It's an obvious ploy to get him to start talking. More obvious is the line about "human rights being trampled". Once he starts talking the hope is he'll spill some information the FBI doesn't already know. Many people fall for this kind if thing as it appeals to their ego. Appelbaum is obviously smart enough to realize there's really nothing for him to gain by talking to the FBI, and only things to lose.
When hundreds (or thousands) of these devices start popping up and people are getting spied on by their fellow citizens, there will be an outrage! (silly emphasis)
Heh. Like say the "outrage" of 20 years ago during the analogue era of cell phone when anyone with a scanner could listen in on cell phone calls? This was widely reported at the time. The response? Ban scanner makers from selling devices capable of receive on cell phone frequencies.
This kind of thing has been going on since wireless phones have been invented. 30 years ago it was listening in on cordless phones. People outrage lasts about until the next commercial and then they forget about it.
You expect a jury (or judge) to understand a technical issue? It will basically boil down to "ZOMG HAX, put him in jail!!!1one!
No, but I expect a jury or judge to understand that when you go to talk where the guy says he's going to listen in on a phone call for the next couple minutes that someone in the room makes, you just don't make a call unless you want everyone in the room to hear it. Why is this such a hard concept for some people to grasp?
Listening in on cell phone calls was sometimes as trivial as turning on your TV to the right UHF station. If you wanted to get sophisticated, you bought a scanner to listen on the right frequency.
It's interesting someone found a way to make a base station an do a MITM attack, but this is nothing compared to the massive problem with cloning, interception, and everything else than went on in the analogue era of cell phones for many many years.
"Hey, you need to charge this guy, he broke wiretapping laws!"
That might be just a bit difficult to convince a jury, given that his "wiretapping" is going to be limited to a small area that likely includes just the conference room full of people their for expressly this purpose, for not particularly long. If anyone doesn't want to be "wiretapped" perhaps they can restrain themselves and not make any phone calls during that short period in that room.
Why is it that some people are always so convinced "the law" is something like the laws of physics that's set in stone and not interpreted for a specific purpose?
I'm guessing he'll be breaking FCC regulations. If someone wants to make some big complaint about the few minutes he'll be running his demo, well I'd help contribute to whatever pathetic fine they might try to assess. In reality this would never happen since the FCC has better things to do.
Of course we don't live in a perfect world. C and C++ never promised "write once, run everywhere". Java did. That's why it's flawed.
Really? That's the big flaw? Java works quite well cross platform, thank you. Please try again and find some real flaws rather than the illusory ones people tried to pin on it 10 years ago.
They would have accomplished roughly the same thing, in a much more straightforward way. Instead they gave us C++ with a GC, a little different syntax, and then evolved it from there. I was, and continue to be, unimpressed.
Some of us actually think not having to manage resources like memory on an active basis to be an advantage. Fine if you don't, but snide remarks don't really impress me. Java most certainly has flaws, but you have to actually know the language and work with it to identify them, not just take a couple pot shots from comments you've heard from others.
Ahhh... so what Java really needs is something like #ifdef, so you can work around-
Not really. It's a runtime configuration. It's something you can just set via command line and distribute the JVM packaged along with your product. Heheh. All this time, and I'm still glad I'm not a Java developer.
We don't live in a perfect world. I'm sure I could point out several flaws of whatever language you personally choose. The permgen issue has existed for years, but it's relatively minor. If you're going to pick something to complain about in Java, at least pick something that's a real issue.
It's understandable that they might not want to run on just anybody's Java.
That's not the issue at all. Identifying the jvm vendor is simply a means to identify if the permgen size should be set, which is a vendor specific setting. Eclipse requires a large permgen space on the sun JVM. When this didn't get set it ran out of permgen memory, and thus the error. I haven't looked into it, but it seems likely there's a standard API to check Java's version.
Given that Eclipse operates in this odd way, my guess is there's no standard API to check. I do agree it's a stupid workaround though.
