This has to do with the human element. If you get six people in a room and give them a pile of badly formatted code, even with specific instructions to the contrary they are likely going to at least mentally pick apart all the obvious problems before they even move on to subtle logic flaws and business logic. I think the savings come in because you can be a better code reviewer precisely because you are not being distracted by formatting or stupid little potential errors. I personally have a much easier time reading code if it's formatted in a consistent way, so I like having a corporate code formatting standard even when I disagree on the specific policies in some places.
Re:Misses the point
on
PMD Applied
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· Score: 2, Informative
PMD is not only a format checker, and If you want syntax checking, just try to compile the code and if it doesn't compile then the syntax is wrong. PMD does exactly what you are talking about. For example, it flags negative tests and if-then blocks without braces, which while valid code are the source of many subtle mistakes.
It is an excellent thing to run before doing code review. It flags piddling sources of code errors and formatting non-compliance so that your peer review process doesn't have to. The author agrees with you. PMD solves the problem of ensuring that code reviewers aren't wasting their time reviewing code formatting, but you still get the benefit of code formatting. PMD is great, everyone in a corporate programming environment should use it (following the author's suggestion of customizing it, I LIKE ternary expressions and will use them whether or not beginners find them "confusing.")
Hah, this is a good point. When I applied for a job, they asked me if I had a criminal record, not if I had NUDE TEEN PIXXX of myself. So, let's give these kids a rap sheet "to protect their careers."
Is "this news for nerds" because they used email? Or because of racy nude teen photos? The density of posts designed to whip up righteous nerd frenzy is getting old.
Yes yes, the law can affect nerds too. I can also get that news anywhere.
If your wife's iBook really is 8 years old, it doesn't have Firewire or a DVD drive, which means 10.4 installations's unsupported by Apple. You can't even get it on the thing without ordering an extra copy on CDs direct from Apple, and you still need hack software to even get it to install.
I bet you can actually run Vista Basic on a machine lower than the system Reqs, which are 800Mhz with 512Megs of RAM. It might be really slow, but I've run OS X 10.3 on a Power Mac G3 400, and it was slow as crap. Your iBook has a 300Mhz CPU and the RAM tops out at 512M, the minimum for OS X non-suckage. I can only imagine the torture it must be to use that thing. On top of that 10.4 is slower than 10.3, the first time an OS X upgrade by Apple wasn't faster than the last. You cannot be using Spotlight on the thing, and it's not even possible to run Quartz Extreme with the video CPU in the laptop if 3D was supported on the Rage Mobility, which I'm not sure if it even is (Mac users had to fight to get acceleration for Rage II.)
So basically you've hack installed OS X to badly run on an 8 year old computer without any fancy features or graphics effects. I'm pretty sure somebody could do that with Vista too, but why? You were forced to upgrade to 10.4 because you wanted to run the latest software, but there'd be no point to upgrade a 1999 PC to Vista because Windows 2000 can pretty much run whatever Windows software you've wanted since 2000, likely even for a few more years. This is ignoring DirectX10 exclusive games which would run like crap on an 8 year computer anyway.
How does this all tie back to the original point? Two ways. Firstly you aren't meeting Apple's minimum requirements but are still running it, I'm pretty sure I could do that with Vista too; second, The argument over upgrading hardware is moot because you basically HAD to upgrade the OS to run stuff, whereas a 1999 PC running a Windows OS that came out in 2000 doesn't need to upgrade to Vista to run new software at all, negating the alleged need for a hardware upgrade in the first place.
*sidenote, what I mean about "forced" upgrade is look at how much OS X software requires 10.4. A LOT.
The summary is, a particular set minimum wage and a particular set mimimum safe working condition are both legal standards rather than rights. Standards are allowed to vary from place to place while we (are supposed to, *cough*) accept that rights are the same for all people regardless of location, even if outside the USA.
Because that doesn't make any logical sense. A right by definition is a non-negotiable standard. To use the USA as an example, a nationwide $5.15 minimum wage is not a right granted by our Creator, but the ability to redress government for grievances is. OSHA doesn't charge companies with human rights violations for a company not being in compliance with a standard of safeworkplaces.
It shouldn't be hypocritical or confusing to follow this model for American businesses running in China because it's exactly the same one we use here.
Working conditions and minimum wage are subject to differing standards while freedom of speech is considered a sacrosanct right. Only at certain levels are standards connected to human rights, but reality dictates that if a country is only at a certain level of economic development you can only expect a certain standard of work conditions for example. I would argue that these are still things that are within the US government's power to regulate, and probably should
Companies are also bound by the laws of the country they are INCORPORATED in. This has always been the case. A company doesn't have the right to incorporate in the USA if it can't follow US laws, and it doesn't have the right to operate in China if it can't obey Chinese laws. This necessarily excludes some types of business ventures with some types of foreign governments.
