Some technologies focus on doing things quickly and easily, and some focus on doing things correctly.
LaTeX is very much the latter. It's there for those who need it. And it isn't really that hard. I picked up the basics fairly quickly when I was TAing as a Sophomore. If you know another formatting language and another programming language and you wrap your head around the boxes and glue model, the basics are pretty easy.
But yeah, use someone else's document class. If you aren't a graphic designer, you shouldn't really want to create your own anyway.
If you think Myspace or Facebook are yet anything more than niche marketing, you're dreaming.
The populace has never been terribly well informed. And our leaders have always been corrupt. The federal government has slowly been accumulating extra powers, though it occasionally takes major leaps in this respect such as under FDR and Bush.
The founders for the most part figured that a second revolution would be needed at some point.
You'd get interrogated for 2 years and then released without charges. For God's sake if you're going to try something this dumb at least have the good sense to be white and have a British sounding last name.
The US Civil war was about a lot of things. One of the things it was about was whether or not an independent society within the USA has the right to peaceably secede. Good luck with your plan.
Now you're talking! Corporations might still have some rights as citizens in this society. Your company has been buying its fair share of campaigns for our glorious leaders, correct?
I'm convinced that the basic infrastructure of Al Qaeda has been largely disrupted (it isn't hard with a fragile super secret organization like that, something like Hezbollah or the IRA where everyone on the street is a supporter is much harder) and that the American islamic population wants what all middle class immigrants to the US want - bigger houses and college degrees for their kids. Because all they'd need to do to bring us to our knees is make some tiny little attack somewhere unexpected every few months. Our moronic policies would take care of the rest.
Or are we doing this until the point when over a half billion third worlders are no longer upset at the global order? Good luck with that. Next lets get the populations of every prison in the country to start liking cops.
A determined terrorist would memorize their information, relay it by word or coded public signal. Now an international NGO that the US Government just plain didn't like? Yeah, robbing them would probably do something.
So why is it that Obama (who I'm only lukewarm towards) isn't making more of a campaign issue over the fact that DHS -- the single largest and most expensive Government bureaucracy ever created -- is a goddamn national embarrassment. FEMA and TSA are just child organizations of this Byzantine take on Orwell.
Re:Why can't engineers think of these things???
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 1
Physics 101 was fun wasn't it? I hear next year you'll have to use calculus.
Re:Selling you yesterday's future today
on
NASA Turns 50
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There's a fixed cost in terms of energy to pull a pound of matter out of the Earth's deep-ass gravity well. You're asking for a near-free source of energy that can effortlessly be converted into kinetic propulsion. NASA hasn't found it because it may very well NOT EXIST.
You need to remember what the 'Fi' in Sci-Fi stands for. Just because a handful of its thousands and thousands of predictions have come true doesn't mean the whole mess was a bill of sale.
Arthur C. Clarke himself has said that it's out and out incredible that we've gotten as far in space as we have, and that without the historical oddity that was the Cold War, we'd probably not be much further along than a fancier Sputnik.
Cheap ways of escaping the Earth's gravity are kind of like Time Machines, Anti-Aging cures, FTL drives, zero-gravity chambers, true holographic projection, and such. Just because they'd be awesome and we've been talking about them forever doesn't mean there's any remotely reasonable expectation that we'll see them in our lifetimes. There's still a WHOLE lot of history left to happen.
Here's an idea. Write (or type and print out) a letter to your senators and representatives and to Mr. Obama (and I guess McCain if you think he's got a snowball's chance) and tell them how important you think this is.
If you work in the tech sector, tell them that too. Super double extra bonus points if you hold a legit patent. Or heck, if you hold an illegitimate patent for defensive reasons.
Some shops hire 4 or 5 very very good programmers and just give them freedom.
Some shops have dozens or hundreds of coders of more market-average skill.
Coding practices are for the latter. I'm sure Bell Labs let their guys write any damn kind of code they wanted. I can't imagine the team at PARC getting told by management where to put their braces and semicolons. I'm sure the MIT AI lab didn't worry over stupid nitpicky...
memory is so much slower than processing these days that old-school tricks like unfurling loops actually slow down code as the larger executable has to be paged into cache more frequently.
I think the fact that I only make friends with people who have senses of humor just blinds me to the fact that there are people out there who don't have them.
Slashdot Mirror
You think Donald Knuth gives a crap about what other people are doing?
This man writes (amazing) Comp Sci text books in make believe assembly.
Some technologies focus on doing things quickly and easily, and some focus on doing things correctly.
LaTeX is very much the latter. It's there for those who need it. And it isn't really that hard. I picked up the basics fairly quickly when I was TAing as a Sophomore. If you know another formatting language and another programming language and you wrap your head around the boxes and glue model, the basics are pretty easy.
But yeah, use someone else's document class. If you aren't a graphic designer, you shouldn't really want to create your own anyway.
Why do people bring up turing-completeness when discussing the usability of a language?