It seems your fancy Java doesn't absolve you from the need to learn memory management after all:)
Partially true, but hardly as true as it is in C++. You can certainly run into the issue, but it's relatively isolated. If you desperately want to avoid it, use a different JVM that doesn't have permgen space. permgen isn't part of the JVM spec.
I don't get it. Why would you design the VM to have a fixed size address space in the first place? Anybody here remember the reason?
Suns VM doesn't have a fixed size address space, per se. The --maxpermsize option in Sun's JVM adjusts the "perm gen" space. Perm gen space is supposed to be the "permanent generation" portion of memory that doesn't get garbage collected. I couldn't tell you about the specifics of why, but it's part of the garbage collection strategy that Sun uses in its JVM, and involves class loading.
I know this, because permgen space is a resource that's often depleted by some applications that load a lot of classes over and over, like say an application server in a development environment. It's a quite ugly problem that winds up being a finger pointing exercise between Sun and the App developers. There are JVMs that don't use a permgen approach, notably IBM.
Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that reflection is designed for?
I'm not sure if there's anything in reflection that'll tell you specifics about the virtual machine options or not, but that's not really what reflection was designed for. Reflection is primarily used to find out information about, and allows manipulation of Classes.
And they can keep winning lawsuits because they keep annoying towns or cops into violating their civil rights or people into punching them or whatever.
The point is to stop them from winning. Just delay delay delay. Don't settle. Lawsuits may be cheap to fight, but without the income for years upon years, why fight them?
Normally lawsuits are all about the money. The other side gives up once it's economical to do so. With a large fund to fight Phelps, the economics of settling go out the window.
An interesting perspective. I suspect you're right that these people are motivated by fame. I don't know that they aren't "true believers" though. I do think we're in agreement that there's really nothing that'll stop these people other than running out of money. Flying all over the country can't be cheap, nor can suing people. I guess I don't understand how they continue to win these lawsuits.
Perhaps the right approach is to start a fund to pay lawyers to fight the lawsuits? Doesn't matter if you win or not, just keep the thing tied up in court and bleed Phelps dry.
So what? Freedom needs to be continually fought for; if you ignore Phelps and give him no opposition
The source of the problem isn't really that there's people like Phelps, and nobody is opposing them. It's that guy and his utterly minuscule congregation get any media attention at all. There's a million people out their that are batshit insane and worry about the orbital mind control lasers that nobody pays attention to. But yet this guy and his handful of followers gets paid attention to. Why?
If we could somehow get the media to drop covering this guy, that'd do a hell of a lot more than these counter-protests ever would. That's likely not possible, as this guy sells a lot of eyeballs. I'd just like to point out that ignoring people is sometimes a very good solution to the "problem".
Freedom of speech also means that you are to respect your fellow man's views, regardless of how unpopular they are, for it may be your views next that become sanctioned
In fact it's exactly the opposite. Freedom of speech guarantees you the right to respect, disrespect, ignore, or anything else of someone elses views.
I think what you're getting at is that to maintain freedom of speech we must all believe in peoples rights to express their views. Respect is something else entirely.
If we look at the real world, we'll see events happening without cause everywhere (virtual particles, radioactive decay, etc.).
This is really the most powerful argument, and I wish people would use it more. It's one of those facts that almost nobody actually knows, but yet it's incredibly revealing about how our Universe works.
Our beliefs that everything has a cause come from observation, not philosophy. The philosophy comes later. If observation says some things don't have a cause, the idea that everything must have a cause goes out the window and all you have left is simply sophistry.
I felt the same way. It's a brilliant counter protest. There's really no response to pointing out how ridiculous people look.
perhaps even the people who are serious protesters will realize how crazy out their they are.
Never happen. It's not about rational thought, it's about Us vs Them. If anything it'll strengthen the group cohesion of the crazies and make them crazier. They'll just shrug it off as another sign they're winning against the commie faggot hippie liberals and their insane robot cartoon protest. That doesn't matter of course, since the counter protest is about influencing everyone else who looks at Phelps bunch of nuts.