No one is asking anyone to violate any nation's sovereignty and no one is taking away the right to run a business as one sees fit. American companies just want to have their cake and eat it too, make profit outside the USA doing while doing things not legal within our borders. I personally think that if an American company runs manufacturing facilities outside the USA they should still be bound by USA pollution standards, because it's all the same air and water.
This would only apply to Google if the law PASSED, I realize this.
Re. not writing off something that's not part of the original design: In my OP, I did in fact agree with you there. What I disputed was, that the argument applied to web browsers. There are parts of the original "document" metaphor that will always break the "application" metaphor. Obviously both metaphors solve certain problems, but the same app cannot fulfill both without compromises.
It happened because of the ubiquity of the browser app as a platform for delivering content over the 'net. My position is: That's only the reason it happened, and not a reason to continue.
The problem here is that you are only looking at the rules under which you are developing. You look at a set of programming tools and a platform and you then set about to implement the solution you want. But you are not seeing the forest for the trees. I am talking about concepts. I know good and well what the back button is supposed to do. The problem is, if you only want the user to see the current state, the proper use of the back button subverts that. When you are simulating a desktop app in the browser, you only want the user to see the current state, which makes the back button, forward button and browser history your enemy. Because the browser treats everything like a stack of papers and you want it to be a desktop API.
So there is this platform that has pages and links to other pages. As you travel from link to link, the metaphor keeps a "stack" of documents you have visited. You are supplied a "forward" and "back" button so that you simulate flipping through the stack to find the document that you want. There is a simple form facility that allows you to request stuff, and a few http headers to indicate not to keep pages that represent transitory information that was only good at the time you requested it. This is all good and fine and works well.
What happened is that someone figured out that if EVERY page was a form, you could simulate a desktop app by feeding an updated HTML document back to the client every time they submitted an "action" (which was really a form submission you are now making into an event handler.) Again, the problem is you are still stuck with with the navigation buttons. So AJAX was invented and you can make round trip requests to the server and dynamically update your DOM, but the user can still navigate off YOUR site to another one. Also don't forget, according to the STANDARDS, the browser doesn't have to honor many directives you rely on for correct behavior, and may or may not support advanced features you rely on.
Every time you reach a hurdle in development you see it as a technical obstacle. But at its roots this is a design problem, not a programming problem. I realize we are all stuck with what we have, but you are essentially calling me a heretic for pointing out that we are pounding nails with a wrench.
I want to thank you for your thoughtful comment. It made me feel good today, especially when contrasted with the "Jim Gray Is Missing" posting where the majority of posts are yukking it up about a man who right now may be dying alone in the ocean. Emotional connection to others and empathy, I think these are traits that make us better than animals. Some people feel a connection to people 4,000 years ago, and some people don't even feel a twinge when they hear about people suffering right now.
You obviously know fuck-all about web programming. Everything done to make dynamic web applications is a clumsy, tacked-on workaround to get around the built-in, inherent static document metaphor in all HTML browsers. Take the back button. It FUNDAMENTALLY ASSUMES STATIC DOCUMENT NAVIGATION. And you cannot change this. There was never any facility to define your own navigation on this button. Guess what, this breaks dynamic page navigation because whatever is in your browser cache could be outdated system state.
So, to get around it you take advantage of some HTTP headers to convince the browser to do a round-trip every time the back button is hit, so you can serve up a fresh page--except that it often doesn't work, because you are using those headers for something they were never intended for, so several browsers all interpret them slightly differently from the way you want if they honor them at all, which you have literally no control over. And you can't reliably detect what browser the client is using to be sure, because there should have never been a need to do so because it was never intended to be doing what you want it to do. AND browsers WERE supposed to all interpret content the same for the same HTML. But they don't and it doesn't, so let's stack on a few more workarounds to glean out what the browser is. Then you can hack up a solution that'll break when MS releases an update.
All this because we're stuck with the back button while breaking the design metaphor! But there's more.
I mentioned the round trip. For years now to simulate a user interface, you essentially had to mimic playing chess by mail. You collect form input, interpret it and deliver back a dynamically generated page containing the requested info. This is why the back button can fuck you so badly. You are using forms for something they were never intended for, and it shows, because they are wholly inadequate for the job. If you want to ensure that an app works without javascript, you are stuck making concessions in your visible page design. Buttons have to be labelled a certain way. You have to arrange information to fit the hierarchical document model (notice the word "document" there) which may not fit your visual needs. You can't submit a form to a different location without javascript, which your client may or may not have. HTML form elements are not really fine-grained enough for many application needs, so to simulate this, let's kludge up some more javascript glue to make them act the way we want.
