I've run into all of the following in the days since MegaUpload has been down:
Stepmania files for public domain, CC, etc. compositions Podcast Video coverage of an event Rip of (public) art/drawing stream
There would also be quite a bit of original as-seen-on-youtube music, but thankfully that usually ends up on Mediafire. Quite frankly I can't imagine the last time I downloaded something not CC, public domain, or clearly free use from such a service. While I won't pretend that sites like MegaUpload don't have pirated content or that it's not some of the most popular stuff on them, suggesting they don't have plenty of legitimate files is extremely ignorant.
First, let's be clear: The crime here isn't "knowing", it's possession of information. That's a pretty big difference.
Second, I don't think that the step from possessing materials to possessing knowledge is that big. Mind that, as you point out, some evidence is required: attending a class, a notebook, or simply putting it to use for some examples. On top of that, double jeopardy laws prevent a person from being tried for the same crime; a law against knowledge could only be applied once. So the 'practical' version of a law against knowledge would come in the form of a law against the expression of it, so demonstrating knowledge would be the crime, with each demonstration being an offense.
So really where is the big leap, then, from building a bomb to demonstrating knowledge of how to build a bomb? It seems to me that it's a much smaller leap than it is from murder to bombs. After all, there are _lots_ of ways to use a bomb without killing people (or other crimes), but there aren't that many ways to use bomb making knowledge without making bombs.
(And, as an aside, this isn't even addressing how being able to get away with breaking a law (e.g. by disposing of a gun) doesn't make that at all any more fair or reasonable.)
I wouldn't call these "pre-crimes", as, after all, possessing these material is apparently a true crime. I'm not sure what a snappy word would be for them, but they come from "crime prevention" laws which have been around for a long time. Arguably by definition, _all_ possession laws fall into this category: can't own guns because you might shoot someone, can't have alcohol in the car because you might drink some (and being impaired you might hit someone), can't own drugs because you might sell/use them.
Now, you may say 'but if the goal was to prevent people from getting blown up, wouldn't it be better to just make owning bombs illegal?" Sure, which is why it already is: owning a bomb is a crime... A crime we must prevent! And to way to stop that we is to make it illegal to know how to make a bomb!
Now, what makes these laws appealing and neat is that they achieve their goal by definition. After all, the original crime is still a crime, but now you can also _maybe_ catch someone before they do it. However, in the grand scheme of things they are awful because they increase the scope of the law beyond the actual crime. At best, you still catch all the perpetrators of the base crime, but the also law opens the ability to 'catch' people that never would have committed the crime you seek to 'prevent'. Thus, while you may prevent one specific crime, you have actually increased crime overall.
Also, there's not incentive to slow moderation at +3 or +4... If you see a post at +4, it's probably going to be better than one at +2, so why _wouldn't_ you mod it to +5? The moderation system is really more of like/dislike setup and has no encouragement for mods to actually say that +4 is fair score and that +5 would be too much.
I've often wondered if it might make sense to increase the costs associated with modding up. Instead of one mod point per mod, instead charge X mod points, where X will be the new score (or current score if modding down). That would mean it would take someone _really_ liking your post to get it to be +5, and having it be free to correct -1 posts. This would also limit abuse from bury-brigades because they would burn through points very quickly tearing down +5 posts.
> > 1) Infinite loop over a circular linked list > How does NULL help here?
Indeed, if circular is what you really want, then certainly NULL doesn't come into it.
So why bring this up? Well simple: it's a solution to the the original question in a statically linked environment. See, each link must have a reference to some data and the next link. The trouble is that the next link cannot be NULL and must point to a valid link... But where does that link point? Well, unless the list in infinite it must point back to the first, making a circular list. (This can be solved with inheritance using a virtual GetNext() that throws and exception for the last link, which is what brings us to point 3.)
> > 2) Returning an invalid/sentinel value > If the invalid/sentinel value is not a member of return type - it's a compile error.
Think harder. A linked list has links: references to the next object. If that reference is statically typed and not NULL, it must be a valid object of the same type as every other member of the list. That's what this static, non NULL typing is all about after all! All references _must_ point to a valid object. So, this end reference could be a circular link (as point #1) or a sentinel object as mentioned here. Regardless, it's a real object of the same (base) type as the rest of the objects in the list so the compiler will have no issue with returning it. You have to manually check that it's the end (even if it's an up-cast, it would still need to be dynamic), thus my point.
Similar to #1, a link interface with a GetData() that throws an exception (and, of course, no actual underlying reference) is a possible solution to this. But, again, that's not actually something the compiler handles for you and we end up at #3 once again.
> > 3) Exceptions > Exceptions are by definition run-time
And this is exactly my point. You spend all your time working around the compiler, dealing with #1 and #2, just so you can end up here: a place that is,/by definition/, something the compiler cannot help you with. So despite eliminating NULLs and statically typing our language, we still much manually manage the list or face an error condition. Except _now_ rather then just checking for NULL, we must create a link interface, a real implementation, a sentinel implementation AND catch exceptions from the last just to know we're at the end. Win?