If the 9/11 assholes get defined as Muslims, and 9/11 was some big Muslim vs Christian event, and 9/11 was the result of the teachings of Islam (All claims I've heard from people of various Christian denominations), then I think it's entirely fair to stick Phelps in with Christians and blame Christianity for his douche-baggery.
I know you haven't done this, and I'm not suggesting you would. But I'm guessing the same people that might divorce themselves from Phelps and his ilk are the same people that would claim Islam is the source of 9/11.
People pick them because it's easy to find programmers, libraries, documentation, training materials, and tools for them. And initially, Java and C++ caught on because a few large companies (Microsoft, IBM, Sun) pushed them.
That's one reason. Why is such an invalid reason? You're really trying to tell me that productivity isn't dependent on programmers, libraries, documentation, training materials and tools? The focus you have on the language itself in isolation from everything else is a false comparison. I actually don't really agree with you on your criticisms of the language specifics, but that's really another issue entirely.
C++ caught on because companies pushed them? I've never heard that before. Companies try to push out products that ultimately fail all the time. The idea that the only reason these language succeeded is because of large companies pushing them (and not anything to do with the language itself) flies in the face of evidence. If products were adopted merely because a large company backs it, there would be no colossal failures. I'm not a language historian, so I can't pull out failed languages that were pushed by a large corporation. Are you suggesting programming languages are different from other products in that the success/failure has nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with marketing, and Big Business? still beats having no programmers working in a well designed language.
So what are these great well designed languages you speak of, that if only all of us idiots of the world would just start USING them, all our problems would just go away? Few languages other than C++ have even the possibility of a buffer overrun or pointer error, one of the most common sources of security errors in UNIX and Windows software. Few languages other than C++ have such widespread use of undefined effects in their definitions. Few languages other than Java have poorly designed features like covariant arrays, type erasure, or class loaders.
So what? It's pretty easy to pick out the flaws of product Y, and then point out how product X doesn't have those flaws (ignoring the flaws that product X has that product Y doesn't have). I'm also not quite sure why class loaders, covariant arrays or type erasure are such horrible flaws. You might as well start arguing about how steel sucks ass because it's relatively heavy compared to an aluminum allow. If only people built everything out of aluminum, all our construction problems would be solved! All tools have limitations built into them. Why you're so focused on some bizarre campaign against these two particular tools I just can't quite understand.
No, you're so focused on the language that you're missing the humans. Software is about people, not languages. It's the humans that create the vast majority of the flaws in programs. Languages can make it easier to avoid those flaws, but ultimately they're created by people. Throw a poor programmer at any language and I guarantee you they'll find a way to fuck it up. If you do have actual knowledge of programming languages, why don't you come up with a technical analysis comparing, oh, the Java type system to the type system of other languages, or the C++ runtime and performance to the runtime and performance of other languages? In what way do you think it's actually technically better?
Because I don't feel any need to prove myself to some guy on slashdot? Because I don't think the whole discussion revolves around some isolated technical merits of Language A vs Language B?
Do you even know other languages besides Java?
Yes, I know several. You're beginning to sound like a troll, merely trying to attack credibility through trying to provoke some sort of technical dick measuring contest. I'm not interested in that.
Right, that's why they're the two most popular languages in the world, because they don't work very well and aren't very productive. Why is it people pick these languages if they suck so bad, and there's obviously better choices available? The software people write in them is bug-ridden, unportable, slow, and full of security holes. Software projects in industry are perpetually behind. When tested, most programmers have basic deficiencies in their understanding of those languages.