Write a signed division operator for a turing machine and then come back and tell us how convenient it is.
If you think Myspace or Facebook are yet anything more than niche marketing, you're dreaming.
The populace has never been terribly well informed. And our leaders have always been corrupt. The federal government has slowly been accumulating extra powers, though it occasionally takes major leaps in this respect such as under FDR and Bush.
The founders for the most part figured that a second revolution would be needed at some point.
Harvey Milk are about a bazijillion times better anyway.
You'd get interrogated for 2 years and then released without charges. For God's sake if you're going to try something this dumb at least have the good sense to be white and have a British sounding last name.
The US Civil war was about a lot of things. One of the things it was about was whether or not an independent society within the USA has the right to peaceably secede. Good luck with your plan.
Now you're talking! Corporations might still have some rights as citizens in this society. Your company has been buying its fair share of campaigns for our glorious leaders, correct?
No joke.
I'm convinced that the basic infrastructure of Al Qaeda has been largely disrupted (it isn't hard with a fragile super secret organization like that, something like Hezbollah or the IRA where everyone on the street is a supporter is much harder) and that the American islamic population wants what all middle class immigrants to the US want - bigger houses and college degrees for their kids. Because all they'd need to do to bring us to our knees is make some tiny little attack somewhere unexpected every few months. Our moronic policies would take care of the rest.
Or are we doing this until the point when over a half billion third worlders are no longer upset at the global order? Good luck with that. Next lets get the populations of every prison in the country to start liking cops.
And who enforces this kind of oversight. You can't rely on anyone to follow the law, especially not authorities, when there is no governance.
A determined terrorist would memorize their information, relay it by word or coded public signal. Now an international NGO that the US Government just plain didn't like? Yeah, robbing them would probably do something.
No, fascism would require a fanatical devotion to order and efficiency.
This is just thuggish authoritarianism. Don't worry, it's still a blight on the very concept of freedom that we're sending kids off to die for.
So why is it that Obama (who I'm only lukewarm towards) isn't making more of a campaign issue over the fact that DHS -- the single largest and most expensive Government bureaucracy ever created -- is a goddamn national embarrassment. FEMA and TSA are just child organizations of this Byzantine take on Orwell.
Physics 101 was fun wasn't it? I hear next year you'll have to use calculus.
There's a fixed cost in terms of energy to pull a pound of matter out of the Earth's deep-ass gravity well. You're asking for a near-free source of energy that can effortlessly be converted into kinetic propulsion. NASA hasn't found it because it may very well NOT EXIST.
You need to remember what the 'Fi' in Sci-Fi stands for. Just because a handful of its thousands and thousands of predictions have come true doesn't mean the whole mess was a bill of sale.
Arthur C. Clarke himself has said that it's out and out incredible that we've gotten as far in space as we have, and that without the historical oddity that was the Cold War, we'd probably not be much further along than a fancier Sputnik.
Cheap ways of escaping the Earth's gravity are kind of like Time Machines, Anti-Aging cures, FTL drives, zero-gravity chambers, true holographic projection, and such. Just because they'd be awesome and we've been talking about them forever doesn't mean there's any remotely reasonable expectation that we'll see them in our lifetimes. There's still a WHOLE lot of history left to happen.
I'm posting to remind you that both smell and haircuts are off-topic here.
Please read the FAQ. It has a sticky.
Yeah, the seemingly logical human brain makes all kinds of silly blunders.
Such as inserting a naive interpretation of Godel's theorem into a debate that isn't about the derivable elements of a formal system.
parent was joking.
Here's an idea. Write (or type and print out) a letter to your senators and representatives and to Mr. Obama (and I guess McCain if you think he's got a snowball's chance) and tell them how important you think this is.
If you work in the tech sector, tell them that too. Super double extra bonus points if you hold a legit patent. Or heck, if you hold an illegitimate patent for defensive reasons.
Emails don't count.
Opinions are like assholes...
the entire internet has seen mine.
Some shops hire 4 or 5 very very good programmers and just give them freedom.
Some shops have dozens or hundreds of coders of more market-average skill.
Coding practices are for the latter. I'm sure Bell Labs let their guys write any damn kind of code they wanted. I can't imagine the team at PARC getting told by management where to put their braces and semicolons. I'm sure the MIT AI lab didn't worry over stupid nitpicky...
or wait... Stallman was there.
If your coding practice requires a *proof of correctness* you're operating in a different world from what this ask slashdot is even about.
Are you modeling ballistics fro DARPA? Do they even prove their code? Does it happen outside of academia these days?
I know someone is working on a proof for the L4 kernel. That's the only real world use of formal proof I've heard of this decade.
memory is so much slower than processing these days that old-school tricks like unfurling loops actually slow down code as the larger executable has to be paged into cache more frequently.
I think managers should all read the above posts and think very very hard about their jobs.
This is real.
I think the fact that I only make friends with people who have senses of humor just blinds me to the fact that there are people out there who don't have them.
It's strange. Er, "dipshit."