Actually, it's against the law for the US military to perform military operations in the USA (with exceptions for insurrection and war, of course - both of which require an Act of Congress)....
We scrutinize our motivations and search for relevant reasons; we lament our mistakes to therapists and ruminate on the beliefs that led us astray. The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence.
This just isn't going to work. WiFi solves the easy problem (range 0-30 metres - you can just pull a cable if you are desperate). The difficult problem is the middle range; 100m -> 10km (or up to about 50km to 100km in country areas).
Actually, it can work, and it has, both in rural areas and poor countries. All at low cost and maintenance. There are devices like the mesh potato that have been used to build networks in South Africa. And the WiLD projects have deployed networks with links... yes, up to 100km.
Just look at all these mesh networks deployed or in process!
Indeed it is half assed solution, and doesn't work at all on many computers, including my main laptop, because of the Intel chips with visualization disabled. I don't know why Intel did that with so many of their multi-core chips, but they did.
Barely. I've been there, and done that. Step 1 is bad enough, but I've gone through all of them and gotten the VB6 IDE up and running. Then I have to load up one of the projects I work on and try to do something with it. Big FAIL there - some things I could work around, but others I could not. Ultimately, because of the hacks and mods Windows 7 needed to run the VB 6 IDE at all, and specifically deal with the applications I have to support, I needed a dedicated workstation to do VB 6 development, because it wouldn't be suitable for use for many other things. So, that might as well just be an XP VM. Easier to set up and use, so why even deal with a bunch of workarounds on Windows 7?
The goal of a high level programming language is to crate applications that do what the customers want it to do. Not be clean, or small, or the best use of memory.
VB6 did that well, very well in fact.
True - within certain parameters - i.e. all users have Windows, can install the client, updates are not too difficult to deal with based on frequency and number of users, etc.
Updating something that works to a 'new' language 'just cause' is a bad business decision.
Pretty sure that's EXACTLY what I said. Are you trying to build a straw man just to have something to argue about?
In fact, there is a lot of technical merit in not doing so.,
What does it have to do with "technical merit"? What does that even mean? "Technical merit"? I really don't know what you mean by that (or if you are using it correctly), but if you're going to build an application today, there is no justifiable "technical merit" for selecting VB 6. Period.
I really can't remember the specifics, it's been a while since I tried it. There were many issues involving first the installation, using admin mode for everything, turning off UAC, etc., that I was able to get around. In the end, there was one or two issue that I couldn't work around that were deal breakers, but I don't remember what they were. It may have even been some low-level direct DLL calls that were the issue, but I seem to recall it being something more fundamental.
What I do remember is that I was faced with having a single machine dedicated to VB 6 development that wasn't going to be suited for doing much else, and XP was the far easier to work with in that case.
I thought there were major compatibility problems with the VS98/VB6 IDE on Windows 7 and Windows 8
There are. I see some people claiming they are running it okay "for simple stuff", but for the applications I support it will not work.
If so, won't this stop you developing once XP is unsupported
Not necessarily. XP still has a couple of years left, but I only run it as a VM (KVM on Linux, even), so even after support for XP ends it won't be an issue for me. My customers don't see any advantages to re-writing these apps in something else (they are very large), and as long as they want work done with them I'll keep doing it.
Exactly. VB6 is crap, but when the customer has an application they like, with lots of functionality, they are NOT going to pay to re-write it in something else just because some developer would prefer to use something different. If they need a minor change they are going to find somebody to spend a day or two making the changes in VB6, no matter how many developers keep telling them they need to spend a few weeks or months to update it to some other language.
I just deployed an update to one of the VB6 applications that I've been supporting for many years. That one, like most of the others, still works for what the customers want.
I would really like to convert those apps to.NET, or Java, or just about anything else. But it's an effort that, while it would help me, I can't really sell to the customers. It would be costly for them (hey - I can comp some time but can't do it all for free), as well as possibly introduce some new bugs (there's a lot of code in there), require time from them for testing and possible interface changes, etc. They just don't see enough advantages to want to do it.
So of course I have to keep some Windows XP VMs around so I can work on those apps. VB applications may run fine in Windows 7 (and presumably will on Windows 8, according to TFA), but the IDE does NOT. I don't remember all the issues I ran into (maybe it had something to do with the controls being used), but it simply doesn't work.
So, yea, it won't die, it will be around for a long time. But at least from my perspective, it has NOTHING to do with the developers not wanting to move on. It's a business decision. And business has almost no incentive to decide on change.
Couldn't they have just released the results without all the hyperbole and pontificating? Yea, everybody knew that most likely there was an issue with timing, rather than with the much-confirmed laws of space-time. We don't need a condescending lecture from the elites. Tell it to the journalists.
Humans aren't that freaky. We are pretty much identical to chimps, with slightly better communication hardware.
Actually, I think that idea has pretty much been discredited with the discovery of "Ardi", the oldest direct human ancestor ever found, that was actually more like a human than a chimp. If anything, chimps evolved MORE from that common ancestor than humans did, despite the similarity in the genome.
So the State Educational Technology Directors Association says we need more... State Educational Technology. What a stunning conclusion for this completely neutral and unaffiliated group to come up with!