Very true. This is also the case for every other language in existence. The problems you describe aren't merely problems of technology or language choice, they're problems we've mostly decided to have and put up with. Language choice might make parts of it go away.. but I'll guarantee you some other problem will immediately replace it. Thinking these problems are technological ones is like burying your head in the sand and not looking up the food chain or around the room a little. The actions of the community clearly are a factor: people with little or no knowledge (e.g., you)
Yes.. we're all fools with no knowledge. Just robots programmed to do as the master tells us. More than a little arrogant. Ultimately though, a useless statement and nothing but an attempt at an ego boost. You should pick technologies based on understanding them and the trade-offs involved. Obviously, you do not.
Right.. because I've certainly expressed enough in this little thread for you to come to that conclusion. Apparently, you can't even read.
I realized we're in agreement, The point is to clarify why pointing out the guy is a dickweed is relevant. And, no, I don't think Go is a particularly good language. But Pike's criticism of Java and C++ is valid, and there are plenty of other, good languages around.
Why is it everyone seems to think their POV is the only one that exists? Why are you making all the right choices for your given problems, but people who use Java and C++ are the big idiots? How is it you know so much about other peoples programming problems and problem space that you can make vast generalizations about how they've made the wrong choices? Utterly ridiculous.
So saying radio signals could not be harmful labels you as the poorly informed.
Taking things out of context (a discussion about cell phones) and putting in some more generalized context (some arbitrarily high level that doesn't exist in the real world) shows one of three things: you have poor reading comprehension, are basically dishonest, or are bending over backwards to find some flaw to try to seem smart. I suspect the latter.
That's unknown. Radio emissions at cell phone bands do have biological effects, and it is currently unknown whether those are harmful.
Nope. There's been multiple studies that say cell phones are essentially harmless, or at the very worst have such a small effect to not be measurable. Many of them have had slashdot stories. Those studies are indeed inconclusive.
I guess we disagree about what they conclude. I've read about several of them, and it's hardly anything worth any concern.
Funny, my light bulbs all come with labels stating how much power they consume and how much light they radiate. It never made me wonder if light is harmful.
That's because you know that the number is a measure of brightness. The number is actually informative. Cell phone emission labels tell people nothing about something they already think is scary "radiation! That's bad!" All those nutrition labels provide information that is completely useless (though still truthful) unless you know what those things are and how they affect health.
It's useless, but it's not misleading. Misleading would be if the label was required to provide how radioactive the food is. (Don't buy Brand X tomatoes,it has twice the radioactivity of brand Y tomatoes!" The nutrition labels are actually based on sound science, not fear and stupidity. The nutrition labels in the US actually contain percentages of the RDA for each nutrient, so the knowledge level required to understand them far far less than with this silly cell phone labels. The only backing any of those have is the hope that some TLA will smack them if they lie.
Not really. The nutrition information you mentioned isn't just random facts about the food, it's intended to provide people a baseline to compare to. You don't have to be all that terribly informed to look at a nutrition label, notice it contains 110% of the saturated fat for a day and realize that maybe that's not the most healthy thing to eat.
The cell phone emission ratings are nothing like a nutrition label. There's no actual scientific evidence that a phone emitting less EM than some other phone is safer. We've got an enormous amount of scientific data that eating too much sodium, or not enough fiber will lead to poor health.
Companies can use the label to educate by just showing a comparison of how much radiation a person gets from:
* Being outside in the sun for 30 minutes
* Doing a 5 minute phone call
* A 1 hour trip on a plane
Great, just want I want. People to be even LESS informed about the EM spectrum.
Companies forced to put miss-leading claims about EM emissions of phones, misleading consumers into thinking radio waves are harmful. Companies try to spin it by now comparing radio waves to x-rays, visible light, etc. Consumers even MORE miss-informed and now somehow think x-rays are comparable to a high wattage light bulb.
Spin helps nobody. What's needed is more honesty about what's going on, not dishonesty to counter misleading and stupid information. Educating the public doesn't happen through spin. (Where the hell did that idea come from?)
Slashdot Mirror
It's an obvious ploy to get him to start talking. More obvious is the line about "human rights being trampled". Once he starts talking the hope is he'll spill some information the FBI doesn't already know. Many people fall for this kind if thing as it appeals to their ego. Appelbaum is obviously smart enough to realize there's really nothing for him to gain by talking to the FBI, and only things to lose.
