... to invest in a continuous flow system. CFSes exist for all of the popular printers out there. Once you buy and install one you only pay for ink. Yes, ink, not cartridges. You buy by the bottle and since ink is practically a commodity there's no artificial monopoly to screw you. Warranty, schmarranty - you can buy a brand new printer with the money saved.
Programmers will not see or edit XML tags; instead, their editors will render these models to create human-friendly views, just like Web browsers and other WYSIWYG editors.
All these whines about obfuscation and "I don't want to write code in XML!!!!" are clouding the debate - "Will this make development of large software projects easier and more reliable?"
How about "We don't want no stinking WYSIWYG editor!!!"?
Seriously:
It adds another layer of things that can fuck up. Even compilers do have some bugs. Why add another layer of things that can go wrong? Add "Check the WYSIWYG editor output" to your bug-hunting checklists.
It is incompatible with existing systems of merging/tracking changes. Try to do a diff/merge on XML files. Yuck. Ok, so we'll develop another WYSIWYG tool to present the differences/conflicts in a colourful graphical way.
The whole concept just takes the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule and sodomizes it. Ok, rules are not absolute, but what's the gain here? Ah, ok, we can sell the WYSIWYG editor to the masses. To quote the parent post: Give me a break, people.
Use "move" or "go" command - it will automatically stop when encountering anything interesting, including floating eyes. Moving through a dark corridor by repeatedly hitting the direction key is slow and dangerous - you are guaranteed to hit it one time too many.
... or turned to stone by a cockatrice and die,
Cockatrices are slow - you can avoid them or kill them from distance. I usually genocide cockatrices , but "what to genocide and when" is an another topic.
... or encounter a superpowerful enemy and die
Well, this one is hard to avoid, but most players
actually invite this by being too aggressive. Run away, build stats, go back and get revenge:)
... or put on some amulet and get choaked and die, or drink a potion and die
It's a "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" category. Don't do that.
... or run out of food and don't find anymore and die
This is a problem, but only in the beginning of the game.
... or take a chance on eating a corpse and die
Take a few games in the explore mode and identify the edible creatures.
I was one of the donators. It is unfortunate that no hacks were found in the time allotted. One good thing is that the organizer did keep his word and returned the donations. I got mine back yesterday.
Yes, it's good that they kept their promises, however it would be funny if this money was used to buy some big red "VERIZON SELLS CRIPPLED PHONES!!!" ads. Just an idea for whoever sets up the next similar challenge:)
Please, a laser pointer wont burn your eye instantly. You really have to stare into the beam for some time, nothing someone ever would do.
Please, get a clue! Google or read a book about physics. You are wrong
angel'o'sphere
Sigh... Actually, the power limits of class 2 lasers are set so that it won't damage your vision unless you refrain from blinking/averting your sight. Class 3R lasers are borderline (small risk of damage from accidental exposure). The pointers are class 3R lasers ( less than 5mW output power).
While it's also possible to have encrypted filesystems, if they can get my box out of my house, I fscking give up.
Hm... There is no need to. Ever heard of StegFS? It gives you "plausible deniability" - several layers of encryption, with no way to prove that next ones exist. Basically it goes like this:
The Feds: You have an encrypted filesystem. Give us the keys, or else...
StegFS user: Sure - here it is. ( gives the keys to the first layer of StegFS )
The Feds: You got to be joking, there are only mpegs of you impersonating a Jedi knight! Give us the keys to the next layer! Or else...
StegFs user: Prove that the next layer exists.
The Feds:...
Of course there are ways to acquire the encrypted filesystem keys - little cameras above your keyboard, trojans listening for passwords, picking up electromagnetic emissions from your machine, beating the shit out of you etc. No absolute security and all that. But StegFS is still cool:)
The only point of cryptography is to make it so that:
Brute-force* is the fastest way to get what you want - there is no magic key that will get you there faster
Brute-force will take too long for it to be useful to anyone.