Please explain how exactly a compiler catches the issues I mentioned: 1) Infinite loop over a circular linked list 2) Returning an invalid/sentinel value 3) Exceptions
Those are what you're trading NULL for. Removing NULL doesn't remove having to deal with the finite nature of lists or bad data. Theses things that create NULLs will still exist and won't be dealt with by any compiler because they are part of the definition of how the program is supposed to function. For all the compiler knows maybe you're supposed to spin through a circular list while a thread injects items.
I already pointed out that removing NULL can provide some security benefits, but in terms of that _plus_ stability and hard-to-find bugs eliminating arrays and other pointers would do more than eliminating NULL. (About the only significant area where NULL is worse is in C/C++ where dereferencing NULL undefined, but that's a story for another time.)
And this is why some applications are actually moving _away_ from static typing. (See Objective C and Microsoft's DLR, among others.) Static typing, especially in large projects, carries with it a great many things like complex inheritances, generics, casts, and just other boilerplate all allowing for all kinds of that the compiler is simply unable to detect. People are finding that the flexibility and style of dynamic languages offset those bugs created by the lack of static typing.
There is so much more to programming then just matching types or catching NULL... Some of the last few bugs I fixed were one subtly occurring in 32bits, not 64, a configuration option not being honored, and lastly, a negative array index. None helped by types or the compiler, and none related to NULL pointers. If the only bugs I ran into involved NULLs, I would be happy^Wout of work.
When it comes down to it, NULL is just a sentinel... and a red herring. You can really replace it with anything; Python does it with "None", for instance.
In the case of a linked list, it could be an agreed upon singleton or an empty value/link which, depending on the language/design, either link to themselves, or throw an exception when you try to access their next. Another option is to just link it circularly and have the sentinel be the 'start' of the list. But, you may say, that causes exceptions, infinite loops, or silent failures (e.g. passing around a sentinel)! Exactly.
NULL is one of the greatest red-herrings in programming. People dream of eliminating it because it causes so many problems, but the reality is that they're just shooting the messenger. The real problems are the conditions that brought the NULL about in the first place... Bad data, missing value, computer on fire, etc. I suppose that one could argue (as I'm sure Mozilla does), that NULL presents a security risk, and, yes, it does but no more than arrays or pointers in general. That's why we have 'managed' languages these days, which is, as best as I can tell, what Rust is: yet another 'managed' programming language. I guess it could be interesting, but I'll won't be holding my breath until it's used outside Mozilla.
Have the republicans really pointed that out? I don't even think many libertarians think that way either. Readily available information is a vital part of a healthy free market, and these secret agreements violate that principle. This is the exactly the sort of thing that the government _should_ be doing in a free market economy: correcting the non ideal factors of real world competition. Things like limiting monopolies and ensuring availability of accurate information (e.g. in advertising) are some regulatory roles, while reducing taxes and mandated behavior (e.g. data retention) are deregulatory roles. Just because people talk about "deregulation" doesn't mean they think that all regulations should be eliminated any more than people saying there should be more regulations want a command economy.
DRM on the console simply isn't the same because it's part of the platform. Crack it once, and it's cracked forever. Emulate it, and it works for all games forever.
On the PC, however, DRM is ad hoc. It isn't a secure platform so DRM has to wreck the system in order to function. The result is that your gaming system looks like a virus infested system because it basically is, with multiple competing root kits installed on it monitoring what you do. I, frankly agree with the GP... I don't know how anyone can have a gaming computer that's usable as a general purpose device. I ultimately game up and went console too (with the plus side being able to give up Windows as well).
You North Korea analogy is extremely poor, because the west _is_ more free than North Korea. Any freedom on the PC is a total illusion... A better analogy would be moving from a police state with inattentive but randomly abusive enforcers to a well managed authoritarian state. Sure, it might be harder to break the law in the latter, but you are more free because you can at least live your life free of free (provided you obey). Same with consoles: Sure you can't pirate games, but you aren't abused by the games you buy either.
> Oh and if consoles are PC's now, you don't mind donating your PC and reading the net from your console
Who's stupid and trolling, exactly? That, like this entire discussion, was clearly in the context of games.
Not particularly, as they're still about 100C short _and_ require water. Water is highly unlikely to exist on that planet because the surface temp is beyond the critical point of pure water (375C) and planets so close to the sun usually have their atmosphere quickly stripped, water included. Whether or not there could be subterranean high pressure water is impossible to say, but very unlikely (it would have to form and never escape to the surface). Extreme conditions on an otherwise livable planet are far different than similar conditions on an otherwise unlivable one.
But at that level of pedantry, we might as well assume that life can exist within a star itself, and that planets aren't really important. Or for that matter, maybe these plants are actually large balls of cheese! Until we actually land on extrasolar planets, we can hardly begin to speculate on if what we are detecting are actually rock and gas.
