Well, there are only two problems with that theory. One is that the attack on Israel isn't a small operation with a few homegrown rockets. These are sophisticated missiles supplied by Iran that have been bought, moved hundreds of miles, smuggled through tunnels, and fired by trained terrorists. In order to this, the Mossad would have to be superhuman.
The 2nd problem is that there just isn't any reason for Israel to do this. It's not like they are going to permanent occupy Gaza, they gave that up years ago. The only reason Israel is fighting is to destroy the missile smuggling operation... but according to the provocateur hypothesis, that's being run by Israel!
They could be. All they need to do acknowledge that Israel is a legitimate nation. But you know, Hamas won't do that. They want to abolish Israel. Kind of hard for Israel to leave alone people who want to destroy it.
As blameworthy? They are responding to hundreds of rocket attacks. Got that? ANY nation would respond the way Israel is responding. The only "nations" that don't respond when they are attacked are ones where central authority has broken down.
Right. Here's a hint... the people who get power are going to be the people who want power. Pretty much the same as now. The only difference is that all the checks and balances that exist right now, the independent judiciary, free elections, freedom of the press, etc, won't necessarily exist. Making it way easier to enforce "order". Before you have a revolution, you need to make damn sure that what replaces what we have right now is way better.
Wait till you live in a real police state, like the former East Germany, where various "friends" that you talk to are on the Stasi payroll. Then you can start complaining about "police state". In the meantime, you can enjoy the freedom to discuss politics and disagree with the government if you live in Western Europe or the USA... something that people in Russia, China, and lots of other countries don't have.
No, it's not obvious. I keep trying to imagine myself lugging a tablet around instead of sitting at a comfortable desktop setup, and sorry, I can't. I'm not going to carry a tablet with me everywhere I go, and if I'm going to get up and move to my computer, why not have a real, full, computer setup? Not saying tablets don't make sense in some circumstances, but they are NOT going to replace the desktop.
I'm not saying that MS or Windows is going to disappear. Just that if Linux is ever going to make inroads on the desktop, this is the moment. Or to put it another way, if Linux can't make a move now, people can stop talking about the Linux desktop hitting a mass market, because it just isn't going to happen. Ever.
But this is a much bigger problem for MS than ME or Vista. It's not a poorly performing iteration of the same O/S. They have changed the UI to confuse users. They are building their own hardware and thus threatening the hardware vendors. Valve is worried that they are going to lock out 3rd party distribution of software. It's not just users who are annoyed, it's businesses that now have pretty strong business case to make an alternative available.
Well, seriously, it's pretty much now or never for the mythical "linux desktop". With Windows 8 MS has managed to simultaneously piss off the customers, the hardware vendors, and the 3rd party software vendors. If Linux can't make inroads into the desktop market over the next year or two, when will it?
Yeah... and then you accidently type in column 6 and it's a continuation card... sorry, this talk printing on 120 column paper caused me to flash back to FORTRAN. I think the world has moved on since those times.
Don't be ridiculous. You can set your tab size to anything that works for you. We specifically indent with tabs and then people can set their tab size to whatever they prefer. I prefer a larger tab size so indentation is obvious. Some people prefer a smaller tab size so code doesn't run off the right hand size of their window. There's zero downside to being flexible on tab size.
Funny, I already own a computer that can stream to my tv so I never saw the point in buying a tablet... guess it's different strokes for different folks.
Thinking about it some more, I agree that there are some bad (or at least limited use) languages out there. For example, Perl is fine for one-liners or quick & dirty scripts, but writing any kind of decent sized system in it is a disaster. But when people start arguing about.Net vs. Java or (even more ridiculous) VB.Net vs C# (two syntaxes for exactly the same function) then they are either ignorant, unprofessional, or both.
I worked at one company for many years where all the code was C on a variety of UNIX platforms. We used our common libraries, code was shared, life was good. C is a fine candidate for code sharing, as long as people are paying attention, using lint, etc. Yes, C allows you to play fast & loose, so you need to be a bit experienced and disciplined, but that helps in any development environment.
.Net has zero to do with good code vs bad code..Net is a decent technology. You can produce good code with it, you can produce bad code with it. Personally, if someone displayed bias like that to me, I'd have serious questions about hiring them.