What schools really need is more education and less "State".
I know, right? They should do it the right way, and publish decks of playing cards with the targets fancifully depicted as jokers.
Nah, that would imply a desire to capture and try them. Better to just keep the list secret and just share it with the drone pilots. Cheaper, too - it's not like there's a reward, just kill them. Also makes it easier as we moving from "Americans we think are terrorists" on the list now to "Americans that are political enemies". No need for they drone pilots to know WHY anyone is targeted for death.
A "violation fee" to the "Department of Justice" for a felony without conviction.
What kind of idiot is going to--- never mind.
I know, right? How ridiculous. It's like people think the President is putting people on some sort of "kill list" and sending drones after them. oh... wait.
Why not ban all mind-altering substances except for a whitelist? Say alcohol, caffeine, nicotene are legal. Everthing else illegal. IANAL but that would seem to solve the legal problem.
They already do that. Oh, wait, were you talking about people NOT in prison?
The FDA can evaluate the safety and risks of recreational drugs
That won't work, because the FDA works for the pharmaceutical companies, and they want to keep marijuana illegal (it presents them with competition, after all).
I live in California. We can't even build a f'ing solar power plant without the enviro nazis throwing a fit. We had a geothermal operation as well and they said that caused earthquakes.
You sound like one of those Californians ready to move to Texas.
Or just build the launch site in one of the many empty places in giant Texas where it will both advance the space industry and leave local wildlife unmolested.
Except that "concern for local wildlife" is just an excuse. These wackos just don't want people firing rockets into space, ever, for any reason. It won't matter where they propose to install a launch site, these guys will find an excuse to oppose it.
There's the rest of the Solar System. Sure, it's a quick death to attempt to hang out around Venus or Mars, for example, but not something we can't turn into a nice place to live. Or we can chose to live in space, much as they currently do in space stations. There's plenty of space, mass, and energy. That's pretty much all you need to live anywhere.
We have pretty good amount of space here on earth too. We can colonise the sea for instance, or build down instead of up. There is lots of space available before we even come up with crazy plans to build O'Neil colonies in space.
Sure, but apparently even in places with almost nothing but wildlife around you can't avoid these wacky radical trust-account environmentalist douche bags.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's against the law for the US military to perform military operations in the USA (with exceptions for insurrection and war, of course - both of which require an Act of Congress)....
Which is why they do it with NATO troops instead.
We scrutinize our motivations and search for relevant reasons; we lament our mistakes to therapists and ruminate on the beliefs that led us astray. The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence.
I call Bullshit!
peer-to-peer wifi/radio system.
This just isn't going to work. WiFi solves the easy problem (range 0-30 metres - you can just pull a cable if you are desperate). The difficult problem is the middle range; 100m -> 10km (or up to about 50km to 100km in country areas).
Actually, it can work, and it has, both in rural areas and poor countries. All at low cost and maintenance. There are devices like the mesh potato that have been used to build networks in South Africa. And the WiLD projects have deployed networks with links ... yes, up to 100km.
Just look at all these mesh networks deployed or in process!
Indeed it is half assed solution, and doesn't work at all on many computers, including my main laptop, because of the Intel chips with visualization disabled. I don't know why Intel did that with so many of their multi-core chips, but they did.
Barely. I've been there, and done that. Step 1 is bad enough, but I've gone through all of them and gotten the VB6 IDE up and running. Then I have to load up one of the projects I work on and try to do something with it. Big FAIL there - some things I could work around, but others I could not. Ultimately, because of the hacks and mods Windows 7 needed to run the VB 6 IDE at all, and specifically deal with the applications I have to support, I needed a dedicated workstation to do VB 6 development, because it wouldn't be suitable for use for many other things. So, that might as well just be an XP VM. Easier to set up and use, so why even deal with a bunch of workarounds on Windows 7?
define crap.
Check the mirror
The goal of a high level programming language is to crate applications that do what the customers want it to do. Not be clean, or small, or the best use of memory.
VB6 did that well, very well in fact.
True - within certain parameters - i.e. all users have Windows, can install the client, updates are not too difficult to deal with based on frequency and number of users, etc.
Updating something that works to a 'new' language 'just cause' is a bad business decision.
Pretty sure that's EXACTLY what I said. Are you trying to build a straw man just to have something to argue about?
In fact, there is a lot of technical merit in not doing so.,
What does it have to do with "technical merit"? What does that even mean? "Technical merit"? I really don't know what you mean by that (or if you are using it correctly), but if you're going to build an application today, there is no justifiable "technical merit" for selecting VB 6. Period.
I really can't remember the specifics, it's been a while since I tried it. There were many issues involving first the installation, using admin mode for everything, turning off UAC, etc., that I was able to get around. In the end, there was one or two issue that I couldn't work around that were deal breakers, but I don't remember what they were. It may have even been some low-level direct DLL calls that were the issue, but I seem to recall it being something more fundamental.
What I do remember is that I was faced with having a single machine dedicated to VB 6 development that wasn't going to be suited for doing much else, and XP was the far easier to work with in that case.
