Anne McCaffrey - Dragon Fuckers of Pern. Seriously that woman has a embarrassing problem.
Orson Scott Card - Outside of Ender's Game, everything is a Mormon allegory.
Robert Heinlein - Never got over his fascination with 19 year old girls and multiple wives. Has absolutely no use for women over 20.
Isaac Asimov - A couple of big ideas. Books that read like logic puzzles but are devoid of all other literary qualities. Complete inability to write female characters.
Yes, I'm bitterly disappointed by the sci-fi I used to love as a child.
The Horatio Hornblower novels. Not sci-fi, but very similar in style. They are a light read, unlike most classics, action-focused, and don't bog down with description. The basic theme is a teenager/young man making his way in the world against moderate adversity.
Old sailing ship tech is just as alien and fascinating as future sci tech and just as fun to read about. Perhaps more so since it actually happened.
Of course after 600 some comments I doubt anyone will make down to this post...
those links were very helpful. I have a chance this weekend to benchmark it myself while our main server is swapped out, and maybe switch back to FreeBSD for the database servers.
I had to abandon FreeBSD a few years ago with performance with MySQL got so abysmal -- apparently the MySQL folks and the FreeBSD folks got into pissing match about threads.
to convince consumers to pay more upfront for large savings over the product's lifetime.
Why is this seemingly logical proposition such a hard sell? Because we are so used to being scammed!
Pay more now, save in the long run! What happens in general across all types of products is that I pay more now, then it breaks, the company
goes out of business, tastes change, it is found to be harmful, etc.
Not to spread FUD, but I bought a bunch of CFLs a few years ago, and found that:
They weren't near as bright as advertised (100 watt equivalent... not even close).
Were oddly colored.
Turned an odd variety of colors as they aged, no two the same!
Ran hotter than I was comfortable with.
The plastic cases cracked and turned brown from the heat they generated after a few months
Could only be used in bare sockets, since the manufacturers warn against putting them in an enclosed fixture.
Were painful to look at in bare sockets, because their limited brightness is concentrated in a smaller area.
In short, I got totally bamboozled on the deal, thoroughly pissed off, and there's no way I'm going to trust Walmart that
things are better now. Nope. I'm going to pay 30 cents a bulb for cheap chinese bulbs that incidentally last longer than the expensive name brands at the grocery store.
P.S. They were from a reputable manufacturer, cost a lot of money and I didn't abuse them in any way.
So, could this hypothesis be proved by looking in one direction, observing an arrangment of galaxies, then looking in the opposite direction and observing the same arrangment rotated 36 degrees?
Obviously someone has though of that already, so is it impractical because the universe is too young for the light to have wrapped around and reached us, or because the universe is just too big to see things that far away?
It's because MySQL runs like dogmeat on FreeBSD, no matter which threading libraries you use. I know, I just switched from FreeBSD to Linux for our database servers. The performance difference was astounding - approximately 60% gain just from switching to Linux.
For us, PostgreSQL is a lot slower than MySQL on the same hardware. But our workload is not typical by any stretch so YMMV.
Try comparing PostgreSQL and MySQL, both running on Linux and I'll think you'll be surprised.
Has it changed any since version 6? I'm still supporting several apps written in that version, and the VCL libraries are IMHO a complete mess.
That said, I'm still hooked on it for cost reasons, it is so much faster and cheaper to develop windows apps in Delphi Pascal than in VC++. Of course, these days, I believe the debate has moved on.
Serious, question, not a troll, is it worth upgrading to the latest?
Clearly. I play both, and can assure you that they are nearly identical. Bugle playing is trivial for a trumpeter. Low brass players can pick it up in a few days.
It's a matter of respect. The govt. should be willing to spend the money to get this job done properly, out of respect for the families.
It's wonderful, inspiring, and beautiful that the VFW folks come out to do this for free. But they shouldn't have to. The govt., with it's billions spent on war, should pay for this simple, inexpensive tribute. The fact that they don't reveals the
true cynical priorities of the people in charge.
There are plenty of working musicians out there who would love to spend a weekend honoring the families. But
you do actually have to pay these guys. And $60/day just isn't going to do it.
I actually agree that it's better than nothing. Someone posted above about a VFW fellow coming out and using one of these devices. To my mind, it's incredibly touching to have someone come out and do that. But it's hard to get around the fact that after a lifetime of service, the Govt. can't be bothered to fund such a simple and profound ritual.
I also feeled compelled to point out that it is very shortsighted to skimp on this cost. A military family who is offended by a cheap funeral is less likely to retain whatever warm fuzzies they have about military service, and less likely to encourage the next generation to enlist.
As an unemployed bugle player, I find this disappointing.:)
Seriously though, trumpet is one of the most common instruments taught in High School, and bugles are
super easy to play (for a brass player). I'm positive they could find people
to do this, they just don't care enough to even look.
