A space nutter thinks this is almost certainly a radical new reactionless drive. A space enthusiast thinks such a thing is almost certainly impossible, but that it would be really useful if it did exist.
In fact science fiction has sucked at predicting technological progress. There are some exceptions, but typically the big breakthroughs have been in areas most SF didn't predict. We do have fantastically powerful computers now, but they don't interface with humans anything like depicted in most earlier science fiction. Strong AI has proven very, very elusive. We've had manned space flight for over fifty years now, and have sent only a very few people higher than low Earth orbit, and that at incredible expense. We've had lasers for a long time, and our most effective personal weapons are still guns. Almost all of the science fiction I read when I was young is either extremely difficult and expensive using modern tech, or violates laws of physics big-time.
There's at least two definitions of well-written code. One is code written that is clear and error-free, and we REALLY can't count on this. Another is code that is written according to a coding standard that can be easily verified in a code review.
To give an example, consider array overflow. In C++, we can have a standard that forbids C-type arrays and strings in favor of safer C++ template container classes. Checking to see if array overflow can occur in C is a equivalent to the halting problem, but checking to see that C-type arrays and strings are not used except to initialize std::vector etc. and in external API calls is easy. Similarly, a requirement that object ownership be handled with C++ smart pointers, and that raw pointers never own anything, is easy to enforce and avoids most memory management issues. This isn't as good as standard garbage collection for handling memory, but is better for other resource management. These classes are not typically more onerous than the C equivalents, although std::weak_ptr does require extra handling.
It's still possible to effectively leak memory in garbage-collected languages, by leaving an obscure and unknown but theoretically reachable reference. It's certainly possible to leak database connections and other resources that tend to be more critical than memory. C++ has advantages and disadvantages in safety here.
The Higgs Boson was not worth my time to check (and was way out of my league in physics education and available test equipment). It was worthwhile for physicists working at CERN to check out. I then found out, with minimal effort on my part, that it exists.
I find it extremely unlikely that this guy is anywhere near as old as is claimed, for a variety of reasons. I find it likely that ages get misstated for various reasons, particularly in societies without the same level of record-keeping and means of verification we've got now. I remember when there were lots of stories about the incredible age people in the Caucasus Mountains lived to.
Therefore, using Bayesian probability, it's going to take a LOT of evidence to get me to believe the guy is that old, and somebody else can go look for it.
I don't know if I want the latest iPhone or not. Let's see how much it's compatible with my headphones (and being able to plug in either the headphones or the power but not both is a deal-breaker).
Usability is subjective. Your $200 phone doubtless lacks a lot of iPhone features. As long as you don't want them, there's no reason for you to buy an iPhone. The lack of hackability is a feature, not a bug. It allows Apple to make using their smartphones a lot safer and more convenient. You may want to avoid this. I know I don't agree with all design decisions. However, it's completely irrelevant to the price. Battery power? Your phone is probably not as powerful, and therefore is easier on its battery.
Some of us want the government and business to be somewhat at odds. As an individual, I don't have much power, and either an overpowering government or an overpowering business could screw me over good.
I have stock in the company I work for. If it goes bankrupt, I lose the invested money, but that's less than 10% of my liquid assets. The other effect of bankruptcy would be that my income would 95% cease, and that would be much more significant. The people with the most interest in the stability of the company are very likely workers.
How about "That could be true, but the probability and significance is such that I don't think it's worth my time to check it"? I don't look into every claim I see, because even with a very long lifespan I wouldn't have the time to do anything else.
Sure. Now, figure that you're old. You can't see well, if you can still see (eyes are complicated and not as durable as many other organs). You may be deaf in one or both ears. Your fingers shake badly, assuming you can use your fingers at all. Your balance is shot. You can't concentrate.
At that point, what of your list are you going to accomplish? When I'm bored, it's not usually because there's nothing to do, but because I feel sick and not up to doing anything interesting.
Most performance-critical code should be written in C++, not C. It allows a programmer to be more productive, and reduces or eliminates several major causes of bugs in C programs.
