Searching through directories is time you wasted, not time you spent learning a language.
There's more to software development learning than learning a language. Languages are the least of your problems in the real-world. At least there's a lot of decent documentation for learning a new language.
Figuring out the package layout and how parts of the system fit together is an important part of learning a new Java system. I find that if I have to puzzle my way around the directories, I learn a hell of a lot more about 1) whether the original package design made sense 2) if there have been battling design approaches (if there are three or more approaches to package design) and what that says about the team...
There are lots of things to learn about a system by manually searching through directories and seeing what's there. Many IDE's can be used for this, although I think the Java view in Eclipse doesn't do anyone favors with the way it stacks all packages.
Depends on where you stick the labels on the spectrum. Is ed the only "just editor" for you? Is notepad non-full-featured enough to qualify? Emacs and vim are as low level as makes sense for me. In my dotage, I'm not happy without auto-indentation.
Recently my corporate overlords forced fed an IDE down my throat but my productivity returned once I determined that it was calling gcc, g++, gdb and gprof.
My fingers know emacs better than anything else and though I've tried, I'm about twice as fast coding on emacs as any other editing environment.
as long as they trust the editor to catch their mistakes, they'll never actually learn to avoid them; they'll simply let the IDE be their guide and never learn it.
Exactly. I've been developing software for 12 years and I still go back to emacs whenever I want to learn a new technique, technology, or toolkit. The dev work may take a little bit longer, but I learn so much more when I have to search through directories or look up an interface in the documentation that you just don't get with an IDE.
I strongly recommend staying close to the metal as possible when learning, then gradually getting more abstracted as your grasp of the underlying skill develops.
(The AC is probably one of that group of programmers whose code I have to rewrite, but I guess we'll never know for certain...:-)
I have a rare medical condition (type of intersex condition). Visably androgynous patients
[...snip...]
Doctors never want to make a written statement that "Patient X has a rare disease" because they might have to defend it later.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that your doctor is probably not worried about the inability to defend an unusual diagnosis in your case. Polaroid is his friend.
It's tough to close the barn door once the horses are out. Removing the scriptlet from all of the pages at this point would take a lot of time and provide no user-visible benefit, so we'll never get permission to do it. We just gradually work to eliminate scriptlets from the pages as we get a chance.
Also, there always seem to be a few cases where two lines of scriptlet can save you huge heaps of difficulty trying to find another way to present some data (normally involving an API you have to work against that doesn't follow bean conventions). For that reason alone, I think we'll 1) still have some scriptlets after cleaning up and 2) want to have them.
The problem with struts is that it builds on JSP's, and in JSP's it can be very tempting to use scriptlet code <%...%> to accomplish some task or another.
Because JSP's don't force the separation of content and presentation, it becomes too tempting for non-craftsmen to slip here and there. And then slip a little more. And eventually, you take a look at that page which just doesn't seem to ever work quite right and it's a seething morass of c-tags, html-tags, and scriptlet code that you realize you're going to throw out because it's simply too horrible to try to band-aid.
If you're going to use Struts (or any JSP-based approach), you must be disciplined about separating concerns and really keep an eye on your code or it will get away from you.
How's it effective? He and other members of al Queada have demonstrated extreme patience when planning terrorist attacks. Avoiding the use of phones, the internet, etc. to communicate certianly hasn't stopped them. Or do you consider simply delaying attacks as "effective"?
This is exactly my argument for rolling back the police state.
Since denying US citizens rights to privacy, free speech, free assembly, and a free press will only slow terrorist groups like al Queda down slightly, if at all, they are ineffective, and our rights should be restored. Won't happen, but should happen.
So the office contents must have been the main fuel source, nothing major, after all when you burn wood in a wood burning stove, the stove doesn't collapse into a flaming heap.
Of course not. Stoves are specifically designed to radiate their heat out through their surface area and offer controls so that you can limit the temperature. You're using the wrong analogy, because when a house burns, the wood stove inside the burning house does collapse into a melted heap.
If you don't feel it is important to know which version of reality is a lie, and which is the truth, that's fine, some of us have the courage to know the truth.
It's not that I'm not curious, or that I won't be upset if the government did stage it. At this point, the questions raised don't cast enough doubt because we don't have enough datapoints to refute any theory (no other steel framed building has collapsed due to severe damage mid-tower, certainly not with sensors keeping track of temperature and movement). We simply don't have enough observations to say that the tower could or couldn't collapse the way it looked on TV. So Occam's Razor comes into play. The least complex story (plane crashed into tower, fuel and offices burned, tower collapsed) wins. The government's lack of certainty as to what happened is a datapoint in favor of the simple story. At this point, the WTC tower structure remains too complex of a system for anyone to clearly understand precisely what happened.
"I don't know yet." has to be a possible answer, and as long as it is, I'm going to put my focus on what was done afterwards (full frontal assault on civil liberties) and do my best to convince my neighbors that rolling back our liberties and freedoms is a bad idea.
Look around you and really drink in all that has been justified because of the attacks on that day.
But how does being laballed a kook help to roll back any of those things that have been justified by 9/11? I want to roll everything on your list back because they're bad ideas, not because the events that supposedly motivated them may or may not have been staged.
Even if you're right, there will never be sufficient evidence to convince the population of the US, not because that evidence isn't there, but because they don't want to be convinced. Find another way around the propaganda. My approach is to point out the specific losses in their privacy, in their future upside, in their daily lives, and make it clear why today, we are less free than we were yesterday.
You tell me......if some or all of the events on 9/11 were allowed or even manufactured by our own goverment, should we stand by and allow these outright treasonous actions to stand?
Much worse things with better documentation have already been done in your and my name by the US government. Indonesia (Timor), Chile, Panama (setting up Noriega), Panama (taking down Noriega), Eduador, Colombia, Iran, Iraq (setting up Saddam), Iraq (taking down Saddam). Millions of peoples lives ended, hundreds of millions more economically ruined or set back decades.