I'd rather have a bad bugle player at a funeral of a friend, then some stupid
souless gadget..
That isn't self-modifying code, that's generation of code at runtime. Runtime code generation is ugly (better to do it at compile time with macros, as in Lisp), but it's not self-modifying code. "Self-modifying code" is usually used to refer to assembly language hacks where you (say) overwrite an adress in part of your code to change where a jump instruction jumps to.
I know what it is. I've done it professionally (long ago). I was using the term out of it's normal context to make a point.
The running program modifies itself by adding functions. Ergo, self modifying. It's ugly any way you slice it. It's also unnessecary, and born strictly of laziness and cleverness, two
of the worst engineering sins.
I thought those days were gone for good. Now a bunch of too-clever children are making the same mistakes all over again.
I was talking about debugging rails itself, not my code. At the time I was using it, 1 year ago, there were plenty of bugs and undocumented side effects in the framework.
I believe that Rails does qualify as self-modifying. There is code doesn't exist at design time. Nor can I step into with a debugger at run time, because there is no associated source file.
There's got to be a better way to handle that.
Regarding #1 (login standards), wouldn't it be nice if you could go to Freshmeat, cherry-pick an email program, calendar, link manager, bug-tracker and file sharing software, all written by different developers in different languages, throw it all together and have a custom groupware app for whatever business you are in?
As for #2, maybe I wasn't clear, I am talking about self-contained components that have no awareness of the app they are in, but can take parameters (for example the name of the table they should use). Like OLE controls on windows. It's more of a challenge in a web environment, but it could be done in a much better way than it is now.
I agree with you, mostly. Rails is a god-awful mess under the hood. The programmers really abuse the language features (especially the ability to re-open objects) to the point where it is nearly impossible to trace through the code to figure out what is really going on.
I tried it, ditched it and refuse to use it anymore. The last straw for me was the lack of respect for backwards compatibility in their version upgrades -- I had gotten halfway through a small a project and then they changed the API drastically!
As for the methods they create behind your back, let's just call it what it is: Self Modifying Code. How the heck am I supposed to debug code that doesn't exist at design time?!?
I too am a procedural guy. I used to write windows programs in C (Delphi now) and am currently doing a lot of embedded work in C. But there are some nice advantages to OOP for web development. For example:
It's nice to have a common base class with a before() function that can handle auth and logging for the entire app.
I can release app upgrades to beta users by copying, renaming and modifying a controller object and view directory
Reusable GUI components!
I am such a convert to (light, simple, uncomplicated) OOP that I have written my own Perl MVC framework to let me do it easily.
But I feel that Rails' implementation of MVC is simplistic and naive. Also, despite all the hype, they haven't solved any NEW problems in web app development. For example, when is somebody going to tackle:
I too work with CCS all day long, and yes it's a real pain. I just use it as a C compiler, and don't hit all the complex features, nor do I use their CSL library. I have also noticed that some of their side tools, like the flash-ram utility, don't always work first time...
My big complaint is their silicon -- why wasn't EDMA designed so that you could easily stream chunky (non-uniform block size) data from the MCBSP into memory? I have a work-around, but it is seriously ugly...
Also, would it have killed them to give me some GPIO pins? And why the heck did they have to change the pinout between REV B and C of the C6711, leaving me stuck with the older processor until the powers that be approve doing a new board?
I'm also still annoyed that their entire DSP support department all went to a convention at the same time, leaving me without support during a critical week.
I can say that I've NEVER seen a compiler bug, which is impressive, especially given the tricky parallel instruction execution that goes on.
For my current project I've switched to Xilinx and Microblaze, and I've been told they do a better job with their tools.
Well, I've thought about this entirely too much, and this is what I came up with.
Reavers probably don't reproduce well or take care of their children. Remember it's only been about a decade since their planet was poisoned. I imagine they would die off in 50 years or so.
How do they organize? They don't!
Why don't they eat each other? They probably do... But killing regular humans has got to be easier than killing other reavers which is probably why they bothered to get ships working to go on raids (after killing all the folks made docile on their home planet).
How can these savages operate advanced technology? They were normal people until their planet was poisoned. They still have all those memories and skills.
All in all though, I was VERY disappointed in the movie. I don't think it had the heart of the TV series at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know. What do I get for a really cool one?
How is Ubuntu not a corporate distribution? There is a
corporation developing and releasing that
product, even if it is loosely based on Debian.
Anne McCaffrey - Dragon Fuckers of Pern. Seriously that woman has a embarrassing problem.
Orson Scott Card - Outside of Ender's Game, everything is a Mormon allegory.
Robert Heinlein - Never got over his fascination with 19 year old girls and multiple wives. Has absolutely no use for women over 20.