The idea behind COBOL was code that even a manager could read, comprehend, and change. It didn't work. The CFO and auditor, unless they've studied programming, will not understand the COBOL code sufficiently to audit it.
That's partly a matter of naming. Modern Fortran, COBOL, and Lisp are not the same as their 1950s equivalents. You're missing ALGOL, among the four 1950s languages that stuck around.
C is an ALGOL derivative in the same way Common Lisp is a Lisp 1.5 derivative, except that C is probably closer to ALGOL than Common Lisp is to Lisp 1.5. What happened is that ALGOL did not become a popular name for a family of languages, and that family flourished.
C++ makes it easy to avoid buffer overflows, and makes it a lot easier to avoid memory leaks and dangling pointers. I don't know what you mean by "stack overflow" here other than recursive functions, which are present in all modern languages.
C and C++ are two distinct languages, even though C is very close to being a subset of C++. Well-written C and well-written C++ look a lot different.
Anyone who knows C should be able to rattle off some problems.
The operator precedence is screwy. Switch statement case fallthrough is a pitfall. The fact that = is an operator, not part of a statement, makes errors easier. There's a lot of undefined behavior for which no diagnostics are required, and which doesn't look dodgy. The string library is awkward and somewhat inconsistent (check out what strncpy() actually does). Memory management and pointer arithmetic are necessary in far too many contexts. The confusion of byte and character worked only as long as everybody using C used ASCII, and makes things messy with Unicode. Arrays and pointers are sorta the same thing. It doesn't compile well with modern tools.
C is a good language, but anyone who thinks it doesn't have problems is fooling themselves.
Another issue is that C++ is better at everything. It's almost a superset of C, and does a lot more. You can use C++ in a limited fashion to get around most of the problems of C without causing more problems. It's easier to write a C compiler, of course, but there are platforms without good and readily accessible C compilers that use C++ just fine.
"When there's work to be done" isn't a straightforward qualifier. There's always work to be done. I know what I'm working on next when I finish this project, and what I'm working on after that. That doesn't mean I'm not going home tonight. There are realistic and unrealistic deadlines and time projections, and burning oneself out to try to make an unrealistic deadline is generally a bad idea.
If your cow-orkers are as you describe them, then your employer's hiring and retention policies don't look all that intelligent. Hiring one highly competent and driven person and a bunch of slackers is a bad idea. If nothing else, the bus factor is far too low. Anything can happen to you. I had a heart attack and was out of work for over three weeks, and had limited endurance for a lot longer. If you have a heart attack, what happens to your employer? Your cow-orkers?
Personally, I can't be effective without identifying with my employer, the corporate goals, and what I'm working on. I've been in jobs that I hated with employers I hated, and that was just bad all around. Fortunately, most of my career has been with employers I liked (well, I'm not sure how much is fortune, how much is attitude, and how much is which jobs I look for and accept, to be honest). I found early on that life was more interesting and fun if I didn't limit what I did to the job description and wasn't fussy
This doesn't mean I'm going to do more than a 40-hour week as a matter of routine (stuff happens, and there is such a thing as crunch time). If I can't get my work done in forty hours, that's a management problem.
The idea behind the Constitution was that it provided the Federal government with assorted legal powers and responsibilities, and that therefore the Feds could not do anything not authorized by the Constitution. Therefore, there's no such thing as something the US government runs that's not subject to the Constitution, since either the Feds have no power to run it or they're bound by the Constitution.
The drone killings of US citizens are done on the basis that there's a war on, and that it's not necessary to conduct a trial before killing an enemy in war. If they're a member of a hostile military force, they're legal targets no matter what else might be true about them. US citizens abroad who have not taken up arms in the service of a foreign power need not worry.
The law allows the US government to expel people who are not US citizens and are here illegally, and that's a significantly lower barrier than would be required to convict and punish them.
Either you're really bad at sarcasm, or you don't know what you're talking about.
Anyone born in the US is a US citizen, according to the Fourteenth Amendment. I haven't noticed that part of the Fourteenth being repealed by another Amendment.
While the Bill of Rights may have been intended to protect US citizens, it doesn't limit itself to them. A person from another country can't be required to incriminate himself or herself, for example.