There are a lot of things to be frustrated about. You have to choose your battles, and even if you're 100% correct, convincing any large number of people that your conspiracy theory is true requires too much effort for me to bother. There are undisputed facts that offer more traction into the psyche of people who think that the neo-con agenda is good for them.
If so, then you've got to ask yourself, at what point do we become 'America' in name only?
I'd put the date at about 44 years ago. That's when MacNamara started deliberately using the CIA in horrific acts to further US policy abroad. As soon as it was decided that that was okay, an important part of America was lost.
Whereas other buildings have remained standing after much more severe fires.
All of the other buildings I've heard compared were steel-reinforced concrete and burned from the top (there wasn't a substantial fraction of the building's mass above the burning area). Steel-reinforced concrete is a very different kind of construction from a steel structure. The steel structure is essentially a bridge set on end (a vertical truss), while steel-reinforced concrete is sills, beams, and lintels (a much older style of building construction).
Ultimately, there are too many differences between the other buildings that people are trying to compare. There just haven't been enough steel building failures yet to have any comparison to what happened in Manhattan that day.
The basic problem with the idea of pockets of intense fire is that steel is a good conductor of heat, in order to even weaken part of a steel structure you need to put in energy faster than it is conducted away.
Steel/iron is actually a rather poor heat conductor, which is why the best pots and pans use other metals (usually copper) for part of the pan (cast iron eliminates hot spots just by being thick enough, but it takes a lot longer to heat a cast iron pan than an All-Clad or Calphalon pan). Watch some videos of a smith making wrought iron decorations or a sword. It's quite easy to get one end of a steel or iron bar bright yellow (well past the annealing temperature and quite soft), only a few inches away is dark metal (well below the annealing temperature and full unhardened strength).
Because of that, the fact that the kerosene fires were relatively cool (fuel rich) as evidenced by the plethora of black smoke from them,
Actually, this only provides evidence that 1) some of the fuel was burning in fuel-rich areas and 2) there were other things burning besides fuel. I find it plausible that there was a lot of fuel scattered throughout the impacted floors and that the resulting fires did not have a consistent fuel/air mix and resulting temperature from one location to another.
Some unexpected things were going on in the WTC damaged floors, that much is clear. I don't think it's necessary to suppose that there was more than just an airplane in there to expect extraordinary events. Occam's razor and all that.
the visual evidence of squibs (or something that looks like it) being set off in the lower parts of the building immediately prior to collapse
I've heard this and I've seen the tapes, even where people are pointing to what they're seeing, but it doesn't look like the detonation of implosion charges to me. I have seen three building implosions up close and too many windows and walls remain intact in both WTC1 and WTC2 before the cloud of debris reaches them. There are a few strange pixels in the video here and there, but I don't see the effects of implosion charges (critical note: high explosives don't produce flames, low explosives don't cut through structural steel).
Besides, I already think US foreign policy and islamic fundamentalism provided sufficient motivation for a well-planned, highly original, and very possible terrorist attack. Instead of coming up with more people to prosecute, I'd rather focus on what we might be able to change (US foreign policy).
I agree with most of your post, but let me state once and for all: the fire did not have to melt steel. It only had to weaken it.
I never meant to imply that the steel had to be melted for the building to collapse, only that I have observed a kerosene fueled furnace fully melt steel.
What I frequently hear by 9/11 conspiracy theorists is that kerosene burns at too low a temperature to weaken steel. Since steel becomes essentially plastic above the annealing temperature and I've observed a kerosene-air fire go well beyond softening steel to melting steel (white hot liquid), the assertion of the conspiracy theorists is wrong.
Actually, there was a lot of plane debris outside. But it was in really tiny pieces. Almost as if a lightweight aluminum structure full of explosive chemicals was forced into contact with a heavy structure at tremendous velocity.
Almost.
(Sorry about the sarcasm. I'm also really pissed at our government, but I don't see any reason to believe that well-funded wack-jobs couldn't have done this.)
A rookie would have crashed from above, near the center of the pentagon.
I don't see why this follows. The alleged pilot successfully got his instrument rating. This is not an insignificant feat. It takes a lot of work to demonstrate that you're capable of flying an aircraft on instruments alone, including many successful landings. I also heard he abandoned a Piper Cub. I've had my own experiences with flying small aircraft and many of them have "personalities" that require unusual rituals (push this, pull that 1/4 of the way out, pump that twice and then hit the starter) to successfully start the engine. I've stalled a few planes on taxiways myself (though I did manage to get them started again).
This plane was well maintained, already running, and off the ground (most of the hard parts were taken care of). He had specifically trained on flying this plane. He knew the altitude of his target (I know the altitude of his target). According to an airline pilot friend, flying a big plane without checklists is actually rather easy to do. Flying one with minimal risk (following all flight protocols, following all of the checklists, understanding what's going on if any of the checks isn't right) is really hard.
He actually did come in a little low as he struck the helipad before reaching the building. If you have learned to fly a plane, his results just doesn't seem that extraordinary.
An airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, not a missile.
The alternate conspiracy theory I heard on the Pentagon crash was centered around who flew the airliner into the Pentagon, not whether or not an airliner flew into the Pentagon.
It's not all that hard to believe that an airliner flew into WTC2, since just about everyone on the planet has seen footage from a dozen cameras which show a 767/757 hitting the tower. Four planes didn't reach their destinations, four impacts are noted.
As for the alternate conspiracy theory, there are only a few remotely relevant facts. They are centered around the lack of credible identification for the 19 passengers labelled as the terrorists.
First fact: the Dulles airport video tapes purported to show part of the Flight 77 check-in lack the camera id and time data that should be present on any airport surveillance capture.