I would hate to see us disappear too. But I'd like to see a clear link between spending massive amounts of money on a self-sustaining Mars colony and the survival of the human race. For example, enumerating the top threats to humanity (nuclear war, nearby supernova explosion, asteroid impact, bio-warfare, civilization collapse due to resource exhaustion, etc) and some explanation as to how a Mars colony is the most practical solution to these problems. Right now, I'm not seeing it.
Don't get me wrong, I love space exploration, I'm insanely jealous of these billionaires who can actually just pony up $$$ or rubles or whatever and buy their way to the ISS, but I can't justify the immense cost of a Mars colony on the basis of human survival. I'd love to see some compelling argument for human space exploration, but it's going to have be more concrete than the old "Columbus sailed the ocean blue and look what happened".
We aren't going to figure out how to set up a self-sustaining system on Mars. It's not like we can fly there and find the Martian plants that produce oxygen in the secret underground caverns (although I have to admit, that would be very cool). The technology and systems to do a self-sustaining environment would be built & tested on Earth.
Not unfortunate, just a recognition of reality. At this moment in time, the science return for sending unmanned probes / orbiters / rovers vastly exceeds the return on sending humans. We'll continue to develop space capability and at some point it may make sense to send humans to Mars... or maybe not.
And please do NOT invoke the whole "omg we have to get off this rock" argument. If an asteroid impact blew most of Earth's atmosphere and water into space and annihilated 99.999% of the species, Earth would STILL be easier to live on than Mars.
For some people, tablets are great. My office mate swears by his. For me, I don't get it. I'm not going to carry my tablet around with me as I move about my house. So if I need to browse the web, read email, type a doc etc I'm going to move to my computing device. At which point I can either
a) Find where I left my tablet with no physical keyboard, small screen, no mouse... b) Use my PC
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Well, there are only two problems with that theory. One is that the attack on Israel isn't a small operation with a few homegrown rockets. These are sophisticated missiles supplied by Iran that have been bought, moved hundreds of miles, smuggled through tunnels, and fired by trained terrorists. In order to this, the Mossad would have to be superhuman.
The 2nd problem is that there just isn't any reason for Israel to do this. It's not like they are going to permanent occupy Gaza, they gave that up years ago. The only reason Israel is fighting is to destroy the missile smuggling operation... but according to the provocateur hypothesis, that's being run by Israel!
They could be. All they need to do acknowledge that Israel is a legitimate nation. But you know, Hamas won't do that. They want to abolish Israel. Kind of hard for Israel to leave alone people who want to destroy it.
As blameworthy? They are responding to hundreds of rocket attacks. Got that? ANY nation would respond the way Israel is responding. The only "nations" that don't respond when they are attacked are ones where central authority has broken down.
And a lot of Slashdotters are going to go on an enforced diet now that they've stopped producing Twinkies.
I hope you aren't seriously comparing ending a war with supporting a document format.
Right. Here's a hint... the people who get power are going to be the people who want power. Pretty much the same as now. The only difference is that all the checks and balances that exist right now, the independent judiciary, free elections, freedom of the press, etc, won't necessarily exist. Making it way easier to enforce "order". Before you have a revolution, you need to make damn sure that what replaces what we have right now is way better.
Wait till you live in a real police state, like the former East Germany, where various "friends" that you talk to are on the Stasi payroll. Then you can start complaining about "police state". In the meantime, you can enjoy the freedom to discuss politics and disagree with the government if you live in Western Europe or the USA... something that people in Russia, China, and lots of other countries don't have.
And you are sure that the new gov'ment that replaces the old one will be better because all revolutions lead to better government... right?
No, it's not obvious. I keep trying to imagine myself lugging a tablet around instead of sitting at a comfortable desktop setup, and sorry, I can't. I'm not going to carry a tablet with me everywhere I go, and if I'm going to get up and move to my computer, why not have a real, full, computer setup? Not saying tablets don't make sense in some circumstances, but they are NOT going to replace the desktop.
I'm not saying that MS or Windows is going to disappear. Just that if Linux is ever going to make inroads on the desktop, this is the moment. Or to put it another way, if Linux can't make a move now, people can stop talking about the Linux desktop hitting a mass market, because it just isn't going to happen. Ever.
