.
No new features until every current feature works perfectly.
It's a good thing the Mozilla team is smarter than this. While it's a noble goal to make "perfect" software, it is an impossible one. First of all, who defines perfect? Second of all, is it more important to iron out some wrinkles or is it more important to move on?
I for one love the innovation that Netscape / Mozilla have done. I encourage them to move forward, be bold, and don't pay attention to bad advice like this.
I would hold onto your democracy or republic or whatever you got. We in America live under a dictatorship. Unelected judges determine what I can or cannot buy in the store. They determine what I can wear, say, eat or drink. They punish me for perfectly legal things, and let criminals walk free.
If your elected officials thwart the will of the people, you can always elect new ones. We have made it too difficult to remove judges, and so now they run our country.
I think it is readily apparent to any sane, thoughtful person that our justice system in the US is broken.
We have too many ideologues on the bench, trying to legislate when they should merely consider the facts and the law.
The courts regularly overturn the constitution. Where in the world did they find the "right" for a woman to have an abortion? Did they totally ignore the 10th amendment?
Too many judges give lenient punishments. Some do it because they don't believe that punishment is the best thing to do. Others do it because they are afraid of being overturned by a higher court.
Too many criminals walk away scott-free. Take a look at this Joseph Smith character. He committed a crime he was already convicted of.
We should be impeaching a lot more judges than we do now. We should have a more powerful president who refuses to enforce unjust decisions. We shouldn't let the judicial branch make decisions for the executive branch or the legislative branch. There has to be a balance between the three.
Right now, judges issue executive orders. Judges write new law, or they order new laws to be written. They disobey current laws.
Our system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Whatdoyabet that this marriage amendment gets passed, gets ratified, gets adopted, and they overturn it anyway? Heck, it's happened to the 10th and the 2nd, why not the 28th?
What recourse will the people have then, if we can't even amend the constitution to hold the courts in check?
Why do we send non-violent criminals to prison to bunk with violent criminals?
I'm sorry, but if you believe that using force to commit crime is a good idea, I don't think you belong on the earth anymore. I certainly won't miss anyone who brings a gun into a store and threatens to kill someone if they don't hand them a wad of cash. I will feel a lot safer knowing that somewhere down the road, said criminal won't be getting out on "good behavior". In fact, said criminal won't even get a chance to execute his elaborate escape scheme.
Prison time is useful -- it's a way to send a message to people that no matter how much money you have, you only have so much time, and if you want to spend that time ruining other people's lives, you're going to pay with your time.
But when you threaten someone else's life, or take a life, you are going to pay with your life. It's that simple.
The jury knew the consequences of their decisions, and they weighed the facts and opinions and emotions better than anyone else could. In the end, they knew without a shadow of a doubt that the criminal was guilty, and they put him down for good. The jury will be held accountable in their own way, whether in their conscience or in the afterlife. But there is no more just way of trial than by jury or your peers.
I have no idea how the Greek government works. However, it sounds like the courts don't carry nearly as much power as they do in the states.
It could be that courts aren't allowed to overturn laws. It could also be that the enforcement arm of the government is run at a local level, and not subject to the national government.
I won't comment on the Greek system, because I do no know it. But I certainly won't form an opinion based on our country's heritage and traditions.
Now, if only we had more governors and presidents who would openly flaunt the will of activist judges, willing to put their job on the line if it ever comes to impeachment, then we might have a more cautious and obedient justice branch.
Look into the fields of program manager or business management. I work around these people all the time, and while they spend a great deal of time trying to understand what we the coders do, and trying to get us on board with the rest of the company, they also have time to dabble with computers and enjoy the highlights of the field.
You may want to exercise the artist in you and look at computer graphics. I work with a web designer who hasn't the foggiest what is happening behind the scenes, but is expert in how users will use the system, what colors and layouts are most pleasing, and things like that. These are all things that are really quite interesting to study, and even more fun to apply.
Finally, never discount the value of being a good lawyer, doctor, or accountant. These are tried and true professions, and they require you to think and nowadays to use computers heavily. I have worked with doctors writing software for them, and I have worked with accountants as well, and these careers are anything but dry and boring.
There are currently 3 solutions competing on the internet. Only one actually works right now as we speak.
(1) Caller ID is Microsoft's big proposal. Domain owners put XML in the TXT records in their domain. Receiving email systems can determine if a message is valid only after seeing all of the headers.