So you've made a commitment to Javascript, you've got your AJAX, which would seem to solve a lot of these problems. Now you can asynch requests back to the server and dynamically update the document object model to make it act like a real desktop app.
CONGRATULATIONS! It took over a decade of "technology progress", a browser that eats up to 30 megabytes and a more than a gigahertz of CPU cycles to simulate badly what a desktop app on a 386SX with 640K of RAM could do in the 1980's. And it still doesn't work right because all the leftover cruft from the discarded metaphor you subverted.
Look, you are right that software can grow beyond it's original intentions. But browsers weren't hurt by complementary, evolutionary enhancements like bookmarks and inline images. When you start breaking the model, problems start popping up and you spend an inordinate amount of time on plumbing. It becomes painfully obvious that what you are doing is working IN SPITE of the medium. You need to consider moving on. I love the idea of a markup-defined, styled UI that you can capture events and handle using a simple but powerful interpreted programming language. It's funny that that's essentially what Firefox is (Chrome, CSS, XUL and Javascript), and it's built for running what's now an incredibly shittier version of itself.
I wrote a very long rant. It's not actually too bad doing web development and programming, but you see the same problems over and over again dealing with your code, inscribed in books and on forums. Elaborate frameworks are constructed to hide and minimize them. Thousands of man-hours and fragile cathedrals of complexity all the direct result of professionally ramming a square peg into a round hole.
I can't believe a control group couldn't be found. I have a number of Mormon friends, and part of their religion is not ingesting stuff like caffeine. One of them went to a private Mormon university, and he told me that there weren't even soda or coffee machines anywhere on campus.
I first tried Linux in 1997. At the time I couldn't imagine using it as a desktop. However, there were a few turning points for me:
1) GOOD package management. I started out on Redhat. Whenever anyone brings up RPM problems, they get reamed on Slashdot "RPM IS NOT A PACKAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM!" Well, once upon a time, there wasn't Yum or Red Carpet, and the best thing there was (RPM) was still hell to use. Now between RHEL and Gentoo, I rarely have to worry about not finding dependencies. Thank God. 2) 2.6 Kernel. The reason is because before 2.6, X under Linux always "felt" slow. 3. Firefox. 4. More expansive community, documentation. I remember in 1997 trying to get help:
ME: "I'm trying to do X and it's doing Y. Does anyone have experience with this? " THEM: "RTFM" ME, (looking): "The man page doesn't say anything" THEM: "+b You've been banned, troll."
Now I look at the Gentoo install documentation and user forums now, and I am just in awe. Likewise for many of the other major distros.
Now that wireless is going smooth, the only thing I have to complain about is no matter what I do, font rendering is inconsistent and often ugly. But as of two years ago, I am a happy full time Linux user! Take this for what it's worth, I just wanted to share my experience.
Your post is an application of the is-ought problem. The fact of the matter is that corporate charters are granted by the government, and it is only the current state of government that a corporation is only required to make as much money as possible with no consideration for social responsibility. This was not always the case, and many people disagree that it is good so it could very well change someday. While I don't disagree that in a very abstract sense a corporation cannot be "good" or "bad," real people are running the thing, and they are capable of making moral decisions.
There was moral outrage when it was revealed that Ford had done a cost-benefit analysis of death settlements against including an $11 part that would prevent their Pinto automobiles from exploding in a collision, and concluding that the settlements were more cost-effective. Would you argue that was the right thing for Ford to to do?
The fundamental problem with your argument is that we are not talking about the USA, we are talking about China, we are talking about Google, not the OP.
Even if we were, on Slashdot the opposition to such policies as you have mentioned happening in the USA is HUGE, so comparing the two will just get you a similar response. "Censorship is wrong." I am American, and the fact that Scientology and the DMCA corrupted Google search results offends me greatly. Google was around a number of years before the law went all crazy on us regarding that, but Google walked into China already knowing that the legal climate would require violating their principles at some point. That's at least a little different.
Optimization isn't just about hardware support, it's also about software support. Maybe I don't want LDAP support, maybe I don't want CUPS support in Samba. Maybe I want to link against Lesstif instead of Motif. Maybe it's going to be a cool server and doesn't need controller support. Sure other distros let you do that, but Gentoo was built for it.