When hundreds (or thousands) of these devices start popping up and people are getting spied on by their fellow citizens, there will be an outrage! (silly emphasis)
Heh. Like say the "outrage" of 20 years ago during the analogue era of cell phone when anyone with a scanner could listen in on cell phone calls? This was widely reported at the time. The response? Ban scanner makers from selling devices capable of receive on cell phone frequencies.
This kind of thing has been going on since wireless phones have been invented. 30 years ago it was listening in on cordless phones. People outrage lasts about until the next commercial and then they forget about it.
You expect a jury (or judge) to understand a technical issue? It will basically boil down to "ZOMG HAX, put him in jail!!!1one!
No, but I expect a jury or judge to understand that when you go to talk where the guy says he's going to listen in on a phone call for the next couple minutes that someone in the room makes, you just don't make a call unless you want everyone in the room to hear it. Why is this such a hard concept for some people to grasp?
Listening in on cell phone calls was sometimes as trivial as turning on your TV to the right UHF station. If you wanted to get sophisticated, you bought a scanner to listen on the right frequency.
It's interesting someone found a way to make a base station an do a MITM attack, but this is nothing compared to the massive problem with cloning, interception, and everything else than went on in the analogue era of cell phones for many many years.
"Hey, you need to charge this guy, he broke wiretapping laws!"
That might be just a bit difficult to convince a jury, given that his "wiretapping" is going to be limited to a small area that likely includes just the conference room full of people their for expressly this purpose, for not particularly long. If anyone doesn't want to be "wiretapped" perhaps they can restrain themselves and not make any phone calls during that short period in that room.
Why is it that some people are always so convinced "the law" is something like the laws of physics that's set in stone and not interpreted for a specific purpose?
I'm guessing he'll be breaking FCC regulations. If someone wants to make some big complaint about the few minutes he'll be running his demo, well I'd help contribute to whatever pathetic fine they might try to assess. In reality this would never happen since the FCC has better things to do.
Of course we don't live in a perfect world. C and C++ never promised "write once, run everywhere". Java did. That's why it's flawed.
Really? That's the big flaw? Java works quite well cross platform, thank you. Please try again and find some real flaws rather than the illusory ones people tried to pin on it 10 years ago.
They would have accomplished roughly the same thing, in a much more straightforward way. Instead they gave us C++ with a GC, a little different syntax, and then evolved it from there. I was, and continue to be, unimpressed.
Some of us actually think not having to manage resources like memory on an active basis to be an advantage. Fine if you don't, but snide remarks don't really impress me. Java most certainly has flaws, but you have to actually know the language and work with it to identify them, not just take a couple pot shots from comments you've heard from others.
Ahhh... so what Java really needs is something like #ifdef, so you can work around-
Not really. It's a runtime configuration. It's something you can just set via command line and distribute the JVM packaged along with your product.
Heheh. All this time, and I'm still glad I'm not a Java developer.
We don't live in a perfect world. I'm sure I could point out several flaws of whatever language you personally choose. The permgen issue has existed for years, but it's relatively minor. If you're going to pick something to complain about in Java, at least pick something that's a real issue.
It's understandable that they might not want to run on just anybody's Java.
That's not the issue at all. Identifying the jvm vendor is simply a means to identify if the permgen size should be set, which is a vendor specific setting. Eclipse requires a large permgen space on the sun JVM. When this didn't get set it ran out of permgen memory, and thus the error.
I haven't looked into it, but it seems likely there's a standard API to check Java's version.
Given that Eclipse operates in this odd way, my guess is there's no standard API to check. I do agree it's a stupid workaround though.
It seems your fancy Java doesn't absolve you from the need to learn memory management after all
Partially true, but hardly as true as it is in C++. You can certainly run into the issue, but it's relatively isolated. If you desperately want to avoid it, use a different JVM that doesn't have permgen space. permgen isn't part of the JVM spec.