Astronomy offers only very limited opportunities for observation and basically none for testing. We must supplement what data we can gather heavily using theories and understandings rigorously tested on Earth. While we can't rule out Star Trek style energy beings, for example, we can look at plasmas and their behavior and realize that forming synaptic pathways out is it would basically be impossible. We can draw up some pretty loose limits on life... If it's cold enough that helium is about the only liquid available or so hot that what hasn't melted are only impermeable rigid ceramics, the probability life exists is nil. If it's too hot for a man built machine to function, then it's probably too hot for life as well. It's just a matter of extending what we know about chemical processes, materials and mechanics... Too hot or too cold and making functional and reliable processes, let alone life, is too hard.
In this case, they are estimating a temperature of 400C. For comparison, silicone and fluoroelastomers top out at about 300C, while highly engineered fluorocarbon oils can only barely get to 400C . Simple hydrocarbons, among other things, can beat that but are highly reactive and can't survive in a reactive environment (particularly with oxygen). Nitrates decompose around that temperature too. So in what medium would life exist? A eutectic salt mixture? But those are so corrosive, what would then contain it? These are the questions the look at and can't answer when they say "life doesn't exist". (And all this doesn't even cover other issues, like the radiation hazards of being closer to the star.)
If we see a rocky planet at 200C, then we can really discuss how stuck we are on water based life being the only option and how open our minds should be. But this one? It's dead, Jim.
Well, "hate" is perhaps a strong word, and rather uselessly unspecific anyways. There are all sorts of feelings like envy (as you point out), distrust, competitiveness / unrealized superiority, etc. How much these ever really develop into 'hate' depend on the individual... Some people hate their rivals, others just view them as, well, rivals (that they must beat). The idea is more the externalization their problems, establishment of a "them", and the the type of motivation it can lead to. Sometimes it's positive, but quite often it's not.
> It's just the standard post Vodka blame game. I don't think anyone is really worried about it.
The problem is, tossing blame like this is the first refuge of incompetent government. The next is constructing enemies, and then finally war. Redirect the rage of the people you ruined to someone else, and rather then remove you from power they will grant you even more.
Given how Russia has been behaving recently this is very worrying. If they have to blame America because their probe is backwards, then what about when something bigger fails? How long before the people have a (renewed) hate of the USA?
It's not a step to a new cold war, but it disconcertingly similar to the behavior we saw then.
The problem with that argument is that he isn't being paid 'vital for the company' money. According to http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/, that salary is about average for "Architect" / "Senior Developer" positions. The key being average. If this guy is so vital to the company, either in an executive or technical capacity, they need to be paying a _lot_ more. For example, the top 10% of "[Java] Architect" makes over £95,000/yr.
So I have a very hard time believing that he was some vital member of the company if his wage was average for a non-vital position. Hell, if he was simply good at his job the company isn't paying enough (probably; I don't know what the duties of that position are) to even dissuade the occasional unsolicited head hunter. (However, I would say that I don't suspect that is the case... You don't fire someone over a triviality like this unless they aren't quite replaceable, even to the point where it's more like an excuse for finally kicking them out.)
I would be fascinated to see the justification behind this. Seriously. Because what I see is: *) Stimulus, Cash-For-Clunkers *) Healthcare *) Patriot Act extension, continued wiretapping, NSLs, etc *) Detaining/Executing citizens without trial if declared *) Extended unemployment
Looking over his tenure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#Presidency, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Barack_Obama) the only thing that I noticed that would be considered libertarian (i.e. not increasing the government's economic or social influence) is extending the Bush tax cuts. The SPEECH Act too, I suppose. Other than that it's mostly just more regulations and spending programs. Don't Ask Don't Tell doesn't count, as that is strictly internal, nor does the stem cell policy as that actually increases the government's role in the economy (it was always a funding, not freedom, issue).
I understand that those aren't all entirely his plans, but that doesn't really change the fact that no major legislation he has pushed or passed reduced the power of government. Regardless of what he says (which simply doesn't matter) he's still captaining a fairly strongly authoritarian ship
P.S. Curious that the PATRIOT Act extension is never mentioned on those wiki pages...
Actually, it rather decreases it*. Whereas a carrier (like T-Mobile in the US) could compete with the ability to unlock phones, now all carriers are required to offer it thus eliminating that option as a difference between carriers. And while that isn't itself a bad thing (as either way the customer can get their phone unlocked), quite often these days carriers will add hidden costs as "compliance fees". So even though you can unlock your phone, instead of it being a feature, it's now a cost burden on you, and a regulation burden on the carrier and the government (who must have staff on either side to ensure compliance).
So, while this is kind of nice, the issue, as always, is that the consumer base is too uninterested / uninformed / lazy to really make it important point of competition and instead 'we' get more corporate/regulatory bloat. Woohoo?
*This does nothing about contracts (as well it should not!), so people are still "locked in" if they, well, choose to sign a contract.
I was just admiring a friend's Shishi lion. It looks nice, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe it's actually protecting anything. Especially as there's only one, and it's not even by an entrance...