There are other great reasons to use Gentoo if you are putting Linux on your PS3. For example, I would do so because I run already Gentoo on my desktop and so I'm _familiar_ with it. Lots more, unrelated to the technical details of Gentoo.
Vista has massively overhauled the Windows security and driver model. The graphics drivers have been separated into a reduced kernel driver and moved more stuff into userspace code. This is to increase stability and reduce kernel exploits.
IIRC, in Linux you have direct access to the hardware in a driver that resides entirely in kernel mode, and there is an instruction filtering process to prevent malicious operations. You are running the game in a regular user account, but at some level that user is executing arbitrary code in kernel mode.
If my understanding is accurate, the reason is because Vista is actually more secure than Linux if you are using your PC for games.
So they publish a statement saying that the earth is becoming overpopulated. They say it is therefore imperative that abortion be universally available. (Coded, "reproductive decision.")
Saying that populations are exceeding expected future ability of the planet to sustain a minimal lifestyle...that is a relatively politically neutral statement. Just saying "overpopulation" is a bit more political, but only because you aren't stating your assumptions. Saying then that abortion is the solution is overtly political, and everyone should acknowledge this. There's probably a million potential solutions to overpopulation. Why do you suppose that abortion was chosen instead of generic population culling; or enacting a global one-child policy; launching a campaign to change cultural values; MANDATORY abortion; etc.
Union of Concerned Scientists in a statement made in 1992 regarding overpopulation: "We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions. "
Regardless if one agrees or not with their statement, it is OVERTLY POLITICAL and has NO connection to scientific method or rigor!
The fact of the matter is, they are and have been for many years taking political positions on scientific findings. So the Bush administration says they disagree with some scientific finding or another. That's less destructive to science (maybe not the planet, however) than SCIENTISTS deriving concrete moral imperatives from cold scientific statement of fact.
I'd just like to mention that in the school district where I went to high school, getting arrested on a drug or alcohol violation would result in an immediate school suspension. After I left, there was also a case where a student created a web site [school name]sucks.com. The site got taken down. He should have contacted the ACLU.
Pretty much my entire high school experience was dodging a barrage of arbitrary threats and punishment from school officials, and I wasn't even one of the troublemakers. I hated that place, it was a soul-sucking hellhole. I find it interesting how many people have this same experience. Schools across the United States seem to be run like Gulags.
With all of the crimes being committed both over and within video games, lawyers are finding a new costumer.
While the lawyers themselves may find this disconcerting, it will be only a minor transition for some of their clients to go from paying one "professional" to dress like Tifa Lockheart to another.
How do you deal with things like Leviticus 11:19 where Moses says that Bats are a type of bird?
Or for that matter, if you literally have to believe that the "Bible" is perfect, which one do you mean? Because there have been many, many versions with misprints, including the first Vulgate Bible, that had so many errors that it was recalled because it was making people question how a Bible could be the perfect word of God but have typos?
Which version of the Bible? Over the years many books have had verses changed and redacted. The catholics and the protestants have different books. The book of Job was (intentionally) mangled so badly in the King James Version that it is literally WRONG. As in, it was intentionally changed for political reasons to remove the actual actions and motivations of Job, because he questioned GOD HIMSELF and got away with it. If you can question God, this brings up two points, namely that you don't need an intermediary to talk to God, and secondly, If you can question GOD'S authority, that de facto gives you the right to question any authority.
I'm not trying to trash on your faith, that's good that you have something to believe in that gives your life purpose and makes you want to be a better person. I just don't see how you can fall back on the Bible being the literal word of God, it just can't be, there's too many problems. I had the same mindset for a long time, all or nothing. I had to throw that away to keep my faith. If you believe in God, I assume there is a reason. I know there is a God because I received irrefutable proof. What I don't have proof of is the literal truth of the Bible, and in fact I have proof of the contrary. Maybe you have had an affirming experience like this, maybe you haven't. You might be afraid that you know a lot less about God than you are comfortable with if the Bible is not literally true. Looking the other direction is not faith, it's blindness. Real religion is as tough as real life.
I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".
Why is this hard to understand? One comes from God, the other from Satan. It's not the magic, it's the source.
What I find funny is how in Catholic schools (at least the one I went to, university-level) the pastors teach what you are talking about, that most of these stories are metaphors, but you have to believe in transubstantiation, that in Holy Communion, the sacrament is LITERALLY transformed into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Talk about selective blindness.