I don't get it. Why would you design the VM to have a fixed size address space in the first place? Anybody here remember the reason?
Suns VM doesn't have a fixed size address space, per se. The --maxpermsize option in Sun's JVM adjusts the "perm gen" space. Perm gen space is supposed to be the "permanent generation" portion of memory that doesn't get garbage collected. I couldn't tell you about the specifics of why, but it's part of the garbage collection strategy that Sun uses in its JVM, and involves class loading.
I know this, because permgen space is a resource that's often depleted by some applications that load a lot of classes over and over, like say an application server in a development environment. It's a quite ugly problem that winds up being a finger pointing exercise between Sun and the App developers. There are JVMs that don't use a permgen approach, notably IBM.
Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that reflection is designed for?
I'm not sure if there's anything in reflection that'll tell you specifics about the virtual machine options or not, but that's not really what reflection was designed for. Reflection is primarily used to find out information about, and allows manipulation of Classes.
And they can keep winning lawsuits because they keep annoying towns or cops into violating their civil rights or people into punching them or whatever.
The point is to stop them from winning. Just delay delay delay. Don't settle. Lawsuits may be cheap to fight, but without the income for years upon years, why fight them?
Normally lawsuits are all about the money. The other side gives up once it's economical to do so. With a large fund to fight Phelps, the economics of settling go out the window.
An interesting perspective. I suspect you're right that these people are motivated by fame. I don't know that they aren't "true believers" though. I do think we're in agreement that there's really nothing that'll stop these people other than running out of money. Flying all over the country can't be cheap, nor can suing people. I guess I don't understand how they continue to win these lawsuits.
Perhaps the right approach is to start a fund to pay lawyers to fight the lawsuits? Doesn't matter if you win or not, just keep the thing tied up in court and bleed Phelps dry.
So what? Freedom needs to be continually fought for; if you ignore Phelps and give him no opposition
The source of the problem isn't really that there's people like Phelps, and nobody is opposing them. It's that guy and his utterly minuscule congregation get any media attention at all. There's a million people out their that are batshit insane and worry about the orbital mind control lasers that nobody pays attention to. But yet this guy and his handful of followers gets paid attention to. Why?
If we could somehow get the media to drop covering this guy, that'd do a hell of a lot more than these counter-protests ever would. That's likely not possible, as this guy sells a lot of eyeballs. I'd just like to point out that ignoring people is sometimes a very good solution to the "problem".
Freedom of speech also means that you are to respect your fellow man's views, regardless of how unpopular they are, for it may be your views next that become sanctioned
In fact it's exactly the opposite. Freedom of speech guarantees you the right to respect, disrespect, ignore, or anything else of someone elses views.
I think what you're getting at is that to maintain freedom of speech we must all believe in peoples rights to express their views. Respect is something else entirely.
If we look at the real world, we'll see events happening without cause everywhere (virtual particles, radioactive decay, etc.).
This is really the most powerful argument, and I wish people would use it more. It's one of those facts that almost nobody actually knows, but yet it's incredibly revealing about how our Universe works.
Our beliefs that everything has a cause come from observation, not philosophy. The philosophy comes later. If observation says some things don't have a cause, the idea that everything must have a cause goes out the window and all you have left is simply sophistry.
I felt the same way. It's a brilliant counter protest. There's really no response to pointing out how ridiculous people look.
perhaps even the people who are serious protesters will realize how crazy out their they are.
Never happen. It's not about rational thought, it's about Us vs Them. If anything it'll strengthen the group cohesion of the crazies and make them crazier. They'll just shrug it off as another sign they're winning against the commie faggot hippie liberals and their insane robot cartoon protest. That doesn't matter of course, since the counter protest is about influencing everyone else who looks at Phelps bunch of nuts.
one shouldn't assume that WBC are Christian
Why not? Who gets to define Christian, and why?