Second fact: the tapes would have to be taken 30 minutes after sunrise, but appear to show bright sunlight and short shadows for people and cars outside the terminal.
Third fact: the sounds that appear to be the terrorists on the radio are extremely short and badly distorted, leaving little chance for actual identification.
Fourth fact: people made several phone calls from the first three aircraft before they crashed, but there has been no public release of information that they physically described the terrorists (as middle-eastern or arabic).
Fifth fact: flight 77 hit the Pentagon in the most heavily reinforced and least populated part of the building, a side that was not on a direct track from takeoff to the Pentagon.
Personally, I find these facts insufficient to dispute the government's conclusions
There's no compelling reason to doubt the motive or the opportunity of radical islamist hijackers on 9/11. The presented story of the hijackers successful in seizing the aircraft is less astonishing than any alternative explanation.
All of the cases where the hijackers were supposedly spotted after 9/11 have been resolved as cases of confused identity (similar/same name) or simply bad original reporting.
Flight 77 was hijacked well into the flight (unlike Flights 11 and 175). Even though the side of the Pentagon hit was not on a direct track from Dulles to the Pentagon, it is very close to a direct track from where the transponders were disabled to the Pentagon.
As for how the WTC buildings collapsed: I agree, it sounds strange that 1) all three of the collapsed buildings would fall mostly down into their foundations 2) at rates consistent with an unimpeded collapse and 3) the heavily reinforced WTC7 fell while WTC6 remained standing (WTC6 was between WTC7 and WTC1/2).
I don't have an explanation for what happened, but then, I'm not a structural engineer. According to the engineers I've read, however, there simply isn't enough information about the collapse of well-engineered steel structures to accurately predict how they should behave during collapse. I do recall, however, that during the collapse, the bottom of each tower looked normal (windows intact, etc.) until engulfed in the debris cloud. The bottom of the tower did not look anything like the "simultaneous collapse" that deliberate building demolition almost always resembles.
Further, I do know that a puddle of kerosene burning will burn at a much lower temperature than a properly aerated and driven kerosene torch (as in, I know from personal experience that you can run a steel forge on kerosene with a correctly sized blower to supply air to the flame) and so I find it highly credible that a kerosene fire could reach well past steel annealing temperatures and get to steel melting temperatures, depending on the specifics of fuel and air flow in the fire.
Ultimately, though, there's no reason to waste your time wondering if the government actually did the atrocities of 9/11 or if several decades of destructive US foreign po
Deciding that you are above the law is neither lawful, democratic, or ethical.
I suggest that you do some reading and thinking about the concept of an "unjust law". Many rather famous thinkers through history have come to the conclusion that law and morality are only occasionally aligned and as human beings first, and citizens of a country second, we have a critically important obligation to do what we know is the right thing, even when that is illegal.
It's also commonly noted that you should be willing to submit to the legal punishment for your action.
Since when have we expected the CIA to be Boy Scouts? I always expected them to be rather low-down and willing to do dirty tricks and willing to kill people as a necessary part of their job. It is what they are hired to do.
This statement makes you seem to be a pragmatic (if slightly amoral) fellow. If you are really pragmatic, you probably weren't even slightly suprised when the people who have been mistreated by the CIA (usually relatives or friends of the dead) came to the US seeking your (and my) blood.
Were you suprised by the events of 9/11? I was shocked, but I wasn't suprised.
Rather than framing Ruby as "Smalltalk-lite", I see Ruby as "maintainable-Perl" with the dramatically superior syntax and Object foundation of Smalltalk. By building in regular expressions, and making it so easy to get started, it takes many of the strengths of Smalltalk and uses them to (successfully) improve many of the weaknesses of Perl.
But as you say, the syntax isn't better than Smalltalk. Like Smalltalk, Ruby's syntax is better than many of the alternatives.
In fact, every time I look at Ruby, all I see is a pale reflection of Smalltalk. I've yet to see anything new it brings to the table.
Deliverable packaging. Extracting a Smalltalk program from the development environment for distribution is, to be generous, annoying. Which is one of the reasons why Smalltalk works so well in an academic environment, but never caught on for commercial work. Ruby, on the other hand, is about as tough for someone else to deploy as Perl (it isn't).
This is one of the places where Java really changed things and is IMHO, the big reason for why Java has become so popular..jar files (and the variations on that theme:.war,.ear, etc.) can package up lots of different things, and as long as people know what VM version to run it on, they're good.
The misery of his people (and many other groups in that region) was created by US foreign policy over many years.
US foreign policy has NOTHING to do with it.
Let's examine some facts and see if the random Iraqi might be in misery because of any of these:
The US government put Saddam Hussein in power to balance Khomeni, who took over from the US backed despot, the Shah. Saddam turned out to be so bad at this job that he eventually became the justification for our latest invasion.
The US government invaded Iraq in 1991 after injuring many soldiers and dropping many bombs on urban and rural targets. There were a number of "collateral" casualties from these attacks, along with severe casualties among the drafted soldiers.
After the Gulf War hostilities were over, Saddam Hussein remained alive and in power.
Bush Sr. stated that he would support an uprising against Saddam Hussein. Three uprisings appeared. They were all fiercely put down by Saddam's loyal troops. None was supported by any US force, covert or otherwise.
Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and apparently just about every Iraqi knew it, yet that was the pretext for another US invasion of Iraq that killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqi civillians.
Since we have been in Iraq: drinking water, electricity, sewage, fuel for cars, have all basically "gone missing", except in US military bases.
Since we have been in Iraq, sectarian violence has been worse than when Saddam was in charge.
Since the close of hostilities in Iraq, US soldiers have injured or killed an unknown number of Iraqi's, some of whom were definitely intending them harm.
But somehow you've managed to wrap your head up in a way that makes it impossible for US policy over decades to be responsible for the misery of people in that region. To the extent of believing that only some wack-job professor could buy into it...
I'm not a liberal. But I'm not a neo-con either.