Religious symbols are _often_ co-opted by other cultures as pieces of art (i.e. decorations). Just because you take the appearance doesn't mean you have to take the meaning and especially the belief as well. So what if Christianity took some pagan symbols or traditions. Many interior decorators will take pieces from various cultures to decorate a room/house. Does that make them or the person living there believe all those religions/customs? Of course not. Without belief, a religious symbol is just a piece of art.
If one is going to stick to the King James Version, I guess I can see how it would seem spot on. But that translation is surprisingly poor when it comes to this passage. Examine the New English Translation with the notes here: http://net.bible.org/?ref=nbt#!bible/Jeremiah+10:1
The KJV suffers from a few flaws that coincidentally make the passage appear to reference Christmas trees. First as foremost, the use of "axe". The literal translation would be "chisel" and the point was that they carved the tree, not simply cut it down and used it whole. Another important mistake was with the word "customs" when the literal word was "statues". The _usage_ is such that it is referring to the idolatry based beliefs that were common at the time so it's usually translated as "religion" or even "customs", but especially with the latter those lose the context of idolatry.
When put in the context of verse 5 (where discussing how a tree couldn't speak of more would otherwise be quite unnecessary), this passage is clearly talking about idolatry. The vaguest bit of description "tree.. decked in gold and silver" could apply to a Christmas tree, but the meaning is quite different: it's referring to carved figures worshiped as gods.
(P.S. I suppose you could I suppose you could call this squirming or rationalizing, but really it's just actually bothering to understand the material.)
While it's true that one couldn't burn the oil for power, the carbon itself would be incredibly valuable. Nearly all of the chemical and plastics we make today use oil/natgas/coal as feedstock. Without plants and oil, any Mars base would either have to import chemicals and plastics from Earth or convert CO2 into hydrocarbons, consuming a great deal of water and energy (15kWh and 2.25kg water per kg methane produced) in the process. Even refining the iron available on Mars would be very costly without cheap carbon (the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere is bad enough).
Simply put, cheap oil on Mars would significantly lower the cost of living on Mars, even if it couldn't be used directly as a fuel. For the immediate future, though, it would really only be a scientific curiosity.
While it's essentially true that Christmas was created to compete with existing pagan holidays and thus carried over some traditions, the idea that it _is_ a pagan holiday is foolish. The name "Christmas" literally means "Christ mass". It's an inherently Christian celebration, and thus a secular "Christmas" celebration actually is denying the holiday's Christian roots. Call it a holiday or solstice celebration, but Christmas is Christian and with its own meanings.
Finally, anyone citing Jer. 10:1-5 as a 'warning' against Christmas trees clearly has a very poor understanding of religious history or simply hasn't actually bothered to read it. It is _explicitly_ waring against idolatry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idolatry) and even uses the word "idol" twice to make it easy for you. Idolatry worships physical things as gods, and the passage says that it's worthless because people create those things and thus they are no more divine or powerful than their makers. Christians don't worship their trees, nor do they even really view them as particularly religious symbols, just religious decorations. (A crucifix would be much closer to what the passage is discussing, but is viewed as a symbol of God, not worshiped as a god itself.)
That's judicial, this executive. They aren't bringing you to court, they're just taking your stuff... which they 'physically' can do. Whether or not they're _allowed_ to do that is certainly a question, but one that needs to be settled in court before you can get it back. And good luck with that.
Think: It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission (especially if you can claim that no one has standing to make you apologize)
Agreed. But part of the problem is that Flash's existence is a higher cost than HTML5. Flash a is closed source, singular implementation that exists outside the control of the browser. As a result, it increases attack vectors and can subvert browser managed privacy (e.g. having it's own cache and cookies). Sandboxing helps, but is more of a hack than a proper solution.
So, even if HTML5 isn't a superset of Flash, it does offer clear benefits in it's implementation. So if Flash's unique benefits are _mostly_ within HTML5, then it's quite possible Flash, while not replaced, quite simply isn't worth it anymore. This is rather why Silverlight was DOA: it just didn't offer enough to be worth having another plugin to maintain.
What confuses me is that there seems to be a disconnect regarding this project vs. lightning... Tesla coils operate on relatively high frequency AC whereas lightning is a very slow DC process. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the lightning can get away with lower voltages because the charge buildup allows for partial ionization at charge concentration points (e.g. a lightning rod) which can create ion streams and render the atmosphere partially conductive thus reducing the required potential. That may not be quite right, but still I find it odd that one would try to replicate lightning using such a fundamentally different design; a marx generator seems far more appropriate. Does anyone know if they're planning on rectifying the output? I guess it's theoretically possible...
Also, Tesla coils generate a _huge_ amount of broadband RF interference (not to mention sound). It seems to me that building this thing would be far less difficult than simply being allowed to build it (and for good reason!). Do they have a location picked out and have they talked to local government and the FCC?