Isaac Asimov - A couple of big ideas. Books that read like logic puzzles but are devoid of all other literary qualities. Complete inability to write female characters.
Yes, I'm bitterly disappointed by the sci-fi I used to love as a child.
The Horatio Hornblower novels. Not sci-fi, but very similar in style. They are a light read, unlike most classics, action-focused, and don't bog down with description. The basic theme is a teenager/young man making his way in the world against moderate adversity.
Old sailing ship tech is just as alien and fascinating as future sci tech and just as fun to read about. Perhaps more so since it actually happened.
Of course after 600 some comments I doubt anyone will make down to this post...
THANK YOU!
those links were very helpful. I have a chance this weekend
to benchmark it myself while our main server is swapped out,
and maybe switch back to FreeBSD for the database servers.
Thanks to the AC above, too.
I had to abandon FreeBSD a few years ago with performance
with MySQL got so abysmal -- apparently the MySQL folks
and the FreeBSD folks got into pissing match about
threads.
Anyone know how this turned out?
Buy a Eurail pass and go to Europe. Spend two months hopping trains to
wherever you please. I've done exactly that and it was a blast. You can too...
to convince consumers to pay more upfront for large savings over the product's lifetime.
Why is this seemingly logical proposition such a hard sell? Because we are so used to being scammed!
Pay more now, save in the long run! What happens in general across all types of products is that I pay more now, then it breaks, the company goes out of business, tastes change, it is found to be harmful, etc.
Not to spread FUD, but I bought a bunch of CFLs a few years ago, and found that:
In short, I got totally bamboozled on the deal, thoroughly pissed off, and there's no way I'm going to trust Walmart that things are better now. Nope. I'm going to pay 30 cents a bulb for cheap chinese bulbs that incidentally last longer than the expensive name brands at the grocery store.
P.S. They were from a reputable manufacturer, cost a lot of money and I didn't abuse them in any way.
Well I don't really count that as corruption, because the behavior is by design and well documented. Personally I'd prefer to get an error...
OK, I'll bite, why do you need to store dates beyond 10,000?
So, could this hypothesis be proved by looking in one direction, observing an arrangment of galaxies, then looking in the opposite direction and observing the same arrangment rotated 36 degrees?
Obviously someone has though of that already, so is it impractical because the universe is too young for the light to have wrapped around and reached us, or because the universe is just too big to see things that far away?
I've had apps hammering hard on MySQL since 2000. I've never seen any data corruption. Give an example or go home.
It's because MySQL runs like dogmeat on FreeBSD, no matter which threading libraries you use. I know, I just switched from FreeBSD to Linux for our database servers. The performance difference was astounding - approximately 60% gain just from switching to Linux.
For us, PostgreSQL is a lot slower than MySQL on the same hardware. But our workload is not typical by any stretch so YMMV.
Try comparing PostgreSQL and MySQL, both running on Linux and I'll think you'll be surprised.
you really should be using SPF. That will gradually
stop the spammers from using your domain as a return
address.
Has it changed any since version 6? I'm still supporting several apps written in that version, and the VCL libraries are IMHO a complete mess.
That said, I'm still hooked on it for cost reasons, it is so much faster and cheaper to develop windows apps in Delphi Pascal than in VC++. Of course, these days, I believe the debate has moved on.
Serious, question, not a troll, is it worth upgrading to the latest?
Maybe Dell will also realize that a lot of us are pissed off that they
have stopped "supporting" FreeBSD on their servers.
I'm that smart ass. At least one of them.
While I play neither
Clearly. I play both, and can assure you that they are nearly identical. Bugle playing is trivial for a trumpeter. Low brass players can pick it up in a few days.
It's a matter of respect. The govt. should be willing to spend the money to get this job done properly, out of respect for the families.
It's wonderful, inspiring, and beautiful that the VFW folks come out to do this for free. But they shouldn't have to. The govt., with it's billions spent on war, should pay for this simple, inexpensive tribute. The fact that they don't reveals the true cynical priorities of the people in charge.
There are plenty of working musicians out there who would love to spend a weekend honoring the families. But you do actually have to pay these guys. And $60/day just isn't going to do it.
I actually agree that it's better than nothing. Someone posted above about a VFW fellow coming out and using one of these devices. To my mind, it's incredibly touching to have someone come out and do that. But it's hard to get around the fact that after a lifetime of service, the Govt. can't be bothered to fund such a simple and profound ritual.
I also feeled compelled to point out that it is very shortsighted to skimp on this cost. A military family who is offended by a cheap funeral is less likely to retain whatever warm fuzzies they have about military service, and less likely to encourage the next generation to enlist.