Do you really think great countries around the world would continue to exist without a military?
You simpleton. I'm not arguing against the military, I'm arguing against non-defensive uses of the military (basically everything since WWII). But you can't separate those arguments in your little head, so you'll continue to support the US in destroying people's live in other places, because we can.
<sarcasm>There's no way that will result in more terrorists. Nope. No way. They said so on Fox News, so it's got to be true.</sarcasm>
Who knows, maybe if we didn't go around killing off democratically elected leaders and replacing them with US-owned despots who destroy the lives of their people, those people wouldn't hate us so much... Nah.
That's a load of BS. It doesn't need futher comment.
But the facts should get more thought from you. Ecuador, Panama (twice in the past 20 years), Chile, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. Do a little history reading and you'll find leaders who didn't play ball with the US mysteriously killed in plane or vehicle accidents and replaced with violent despots much friendlier to the US. You'll find people looking at a better future because of a good leader suddenly plunged back 30 years to line the pockets of an awful leader who will allow US bases on their soil. But you don't want to find out things that take the shine off what you believe about the US.
Bush made the underlying problems worse and our country less safe (more terrorists)
No. It's people like you and your ilk (liberals) who make this country less safe. It's people like you who would rather take down the US a notch just to prove to the rest of the world we "care" and "understand".
Without dissent, it's not America.
I am a registered Republican and I consider myself a conservative libertarian.
The Bush administration has successfully kept the US free of terrorist attacks since 9/11/01.
Yeah. They were perfect at preventing domestic terrorist attacks from 04/20/1995 through 9/10/01, too. With that kind of a record, you'd have to trust that their efforts are the reason no attack has happened.
What kind of asinine logic are you using?
We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
You mean Iraq? The country that was the source of none of the 9/11 bombers? The country where none of the 9/11 bombers trained? The country where terrorists from other places (Saudi Arabia) go to seek out a fight with the US military?
Clue-bat for you: Saddam Hussein was literally created by US foreign policy via the CIA. The misery of his people (and many other groups in that region) was created by US foreign policy over many years. The fact that they hate us is simply chickens coming home to roost. Kill enough fathers and husbands and the kids are going to grow up pissed off. If you don't understand why, then you're stupider than your posting lets on.
You must have missed the slashdot article a few days ago about the polling results that show 63% of Americans support the NSA operations.
You're actually claiming membership with the sheeple? Wow.
Right and wrong don't arise from "majority rules" or "might makes right". Even if I was the only person saying that what our government is doing is flat out wrong while everyone else disagreed, I'd still be right and every single other person would be wrong. Including you.
I wonder if a nuclear attack will wake them out of their stupor?
So, based on the fact that if someone really wants to detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil they will, you're also willing to give up all of your freedoms to slow them down a bit?
Doesn't seem like a smart trade to me. I'd rather live in a country where "home of the free" meant something important. Who knows, maybe if we didn't go around killing off democratically elected leaders and replacing them with US-owned despots who destroy the lives of their people, those people wouldn't hate us so much... Nah.
Alas, probably not. They'll just blame it on Bush.
Bush made the underlying problems worse and our country less safe (more terrorists), however, he didn't start the process. He's as much a pawn of the corporations as anyone else these days. Some would go back to MacNamara for the first systematic horrors of US foreign policy, some would go back much further than that (McKinley, Monroe, etc.)
But to understand these names, you'd have to know history, which would imply reading a book. Unlikely in your case. The stupidity of people who think like you make me furious. Every time an American soldier dies, I want to punch someone like you in the face and say, "IT'S YOUR FUCKING FAULT!" Because you let Bush and the people behind Bush get away with any action or lie they want.
It's not Bush's fault. It's your fault. You elected him, you total and complete fuckwit.
Does anyone really doubt that MS can (and will) scream ahead of Yahoo in market share in the coming years?
Yes. I live down the street from their new office in Santa Monica. They're competing well with Google on recruiting the sharpest people from other regional employers. Including three of my new neighbors who recently moved down here from Seattle.
Google isn't the only one successfully recruiting hot-shit developers from MS.
I agree with your question. The SpaceOrb had full 6-D control in 1993 (3 rotation axes, 3 translation axes).
I loved that thing. Descent was the absolute best game for that controller. I could finally take out bosses with the SpaceOrb that I just couldn't get with joystick and/or keyboard. It provided so much control. Always ended up stopping "game time" after a few hours because my hands would get cramps.
No need to mention that's also the only real reason to stop a different kind of activity... ahem.
Snarkiness and condescension aside, you took out the important part of my statement, involving communication over satellites and using a corporation's wires.
What you should have taken from my response is that what you think is "the important part" is what I think is "the completely and utterly irrelevant part".
The fact that you aren't finding a strong privacy requirement in the "persons... and effects" parts of the Amendment is additional evidence that there are people who think differently from you, and who are outraged at recent events re: government surveillance of people not suspected of any crime.
I won't assume that you'll change your mind today, so I think this particular discussion is complete.
This is the kind of team I was referring to in the other response when I observed that the best offshoring outcome seem to cost between 0% and 15% less while taking 20-50% longer.
You still haven't fixed the communication hurdle: people can convey a great deal more information when facing each other in front of a whiteboard than they can in any other way. Phone calls and emails (with people on a schedule 12 1/2 hours from yours) simply don't compare. That lack of fidelity and nuance ultimately results in less effective work.
The best offshore outcome I've ever seen was when the offshore team was the QA testing group. We used Bugzilla as the communication medium and the fact that they were able to check changes that night and give you feedback by the time you returned the next day was fantastic. But my experiences with splitting up dev teams or moving development work offshore have seen marginal cost savings at best, and always resulted in a longer schedule than a motivated group of local developers could achieve.
I remain convinced that face to face communication is core to maximizing effectiveness. Once we can do that over 12,500 miles, it will be a completely even playing field.