Slashdot Mirror
I've run into all of the following in the days since MegaUpload has been down:
Stepmania files for public domain, CC, etc. compositions
Podcast
Video coverage of an event
Rip of (public) art/drawing stream
There would also be quite a bit of original as-seen-on-youtube music, but thankfully that usually ends up on Mediafire. Quite frankly I can't imagine the last time I downloaded something not CC, public domain, or clearly free use from such a service. While I won't pretend that sites like MegaUpload don't have pirated content or that it's not some of the most popular stuff on them, suggesting they don't have plenty of legitimate files is extremely ignorant.
First, let's be clear: The crime here isn't "knowing", it's possession of information. That's a pretty big difference.
Second, I don't think that the step from possessing materials to possessing knowledge is that big. Mind that, as you point out, some evidence is required: attending a class, a notebook, or simply putting it to use for some examples. On top of that, double jeopardy laws prevent a person from being tried for the same crime; a law against knowledge could only be applied once. So the 'practical' version of a law against knowledge would come in the form of a law against the expression of it, so demonstrating knowledge would be the crime, with each demonstration being an offense.
So really where is the big leap, then, from building a bomb to demonstrating knowledge of how to build a bomb? It seems to me that it's a much smaller leap than it is from murder to bombs. After all, there are _lots_ of ways to use a bomb without killing people (or other crimes), but there aren't that many ways to use bomb making knowledge without making bombs.
(And, as an aside, this isn't even addressing how being able to get away with breaking a law (e.g. by disposing of a gun) doesn't make that at all any more fair or reasonable.)
I wouldn't call these "pre-crimes", as, after all, possessing these material is apparently a true crime. I'm not sure what a snappy word would be for them, but they come from "crime prevention" laws which have been around for a long time. Arguably by definition, _all_ possession laws fall into this category: can't own guns because you might shoot someone, can't have alcohol in the car because you might drink some (and being impaired you might hit someone), can't own drugs because you might sell/use them.
Now, you may say 'but if the goal was to prevent people from getting blown up, wouldn't it be better to just make owning bombs illegal?" Sure, which is why it already is: owning a bomb is a crime... A crime we must prevent! And to way to stop that we is to make it illegal to know how to make a bomb!
Now, what makes these laws appealing and neat is that they achieve their goal by definition. After all, the original crime is still a crime, but now you can also _maybe_ catch someone before they do it. However, in the grand scheme of things they are awful because they increase the scope of the law beyond the actual crime. At best, you still catch all the perpetrators of the base crime, but the also law opens the ability to 'catch' people that never would have committed the crime you seek to 'prevent'. Thus, while you may prevent one specific crime, you have actually increased crime overall.
Then people switch to T-Mobile and the issue corrects itself?
Agreed.
Also, there's not incentive to slow moderation at +3 or +4... If you see a post at +4, it's probably going to be better than one at +2, so why _wouldn't_ you mod it to +5? The moderation system is really more of like/dislike setup and has no encouragement for mods to actually say that +4 is fair score and that +5 would be too much.
I've often wondered if it might make sense to increase the costs associated with modding up. Instead of one mod point per mod, instead charge X mod points, where X will be the new score (or current score if modding down). That would mean it would take someone _really_ liking your post to get it to be +5, and having it be free to correct -1 posts. This would also limit abuse from bury-brigades because they would burn through points very quickly tearing down +5 posts.
> > 1) Infinite loop over a circular linked list
> How does NULL help here?
Indeed, if circular is what you really want, then certainly NULL doesn't come into it.
So why bring this up? Well simple: it's a solution to the the original question in a statically linked environment. See, each link must have a reference to some data and the next link. The trouble is that the next link cannot be NULL and must point to a valid link... But where does that link point? Well, unless the list in infinite it must point back to the first, making a circular list. (This can be solved with inheritance using a virtual GetNext() that throws and exception for the last link, which is what brings us to point 3.)
> > 2) Returning an invalid/sentinel value
> If the invalid/sentinel value is not a member of return type - it's a compile error.
Think harder. A linked list has links: references to the next object. If that reference is statically typed and not NULL, it must be a valid object of the same type as every other member of the list. That's what this static, non NULL typing is all about after all! All references _must_ point to a valid object. So, this end reference could be a circular link (as point #1) or a sentinel object as mentioned here. Regardless, it's a real object of the same (base) type as the rest of the objects in the list so the compiler will have no issue with returning it. You have to manually check that it's the end (even if it's an up-cast, it would still need to be dynamic), thus my point.
Similar to #1, a link interface with a GetData() that throws an exception (and, of course, no actual underlying reference) is a possible solution to this. But, again, that's not actually something the compiler handles for you and we end up at #3 once again.
> > 3) Exceptions
> Exceptions are by definition run-time
And this is exactly my point. You spend all your time working around the compiler, dealing with #1 and #2, just so you can end up here: a place that is, /by definition/, something the compiler cannot help you with. So despite eliminating NULLs and statically typing our language, we still much manually manage the list or face an error condition. Except _now_ rather then just checking for NULL, we must create a link interface, a real implementation, a sentinel implementation AND catch exceptions from the last just to know we're at the end. Win?
