Orion is a cool idea and makes for good stories but it was killed for a reason. What was it, something like 1 nuke per second to get off the ground? That's all well and good if you decide you don't want to use the planet again.
There were various designs, including ones that could be assembled in Earth orbit from about 3 pieces lifted on Nova rockets (the successor to the Saturn V).
What killed it was politics, as usual.
Politics will kill project Constellation too, before they get back to the Moon. I reckon that funding will dry up once they make it to the ISS with Orion.
And apparently yours is "not Perl or C++", even though those two languages have been used to build useful real-world systems with some regularity for years and there are accepted community standards for writing good code in both. I think Bjarne Stroustrup said it best: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."
I've yet to see a good piece of PERL written by more than one person who wasn't a very experienced expert.
I've seen very little C++ in the Real World. Usually, C++ jobs are C jobs with a smattering of basic C++ code thrown in because someone once thought it might be a good idea to look at C++.
OK, Windows is C++ and in the free unix world, KDE. I don't use C++ by choice, or PERL.
My point is, I don't think this behavior makes stupid "stupid" ipso facto. It just means they have more money than you (or me), which might mean they are not so stupid.
"More money than sense," I believe, is the correct expression.
Funny that. Most people in South East England call it "maffs." Most people in the UK live in South East England... (or you might think so from the cultural media bias).
Anyone who doesn't think this is possible has never learned Perl.
Everyone has their own "expert opinion" on what constitutes "good code." PERL is so baroque and full of exceptions to rules, non-obvious conveniences (e.g. command-line parameter processing), default variables, case requirements etc. that it is impossible for mere mortals to produce code that is understandable and maintainable by anyone other than themselves, and certainly not to anyone learning the language. It's probably easier to get a newbie productive on an existing C++ project than on a PERL one, and C++ sucks. Indeed, someone once said that C++ is an octopus made by nailing extra legs on a dog, and they're not far wrong.
Object orientation in PERL is not part of the core language, but is a hack based on the way that the symbol table works. You can not possibly seriously suggest that it's a good idea.
PERL is duct tape. It's covered in fluff and hair. Let me know when PERL 6 is ready.
Definitely. And because of this ability to adopt a particular style, Perl is the only language I know that I can walk away from for a year, and still be able to write a simple script without having to look at any reference material.
Assuming no-one else modifies your code in that time.
PERL is a glue language and should be used sparingly. Anyone who thinks they can write substantial programs (>20 lines (yes, I am being sarcastic)) in PERL that will be maintainable, reliable and testable is severely misguided.
I have seen it abused far too much to recommend its use for anything other than 10-line scripts.
Might I also add, that as a former Reactor Physics Engineer in the UK nuclear industry, the USA could learn a lot from the way we do things in the UK, IMNSHO.
Hmm, a vendetta against a slashdot user. Cyberbullying?
If you don't like what someone says, ignore it, or disagree.
I quite like twitter's posts, but then I grew up in the UK where we have good journalism and alternative comedy, so I can see where he's coming from.
I'm noticing so must pro-Microsoft sycophancy and astroturfing on here of late. For a while, here on slashdot, to avoid being modded down, one had to give M$ the benefit of the doubt. Now, things are just getting silly.
Microsoft's empire is starting to crumble at long last. The fanboys, astroturfers and M$ themselves are getting desperate. So are you by the looks of it.
Anyway, it's slashdot: Cmdr. Taco's blog. Don't take it too seriously.
My final words of advice to you are to get out of mummy's basement, wash, put on deodorant, brush your teeth and go and meet some real people. You might even meet a nice girl.
Yes, indeed, Window Maker. I've been using it since 200. It is small, powerful, reliable, user-friendly, Free, ergonomic.
It really is painful to use kwm (KDE) and metacity (GNOME) in comparison. Before Window Maker I was an avid AfterStep fan, but at some point it became very buggy, bloated and full of cheesy eye-candy.
In my new job I have to use MS windows (2k3) which is absolutely dreadful, but I also get to use a RedHat box running GNOME. It's not as bad as Windows, but it's still no banana.
If they were serious about the whole standards thing, they could just add real ODF support. Then they could simply put out MS Office that worked with ODF, and most people and businesses would STILL buy it, even with alternatives available.
Sun already did that for them. (ODF pligin for MS Office).
I'm sorry to feel it nescessary to say so, but wiccans aren't any better then scientologists or Christian or Hindus..... You all represent fantasy and escape - Now With More Ignorance Fear and Paranoia of Science!