Then why hasn't every slave throughout history killed himself?
In general, because the actual spirit of the quote is that it's better to die fighting for a cause that might result in freedom than to tolerate a situation with little to no freedom. Committing suicide whether by literally killing yourself or fighting a hopeless rebellion aren't things that people who have never tasted freedom are willing to do.
Once you've tasted freedom, however, you'd be amazed at the hopeless causes that "would be slaves" have taken up (Digger Rebellion).
Slashdot Mirror
Searching through directories is time you wasted, not time you spent learning a language.
There's more to software development learning than learning a language. Languages are the least of your problems in the real-world. At least there's a lot of decent documentation for learning a new language.
Figuring out the package layout and how parts of the system fit together is an important part of learning a new Java system. I find that if I have to puzzle my way around the directories, I learn a hell of a lot more about 1) whether the original package design made sense 2) if there have been battling design approaches (if there are three or more approaches to package design) and what that says about the team...
There are lots of things to learn about a system by manually searching through directories and seeing what's there. Many IDE's can be used for this, although I think the Java view in Eclipse doesn't do anyone favors with the way it stacks all packages.
Regards,
Ross
Emacs is an IDE
Depends on where you stick the labels on the spectrum. Is ed the only "just editor" for you? Is notepad non-full-featured enough to qualify? Emacs and vim are as low level as makes sense for me. In my dotage, I'm not happy without auto-indentation.
Recently my corporate overlords forced fed an IDE down my throat but my productivity returned once I determined that it was calling gcc, g++, gdb and gprof.
My fingers know emacs better than anything else and though I've tried, I'm about twice as fast coding on emacs as any other editing environment.
Regards,
Ross
no.
:-)
as long as they trust the editor to catch their mistakes, they'll never actually learn to avoid them; they'll simply let the IDE be their guide and never learn it.
Exactly. I've been developing software for 12 years and I still go back to emacs whenever I want to learn a new technique, technology, or toolkit. The dev work may take a little bit longer, but I learn so much more when I have to search through directories or look up an interface in the documentation that you just don't get with an IDE.
I strongly recommend staying close to the metal as possible when learning, then gradually getting more abstracted as your grasp of the underlying skill develops.
(The AC is probably one of that group of programmers whose code I have to rewrite, but I guess we'll never know for certain...
Regards,
Ross
I have a rare medical condition (type of intersex condition). Visably androgynous patients
[...snip...]
Doctors never want to make a written statement that "Patient X has a rare disease" because they might have to defend it later.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that your doctor is probably not worried about the inability to defend an unusual diagnosis in your case. Polaroid is his friend.
Regards,
Ross
It's tough to close the barn door once the horses are out. Removing the scriptlet from all of the pages at this point would take a lot of time and provide no user-visible benefit, so we'll never get permission to do it. We just gradually work to eliminate scriptlets from the pages as we get a chance.
Also, there always seem to be a few cases where two lines of scriptlet can save you huge heaps of difficulty trying to find another way to present some data (normally involving an API you have to work against that doesn't follow bean conventions). For that reason alone, I think we'll 1) still have some scriptlets after cleaning up and 2) want to have them.
Regards,
Ross
The problem with struts is that it builds on JSP's, and in JSP's it can be very tempting to use scriptlet code <%...%> to accomplish some task or another.
Because JSP's don't force the separation of content and presentation, it becomes too tempting for non-craftsmen to slip here and there. And then slip a little more. And eventually, you take a look at that page which just doesn't seem to ever work quite right and it's a seething morass of c-tags, html-tags, and scriptlet code that you realize you're going to throw out because it's simply too horrible to try to band-aid.
If you're going to use Struts (or any JSP-based approach), you must be disciplined about separating concerns and really keep an eye on your code or it will get away from you.
Regards,
Ross
How's it effective? He and other members of al Queada have demonstrated extreme patience when planning terrorist attacks. Avoiding the use of phones, the internet, etc. to communicate certianly hasn't stopped them. Or do you consider simply delaying attacks as "effective"?
This is exactly my argument for rolling back the police state.
Since denying US citizens rights to privacy, free speech, free assembly, and a free press will only slow terrorist groups like al Queda down slightly, if at all, they are ineffective, and our rights should be restored. Won't happen, but should happen.
Regards,
Ross
So the office contents must have been the main fuel source, nothing major, after all when you burn wood in a wood burning stove, the stove doesn't collapse into a flaming heap.
Of course not. Stoves are specifically designed to radiate their heat out through their surface area and offer controls so that you can limit the temperature. You're using the wrong analogy, because when a house burns, the wood stove inside the burning house does collapse into a melted heap.
If you don't feel it is important to know which version of reality is a lie, and which is the truth, that's fine, some of us have the courage to know the truth.
It's not that I'm not curious, or that I won't be upset if the government did stage it. At this point, the questions raised don't cast enough doubt because we don't have enough datapoints to refute any theory (no other steel framed building has collapsed due to severe damage mid-tower, certainly not with sensors keeping track of temperature and movement). We simply don't have enough observations to say that the tower could or couldn't collapse the way it looked on TV. So Occam's Razor comes into play. The least complex story (plane crashed into tower, fuel and offices burned, tower collapsed) wins. The government's lack of certainty as to what happened is a datapoint in favor of the simple story. At this point, the WTC tower structure remains too complex of a system for anyone to clearly understand precisely what happened.
"I don't know yet." has to be a possible answer, and as long as it is, I'm going to put my focus on what was done afterwards (full frontal assault on civil liberties) and do my best to convince my neighbors that rolling back our liberties and freedoms is a bad idea.
You've got to choose your battles.
Regards,
Ross
Look around you and really drink in all that has been justified because of the attacks on that day.