(2) SPF (http://spf.pobox.com/) is already implemented and is already blocking joe-jobs and phishing schemes. It relies only on the envelope FROM and the owners of the domain publishing a short TXT record. Currently, aol.com and many more domains (around 6,000?) publish SPF records. Implementations for filtering based on SPF exist in perl, python, C, and for Exim, postfix, qmail and sendmail.
There is a small problem in forwarding email properly, but that is being resolved with SRS (same website).
(3) DomainKeys (Yahoo!'s solution) is still being researched and is looking more and more like S/MIME or PGP but for an entire domain. The domain owners would publish the public key via DNS (probably a TXT record as well) and receving mail servers can verify that the message is indeed from said domain. There are some severe limitations: If someone gets your domain private key, you are screwed. It's also subject to a replay attack. The attacker would send a valid email to themselves through a server using domain keys, and then replay that message to the rest of the internet.
Both SPF and Caller ID can't work around DNS poisoning or IP spoofing. But they both limit the number of machines that are allowed to send email for a domain.
It is important that if you own a domain, that you publish SPF records - even if it is only "v=spf1 !all" or "I don't send any email for this domain". SPF, if it is going to be adopted, is going to be adopted at an exponential rate.
Caller ID is mostly Microsoft's response to the rapid success of SPF. They want to own the solution to spam, and they want to take credit for cleaning up your email box, even though their idea is really other people's ideas + XML. The protocol is heavy, burdensome, and subject to the whims of the XML interpreters out there right now. Plus, it is a huge proposal that is detailed and complicated, ripe for incompatibilities that could force users of Sendmail, Exim, Postfix, or Qmail to "upgrade" to Exchange.
The earth is a tremendously complicated system and anyone that pretends to understand it completely is lying. We only understand very small bits of it, and we're like the blind men trying to ascertain what an elephant is. Some see a small part of it and get worried that we're turning the planet into an ice world. Others worry about a water world. Others say we are going to turn it into a tropical paradise. There were people running around in the 70's claiming that the world would be so full of people that there wouldn't be enough food in 2000!
If you look around, you will find plenty of examples of CO2 "sinks". One popular example is limestone deposits at the bottom of the ocean. A little research will turn up several others.
But otherwise, pay these "prophets" no mind. They are out there to stir up controversy and profit from it.
You'll find any study that espouses global warming to be light on the details and any empirical numbers.
No one ever compares the actual amounts of energy or chemicals, nor do they estimate the CO2 sinks in the world that are natural.
It's kind of like the traffic studies that say "If we build another lane, people will just fill it up, so why do it?" rather than "Building one more lane will increase traffic flow by X0 and decrease travel time by X1, which is estimated to increase the economy by Y, and it will cost Z to build it."
The ISPs are looking at any and all possibilities. This is one of them, and the one that is probably only being pushed by management.
/both/ Domain Keys AND Caller ID. On top of that, we are likely to start using S/MIME on all external messages. I think when we finally issue a press release, it will be big news, and everyone and their grandmother will join in.
The one that is most likely to get implemented the fastest is SPF. It is already deployed in numerous places, and participating is as easy as putting a TXT record in your domain name. It's so simple AOL is doing it!
But Microsoft's Caller ID and Yahoo's Domain Keys are probably also going to get implemented in 2004.
I know at my major retailer, we are 100% going to deploy SPF, likely this week, and we are 90% likely to do
This idea of charging for email is just one option among many. I'll tell you one thing, it's not a popular one, because it requires legitimate "spammers" to pay to get their email through. Who'd be the gullible ones to implement this first? It's not worth it, and it doesn't solve the most serious problems with email: authenticity and identity.
If it is possible for organisms to survive this kind of acid here on earth, are there organisms that can survive zero pressure, low temperatures, and high background radiation?
What if some bacteria escaped earth's atmosphere -- maybe a meteor kicked it up, or it was randomly carried by wind up and out of the reach of earth -- and settled on Europa, Mars, Venus, or some other planets?
Hear, hear.
Recently, the internal web application I built I built exclusively for Mozilla, then I tweaked the CSS and some tables and some images to make it work in both Mozilla and IE. The end result is clean and flawless, using mostly divs and tables only for tabular data. (Hint: "float: right" does wonders! But both browsers have problems if it's taller than the content that is to the left.)
CSS: -moz-border-radius
http://lab.artlung.com/css/rounded-mozilla/
It's perfectly harmless to IE, but it makes rounded borders a billion times easier in Mozilla.