Yes, but Wicca is just a bit of harmless fun. It's not deadly serious like these other religions. It just involves dancing about naked in the great outdoors, eating, drinking and generally making merry. So I'm told. Harmless eccentricity. No limb amputations, stonings, making women dress up like Darth Vader, inability to eat pork, giving all your money away etc.
I know, I was only teasing:-) Now, New Order, that's a band that only ever did two songs: Blue Monday and the other one, which they keep releasing over and over again.
They have known for years that they can take the most untalented act, wrap it up in a pretty package and saturation-market it, and the mongrel public will stupidly buy it. Ask yourself: "what instruments do they play?" and "do they write their own music?" Then go to your CD shelf and start throwing out the embarrassing evidence before anyone sees it. Look for anything that is eyecandy + microphone.
So here's the elephant in the room.
Why hasn't anyone invented Musical Pr0n yet? Cast aside all pretentions of pop music. Just get a bunch on 18-25 year old young ladies and have them gyrate naked (as in full-frontal) to handbag disco music for 3 or so minutes. Get them to lez up every so often.
I guarantee it'll sell like hot cakes. It'll sell itself.
Plundering of pension funds, lack of affordable housing, broken public transport, unfair tax system, broken eduacation system, student debt, personal debt, general lack of direction. Oh, and pandering to America's Imperialist agenda.
So it's Apples's fault that people prefer singles instead of albums? It can't be that Apple is just responding to consumer demand, could it?
Yes. Apple are a bunch of dirty, smelly, subversive hippy-communists. I mean they sell "pretty" computers and don't even ship them with Windows installed. How more un-American can you get?
I wouldn't be surprised but they are in league with Putin and quite possible bin Laden and the Democrats.
Slashdot Mirror
Orion is a cool idea and makes for good stories but it was killed for a reason. What was it, something like 1 nuke per second to get off the ground? That's all well and good if you decide you don't want to use the planet again.
There were various designs, including ones that could be assembled in Earth orbit from about 3 pieces lifted on Nova rockets (the successor to the Saturn V).
What killed it was politics, as usual.
Politics will kill project Constellation too, before they get back to the Moon. I reckon that funding will dry up once they make it to the ISS with Orion.
Is Novell a Judas or just another plain old sucker?
Probably just in financial dire straights and taking the short-term cash injection from Microsoft to put off its inevitable demise.
And apparently yours is "not Perl or C++", even though those two languages have been used to build useful real-world systems with some regularity for years and there are accepted community standards for writing good code in both. I think Bjarne Stroustrup said it best: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."
I've yet to see a good piece of PERL written by more than one person who wasn't a very experienced expert.
I've seen very little C++ in the Real World. Usually, C++ jobs are C jobs with a smattering of basic C++ code thrown in because someone once thought it might be a good idea to look at C++.
OK, Windows is C++ and in the free unix world, KDE. I don't use C++ by choice, or PERL.
My point is, I don't think this behavior makes stupid "stupid" ipso facto. It just means they have more money than you (or me), which might mean they are not so stupid.
"More money than sense," I believe, is the correct expression.
I, for one, really do stil want to buy plastic discs.
Me too.
And I like to have the audio lossless, and I rip it and and encode it how I like in the formats I require for my hardware.
cdparanoia, LAME, ogg, FLAC.
Funny that. Most people in South East England call it "maffs." Most people in the UK live in South East England... (or you might think so from the cultural media bias).
Anyone who doesn't think this is possible has never learned Perl.
Everyone has their own "expert opinion" on what constitutes "good code." PERL is so baroque and full of exceptions to rules, non-obvious conveniences (e.g. command-line parameter processing), default variables, case requirements etc. that it is impossible for mere mortals to produce code that is understandable and maintainable by anyone other than themselves, and certainly not to anyone learning the language. It's probably easier to get a newbie productive on an existing C++ project than on a PERL one, and C++ sucks. Indeed, someone once said that C++ is an octopus made by nailing extra legs on a dog, and they're not far wrong.
Object orientation in PERL is not part of the core language, but is a hack based on the way that the symbol table works. You can not possibly seriously suggest that it's a good idea.
PERL is duct tape. It's covered in fluff and hair. Let me know when PERL 6 is ready.
Why anyone pays money for anything from IBM, Microsoft. Oracle or MySQL AB.
Yay! Another step to IBM getting even bigger discounts from Microsoft when it goes deploying thousands of machines in large corporate deals!
Definitely. And because of this ability to adopt a particular style, Perl is the only language I know that I can walk away from for a year, and still be able to write a simple script without having to look at any reference material.
Assuming no-one else modifies your code in that time.
PERL is a glue language and should be used sparingly. Anyone who thinks they can write substantial programs (>20 lines (yes, I am being sarcastic)) in PERL that will be maintainable, reliable and testable is severely misguided.