I thought there were major compatibility problems with the VS98/VB6 IDE on Windows 7 and Windows 8
There are. I see some people claiming they are running it okay "for simple stuff", but for the applications I support it will not work.
If so, won't this stop you developing once XP is unsupported
Not necessarily. XP still has a couple of years left, but I only run it as a VM (KVM on Linux, even), so even after support for XP ends it won't be an issue for me. My customers don't see any advantages to re-writing these apps in something else (they are very large), and as long as they want work done with them I'll keep doing it.
2. Visual Studio 6 needs to run on Newer OS's Windows 7 64 bit... Windows 8?
It doesn't, actually. I can't make it work sufficiently to use. The compiled app works, but I have to maintain an XP system to do VB6 development.
Exactly. VB6 is crap, but when the customer has an application they like, with lots of functionality, they are NOT going to pay to re-write it in something else just because some developer would prefer to use something different. If they need a minor change they are going to find somebody to spend a day or two making the changes in VB6, no matter how many developers keep telling them they need to spend a few weeks or months to update it to some other language.
I just deployed an update to one of the VB6 applications that I've been supporting for many years. That one, like most of the others, still works for what the customers want.
I would really like to convert those apps to .NET, or Java, or just about anything else. But it's an effort that, while it would help me, I can't really sell to the customers. It would be costly for them (hey - I can comp some time but can't do it all for free), as well as possibly introduce some new bugs (there's a lot of code in there), require time from them for testing and possible interface changes, etc. They just don't see enough advantages to want to do it.
So of course I have to keep some Windows XP VMs around so I can work on those apps. VB applications may run fine in Windows 7 (and presumably will on Windows 8, according to TFA), but the IDE does NOT. I don't remember all the issues I ran into (maybe it had something to do with the controls being used), but it simply doesn't work.
So, yea, it won't die, it will be around for a long time. But at least from my perspective, it has NOTHING to do with the developers not wanting to move on. It's a business decision. And business has almost no incentive to decide on change.
Couldn't they have just released the results without all the hyperbole and pontificating? Yea, everybody knew that most likely there was an issue with timing, rather than with the much-confirmed laws of space-time. We don't need a condescending lecture from the elites. Tell it to the journalists.
Yea, that's not frightening. Not at all.
I thought it was caused by a collision of M-Branes.
Humans aren't that freaky. We are pretty much identical to chimps, with slightly better communication hardware.
Actually, I think that idea has pretty much been discredited with the discovery of "Ardi", the oldest direct human ancestor ever found, that was actually more like a human than a chimp. If anything, chimps evolved MORE from that common ancestor than humans did, despite the similarity in the genome.
Going to 10 different shrinks has to indicate some sort of mental disorder!
So the State Educational Technology Directors Association says we need more ... State Educational Technology. What a stunning conclusion for this completely neutral and unaffiliated group to come up with!
What schools really need is more education and less "State".
I know, right? They should do it the right way, and publish decks of playing cards with the targets fancifully depicted as jokers.
Nah, that would imply a desire to capture and try them. Better to just keep the list secret and just share it with the drone pilots. Cheaper, too - it's not like there's a reward, just kill them. Also makes it easier as we moving from "Americans we think are terrorists" on the list now to "Americans that are political enemies". No need for they drone pilots to know WHY anyone is targeted for death.
A "violation fee" to the "Department of Justice" for a felony without conviction.
What kind of idiot is going to--- never mind.
I know, right? How ridiculous. It's like people think the President is putting people on some sort of "kill list" and sending drones after them. oh... wait.
Why not ban all mind-altering substances except for a whitelist? Say alcohol, caffeine, nicotene are legal. Everthing else illegal. IANAL but that would seem to solve the legal problem.
They already do that. Oh, wait, were you talking about people NOT in prison?
The FDA can evaluate the safety and risks of recreational drugs
That won't work, because the FDA works for the pharmaceutical companies, and they want to keep marijuana illegal (it presents them with competition, after all).
I live in California. We can't even build a f'ing solar power plant without the enviro nazis throwing a fit. We had a geothermal operation as well and they said that caused earthquakes.
You sound like one of those Californians ready to move to Texas.
Or just build the launch site in one of the many empty places in giant Texas where it will both advance the space industry and leave local wildlife unmolested.
Except that "concern for local wildlife" is just an excuse. These wackos just don't want people firing rockets into space, ever, for any reason. It won't matter where they propose to install a launch site, these guys will find an excuse to oppose it.
You Teabaggers are dumber than a broken record.
Make like a tree and get out of here.
Escape to where, exactly?
There's the rest of the Solar System. Sure, it's a quick death to attempt to hang out around Venus or Mars, for example, but not something we can't turn into a nice place to live. Or we can chose to live in space, much as they currently do in space stations. There's plenty of space, mass, and energy. That's pretty much all you need to live anywhere.
We have pretty good amount of space here on earth too. We can colonise the sea for instance, or build down instead of up. There is lots of space available before we even come up with crazy plans to build O'Neil colonies in space.
Sure, but apparently even in places with almost nothing but wildlife around you can't avoid these wacky radical trust-account environmentalist douche bags.