Please explain how exactly a compiler catches the issues I mentioned:
1) Infinite loop over a circular linked list
2) Returning an invalid/sentinel value
3) Exceptions
Those are what you're trading NULL for. Removing NULL doesn't remove having to deal with the finite nature of lists or bad data. Theses things that create NULLs will still exist and won't be dealt with by any compiler because they are part of the definition of how the program is supposed to function. For all the compiler knows maybe you're supposed to spin through a circular list while a thread injects items.
I already pointed out that removing NULL can provide some security benefits, but in terms of that _plus_ stability and hard-to-find bugs eliminating arrays and other pointers would do more than eliminating NULL. (About the only significant area where NULL is worse is in C/C++ where dereferencing NULL undefined, but that's a story for another time.)
And this is why some applications are actually moving _away_ from static typing. (See Objective C and Microsoft's DLR, among others.) Static typing, especially in large projects, carries with it a great many things like complex inheritances, generics, casts, and just other boilerplate all allowing for all kinds of that the compiler is simply unable to detect. People are finding that the flexibility and style of dynamic languages offset those bugs created by the lack of static typing.
There is so much more to programming then just matching types or catching NULL... Some of the last few bugs I fixed were one subtly occurring in 32bits, not 64, a configuration option not being honored, and lastly, a negative array index. None helped by types or the compiler, and none related to NULL pointers. If the only bugs I ran into involved NULLs, I would be happy^Wout of work.
When it comes down to it, NULL is just a sentinel... and a red herring. You can really replace it with anything; Python does it with "None", for instance.
In the case of a linked list, it could be an agreed upon singleton or an empty value/link which, depending on the language/design, either link to themselves, or throw an exception when you try to access their next. Another option is to just link it circularly and have the sentinel be the 'start' of the list. But, you may say, that causes exceptions, infinite loops, or silent failures (e.g. passing around a sentinel)! Exactly.
NULL is one of the greatest red-herrings in programming. People dream of eliminating it because it causes so many problems, but the reality is that they're just shooting the messenger. The real problems are the conditions that brought the NULL about in the first place... Bad data, missing value, computer on fire, etc. I suppose that one could argue (as I'm sure Mozilla does), that NULL presents a security risk, and, yes, it does but no more than arrays or pointers in general. That's why we have 'managed' languages these days, which is, as best as I can tell, what Rust is: yet another 'managed' programming language. I guess it could be interesting, but I'll won't be holding my breath until it's used outside Mozilla.
Have the republicans really pointed that out? I don't even think many libertarians think that way either. Readily available information is a vital part of a healthy free market, and these secret agreements violate that principle. This is the exactly the sort of thing that the government _should_ be doing in a free market economy: correcting the non ideal factors of real world competition. Things like limiting monopolies and ensuring availability of accurate information (e.g. in advertising) are some regulatory roles, while reducing taxes and mandated behavior (e.g. data retention) are deregulatory roles. Just because people talk about "deregulation" doesn't mean they think that all regulations should be eliminated any more than people saying there should be more regulations want a command economy.
DRM on the console simply isn't the same because it's part of the platform. Crack it once, and it's cracked forever. Emulate it, and it works for all games forever.
On the PC, however, DRM is ad hoc. It isn't a secure platform so DRM has to wreck the system in order to function. The result is that your gaming system looks like a virus infested system because it basically is, with multiple competing root kits installed on it monitoring what you do. I, frankly agree with the GP... I don't know how anyone can have a gaming computer that's usable as a general purpose device. I ultimately game up and went console too (with the plus side being able to give up Windows as well).
You North Korea analogy is extremely poor, because the west _is_ more free than North Korea. Any freedom on the PC is a total illusion... A better analogy would be moving from a police state with inattentive but randomly abusive enforcers to a well managed authoritarian state. Sure, it might be harder to break the law in the latter, but you are more free because you can at least live your life free of free (provided you obey). Same with consoles: Sure you can't pirate games, but you aren't abused by the games you buy either.
> Oh and if consoles are PC's now, you don't mind donating your PC and reading the net from your console
Who's stupid and trolling, exactly? That, like this entire discussion, was clearly in the context of games.
Not particularly, as they're still about 100C short _and_ require water. Water is highly unlikely to exist on that planet because the surface temp is beyond the critical point of pure water (375C) and planets so close to the sun usually have their atmosphere quickly stripped, water included. Whether or not there could be subterranean high pressure water is impossible to say, but very unlikely (it would have to form and never escape to the surface). Extreme conditions on an otherwise livable planet are far different than similar conditions on an otherwise unlivable one.
But at that level of pedantry, we might as well assume that life can exist within a star itself, and that planets aren't really important. Or for that matter, maybe these plants are actually large balls of cheese! Until we actually land on extrasolar planets, we can hardly begin to speculate on if what we are detecting are actually rock and gas.