As an unemployed bugle player, I find this disappointing. :)
Seriously though, trumpet is one of the most common instruments taught in High School, and bugles are super easy to play (for a brass player). I'm positive they could find people to do this, they just don't care enough to even look.
I'd rather have a bad bugle player at a funeral of a friend, then some stupid souless gadget..
That isn't self-modifying code, that's generation of code at runtime. Runtime code generation is ugly (better to do it at compile time with macros, as in Lisp), but it's not self-modifying code. "Self-modifying code" is usually used to refer to assembly language hacks where you (say) overwrite an adress in part of your code to change where a jump instruction jumps to.
I know what it is. I've done it professionally (long ago). I was using the term out of it's normal context to make a point.
The running program modifies itself by adding functions. Ergo, self modifying. It's ugly any way you slice it. It's also unnessecary, and born strictly of laziness and cleverness, two of the worst engineering sins.
I thought those days were gone for good. Now a bunch of too-clever children are making the same mistakes all over again.
I was talking about debugging rails itself, not my code. At the time I was using it,
1 year ago, there were plenty of bugs and undocumented side effects in the framework.
I believe that Rails does qualify as self-modifying. There is code doesn't exist at design time. Nor can I step into with a debugger at run time, because there is no associated source file.
There's got to be a better way to handle that.
Regarding #1 (login standards), wouldn't it be nice if you could go to Freshmeat, cherry-pick an email program, calendar, link manager, bug-tracker and file sharing software, all written by different developers in different languages, throw it all together and have a custom groupware app for whatever business you are in?
As for #2, maybe I wasn't clear, I am talking about self-contained components that have no awareness of the app they are in, but can take parameters (for example the name of the table they should use). Like OLE controls on windows. It's more of a challenge in a web environment, but it could be done in a much better way than it is now.
Do you use any of the Class::* modules?
I use Class::MethodMaker. It's nice for declaring member variables but OO is pretty clunky it perl 5, and Perl 6 doesn't seem much better.
I agree with you, mostly. Rails is a god-awful mess under the hood. The programmers really abuse the language features (especially the ability to re-open objects) to the point where it is nearly impossible to trace through the code to figure out what is really going on.
I tried it, ditched it and refuse to use it anymore. The last straw for me was the lack of respect for backwards compatibility in their version upgrades -- I had gotten halfway through a small a project and then they changed the API drastically!
As for the methods they create behind your back, let's just call it what it is: Self Modifying Code. How the heck am I supposed to debug code that doesn't exist at design time?!?
I too am a procedural guy. I used to write windows programs in C (Delphi now) and am currently doing a lot of embedded work in C. But there are some nice advantages to OOP for web development. For example:
I am such a convert to (light, simple, uncomplicated) OOP that I have written my own Perl MVC framework to let me do it easily.
But I feel that Rails' implementation of MVC is simplistic and naive. Also, despite all the hype, they haven't solved any NEW problems in web app development. For example, when is somebody going to tackle:
So yes, I am a fellow nutjob, but I have seen light of OO web development.
I too work with CCS all day long, and yes it's a real pain. I just
use it as a C compiler, and don't hit all the complex features, nor
do I use their CSL library. I have also noticed that some of their
side tools, like the flash-ram utility, don't always work first time...
My big complaint is their silicon -- why wasn't EDMA designed so
that you could easily stream chunky (non-uniform block size) data
from the MCBSP into memory? I have a work-around, but it is seriously
ugly...
Also, would it have killed them to give me some GPIO pins? And
why the heck did they have to change the pinout between REV B
and C of the C6711, leaving me stuck with the older processor
until the powers that be approve doing a new board?
I'm also still annoyed that their entire DSP support department all
went to a convention at the same time, leaving me without support
during a critical week.
I can say that I've NEVER seen a compiler bug, which is impressive,
especially given the tricky parallel instruction execution that goes
on.
For my current project I've switched to Xilinx and Microblaze, and
I've been told they do a better job with their tools.
my iBook is my most useful tool... A portable unix box that never needs to be messed with or tweaked to work!
The TIVO monthly fee is nothing in comparison to the time and aggravation it would take to set up and maintain a software PVR.
But then again I'm a Mac person, and I value things that just work.
Well, I've thought about this entirely too much, and this is what I came up with.
Reavers probably don't reproduce well or take care of their children. Remember it's only been about a decade since their planet was poisoned. I imagine they would die off in 50 years or so.
How do they organize? They don't!
Why don't they eat each other? They probably do... But killing regular humans has got to be easier than killing other reavers which is probably why they bothered to get ships working to go on raids (after killing all the folks made docile on their home planet).
How can these savages operate advanced technology? They were normal people until their planet was poisoned. They still have all those memories and skills.
All in all though, I was VERY disappointed in the movie. I don't think it had the heart of the TV series at all.