I have seen it abused far too much to recommend its use for anything other than 10-line scripts.
Someone with a clue.
Might I also add, that as a former Reactor Physics Engineer in the UK nuclear industry, the USA could learn a lot from the way we do things in the UK, IMNSHO.
That sums up the article for ya, right there. Famous bird, written up in New York Times. A tragedy, dead. Give me some money...
Paris Hilton? That's not a tragedy. I'll keep my money.
If only they had been lumberjacks.
It's actually impossible for the computer to know whether you're creating an infinite loop.
Oh really? My computer in Aleph-1. Stop being pedantic, dad, and get back to your Delphi coding.
Hmm, a vendetta against a slashdot user. Cyberbullying?
If you don't like what someone says, ignore it, or disagree.
I quite like twitter's posts, but then I grew up in the UK where we have good journalism and alternative comedy, so I can see where he's coming from.
I'm noticing so must pro-Microsoft sycophancy and astroturfing on here of late. For a while, here on slashdot, to avoid being modded down, one had to give M$ the benefit of the doubt. Now, things are just getting silly.
Microsoft's empire is starting to crumble at long last. The fanboys, astroturfers and M$ themselves are getting desperate. So are you by the looks of it.
Anyway, it's slashdot: Cmdr. Taco's blog. Don't take it too seriously.
My final words of advice to you are to get out of mummy's basement, wash, put on deodorant, brush your teeth and go and meet some real people. You might even meet a nice girl.
Yes, indeed, Window Maker. I've been using it since 200. It is small, powerful, reliable, user-friendly, Free, ergonomic.
It really is painful to use kwm (KDE) and metacity (GNOME) in comparison. Before Window Maker I was an avid AfterStep fan, but at some point it became very buggy, bloated and full of cheesy eye-candy.
In my new job I have to use MS windows (2k3) which is absolutely dreadful, but I also get to use a RedHat box running GNOME. It's not as bad as Windows, but it's still no banana.
If they were serious about the whole standards thing, they could just add real ODF support. Then they could simply put out MS Office that worked with ODF, and most people and businesses would STILL buy it, even with alternatives available.
Sun already did that for them. (ODF pligin for MS Office).
Woot! A cornucopian!
So, I'm a Virgo and my wife's a Libra. Is that exciting too?
I'm sorry to feel it nescessary to say so, but wiccans aren't any better then scientologists or Christian or Hindus..... You all represent fantasy and escape - Now With More Ignorance Fear and Paranoia of Science!
Yes, but Wicca is just a bit of harmless fun. It's not deadly serious like these other religions. It just involves dancing about naked in the great outdoors, eating, drinking and generally making merry. So I'm told. Harmless eccentricity. No limb amputations, stonings, making women dress up like Darth Vader, inability to eat pork, giving all your money away etc.
And as an aside, the clarinet only has odd harmonics, therefore the upper register is an octave and a fifth above for the same fingering.
Which brings us nicely to the Bohlen-Pierce Scale. For an example of what it sounds like, follow the link in my sig.
I know, I was only teasing :-) Now, New Order, that's a band that only ever did two songs: Blue Monday and the other one, which they keep releasing over and over again.
Zepplin I can understand but AC/DC?
Zeppelin did three good songs: Black Dog, Rock n Roll and the Immigrant Song. The rest is all turgid fake blues.
Now AC/DC... did they do a good song?
They have known for years that they can take the most untalented act, wrap it up in a pretty package and saturation-market it, and the mongrel public will stupidly buy it. Ask yourself: "what instruments do they play?" and "do they write their own music?" Then go to your CD shelf and start throwing out the embarrassing evidence before anyone sees it. Look for anything that is eyecandy + microphone.
So here's the elephant in the room.
Why hasn't anyone invented Musical Pr0n yet? Cast aside all pretentions of pop music. Just get a bunch on 18-25 year old young ladies and have them gyrate naked (as in full-frontal) to handbag disco music for 3 or so minutes. Get them to lez up every so often.
I guarantee it'll sell like hot cakes. It'll sell itself.
Plundering of pension funds, lack of affordable housing, broken public transport, unfair tax system, broken eduacation system, student debt, personal debt, general lack of direction. Oh, and pandering to America's Imperialist agenda.
So it's Apples's fault that people prefer singles instead of albums? It can't be that Apple is just responding to consumer demand, could it?
Yes. Apple are a bunch of dirty, smelly, subversive hippy-communists. I mean they sell "pretty" computers and don't even ship them with Windows installed. How more un-American can you get?
I wouldn't be surprised but they are in league with Putin and quite possible bin Laden and the Democrats.