The people writing the questions aren't that stupid. You're missing the idea behind the questions.
Lying on one of those forms is grounds for being thrown out of the country immediately, without further ado. If a visitor or immigrant does something perfectly legal (but suspicious) that contradicts any question on the form, the US government doesn't have to find any further excuse to get that person out.
If you Google me, you'll find several people with that name. Most people have duplicates out there. The only exception I personally know is my wife, who has an unusual first name and a not-very-common last name.
What those questions are for, in practice, is to allow deportation. Lying on anything pertaining to coming into the country is grounds for deportation. Check the "I am not a member of a terrorist organization" and lie about it, and you can be deported without anything else being established, no matter how much time has passed.
I had a next door neighbor (he lives elsewhere in the neighborhood now) who was a member of the Galician SS. When he came to the US in the late 40s, his papers said (among other things) that he'd never been a member of the SS. (He wasn't at all good with English then, so it's doubtful he filled them out, but legally that doesn't matter.) In the 2010s, he was found to have been the commander of a unit involved in an atrocity, and the German authorities and the US state department finally decided that a man in his 90s who'd been a good person for about seventy years really didn't need to be deported and/or extradited. (Me? I know enough about the history involved to know that I can't imagine what it was like, and I'm not going to condemn someone without understanding the circumstances.)
The full consequences of motherhood include the fact that it's a hell of a lot of work and expense, and it's necessary for society. If we aren't going to have a worse population age structure, we need to encourage motherhood, not discourage it. If women wind up bearing the greater burden for keeping society going, why give them worse jobs and worse pay because of it?
The idea that there's an economy that's part of society and takes advantage of what society offers, but shouldn't bend to the needs of society, is perverse. Discriminating against mothers for having wider but still important priorities is much like pollution: it helps the individual company, but at an expense for everyone.
Work ethic doesn't mean working long hours. It means getting what you should do done and done well, and being flexible. It doesn't mean being exploited.
Slashdot Mirror
A space nutter thinks this is almost certainly a radical new reactionless drive. A space enthusiast thinks such a thing is almost certainly impossible, but that it would be really useful if it did exist.
In fact science fiction has sucked at predicting technological progress. There are some exceptions, but typically the big breakthroughs have been in areas most SF didn't predict. We do have fantastically powerful computers now, but they don't interface with humans anything like depicted in most earlier science fiction. Strong AI has proven very, very elusive. We've had manned space flight for over fifty years now, and have sent only a very few people higher than low Earth orbit, and that at incredible expense. We've had lasers for a long time, and our most effective personal weapons are still guns. Almost all of the science fiction I read when I was young is either extremely difficult and expensive using modern tech, or violates laws of physics big-time.
There's at least two definitions of well-written code. One is code written that is clear and error-free, and we REALLY can't count on this. Another is code that is written according to a coding standard that can be easily verified in a code review.
To give an example, consider array overflow. In C++, we can have a standard that forbids C-type arrays and strings in favor of safer C++ template container classes. Checking to see if array overflow can occur in C is a equivalent to the halting problem, but checking to see that C-type arrays and strings are not used except to initialize std::vector etc. and in external API calls is easy. Similarly, a requirement that object ownership be handled with C++ smart pointers, and that raw pointers never own anything, is easy to enforce and avoids most memory management issues. This isn't as good as standard garbage collection for handling memory, but is better for other resource management. These classes are not typically more onerous than the C equivalents, although std::weak_ptr does require extra handling.
It's still possible to effectively leak memory in garbage-collected languages, by leaving an obscure and unknown but theoretically reachable reference. It's certainly possible to leak database connections and other resources that tend to be more critical than memory. C++ has advantages and disadvantages in safety here.
The Higgs Boson was not worth my time to check (and was way out of my league in physics education and available test equipment). It was worthwhile for physicists working at CERN to check out. I then found out, with minimal effort on my part, that it exists.
I find it extremely unlikely that this guy is anywhere near as old as is claimed, for a variety of reasons. I find it likely that ages get misstated for various reasons, particularly in societies without the same level of record-keeping and means of verification we've got now. I remember when there were lots of stories about the incredible age people in the Caucasus Mountains lived to.