If the 9/11 assholes get defined as Muslims, and 9/11 was some big Muslim vs Christian event, and 9/11 was the result of the teachings of Islam (All claims I've heard from people of various Christian denominations), then I think it's entirely fair to stick Phelps in with Christians and blame Christianity for his douche-baggery.
I know you haven't done this, and I'm not suggesting you would. But I'm guessing the same people that might divorce themselves from Phelps and his ilk are the same people that would claim Islam is the source of 9/11.
People pick them because it's easy to find programmers, libraries, documentation, training materials, and tools for them. And initially, Java and C++ caught on because a few large companies (Microsoft, IBM, Sun) pushed them.
That's one reason. Why is such an invalid reason? You're really trying to tell me that productivity isn't dependent on programmers, libraries, documentation, training materials and tools? The focus you have on the language itself in isolation from everything else is a false comparison. I actually don't really agree with you on your criticisms of the language specifics, but that's really another issue entirely.
C++ caught on because companies pushed them? I've never heard that before. Companies try to push out products that ultimately fail all the time. The idea that the only reason these language succeeded is because of large companies pushing them (and not anything to do with the language itself) flies in the face of evidence. If products were adopted merely because a large company backs it, there would be no colossal failures. I'm not a language historian, so I can't pull out failed languages that were pushed by a large corporation. Are you suggesting programming languages are different from other products in that the success/failure has nothing to do with the product itself and everything to do with marketing, and Big Business?
still beats having no programmers working in a well designed language.
So what are these great well designed languages you speak of, that if only all of us idiots of the world would just start USING them, all our problems would just go away?
Few languages other than C++ have even the possibility of a buffer overrun or pointer error, one of the most common sources of security errors in UNIX and Windows software. Few languages other than C++ have such widespread use of undefined effects in their definitions. Few languages other than Java have poorly designed features like covariant arrays, type erasure, or class loaders.
So what? It's pretty easy to pick out the flaws of product Y, and then point out how product X doesn't have those flaws (ignoring the flaws that product X has that product Y doesn't have). I'm also not quite sure why class loaders, covariant arrays or type erasure are such horrible flaws. You might as well start arguing about how steel sucks ass because it's relatively heavy compared to an aluminum allow. If only people built everything out of aluminum, all our construction problems would be solved! All tools have limitations built into them. Why you're so focused on some bizarre campaign against these two particular tools I just can't quite understand.
No, you're so focused on the language that you're missing the humans. Software is about people, not languages. It's the humans that create the vast majority of the flaws in programs. Languages can make it easier to avoid those flaws, but ultimately they're created by people. Throw a poor programmer at any language and I guarantee you they'll find a way to fuck it up.
If you do have actual knowledge of programming languages, why don't you come up with a technical analysis comparing, oh, the Java type system to the type system of other languages, or the C++ runtime and performance to the runtime and performance of other languages? In what way do you think it's actually technically better?
Because I don't feel any need to prove myself to some guy on slashdot? Because I don't think the whole discussion revolves around some isolated technical merits of Language A vs Language B?
Do you even know other languages besides Java?
Yes, I know several. You're beginning to sound like a troll, merely trying to attack credibility through trying to provoke some sort of technical dick measuring contest. I'm not interested in that.
But Java and C++ do not "work quite well".
Right, that's why they're the two most popular languages in the world, because they don't work very well and aren't very productive. Why is it people pick these languages if they suck so bad, and there's obviously better choices available?
The software people write in them is bug-ridden, unportable, slow, and full of security holes. Software projects in industry are perpetually behind. When tested, most programmers have basic deficiencies in their understanding of those languages.
Very true. This is also the case for every other language in existence. The problems you describe aren't merely problems of technology or language choice, they're problems we've mostly decided to have and put up with. Language choice might make parts of it go away.. but I'll guarantee you some other problem will immediately replace it. Thinking these problems are technological ones is like burying your head in the sand and not looking up the food chain or around the room a little.