Note: There are still a few bugs. Try putting content in a rounded border when you don't have enough padding. You'll get square corners poking out of the rounded corners.
TwistedPython runs everything from a single thread. Even if you have multiple threads, only one thread can be running at a time due to Python's GIL (Global Interpreter Lock).
Diregard the fact that TwistedPython is still in its infancy and thus immature compared to its rivals.
The fundamental problem with it is that it will not scale well to multiple processors because all of the python threads must interact and share the same memory. It's not like Apache which has one master process that handles incoming connections, and several children distributed across the processors, using seperate sections of memory - it is only a single process with multiple Python threads, forced to run one after another thanks to the GIL.
Apache scales far better than TwistedPython. When you have a properly scaleable database backend, or some kind of application logic layer that can scale, then it behaves very well as the load increases and on more advanced hardware.
Understand that I'm not saying that "TwistedPython Sux!" I am saying that I won't be using it for an application server that must scale. Once Python overcomes the GIL problem (and offers shared memory for Python objects) then TwistedPython may begin to have some hope of actually scaling.
If salary grows exponentially, I'll be making $400,000/yr in 2010.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of programmers out there raking in over $100,000, even in my area. They are certainly worth it.
The last thing you want to do is tarnish your reputation with a lawsuit against your employer.
Your next potential employer is going to call your last employer. Your last employer is not going to say nice things about you. Your chances of getting hired are going to be much lower, particularly in an industry with such a high rate of unemployment.
I'd sit down and resolve this out of court, amicably, and leave on terms where they wouldn't mind hiring you back. This doesn't mean "bend over", it means work it out like adults and figure out a solution that suits you both and makes you both happy. You'll find your employers are just as human as you are, and would rather make a friend than an enemy. (They don't need an engineer running around telling people what a sweatshop their hole is, either! See, it goes both ways!)
And next job you get, get overtime conditions in the contract if you really want it. Don't rely on federal or state law to back you up, work it out like adults. Treat the employer not as a "proletariat", but as a business partner. They are giving you cash and you're giving them your time, talents, and sweat. It really is a business negotiation and not slavery.
I'm surprised your lawyer hasn't clued you in on this. Maybe he smells blood in the water and is willing to sacrifice you for it. The best lawyers I've met have always resolved things out of court farily and without hard feelings between the parties. Heck, they actually would encourage me to make the call because (1) they charge big $$$ for it and (2) things work out better when the parties talk to each other directly.
The other lawyers are out for the cash and don't give a damn about their clients. Is he representing your long-term interests or does he only see the payola?
And just to decimate my karma even more, I would remind anyone who is inclined to think of America as an unusually heroic military force that they have never won a significant military victory without superior numbers or equipment. I don't believe any other nation in history has that distinction.
You're right. I am proud to be a member of a country that has lost few if any wars. I'm also proud that when our country mobilizes for war, we don't play games. Put it another way, if war were football, we sould show up on the gridiron with thirty thousand marines, air support, and a couple of nukes just in case it got really bad.
I believe the US should abide by that treaty, but make no mistake: It will be broken.
I predict:
(a) The treaty will be broken sooner not later
(b) It will be broken by either the Chinese or the North Koreans
When's the last time a Communist abided by any rules, let alone a treaty? Go read your communist manifesto one more time and note well that rule keeping is not one of the virtues.
You're forgetting the one selling point to the moon for the military. The military likes bases in hard to reach places where no one lives.
(A) It's hard for the enemy to get to you.
(B) When they do get to you, there is no nearby city to take damage.
Unlike Saddam Hussein, we do not put missile silos next to orphanages, we do not put our troops into childrens hospitals, and we don't use commercial airports for military craft. The only reason Saddam did that was because he could get the reporters to take pictures of the children with their eyes gouged out from shrapnel and broadcast it to the world showing how horrible the US is for attacking an orphanarium.
Exactly what I thought the first time I heard this. The cost of maintaining it increase over time, and people start wanting to put something better up in its place. I bet that NASA is working on the next generation, with all kinds of fancy gizmos that the original Hubble team only dreamed about.
They ran the numbers and they've probably showed congress a graph of how much money it would cost to keep maintaining Hubble vs. how much money it would cost to build Hubble 2. Congress liked the numbers for Hubble 2, and so the EOL of Hubble approached.
One thing I remember about the professors at University of Washington discussing Hubble was all the mistakes they made and how they'll get it right the next time with what they know now.