But how does being laballed a kook help to roll back any of those things that have been justified by 9/11? I want to roll everything on your list back because they're bad ideas, not because the events that supposedly motivated them may or may not have been staged.
Even if you're right, there will never be sufficient evidence to convince the population of the US, not because that evidence isn't there, but because they don't want to be convinced. Find another way around the propaganda. My approach is to point out the specific losses in their privacy, in their future upside, in their daily lives, and make it clear why today, we are less free than we were yesterday.
You tell me......if some or all of the events on 9/11 were allowed or even manufactured by our own goverment, should we stand by and allow these outright treasonous actions to stand?
Much worse things with better documentation have already been done in your and my name by the US government. Indonesia (Timor), Chile, Panama (setting up Noriega), Panama (taking down Noriega), Eduador, Colombia, Iran, Iraq (setting up Saddam), Iraq (taking down Saddam). Millions of peoples lives ended, hundreds of millions more economically ruined or set back decades.
There are a lot of things to be frustrated about. You have to choose your battles, and even if you're 100% correct, convincing any large number of people that your conspiracy theory is true requires too much effort for me to bother. There are undisputed facts that offer more traction into the psyche of people who think that the neo-con agenda is good for them.
If so, then you've got to ask yourself, at what point do we become 'America' in name only?
I'd put the date at about 44 years ago. That's when MacNamara started deliberately using the CIA in horrific acts to further US policy abroad. As soon as it was decided that that was okay, an important part of America was lost.
Regards,
Ross
Whereas other buildings have remained standing after much more severe fires.
All of the other buildings I've heard compared were steel-reinforced concrete and burned from the top (there wasn't a substantial fraction of the building's mass above the burning area). Steel-reinforced concrete is a very different kind of construction from a steel structure. The steel structure is essentially a bridge set on end (a vertical truss), while steel-reinforced concrete is sills, beams, and lintels (a much older style of building construction).
Ultimately, there are too many differences between the other buildings that people are trying to compare. There just haven't been enough steel building failures yet to have any comparison to what happened in Manhattan that day.
The basic problem with the idea of pockets of intense fire is that steel is a good conductor of heat, in order to even weaken part of a steel structure you need to put in energy faster than it is conducted away.
Steel/iron is actually a rather poor heat conductor, which is why the best pots and pans use other metals (usually copper) for part of the pan (cast iron eliminates hot spots just by being thick enough, but it takes a lot longer to heat a cast iron pan than an All-Clad or Calphalon pan). Watch some videos of a smith making wrought iron decorations or a sword. It's quite easy to get one end of a steel or iron bar bright yellow (well past the annealing temperature and quite soft), only a few inches away is dark metal (well below the annealing temperature and full unhardened strength).
Regards,
Ross
Because of that, the fact that the kerosene fires were relatively cool (fuel rich) as evidenced by the plethora of black smoke from them,
Actually, this only provides evidence that 1) some of the fuel was burning in fuel-rich areas and 2) there were other things burning besides fuel. I find it plausible that there was a lot of fuel scattered throughout the impacted floors and that the resulting fires did not have a consistent fuel/air mix and resulting temperature from one location to another.
Some unexpected things were going on in the WTC damaged floors, that much is clear. I don't think it's necessary to suppose that there was more than just an airplane in there to expect extraordinary events. Occam's razor and all that.
the visual evidence of squibs (or something that looks like it) being set off in the lower parts of the building immediately prior to collapse
I've heard this and I've seen the tapes, even where people are pointing to what they're seeing, but it doesn't look like the detonation of implosion charges to me. I have seen three building implosions up close and too many windows and walls remain intact in both WTC1 and WTC2 before the cloud of debris reaches them. There are a few strange pixels in the video here and there, but I don't see the effects of implosion charges (critical note: high explosives don't produce flames, low explosives don't cut through structural steel).
Besides, I already think US foreign policy and islamic fundamentalism provided sufficient motivation for a well-planned, highly original, and very possible terrorist attack. Instead of coming up with more people to prosecute, I'd rather focus on what we might be able to change (US foreign policy).
Regards,
Ross
I agree with most of your post, but let me state once and for all: the fire did not have to melt steel. It only had to weaken it.
I never meant to imply that the steel had to be melted for the building to collapse, only that I have observed a kerosene fueled furnace fully melt steel.
What I frequently hear by 9/11 conspiracy theorists is that kerosene burns at too low a temperature to weaken steel. Since steel becomes essentially plastic above the annealing temperature and I've observed a kerosene-air fire go well beyond softening steel to melting steel (white hot liquid), the assertion of the conspiracy theorists is wrong.
Regards,
ross
And yet, no plane debris outside.
Actually, there was a lot of plane debris outside. But it was in really tiny pieces. Almost as if a lightweight aluminum structure full of explosive chemicals was forced into contact with a heavy structure at tremendous velocity.
Almost.
(Sorry about the sarcasm. I'm also really pissed at our government, but I don't see any reason to believe that well-funded wack-jobs couldn't have done this.)
Regards,
Ross
A rookie would have crashed from above, near the center of the pentagon.
I don't see why this follows. The alleged pilot successfully got his instrument rating. This is not an insignificant feat. It takes a lot of work to demonstrate that you're capable of flying an aircraft on instruments alone, including many successful landings. I also heard he abandoned a Piper Cub. I've had my own experiences with flying small aircraft and many of them have "personalities" that require unusual rituals (push this, pull that 1/4 of the way out, pump that twice and then hit the starter) to successfully start the engine. I've stalled a few planes on taxiways myself (though I did manage to get them started again).
This plane was well maintained, already running, and off the ground (most of the hard parts were taken care of). He had specifically trained on flying this plane. He knew the altitude of his target (I know the altitude of his target). According to an airline pilot friend, flying a big plane without checklists is actually rather easy to do. Flying one with minimal risk (following all flight protocols, following all of the checklists, understanding what's going on if any of the checks isn't right) is really hard.