The actions of the community clearly are a factor: people with little or no knowledge (e.g., you)
Yes.. we're all fools with no knowledge. Just robots programmed to do as the master tells us. More than a little arrogant. Ultimately though, a useless statement and nothing but an attempt at an ego boost.
You should pick technologies based on understanding them and the trade-offs involved. Obviously, you do not.
Right.. because I've certainly expressed enough in this little thread for you to come to that conclusion.
Apparently, you can't even read.
I realized we're in agreement, The point is to clarify why pointing out the guy is a dickweed is relevant.
And, no, I don't think Go is a particularly good language. But Pike's criticism of Java and C++ is valid, and there are plenty of other, good languages around.
Why is it everyone seems to think their POV is the only one that exists? Why are you making all the right choices for your given problems, but people who use Java and C++ are the big idiots? How is it you know so much about other peoples programming problems and problem space that you can make vast generalizations about how they've made the wrong choices? Utterly ridiculous.
So saying radio signals could not be harmful labels you as the poorly informed.
Taking things out of context (a discussion about cell phones) and putting in some more generalized context (some arbitrarily high level that doesn't exist in the real world) shows one of three things: you have poor reading comprehension, are basically dishonest, or are bending over backwards to find some flaw to try to seem smart. I suspect the latter.
That's unknown. Radio emissions at cell phone bands do have biological effects, and it is currently unknown whether those are harmful.
Nope. There's been multiple studies that say cell phones are essentially harmless, or at the very worst have such a small effect to not be measurable. Many of them have had slashdot stories.
Those studies are indeed inconclusive.
I guess we disagree about what they conclude. I've read about several of them, and it's hardly anything worth any concern.
Looks like you're flunking the nutrition test.
Looks like you're taking things out of context, which wasn't a discussion about nutrition, but on labels.
As for the rest of your comments. Pay more attention.
Funny, my light bulbs all come with labels stating how much power they consume and how much light they radiate. It never made me wonder if light is harmful.
That's because you know that the number is a measure of brightness. The number is actually informative. Cell phone emission labels tell people nothing about something they already think is scary "radiation! That's bad!"
All those nutrition labels provide information that is completely useless (though still truthful) unless you know what those things are and how they affect health.
It's useless, but it's not misleading. Misleading would be if the label was required to provide how radioactive the food is. (Don't buy Brand X tomatoes,it has twice the radioactivity of brand Y tomatoes!" The nutrition labels are actually based on sound science, not fear and stupidity. The nutrition labels in the US actually contain percentages of the RDA for each nutrient, so the knowledge level required to understand them far far less than with this silly cell phone labels.
The only backing any of those have is the hope that some TLA will smack them if they lie.
Not really. The nutrition information you mentioned isn't just random facts about the food, it's intended to provide people a baseline to compare to. You don't have to be all that terribly informed to look at a nutrition label, notice it contains 110% of the saturated fat for a day and realize that maybe that's not the most healthy thing to eat.
The cell phone emission ratings are nothing like a nutrition label. There's no actual scientific evidence that a phone emitting less EM than some other phone is safer. We've got an enormous amount of scientific data that eating too much sodium, or not enough fiber will lead to poor health.
Companies can use the label to educate by just showing a comparison of how much radiation a person gets from:
* Being outside in the sun for 30 minutes
* Doing a 5 minute phone call
* A 1 hour trip on a plane
Great, just want I want. People to be even LESS informed about the EM spectrum.
Companies forced to put miss-leading claims about EM emissions of phones, misleading consumers into thinking radio waves are harmful.
Companies try to spin it by now comparing radio waves to x-rays, visible light, etc. Consumers even MORE miss-informed and now somehow think x-rays are comparable to a high wattage light bulb.
Spin helps nobody. What's needed is more honesty about what's going on, not dishonesty to counter misleading and stupid information. Educating the public doesn't happen through spin. (Where the hell did that idea come from?)