Therefore, using Bayesian probability, it's going to take a LOT of evidence to get me to believe the guy is that old, and somebody else can go look for it.
I don't know if I want the latest iPhone or not. Let's see how much it's compatible with my headphones (and being able to plug in either the headphones or the power but not both is a deal-breaker).
Usability is subjective. Your $200 phone doubtless lacks a lot of iPhone features. As long as you don't want them, there's no reason for you to buy an iPhone. The lack of hackability is a feature, not a bug. It allows Apple to make using their smartphones a lot safer and more convenient. You may want to avoid this. I know I don't agree with all design decisions. However, it's completely irrelevant to the price. Battery power? Your phone is probably not as powerful, and therefore is easier on its battery.
Some of us want the government and business to be somewhat at odds. As an individual, I don't have much power, and either an overpowering government or an overpowering business could screw me over good.
I have stock in the company I work for. If it goes bankrupt, I lose the invested money, but that's less than 10% of my liquid assets. The other effect of bankruptcy would be that my income would 95% cease, and that would be much more significant. The people with the most interest in the stability of the company are very likely workers.
How about "That could be true, but the probability and significance is such that I don't think it's worth my time to check it"? I don't look into every claim I see, because even with a very long lifespan I wouldn't have the time to do anything else.
Sure. Now, figure that you're old. You can't see well, if you can still see (eyes are complicated and not as durable as many other organs). You may be deaf in one or both ears. Your fingers shake badly, assuming you can use your fingers at all. Your balance is shot. You can't concentrate.
At that point, what of your list are you going to accomplish? When I'm bored, it's not usually because there's nothing to do, but because I feel sick and not up to doing anything interesting.
Most performance-critical code should be written in C++, not C. It allows a programmer to be more productive, and reduces or eliminates several major causes of bugs in C programs.
The idea behind COBOL was code that even a manager could read, comprehend, and change. It didn't work. The CFO and auditor, unless they've studied programming, will not understand the COBOL code sufficiently to audit it.
That's partly a matter of naming. Modern Fortran, COBOL, and Lisp are not the same as their 1950s equivalents. You're missing ALGOL, among the four 1950s languages that stuck around.
C is an ALGOL derivative in the same way Common Lisp is a Lisp 1.5 derivative, except that C is probably closer to ALGOL than Common Lisp is to Lisp 1.5. What happened is that ALGOL did not become a popular name for a family of languages, and that family flourished.
C++ makes it easy to avoid buffer overflows, and makes it a lot easier to avoid memory leaks and dangling pointers. I don't know what you mean by "stack overflow" here other than recursive functions, which are present in all modern languages.
C and C++ are two distinct languages, even though C is very close to being a subset of C++. Well-written C and well-written C++ look a lot different.
Anyone who knows C should be able to rattle off some problems.
The operator precedence is screwy. Switch statement case fallthrough is a pitfall. The fact that = is an operator, not part of a statement, makes errors easier. There's a lot of undefined behavior for which no diagnostics are required, and which doesn't look dodgy. The string library is awkward and somewhat inconsistent (check out what strncpy() actually does). Memory management and pointer arithmetic are necessary in far too many contexts. The confusion of byte and character worked only as long as everybody using C used ASCII, and makes things messy with Unicode. Arrays and pointers are sorta the same thing. It doesn't compile well with modern tools.
C is a good language, but anyone who thinks it doesn't have problems is fooling themselves.
Another issue is that C++ is better at everything. It's almost a superset of C, and does a lot more. You can use C++ in a limited fashion to get around most of the problems of C without causing more problems. It's easier to write a C compiler, of course, but there are platforms without good and readily accessible C compilers that use C++ just fine.
"When there's work to be done" isn't a straightforward qualifier. There's always work to be done. I know what I'm working on next when I finish this project, and what I'm working on after that. That doesn't mean I'm not going home tonight. There are realistic and unrealistic deadlines and time projections, and burning oneself out to try to make an unrealistic deadline is generally a bad idea.