Slashdot Mirror
This has to do with the human element. If you get six people in a room and give them a pile of badly formatted code, even with specific instructions to the contrary they are likely going to at least mentally pick apart all the obvious problems before they even move on to subtle logic flaws and business logic. I think the savings come in because you can be a better code reviewer precisely because you are not being distracted by formatting or stupid little potential errors. I personally have a much easier time reading code if it's formatted in a consistent way, so I like having a corporate code formatting standard even when I disagree on the specific policies in some places.
PMD is not only a format checker, and If you want syntax checking, just try to compile the code and if it doesn't compile then the syntax is wrong. PMD does exactly what you are talking about. For example, it flags negative tests and if-then blocks without braces, which while valid code are the source of many subtle mistakes.
It is an excellent thing to run before doing code review. It flags piddling sources of code errors and formatting non-compliance so that your peer review process doesn't have to. The author agrees with you. PMD solves the problem of ensuring that code reviewers aren't wasting their time reviewing code formatting, but you still get the benefit of code formatting. PMD is great, everyone in a corporate programming environment should use it (following the author's suggestion of customizing it, I LIKE ternary expressions and will use them whether or not beginners find them "confusing.")
Hah, this is a good point. When I applied for a job, they asked me if I had a criminal record, not if I had NUDE TEEN PIXXX of myself. So, let's give these kids a rap sheet "to protect their careers."
Is "this news for nerds" because they used email? Or because of racy nude teen photos? The density of posts designed to whip up righteous nerd frenzy is getting old.
Yes yes, the law can affect nerds too. I can also get that news anywhere.
If your wife's iBook really is 8 years old, it doesn't have Firewire or a DVD drive, which means 10.4 installations's unsupported by Apple. You can't even get it on the thing without ordering an extra copy on CDs direct from Apple, and you still need hack software to even get it to install.
I bet you can actually run Vista Basic on a machine lower than the system Reqs, which are 800Mhz with 512Megs of RAM. It might be really slow, but I've run OS X 10.3 on a Power Mac G3 400, and it was slow as crap. Your iBook has a 300Mhz CPU and the RAM tops out at 512M, the minimum for OS X non-suckage. I can only imagine the torture it must be to use that thing. On top of that 10.4 is slower than 10.3, the first time an OS X upgrade by Apple wasn't faster than the last. You cannot be using Spotlight on the thing, and it's not even possible to run Quartz Extreme with the video CPU in the laptop if 3D was supported on the Rage Mobility, which I'm not sure if it even is (Mac users had to fight to get acceleration for Rage II.)
So basically you've hack installed OS X to badly run on an 8 year old computer without any fancy features or graphics effects. I'm pretty sure somebody could do that with Vista too, but why? You were forced to upgrade to 10.4 because you wanted to run the latest software, but there'd be no point to upgrade a 1999 PC to Vista because Windows 2000 can pretty much run whatever Windows software you've wanted since 2000, likely even for a few more years. This is ignoring DirectX10 exclusive games which would run like crap on an 8 year computer anyway.
How does this all tie back to the original point? Two ways. Firstly you aren't meeting Apple's minimum requirements but are still running it, I'm pretty sure I could do that with Vista too; second, The argument over upgrading hardware is moot because you basically HAD to upgrade the OS to run stuff, whereas a 1999 PC running a Windows OS that came out in 2000 doesn't need to upgrade to Vista to run new software at all, negating the alleged need for a hardware upgrade in the first place.
*sidenote, what I mean about "forced" upgrade is look at how much OS X software requires 10.4. A LOT.
Hey there, I actually responded to another post that brought up this exact issue, you can check out that posting and the subsequent posts:
Link
The summary is, a particular set minimum wage and a particular set mimimum safe working condition are both legal standards rather than rights. Standards are allowed to vary from place to place while we (are supposed to, *cough*) accept that rights are the same for all people regardless of location, even if outside the USA.
Because that doesn't make any logical sense. A right by definition is a non-negotiable standard. To use the USA as an example, a nationwide $5.15 minimum wage is not a right granted by our Creator, but the ability to redress government for grievances is. OSHA doesn't charge companies with human rights violations for a company not being in compliance with a standard of safeworkplaces.
It shouldn't be hypocritical or confusing to follow this model for American businesses running in China because it's exactly the same one we use here.
Working conditions and minimum wage are subject to differing standards while freedom of speech is considered a sacrosanct right. Only at certain levels are standards connected to human rights, but reality dictates that if a country is only at a certain level of economic development you can only expect a certain standard of work conditions for example. I would argue that these are still things that are within the US government's power to regulate, and probably should
Companies are also bound by the laws of the country they are INCORPORATED in. This has always been the case. A company doesn't have the right to incorporate in the USA if it can't follow US laws, and it doesn't have the right to operate in China if it can't obey Chinese laws. This necessarily excludes some types of business ventures with some types of foreign governments.