Astronomy offers only very limited opportunities for observation and basically none for testing. We must supplement what data we can gather heavily using theories and understandings rigorously tested on Earth. While we can't rule out Star Trek style energy beings, for example, we can look at plasmas and their behavior and realize that forming synaptic pathways out is it would basically be impossible. We can draw up some pretty loose limits on life... If it's cold enough that helium is about the only liquid available or so hot that what hasn't melted are only impermeable rigid ceramics, the probability life exists is nil. If it's too hot for a man built machine to function, then it's probably too hot for life as well. It's just a matter of extending what we know about chemical processes, materials and mechanics... Too hot or too cold and making functional and reliable processes, let alone life, is too hard.
In this case, they are estimating a temperature of 400C. For comparison, silicone and fluoroelastomers top out at about 300C, while highly engineered fluorocarbon oils can only barely get to 400C . Simple hydrocarbons, among other things, can beat that but are highly reactive and can't survive in a reactive environment (particularly with oxygen). Nitrates decompose around that temperature too. So in what medium would life exist? A eutectic salt mixture? But those are so corrosive, what would then contain it? These are the questions the look at and can't answer when they say "life doesn't exist". (And all this doesn't even cover other issues, like the radiation hazards of being closer to the star.)
If we see a rocky planet at 200C, then we can really discuss how stuck we are on water based life being the only option and how open our minds should be. But this one? It's dead, Jim.
Well, "hate" is perhaps a strong word, and rather uselessly unspecific anyways. There are all sorts of feelings like envy (as you point out), distrust, competitiveness / unrealized superiority, etc. How much these ever really develop into 'hate' depend on the individual... Some people hate their rivals, others just view them as, well, rivals (that they must beat). The idea is more the externalization their problems, establishment of a "them", and the the type of motivation it can lead to. Sometimes it's positive, but quite often it's not.
> It's just the standard post Vodka blame game. I don't think anyone is really worried about it.
The problem is, tossing blame like this is the first refuge of incompetent government. The next is constructing enemies, and then finally war. Redirect the rage of the people you ruined to someone else, and rather then remove you from power they will grant you even more.
Given how Russia has been behaving recently this is very worrying. If they have to blame America because their probe is backwards, then what about when something bigger fails? How long before the people have a (renewed) hate of the USA?
It's not a step to a new cold war, but it disconcertingly similar to the behavior we saw then.
The problem with that argument is that he isn't being paid 'vital for the company' money. According to http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/, that salary is about average for "Architect" / "Senior Developer" positions. The key being average. If this guy is so vital to the company, either in an executive or technical capacity, they need to be paying a _lot_ more. For example, the top 10% of "[Java] Architect" makes over £95,000/yr.
So I have a very hard time believing that he was some vital member of the company if his wage was average for a non-vital position. Hell, if he was simply good at his job the company isn't paying enough (probably; I don't know what the duties of that position are) to even dissuade the occasional unsolicited head hunter. (However, I would say that I don't suspect that is the case... You don't fire someone over a triviality like this unless they aren't quite replaceable, even to the point where it's more like an excuse for finally kicking them out.)
I would be fascinated to see the justification behind this. Seriously. Because what I see is:
*) Stimulus, Cash-For-Clunkers
*) Healthcare
*) Patriot Act extension, continued wiretapping, NSLs, etc
*) Detaining/Executing citizens without trial if declared
*) Extended unemployment
Looking over his tenure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#Presidency, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Barack_Obama) the only thing that I noticed that would be considered libertarian (i.e. not increasing the government's economic or social influence) is extending the Bush tax cuts. The SPEECH Act too, I suppose. Other than that it's mostly just more regulations and spending programs. Don't Ask Don't Tell doesn't count, as that is strictly internal, nor does the stem cell policy as that actually increases the government's role in the economy (it was always a funding, not freedom, issue).
I understand that those aren't all entirely his plans, but that doesn't really change the fact that no major legislation he has pushed or passed reduced the power of government. Regardless of what he says (which simply doesn't matter) he's still captaining a fairly strongly authoritarian ship
P.S. Curious that the PATRIOT Act extension is never mentioned on those wiki pages...
Actually, it rather decreases it*. Whereas a carrier (like T-Mobile in the US) could compete with the ability to unlock phones, now all carriers are required to offer it thus eliminating that option as a difference between carriers. And while that isn't itself a bad thing (as either way the customer can get their phone unlocked), quite often these days carriers will add hidden costs as "compliance fees". So even though you can unlock your phone, instead of it being a feature, it's now a cost burden on you, and a regulation burden on the carrier and the government (who must have staff on either side to ensure compliance).
So, while this is kind of nice, the issue, as always, is that the consumer base is too uninterested / uninformed / lazy to really make it important point of competition and instead 'we' get more corporate/regulatory bloat. Woohoo?
*This does nothing about contracts (as well it should not!), so people are still "locked in" if they, well, choose to sign a contract.
I was just admiring a friend's Shishi lion. It looks nice, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe it's actually protecting anything. Especially as there's only one, and it's not even by an entrance...