He actually did come in a little low as he struck the helipad before reaching the building. If you have learned to fly a plane, his results just doesn't seem that extraordinary.
Regards,
Ross
An airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, not a missile.
The alternate conspiracy theory I heard on the Pentagon crash was centered around who flew the airliner into the Pentagon, not whether or not an airliner flew into the Pentagon.
It's not all that hard to believe that an airliner flew into WTC2, since just about everyone on the planet has seen footage from a dozen cameras which show a 767/757 hitting the tower. Four planes didn't reach their destinations, four impacts are noted.
As for the alternate conspiracy theory, there are only a few remotely relevant facts. They are centered around the lack of credible identification for the 19 passengers labelled as the terrorists.
Personally, I find these facts insufficient to dispute the government's conclusions
As for how the WTC buildings collapsed: I agree, it sounds strange that 1) all three of the collapsed buildings would fall mostly down into their foundations 2) at rates consistent with an unimpeded collapse and 3) the heavily reinforced WTC7 fell while WTC6 remained standing (WTC6 was between WTC7 and WTC1/2).
I don't have an explanation for what happened, but then, I'm not a structural engineer. According to the engineers I've read, however, there simply isn't enough information about the collapse of well-engineered steel structures to accurately predict how they should behave during collapse. I do recall, however, that during the collapse, the bottom of each tower looked normal (windows intact, etc.) until engulfed in the debris cloud. The bottom of the tower did not look anything like the "simultaneous collapse" that deliberate building demolition almost always resembles.
Further, I do know that a puddle of kerosene burning will burn at a much lower temperature than a properly aerated and driven kerosene torch (as in, I know from personal experience that you can run a steel forge on kerosene with a correctly sized blower to supply air to the flame) and so I find it highly credible that a kerosene fire could reach well past steel annealing temperatures and get to steel melting temperatures, depending on the specifics of fuel and air flow in the fire.
Ultimately, though, there's no reason to waste your time wondering if the government actually did the atrocities of 9/11 or if several decades of destructive US foreign po
Deciding that you are above the law is neither lawful, democratic, or ethical.
I suggest that you do some reading and thinking about the concept of an "unjust law". Many rather famous thinkers through history have come to the conclusion that law and morality are only occasionally aligned and as human beings first, and citizens of a country second, we have a critically important obligation to do what we know is the right thing, even when that is illegal.
It's also commonly noted that you should be willing to submit to the legal punishment for your action.
Since when have we expected the CIA to be Boy Scouts? I always expected them to be rather low-down and willing to do dirty tricks and willing to kill people as a necessary part of their job. It is what they are hired to do.
This statement makes you seem to be a pragmatic (if slightly amoral) fellow. If you are really pragmatic, you probably weren't even slightly suprised when the people who have been mistreated by the CIA (usually relatives or friends of the dead) came to the US seeking your (and my) blood.
Were you suprised by the events of 9/11? I was shocked, but I wasn't suprised.
Ross
Rather than framing Ruby as "Smalltalk-lite", I see Ruby as "maintainable-Perl" with the dramatically superior syntax and Object foundation of Smalltalk. By building in regular expressions, and making it so easy to get started, it takes many of the strengths of Smalltalk and uses them to (successfully) improve many of the weaknesses of Perl.
But as you say, the syntax isn't better than Smalltalk. Like Smalltalk, Ruby's syntax is better than many of the alternatives.
Regards,
Ross
In fact, every time I look at Ruby, all I see is a pale reflection of Smalltalk. I've yet to see anything new it brings to the table.
.jar files (and the variations on that theme: .war, .ear, etc.) can package up lots of different things, and as long as people know what VM version to run it on, they're good.
Deliverable packaging. Extracting a Smalltalk program from the development environment for distribution is, to be generous, annoying. Which is one of the reasons why Smalltalk works so well in an academic environment, but never caught on for commercial work. Ruby, on the other hand, is about as tough for someone else to deploy as Perl (it isn't).
This is one of the places where Java really changed things and is IMHO, the big reason for why Java has become so popular.
Regards,
Ross
US foreign policy has NOTHING to do with it.
Let's examine some facts and see if the random Iraqi might be in misery because of any of these:
The US government put Saddam Hussein in power to balance Khomeni, who took over from the US backed despot, the Shah. Saddam turned out to be so bad at this job that he eventually became the justification for our latest invasion.
The US government invaded Iraq in 1991 after injuring many soldiers and dropping many bombs on urban and rural targets. There were a number of "collateral" casualties from these attacks, along with severe casualties among the drafted soldiers.
After the Gulf War hostilities were over, Saddam Hussein remained alive and in power.
Bush Sr. stated that he would support an uprising against Saddam Hussein. Three uprisings appeared. They were all fiercely put down by Saddam's loyal troops. None was supported by any US force, covert or otherwise.
Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and apparently just about every Iraqi knew it, yet that was the pretext for another US invasion of Iraq that killed between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqi civillians.
Since we have been in Iraq: drinking water, electricity, sewage, fuel for cars, have all basically "gone missing", except in US military bases.
Since we have been in Iraq, sectarian violence has been worse than when Saddam was in charge.
Since the close of hostilities in Iraq, US soldiers have injured or killed an unknown number of Iraqi's, some of whom were definitely intending them harm.
But somehow you've managed to wrap your head up in a way that makes it impossible for US policy over decades to be responsible for the misery of people in that region. To the extent of believing that only some wack-job professor could buy into it...
I'm not a liberal. But I'm not a neo-con either.
Do you really think great countries around the world would continue to exist without a military?
You simpleton. I'm not arguing against the military, I'm arguing against non-defensive uses of the military (basically everything since WWII). But you can't separate those arguments in your little head, so you'll continue to support the US in destroying people's live in other places, because we can.