No one is asking anyone to violate any nation's sovereignty and no one is taking away the right to run a business as one sees fit. American companies just want to have their cake and eat it too, make profit outside the USA doing while doing things not legal within our borders. I personally think that if an American company runs manufacturing facilities outside the USA they should still be bound by USA pollution standards, because it's all the same air and water.
This would only apply to Google if the law PASSED, I realize this.
Re. not writing off something that's not part of the original design: In my OP, I did in fact agree with you there. What I disputed was, that the argument applied to web browsers. There are parts of the original "document" metaphor that will always break the "application" metaphor. Obviously both metaphors solve certain problems, but the same app cannot fulfill both without compromises.
It happened because of the ubiquity of the browser app as a platform for delivering content over the 'net. My position is: That's only the reason it happened, and not a reason to continue.
Nice discussion though, thanks.
The problem here is that you are only looking at the rules under which you are developing. You look at a set of programming tools and a platform and you then set about to implement the solution you want. But you are not seeing the forest for the trees. I am talking about concepts. I know good and well what the back button is supposed to do. The problem is, if you only want the user to see the current state, the proper use of the back button subverts that. When you are simulating a desktop app in the browser, you only want the user to see the current state, which makes the back button, forward button and browser history your enemy. Because the browser treats everything like a stack of papers and you want it to be a desktop API.
So there is this platform that has pages and links to other pages. As you travel from link to link, the metaphor keeps a "stack" of documents you have visited. You are supplied a "forward" and "back" button so that you simulate flipping through the stack to find the document that you want. There is a simple form facility that allows you to request stuff, and a few http headers to indicate not to keep pages that represent transitory information that was only good at the time you requested it. This is all good and fine and works well.
What happened is that someone figured out that if EVERY page was a form, you could simulate a desktop app by feeding an updated HTML document back to the client every time they submitted an "action" (which was really a form submission you are now making into an event handler.) Again, the problem is you are still stuck with with the navigation buttons. So AJAX was invented and you can make round trip requests to the server and dynamically update your DOM, but the user can still navigate off YOUR site to another one. Also don't forget, according to the STANDARDS, the browser doesn't have to honor many directives you rely on for correct behavior, and may or may not support advanced features you rely on.
Every time you reach a hurdle in development you see it as a technical obstacle. But at its roots this is a design problem, not a programming problem. I realize we are all stuck with what we have, but you are essentially calling me a heretic for pointing out that we are pounding nails with a wrench.
I want to thank you for your thoughtful comment. It made me feel good today, especially when contrasted with the "Jim Gray Is Missing" posting where the majority of posts are yukking it up about a man who right now may be dying alone in the ocean. Emotional connection to others and empathy, I think these are traits that make us better than animals. Some people feel a connection to people 4,000 years ago, and some people don't even feel a twinge when they hear about people suffering right now.
You obviously know fuck-all about web programming. Everything done to make dynamic web applications is a clumsy, tacked-on workaround to get around the built-in, inherent static document metaphor in all HTML browsers. Take the back button. It FUNDAMENTALLY ASSUMES STATIC DOCUMENT NAVIGATION. And you cannot change this. There was never any facility to define your own navigation on this button. Guess what, this breaks dynamic page navigation because whatever is in your browser cache could be outdated system state.
So, to get around it you take advantage of some HTTP headers to convince the browser to do a round-trip every time the back button is hit, so you can serve up a fresh page--except that it often doesn't work, because you are using those headers for something they were never intended for, so several browsers all interpret them slightly differently from the way you want if they honor them at all, which you have literally no control over. And you can't reliably detect what browser the client is using to be sure, because there should have never been a need to do so because it was never intended to be doing what you want it to do. AND browsers WERE supposed to all interpret content the same for the same HTML. But they don't and it doesn't, so let's stack on a few more workarounds to glean out what the browser is. Then you can hack up a solution that'll break when MS releases an update.
All this because we're stuck with the back button while breaking the design metaphor! But there's more.
I mentioned the round trip. For years now to simulate a user interface, you essentially had to mimic playing chess by mail. You collect form input, interpret it and deliver back a dynamically generated page containing the requested info. This is why the back button can fuck you so badly. You are using forms for something they were never intended for, and it shows, because they are wholly inadequate for the job. If you want to ensure that an app works without javascript, you are stuck making concessions in your visible page design. Buttons have to be labelled a certain way. You have to arrange information to fit the hierarchical document model (notice the word "document" there) which may not fit your visual needs. You can't submit a form to a different location without javascript, which your client may or may not have. HTML form elements are not really fine-grained enough for many application needs, so to simulate this, let's kludge up some more javascript glue to make them act the way we want.