Religious symbols are _often_ co-opted by other cultures as pieces of art (i.e. decorations). Just because you take the appearance doesn't mean you have to take the meaning and especially the belief as well. So what if Christianity took some pagan symbols or traditions. Many interior decorators will take pieces from various cultures to decorate a room/house. Does that make them or the person living there believe all those religions/customs? Of course not. Without belief, a religious symbol is just a piece of art.
If one is going to stick to the King James Version, I guess I can see how it would seem spot on. But that translation is surprisingly poor when it comes to this passage. Examine the New English Translation with the notes here:
http://net.bible.org/?ref=nbt#!bible/Jeremiah+10:1
The KJV suffers from a few flaws that coincidentally make the passage appear to reference Christmas trees. First as foremost, the use of "axe". The literal translation would be "chisel" and the point was that they carved the tree, not simply cut it down and used it whole. Another important mistake was with the word "customs" when the literal word was "statues". The _usage_ is such that it is referring to the idolatry based beliefs that were common at the time so it's usually translated as "religion" or even "customs", but especially with the latter those lose the context of idolatry.
When put in the context of verse 5 (where discussing how a tree couldn't speak of more would otherwise be quite unnecessary), this passage is clearly talking about idolatry. The vaguest bit of description "tree .. decked in gold and silver" could apply to a Christmas tree, but the meaning is quite different: it's referring to carved figures worshiped as gods.
(P.S. I suppose you could I suppose you could call this squirming or rationalizing, but really it's just actually bothering to understand the material.)
While it's true that one couldn't burn the oil for power, the carbon itself would be incredibly valuable. Nearly all of the chemical and plastics we make today use oil/natgas/coal as feedstock. Without plants and oil, any Mars base would either have to import chemicals and plastics from Earth or convert CO2 into hydrocarbons, consuming a great deal of water and energy (15kWh and 2.25kg water per kg methane produced) in the process. Even refining the iron available on Mars would be very costly without cheap carbon (the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere is bad enough).
Simply put, cheap oil on Mars would significantly lower the cost of living on Mars, even if it couldn't be used directly as a fuel. For the immediate future, though, it would really only be a scientific curiosity.
While it's essentially true that Christmas was created to compete with existing pagan holidays and thus carried over some traditions, the idea that it _is_ a pagan holiday is foolish. The name "Christmas" literally means "Christ mass". It's an inherently Christian celebration, and thus a secular "Christmas" celebration actually is denying the holiday's Christian roots. Call it a holiday or solstice celebration, but Christmas is Christian and with its own meanings.
Finally, anyone citing Jer. 10:1-5 as a 'warning' against Christmas trees clearly has a very poor understanding of religious history or simply hasn't actually bothered to read it. It is _explicitly_ waring against idolatry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idolatry) and even uses the word "idol" twice to make it easy for you. Idolatry worships physical things as gods, and the passage says that it's worthless because people create those things and thus they are no more divine or powerful than their makers. Christians don't worship their trees, nor do they even really view them as particularly religious symbols, just religious decorations. (A crucifix would be much closer to what the passage is discussing, but is viewed as a symbol of God, not worshiped as a god itself.)
That's judicial, this executive. They aren't bringing you to court, they're just taking your stuff... which they 'physically' can do. Whether or not they're _allowed_ to do that is certainly a question, but one that needs to be settled in court before you can get it back. And good luck with that.
Think: It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission (especially if you can claim that no one has standing to make you apologize)
Agreed. But part of the problem is that Flash's existence is a higher cost than HTML5. Flash a is closed source, singular implementation that exists outside the control of the browser. As a result, it increases attack vectors and can subvert browser managed privacy (e.g. having it's own cache and cookies). Sandboxing helps, but is more of a hack than a proper solution.
So, even if HTML5 isn't a superset of Flash, it does offer clear benefits in it's implementation. So if Flash's unique benefits are _mostly_ within HTML5, then it's quite possible Flash, while not replaced, quite simply isn't worth it anymore. This is rather why Silverlight was DOA: it just didn't offer enough to be worth having another plugin to maintain.
What confuses me is that there seems to be a disconnect regarding this project vs. lightning... Tesla coils operate on relatively high frequency AC whereas lightning is a very slow DC process. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the lightning can get away with lower voltages because the charge buildup allows for partial ionization at charge concentration points (e.g. a lightning rod) which can create ion streams and render the atmosphere partially conductive thus reducing the required potential. That may not be quite right, but still I find it odd that one would try to replicate lightning using such a fundamentally different design; a marx generator seems far more appropriate. Does anyone know if they're planning on rectifying the output? I guess it's theoretically possible...
Also, Tesla coils generate a _huge_ amount of broadband RF interference (not to mention sound). It seems to me that building this thing would be far less difficult than simply being allowed to build it (and for good reason!). Do they have a location picked out and have they talked to local government and the FCC?
As others posted, this isn't nuclear. And even if it was, your remark is still bizarre; we've blown up more than a few nukes underground already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_nuclear_testing