If your cow-orkers are as you describe them, then your employer's hiring and retention policies don't look all that intelligent. Hiring one highly competent and driven person and a bunch of slackers is a bad idea. If nothing else, the bus factor is far too low. Anything can happen to you. I had a heart attack and was out of work for over three weeks, and had limited endurance for a lot longer. If you have a heart attack, what happens to your employer? Your cow-orkers?
Personally, I can't be effective without identifying with my employer, the corporate goals, and what I'm working on. I've been in jobs that I hated with employers I hated, and that was just bad all around. Fortunately, most of my career has been with employers I liked (well, I'm not sure how much is fortune, how much is attitude, and how much is which jobs I look for and accept, to be honest). I found early on that life was more interesting and fun if I didn't limit what I did to the job description and wasn't fussy
This doesn't mean I'm going to do more than a 40-hour week as a matter of routine (stuff happens, and there is such a thing as crunch time). If I can't get my work done in forty hours, that's a management problem.
No, it means you're subject to immediate deportation if you are found to have a Snapchat account.
The idea behind the Constitution was that it provided the Federal government with assorted legal powers and responsibilities, and that therefore the Feds could not do anything not authorized by the Constitution. Therefore, there's no such thing as something the US government runs that's not subject to the Constitution, since either the Feds have no power to run it or they're bound by the Constitution.
The drone killings of US citizens are done on the basis that there's a war on, and that it's not necessary to conduct a trial before killing an enemy in war. If they're a member of a hostile military force, they're legal targets no matter what else might be true about them. US citizens abroad who have not taken up arms in the service of a foreign power need not worry.
The law allows the US government to expel people who are not US citizens and are here illegally, and that's a significantly lower barrier than would be required to convict and punish them.
Either you're really bad at sarcasm, or you don't know what you're talking about.
Anyone born in the US is a US citizen, according to the Fourteenth Amendment. I haven't noticed that part of the Fourteenth being repealed by another Amendment.
While the Bill of Rights may have been intended to protect US citizens, it doesn't limit itself to them. A person from another country can't be required to incriminate himself or herself, for example.
The people writing the questions aren't that stupid. You're missing the idea behind the questions.
Lying on one of those forms is grounds for being thrown out of the country immediately, without further ado. If a visitor or immigrant does something perfectly legal (but suspicious) that contradicts any question on the form, the US government doesn't have to find any further excuse to get that person out.
If you Google me, you'll find several people with that name. Most people have duplicates out there. The only exception I personally know is my wife, who has an unusual first name and a not-very-common last name.
What those questions are for, in practice, is to allow deportation. Lying on anything pertaining to coming into the country is grounds for deportation. Check the "I am not a member of a terrorist organization" and lie about it, and you can be deported without anything else being established, no matter how much time has passed.
I had a next door neighbor (he lives elsewhere in the neighborhood now) who was a member of the Galician SS. When he came to the US in the late 40s, his papers said (among other things) that he'd never been a member of the SS. (He wasn't at all good with English then, so it's doubtful he filled them out, but legally that doesn't matter.) In the 2010s, he was found to have been the commander of a unit involved in an atrocity, and the German authorities and the US state department finally decided that a man in his 90s who'd been a good person for about seventy years really didn't need to be deported and/or extradited. (Me? I know enough about the history involved to know that I can't imagine what it was like, and I'm not going to condemn someone without understanding the circumstances.)
And now, in the real world....
The full consequences of motherhood include the fact that it's a hell of a lot of work and expense, and it's necessary for society. If we aren't going to have a worse population age structure, we need to encourage motherhood, not discourage it. If women wind up bearing the greater burden for keeping society going, why give them worse jobs and worse pay because of it?
The idea that there's an economy that's part of society and takes advantage of what society offers, but shouldn't bend to the needs of society, is perverse. Discriminating against mothers for having wider but still important priorities is much like pollution: it helps the individual company, but at an expense for everyone.
The rewards for working long hours are never explicit, and always unreliable. The rewards for getting stuff done are much more significant.
Work ethic doesn't mean working long hours. It means getting what you should do done and done well, and being flexible. It doesn't mean being exploited.