So you've made a commitment to Javascript, you've got your AJAX, which would seem to solve a lot of these problems. Now you can asynch requests back to the server and dynamically update the document object model to make it act like a real desktop app.
CONGRATULATIONS! It took over a decade of "technology progress", a browser that eats up to 30 megabytes and a more than a gigahertz of CPU cycles to simulate badly what a desktop app on a 386SX with 640K of RAM could do in the 1980's. And it still doesn't work right because all the leftover cruft from the discarded metaphor you subverted.
Look, you are right that software can grow beyond it's original intentions. But browsers weren't hurt by complementary, evolutionary enhancements like bookmarks and inline images. When you start breaking the model, problems start popping up and you spend an inordinate amount of time on plumbing. It becomes painfully obvious that what you are doing is working IN SPITE of the medium. You need to consider moving on. I love the idea of a markup-defined, styled UI that you can capture events and handle using a simple but powerful interpreted programming language. It's funny that that's essentially what Firefox is (Chrome, CSS, XUL and Javascript), and it's built for running what's now an incredibly shittier version of itself.
I wrote a very long rant. It's not actually too bad doing web development and programming, but you see the same problems over and over again dealing with your code, inscribed in books and on forums. Elaborate frameworks are constructed to hide and minimize them. Thousands of man-hours and fragile cathedrals of complexity all the direct result of professionally ramming a square peg into a round hole.
I can't believe a control group couldn't be found. I have a number of Mormon friends, and part of their religion is not ingesting stuff like caffeine. One of them went to a private Mormon university, and he told me that there weren't even soda or coffee machines anywhere on campus.
I first tried Linux in 1997. At the time I couldn't imagine using it as a desktop. However, there were a few turning points for me:
1) GOOD package management. I started out on Redhat. Whenever anyone brings up RPM problems, they get reamed on Slashdot "RPM IS NOT A PACKAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM!" Well, once upon a time, there wasn't Yum or Red Carpet, and the best thing there was (RPM) was still hell to use. Now between RHEL and Gentoo, I rarely have to worry about not finding dependencies. Thank God.
2) 2.6 Kernel. The reason is because before 2.6, X under Linux always "felt" slow.
3. Firefox.
4. More expansive community, documentation. I remember in 1997 trying to get help:
ME: "I'm trying to do X and it's doing Y. Does anyone have experience with this? "
THEM: "RTFM"
ME, (looking): "The man page doesn't say anything"
THEM: "+b You've been banned, troll."
Now I look at the Gentoo install documentation and user forums now, and I am just in awe. Likewise for many of the other major distros.
Now that wireless is going smooth, the only thing I have to complain about is no matter what I do, font rendering is inconsistent and often ugly. But as of two years ago, I am a happy full time Linux user! Take this for what it's worth, I just wanted to share my experience.
Your post is an application of the is-ought problem. The fact of the matter is that corporate charters are granted by the government, and it is only the current state of government that a corporation is only required to make as much money as possible with no consideration for social responsibility. This was not always the case, and many people disagree that it is good so it could very well change someday. While I don't disagree that in a very abstract sense a corporation cannot be "good" or "bad," real people are running the thing, and they are capable of making moral decisions.
There was moral outrage when it was revealed that Ford had done a cost-benefit analysis of death settlements against including an $11 part that would prevent their Pinto automobiles from exploding in a collision, and concluding that the settlements were more cost-effective. Would you argue that was the right thing for Ford to to do?
link.
The fundamental problem with your argument is that we are not talking about the USA, we are talking about China, we are talking about Google, not the OP.
Even if we were, on Slashdot the opposition to such policies as you have mentioned happening in the USA is HUGE, so comparing the two will just get you a similar response. "Censorship is wrong." I am American, and the fact that Scientology and the DMCA corrupted Google search results offends me greatly. Google was around a number of years before the law went all crazy on us regarding that, but Google walked into China already knowing that the legal climate would require violating their principles at some point. That's at least a little different.
Cheers...
Optimization isn't just about hardware support, it's also about software support. Maybe I don't want LDAP support, maybe I don't want CUPS support in Samba. Maybe I want to link against Lesstif instead of Motif. Maybe it's going to be a cool server and doesn't need controller support. Sure other distros let you do that, but Gentoo was built for it.