This is of course true, but what makes cryptography interesting is that with current knowledge such kind safety is impossible to prove for any hash function. As long as we don't know whether NP is actually harder that P, no hash function is provably safe. Strong functions are different from weak functions only in that they don't fall to the known attacks.
This is exactly the reason I want to drive an 18 wheeler. They only cut me off in traffic once....
An 18-wheeler driver got an award for 30 years of driving without an accident. They asked him for advice about safe driving. He responded "I look to the left, I look to the right. If there's no 18-wheeler, I go ahead".
A live cop isn't saying "well the distance between the corners of his lips is the same as Suspect X, his pupils are the same distance apart as Suspect X, his ears in relation to his other features are the same size and shape as Suspect X therefore he must be Suspect X".
The live cop is saying "He fits the description I just got. Good morning sir, may I see your ID?". It actually happened to my friends - a cop stopped them because they fit the description of some criminals he just got over the radio. Sure, they got an apology, but missed a concert because of the delay.
I don't think that false positives are the main concern with automatic recognition systems. The more scary part is that with a sufficiently dense camera population, the system can track individual citizens "just in case" and record the data forever. Hello, Mr Anderson - you have unpaid parking tickets, and by the way - can you explain what were you doing in the Rodney's Ass Vibrator Store 5 months ago? And say hello to your mistress from the All Seeing Eye Department.
Perfect for would be bank robbers...could circumvent hand gun legislation. Just think you get pissed at your parents or teacher or whatever and poof you can make your own 9mm like now!
Home made guns aren't anything new, though I agree it would be scary if everyone could get one _fast_, before the reasonable part of the brain has the chance to kick in.
Too bad bugs happen in Java, C#, Python, Ruby and Lisp as well. Really they do!
I wasn't arguing "C/C++ vs all of the world" or even "C/C++ vs languages with built-in safe pointers". I was just saying that following good practices won't get you rid of buffer overruns.
Why? Because there is just too much code around. Even if avoiding buffer overruns was as simple as not using variable names starting with "b", there would still be programmers forgetting this rule (lack of morning coffee, typos+bad eyesight) unless of course compiler writers enforced it, just like lisp/python/ruby run-time isolates you from raw pointers.
As to Java, C#, Python, Ruby and Lisp - of course bugs happen in these languages too (that was my point, sort of). Even buffer overflows happen in these languages (statistically, there _must_ be a buffer overflow in one of the lisp interpreters out there). But at least the "unchecked pointer" class of bugs in these languages is limited to bugs in the interpreter and/or linked external code - an order of magnitude less of code potentially introducing this particular kind of bug.
Really, it's all about tradeoffs. C/C++ makes you care about buffer overflows (and their ilk) yourself, which you might find insignificant and the pointer-safe languages use some CPU cycles on pointer-checking, which (surprise!) you might find insignificant. Ah, and you can write bugs in them too, thanks a bunch for reminding me of this fact!
This is borderline troll material! Would you stop beating that dead horse? You avoid buffer overflows in C by checking the lengths of your buffers. You stop using C strings. You use container libraries. As for C++, you avoid them by using the included string and container classes.
I am sure we all know the theory, but to me it's like saying "you avoid bugs by following good coding practices".
I am sure that Microsoft, Linux, Apache and whatnot other programmers know the theory too. Too bad that buffer overflows still happen.
2) Put up the cool USSS site: 3972 members scared for their lives so that they stop their illegal activities and turn themselves in to USSS. (Not to mention have a mental breakdown next time they see Mission Impossible!)
In your dreams. Criminals aren't that easy to scare, otherwise a couple of billboards with "turn yourself in" would do the job of the law enforcement.
Besides, this site is so cocky, especially the "proxies, VPNs, whatnot - you are no longer anonymous!" that it makes me, a law abiding citizen, want to do something illegal just
for the heck of it.
I don't get the whole mystery over 1+1=2 and huge proofs.
Let's construct a number system from the very basics. We'll construct an infinite field over addition and multiplication. We have an additive unit which we'll call 0 and a multiplicative unit which we'll call 1. So we can add two multiplicative units to get 1+1. We call this 2. Therefore 1 + 1 = 2 *by definition of 2*.