But this is a much bigger problem for MS than ME or Vista. It's not a poorly performing iteration of the same O/S. They have changed the UI to confuse users. They are building their own hardware and thus threatening the hardware vendors. Valve is worried that they are going to lock out 3rd party distribution of software. It's not just users who are annoyed, it's businesses that now have pretty strong business case to make an alternative available.
Well, seriously, it's pretty much now or never for the mythical "linux desktop". With Windows 8 MS has managed to simultaneously piss off the customers, the hardware vendors, and the 3rd party software vendors. If Linux can't make inroads into the desktop market over the next year or two, when will it?
Yeah... and then you accidently type in column 6 and it's a continuation card... sorry, this talk printing on 120 column paper caused me to flash back to FORTRAN. I think the world has moved on since those times.
If you don't mix tabs & spaces, it doesn't matter whether the tabs are set to 2, 4, 8, or 16. Indentation will be correct.
Don't be ridiculous. You can set your tab size to anything that works for you. We specifically indent with tabs and then people can set their tab size to whatever they prefer. I prefer a larger tab size so indentation is obvious. Some people prefer a smaller tab size so code doesn't run off the right hand size of their window. There's zero downside to being flexible on tab size.
Funny, I already own a computer that can stream to my tv so I never saw the point in buying a tablet... guess it's different strokes for different folks.
Only on Slashdot could you see a post about "sheeple" that is rated +5 insightful. There may not be sheeple, but there is certainly Slashthink.
Thinking about it some more, I agree that there are some bad (or at least limited use) languages out there. For example, Perl is fine for one-liners or quick & dirty scripts, but writing any kind of decent sized system in it is a disaster. But when people start arguing about .Net vs. Java or (even more ridiculous) VB.Net vs C# (two syntaxes for exactly the same function) then they are either ignorant, unprofessional, or both.
I worked at one company for many years where all the code was C on a variety of UNIX platforms. We used our common libraries, code was shared, life was good. C is a fine candidate for code sharing, as long as people are paying attention, using lint, etc. Yes, C allows you to play fast & loose, so you need to be a bit experienced and disciplined, but that helps in any development environment.
.Net has zero to do with good code vs bad code. .Net is a decent technology. You can produce good code with it, you can produce bad code with it. Personally, if someone displayed bias like that to me, I'd have serious questions about hiring them.
I would hate to see us disappear too. But I'd like to see a clear link between spending massive amounts of money on a self-sustaining Mars colony and the survival of the human race. For example, enumerating the top threats to humanity (nuclear war, nearby supernova explosion, asteroid impact, bio-warfare, civilization collapse due to resource exhaustion, etc) and some explanation as to how a Mars colony is the most practical solution to these problems. Right now, I'm not seeing it.
Don't get me wrong, I love space exploration, I'm insanely jealous of these billionaires who can actually just pony up $$$ or rubles or whatever and buy their way to the ISS, but I can't justify the immense cost of a Mars colony on the basis of human survival. I'd love to see some compelling argument for human space exploration, but it's going to have be more concrete than the old "Columbus sailed the ocean blue and look what happened".
We aren't going to figure out how to set up a self-sustaining system on Mars. It's not like we can fly there and find the Martian plants that produce oxygen in the secret underground caverns (although I have to admit, that would be very cool). The technology and systems to do a self-sustaining environment would be built & tested on Earth.
One of the "arguments" for going to Mars is to survive AFTER an asteroid hits Earth. Not too many supply ships going to arrive on Mars in that case.
Not unfortunate, just a recognition of reality. At this moment in time, the science return for sending unmanned probes / orbiters / rovers vastly exceeds the return on sending humans. We'll continue to develop space capability and at some point it may make sense to send humans to Mars ... or maybe not.
And please do NOT invoke the whole "omg we have to get off this rock" argument. If an asteroid impact blew most of Earth's atmosphere and water into space and annihilated 99.999% of the species, Earth would STILL be easier to live on than Mars.
For some people, tablets are great. My office mate swears by his. For me, I don't get it. I'm not going to carry my tablet around with me as I move about my house. So if I need to browse the web, read email, type a doc etc I'm going to move to my computing device. At which point I can either
a) Find where I left my tablet with no physical keyboard, small screen, no mouse...
b) Use my PC
Any guesses what makes more sense?