There are other great reasons to use Gentoo if you are putting Linux on your PS3. For example, I would do so because I run already Gentoo on my desktop and so I'm _familiar_ with it. Lots more, unrelated to the technical details of Gentoo.
Vista has massively overhauled the Windows security and driver model. The graphics drivers have been separated into a reduced kernel driver and moved more stuff into userspace code. This is to increase stability and reduce kernel exploits.
IIRC, in Linux you have direct access to the hardware in a driver that resides entirely in kernel mode, and there is an instruction filtering process to prevent malicious operations. You are running the game in a regular user account, but at some level that user is executing arbitrary code in kernel mode.
If my understanding is accurate, the reason is because Vista is actually more secure than Linux if you are using your PC for games.
SUSPECTED "pedos." Or are we dispensing with trials in Germany now also?
OK!
s cientists.html
So they publish a statement saying that the earth is becoming overpopulated. They say it is therefore imperative that abortion be universally available. (Coded, "reproductive decision.")
Saying that populations are exceeding expected future ability of the planet to sustain a minimal lifestyle...that is a relatively politically neutral statement. Just saying "overpopulation" is a bit more political, but only because you aren't stating your assumptions. Saying then that abortion is the solution is overtly political, and everyone should acknowledge this. There's probably a million potential solutions to overpopulation. Why do you suppose that abortion was chosen instead of generic population culling; or enacting a global one-child policy; launching a campaign to change cultural values; MANDATORY abortion; etc.
Union of Concerned Scientists in a statement made in 1992 regarding overpopulation: "We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions. "
Regardless if one agrees or not with their statement, it is OVERTLY POLITICAL and has NO connection to scientific method or rigor!
http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/world
The fact of the matter is, they are and have been for many years taking political positions on scientific findings. So the Bush administration says they disagree with some scientific finding or another. That's less destructive to science (maybe not the planet, however) than SCIENTISTS deriving concrete moral imperatives from cold scientific statement of fact.
I'd just like to mention that in the school district where I went to high school, getting arrested on a drug or alcohol violation would result in an immediate school suspension. After I left, there was also a case where a student created a web site [school name]sucks.com. The site got taken down. He should have contacted the ACLU.
Pretty much my entire high school experience was dodging a barrage of arbitrary threats and punishment from school officials, and I wasn't even one of the troublemakers. I hated that place, it was a soul-sucking hellhole. I find it interesting how many people have this same experience. Schools across the United States seem to be run like Gulags.
With all of the crimes being committed both over and within video games, lawyers are finding a new costumer.
While the lawyers themselves may find this disconcerting, it will be only a minor transition for some of their clients to go from paying one "professional" to dress like Tifa Lockheart to another.
How do you deal with things like Leviticus 11:19 where Moses says that Bats are a type of bird?
Or for that matter, if you literally have to believe that the "Bible" is perfect, which one do you mean? Because there have been many, many versions with misprints, including the first Vulgate Bible, that had so many errors that it was recalled because it was making people question how a Bible could be the perfect word of God but have typos?
Which version of the Bible? Over the years many books have had verses changed and redacted. The catholics and the protestants have different books. The book of Job was (intentionally) mangled so badly in the King James Version that it is literally WRONG. As in, it was intentionally changed for political reasons to remove the actual actions and motivations of Job, because he questioned GOD HIMSELF and got away with it. If you can question God, this brings up two points, namely that you don't need an intermediary to talk to God, and secondly, If you can question GOD'S authority, that de facto gives you the right to question any authority.
I'm not trying to trash on your faith, that's good that you have something to believe in that gives your life purpose and makes you want to be a better person. I just don't see how you can fall back on the Bible being the literal word of God, it just can't be, there's too many problems. I had the same mindset for a long time, all or nothing. I had to throw that away to keep my faith. If you believe in God, I assume there is a reason. I know there is a God because I received irrefutable proof. What I don't have proof of is the literal truth of the Bible, and in fact I have proof of the contrary. Maybe you have had an affirming experience like this, maybe you haven't. You might be afraid that you know a lot less about God than you are comfortable with if the Bible is not literally true. Looking the other direction is not faith, it's blindness. Real religion is as tough as real life.
I also find it funny that so many evangelicals are willing to believe Jesus did "miracles" (aka magic) but don't want their kids reading Harry Potter books because magic is "Satanic".
Why is this hard to understand? One comes from God, the other from Satan. It's not the magic, it's the source.
What I find funny is how in Catholic schools (at least the one I went to, university-level) the pastors teach what you are talking about, that most of these stories are metaphors, but you have to believe in transubstantiation, that in Holy Communion, the sacrament is LITERALLY transformed into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Talk about selective blindness.