So what am I missing?
Usually "from the very basics" means "from zero and the successor operation".
1+1=2 in the most popular formal systems translates to:
S(0)+S(0)=S(S(0))
where S(x) is the successor operation. To prove that, you have to use the addition axioms:
x+1=S(x)// 1 is shortcut for S(0)
S(a+b)=a+S(b)
and of course the Peano axioms (look them up on google, I'm too lazy to retype).
Try to prove 1+1=2 with this simple set of axioms. Note that you don't have x+y=y+x, x+(y+z)=(x+y)+z nor even x+0=x. The proof won't be several pages long, but still quite long.
Their flagship Delphi fails to work on XP systems
with the latest SP 2 applied.
That's the smallest problem with Delphi that I see. Delphi is a joke. Why? Have you ever tried to obtain a formal syntax for their "Object Pascal"? Good luck, one probably doesn't even exist. That's right. I'm not kidding you. The only program on earth that can parse 100% of Delphi code is the Delphi compiler!. See this thread on comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc.
This is year 2004 and Borland offers us a language for which you cannot write a code analyzer/class diagram generator/semi-automatic doc generator - nothing that works on 100% of their code.
I repeat: Delphi is a joke language that needs to die.
... but intelligent tools like Python make using Windows XP Home a much more fruitful and fun experience as I can actually get stuff done programmatically.
In general scripting languages have been looked down upon, but realistically the gap between scripting languages (and what you even mean by "scripting language").
I think that not being dependent on another language (including VM written in another language) is what discerns the scripting languages from the umm.. other ones.
So when the Parrot VM will be written in Perl (and compiled to Parrot bytecode by a Perl-to-Parrot compiler written in Perl and then presumably compiled by a Parrot-to-native compiler also written in Perl) Perl will become a nonscripting language.
By this definition C/C++ is a nonscripting (by lack of any other name) language, Java is a scripting language (as far as I know all Java VMs are written in C).
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think the lack of this feature is a reason to frown upon a language.
(This feature could only affect your choice of the first "bootstrapping" language for a totally new platform, which would be C anyway:-) ) I am only saying that this maps well on what languages I consider the scripting ones.
Re:Welcome stranger!
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is why there is actually not anything fundamentally wrong with our C++.
Except that you can actually program a GPF in C++. I call this fundamentally wrong.
IMHO, Apple is already there with ease of use (who'da thought) and choice of songs.
The thought that Microsoft can compete with "better" DRM is laughable. Show me a user that will switch to another DRM system, because, you know - it's better at limitting your freedom better, so you should switch to it, you filthy thief, right?
My thoughts for Ballmer: good luck in alienating your potential customers!
Why would it lure people from Microsoft? People don't just use Office because they are forced into it.
This, of course isn't true in case of people who must use Office because it's a part of their corporate desktop standard.
People who actually create the standards like having buzzwords like "ISO standard" and "XML" somehow connected to what they pick - it looks good in reports.
Slashdot Mirror
... to invest in a continuous flow system. CFSes exist for all of the popular printers out there. Once you buy and install one you only pay for ink. Yes, ink, not cartridges. You buy by the bottle and since ink is practically a commodity there's no artificial monopoly to screw you. Warranty, schmarranty - you can buy a brand new printer with the money saved.
Seriously:
It adds another layer of things that can fuck up. Even compilers do have some bugs. Why add another layer of things that can go wrong? Add "Check the WYSIWYG editor output" to your bug-hunting checklists.
It is incompatible with existing systems of merging/tracking changes. Try to do a diff/merge on XML files. Yuck. Ok, so we'll develop another WYSIWYG tool to present the differences/conflicts in a colourful graphical way.
The whole concept just takes the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule and sodomizes it. Ok, rules are not absolute, but what's the gain here? Ah, ok, we can sell the WYSIWYG editor to the masses. To quote the parent post: Give me a break, people.