<sarcasm>There's no way that will result in more terrorists. Nope. No way. They said so on Fox News, so it's got to be true.</sarcasm>
That's a load of BS. It doesn't need futher comment.
But the facts should get more thought from you. Ecuador, Panama (twice in the past 20 years), Chile, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. Do a little history reading and you'll find leaders who didn't play ball with the US mysteriously killed in plane or vehicle accidents and replaced with violent despots much friendlier to the US. You'll find people looking at a better future because of a good leader suddenly plunged back 30 years to line the pockets of an awful leader who will allow US bases on their soil. But you don't want to find out things that take the shine off what you believe about the US.
No. It's people like you and your ilk (liberals) who make this country less safe. It's people like you who would rather take down the US a notch just to prove to the rest of the world we "care" and "understand".
Without dissent, it's not America.
I am a registered Republican and I consider myself a conservative libertarian.
The Bush administration has successfully kept the US free of terrorist attacks since 9/11/01.
Yeah. They were perfect at preventing domestic terrorist attacks from 04/20/1995 through 9/10/01, too. With that kind of a record, you'd have to trust that their efforts are the reason no attack has happened.
What kind of asinine logic are you using?
We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
You mean Iraq? The country that was the source of none of the 9/11 bombers? The country where none of the 9/11 bombers trained? The country where terrorists from other places (Saudi Arabia) go to seek out a fight with the US military?
Clue-bat for you: Saddam Hussein was literally created by US foreign policy via the CIA. The misery of his people (and many other groups in that region) was created by US foreign policy over many years. The fact that they hate us is simply chickens coming home to roost. Kill enough fathers and husbands and the kids are going to grow up pissed off. If you don't understand why, then you're stupider than your posting lets on.
You must have missed the slashdot article a few days ago about the polling results that show 63% of Americans support the NSA operations.
You're actually claiming membership with the sheeple? Wow.
Right and wrong don't arise from "majority rules" or "might makes right". Even if I was the only person saying that what our government is doing is flat out wrong while everyone else disagreed, I'd still be right and every single other person would be wrong. Including you.
I wonder if a nuclear attack will wake them out of their stupor?
So, based on the fact that if someone really wants to detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil they will, you're also willing to give up all of your freedoms to slow them down a bit?
Doesn't seem like a smart trade to me. I'd rather live in a country where "home of the free" meant something important. Who knows, maybe if we didn't go around killing off democratically elected leaders and replacing them with US-owned despots who destroy the lives of their people, those people wouldn't hate us so much... Nah.
Alas, probably not. They'll just blame it on Bush.
Bush made the underlying problems worse and our country less safe (more terrorists), however, he didn't start the process. He's as much a pawn of the corporations as anyone else these days. Some would go back to MacNamara for the first systematic horrors of US foreign policy, some would go back much further than that (McKinley, Monroe, etc.)
But to understand these names, you'd have to know history, which would imply reading a book. Unlikely in your case. The stupidity of people who think like you make me furious. Every time an American soldier dies, I want to punch someone like you in the face and say, "IT'S YOUR FUCKING FAULT!" Because you let Bush and the people behind Bush get away with any action or lie they want.
It's not Bush's fault. It's your fault. You elected him, you total and complete fuckwit.
Ross
Does anyone really doubt that MS can (and will) scream ahead of Yahoo in market share in the coming years?
Yes. I live down the street from their new office in Santa Monica. They're competing well with Google on recruiting the sharpest people from other regional employers. Including three of my new neighbors who recently moved down here from Seattle.
Google isn't the only one successfully recruiting hot-shit developers from MS.
Regards,
Ross
I agree with your question. The SpaceOrb had full 6-D control in 1993 (3 rotation axes, 3 translation axes).
I loved that thing. Descent was the absolute best game for that controller. I could finally take out bosses with the SpaceOrb that I just couldn't get with joystick and/or keyboard. It provided so much control. Always ended up stopping "game time" after a few hours because my hands would get cramps.
No need to mention that's also the only real reason to stop a different kind of activity... ahem.
Ross
Snarkiness and condescension aside, you took out the important part of my statement, involving communication over satellites and using a corporation's wires.
What you should have taken from my response is that what you think is "the important part" is what I think is "the completely and utterly irrelevant part".
The fact that you aren't finding a strong privacy requirement in the "persons... and effects" parts of the Amendment is additional evidence that there are people who think differently from you, and who are outraged at recent events re: government surveillance of people not suspected of any crime.
I won't assume that you'll change your mind today, so I think this particular discussion is complete.
Regards,
Ross
This is the kind of team I was referring to in the other response when I observed that the best offshoring outcome seem to cost between 0% and 15% less while taking 20-50% longer.
You still haven't fixed the communication hurdle: people can convey a great deal more information when facing each other in front of a whiteboard than they can in any other way. Phone calls and emails (with people on a schedule 12 1/2 hours from yours) simply don't compare. That lack of fidelity and nuance ultimately results in less effective work.
The best offshore outcome I've ever seen was when the offshore team was the QA testing group. We used Bugzilla as the communication medium and the fact that they were able to check changes that night and give you feedback by the time you returned the next day was fantastic. But my experiences with splitting up dev teams or moving development work offshore have seen marginal cost savings at best, and always resulted in a longer schedule than a motivated group of local developers could achieve.
I remain convinced that face to face communication is core to maximizing effectiveness. Once we can do that over 12,500 miles, it will be a completely even playing field.
Regards,
Ross
Then why hasn't every slave throughout history killed himself?
In general, because the actual spirit of the quote is that it's better to die fighting for a cause that might result in freedom than to tolerate a situation with little to no freedom. Committing suicide whether by literally killing yourself or fighting a hopeless rebellion aren't things that people who have never tasted freedom are willing to do.
Once you've tasted freedom, however, you'd be amazed at the hopeless causes that "would be slaves" have taken up (Digger Rebellion).
Regards,
Ross