The Feds: You have an encrypted filesystem. Give us the keys, or else...
StegFS user: Sure - here it is. ( gives the keys to the first layer of StegFS )
The Feds: You got to be joking, there are only mpegs of you impersonating a Jedi knight! Give us the keys to the next layer! Or else...
StegFs user: Prove that the next layer exists.
The Feds: ...
Of course there are ways to acquire the encrypted filesystem keys - little cameras above your keyboard, trojans listening for passwords, picking up electromagnetic emissions from your machine, beating the shit out of you etc. No absolute security and all that. But StegFS is still cool :)
I don't think that false positives are the main concern with automatic recognition systems. The more scary part is that with a sufficiently dense camera population, the system can track individual citizens "just in case" and record the data forever. Hello, Mr Anderson - you have unpaid parking tickets, and by the way - can you explain what were you doing in the Rodney's Ass Vibrator Store 5 months ago? And say hello to your mistress from the All Seeing Eye Department.
Why? Because there is just too much code around. Even if avoiding buffer overruns was as simple as not using variable names starting with "b", there would still be programmers forgetting this rule (lack of morning coffee, typos+bad eyesight) unless of course compiler writers enforced it, just like lisp/python/ruby run-time isolates you from raw pointers.
As to Java, C#, Python, Ruby and Lisp - of course bugs happen in these languages too (that was my point, sort of). Even buffer overflows happen in these languages (statistically, there _must_ be a buffer overflow in one of the lisp interpreters out there). But at least the "unchecked pointer" class of bugs in these languages is limited to bugs in the interpreter and/or linked external code - an order of magnitude less of code potentially introducing this particular kind of bug.
Really, it's all about tradeoffs. C/C++ makes you care about buffer overflows (and their ilk) yourself, which you might find insignificant and the pointer-safe languages use some CPU cycles on pointer-checking, which (surprise!) you might find insignificant. Ah, and you can write bugs in them too, thanks a bunch for reminding me of this fact!
I am sure that Microsoft, Linux, Apache and whatnot other programmers know the theory too. Too bad that buffer overflows still happen.
Besides, this site is so cocky, especially the "proxies, VPNs, whatnot - you are no longer anonymous!" that it makes me, a law abiding citizen, want to do something illegal just for the heck of it.
1+1=2 in the most popular formal systems translates to:
S(0)+S(0)=S(S(0))
where S(x) is the successor operation. To prove that, you have to use the addition axioms:
x+1=S(x) // 1 is shortcut for S(0)
S(a+b)=a+S(b)
and of course the Peano axioms (look them up on google, I'm too lazy to retype).
Try to prove 1+1=2 with this simple set of axioms. Note that you don't have x+y=y+x, x+(y+z)=(x+y)+z nor even x+0=x. The proof won't be several pages long, but still quite long.
This is year 2004 and Borland offers us a language for which you cannot write a code analyzer/class diagram generator/semi-automatic doc generator - nothing that works on 100% of their code.
I repeat: Delphi is a joke language that needs to die.
So when the Parrot VM will be written in Perl (and compiled to Parrot bytecode by a Perl-to-Parrot compiler written in Perl and then presumably compiled by a Parrot-to-native compiler also written in Perl) Perl will become a nonscripting language. By this definition C/C++ is a nonscripting (by lack of any other name) language, Java is a scripting language (as far as I know all Java VMs are written in C).
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think the lack of this feature is a reason to frown upon a language. (This feature could only affect your choice of the first "bootstrapping" language for a totally new platform, which would be C anyway :-) ) I am only saying that this maps well on what languages I consider the scripting ones.
The thought that Microsoft can compete with "better" DRM is laughable. Show me a user that will switch to another DRM system, because, you know - it's better at limitting your freedom better, so you should switch to it, you filthy thief, right?
My thoughts for Ballmer: good luck in alienating your potential customers!
People who actually create the standards like having buzzwords like "ISO standard" and "XML" somehow connected to what they pick - it looks good in reports.