Oh of course, You can easily hit the CTRL+SHIFT on accident but not CTRL+ALT because the windows key is in the way. Wow, they were a smart thinkers 20 years ago.
10 years ago, where the windows key is now, there was a gap -- CTRL and ALT were not next to each other so you could accidentially hit both when you intended to hit only one. 20 years ago, however, CTRL was where caps lock is now. So, this has absolutely nothing to do with the windows key.
Actually they DID call up Douglas Adams and ask him for a name to give their new form of matter, but the only reply he would give is "I'm fucking dead!"
After some BEC had actually been _created_ in a lab, DNA continued to live for almost six years.
Hate to break it to ya, but Mexico is part of North America as well.
The parent poster you replied to never said anything to the contrary. He did not claim that all people living on the North American continent that are not (US) 'American' were Canadian, Patrick13. 13... is this your age?
I have never owned a Mac, but I have many friends who do and who constantly rave about how much they love it.
Macs seem to be much more likeable than PCs indeed. However, there are other things Mac owners admit to be factors in them constantly raving about how much they love their machines. For example, they have to pay a much higher price for their hardware than PC people, so they try to eliminate doubts about wheter it was really worth it. They already have the machine, so it _must_ be worth it. And, of course, raving about how much your PC can do and how super the OS and everything is doesn't make as much sense, because most people already know about these things, they're taken for granted. It's the standard Macs are compared to. No question, they come out on top in many areas, but just the fact that Mac users praise their machines is absolutely no indication that Apple owns all the brainpower of Silicon Valley; they don't.
Were not NYT writers and editors the imbeciles responsible for irreparably damaging the English language by convincing millions of people that a comma was not needed before the and in a series?
I don't know about American English, but in the English language a comma is not needed before the and in a series.
I just saw the parent poster modded up to 5, then modded down again because some anonymous sibling poster screamed "RTFA! that quote isn't in the article!" Yes, moderators, you should really RTFA... the quote is in fact in the article.
I also found it there at dallasnews.com, which requires registration. You can use the dummy account I just created: login: none-of-your@business.com pwd: 123456. Oh, wait a moment, I guess that's exactly the same article.
I think in Europe it's generelly common to use 'Lego' as kind of a special adjective, exactly as every company wants you to use their brand name(s). We don't have a plural form, because we haven't got a proper singular form either! We don't say "give me that Lego" or "I need a blue 2x4 Lego". 'Lego' is either used like an adjective, as in "Lego piece/part/brick/box/set", or it is used as a noun that refers to an unknown subset of all Lego parts, the company, the principle of plastic pieces snapping together or something. In that respect, it's a word like 'money' or 'poliece'. So, to us "he's playing with his Legos" sounds as horribly wrong as "he's counting his moneys". But I don't care what the Amis do. I've long given up the idea that they waste any length of time or effort bothering with superfluous things like spelling or grammar (noteworthy exceptions seem to be rather common on/., though).
Excellent tip, thanks. I completely forgot about the existence of bochs since I last tried it on my PII and and the emulation of the mere DOS prompt was too slow. However, it could be worth trying it out on the G4.
the new model will differ slightly from the previous 20G one - for example, the 40G player will be 3 mm thicker and 12 grams heavier
... you mean I'll have to lug around no less that 12 grams, all for a mere 20GB? thanks for the warning, i'd have almost bought it if i hadn't known there's such a big difference to the previous model.
Moderators beware! (I have mod points myself at the moment, but if I mod this down without commenting, I guess it will be at 5 in no time again.) Apparently several people find this post insightful; however, the author actually didn't understand the intermediate language concept at all.
What the article describes is absolutely not "akin to writing machine code directly for a VM". To the contrary, the IL code would be generated automatically, thus eliminating the need of assembly micromanagement. To make it fast, effort would have to go into a compiler that does good automatic optimizations, as well as into writing efficient code in a higher level language. The idea is that you have to do this only for one well-known platform, not for every piece of iron your code runs on. Optimization is made easier, this also the "inefficiencies of high-level programming" are reduced.
Maybe the original poster didn't get that this new IL wouldn't run on top of a Java VNM, nor below it, but rather do a similar job, but in a way much better suited for big iron and big tasks ("petascale systems").
even so, though.. after i managed to get it to connect to *something*,...
What did you connect it to, to your other machine?;-) Seriously, I searched their homepage, the docs, the archive I downloaded on their site, tried google, but found no way to get peer's addresses. Can anyone help?
Ouch, that hurts! Make it stop! (And I don't even like the band very much, nor am I German.) The problem with just omitting the umlaut dots is that it either makes the word in question both look and sound _really_ silly to any German speaker who knows correct pronunciation, or it changes the meaning of the whole sentence. "Die Aerzte" is correct, "Die Arzte" is not, it looks idiotic.
Are you talking about the new double-album Gerausch?
That would be Geraeusch, but yes. I was too lazy to check before, but I did check now. I also found out that the logo they used (the text says: "as always: without copy protection") is a slightly modified version (they basically added the extended middle finger) of a logo that is actually used in Germany to label CDs with a certain copy protection mechanism.
It would be smarter to send an e-mail to the editor who posted this story, so he can add the company name to the story. That way no one knows from whom the info is, but we know the editor could check it came from the right anonymous 'coward', and not just any anonymous coward.
I guess it's not exactly what you're looking for, but this might still interest you: I recently read that the new CD of German band 'Die Aerzte' (actually written with an umlaut-A instead of Ae, but, you know, slashdot...) was for many people the first album they had bought in a _really_ long time, because the cover boldly exclaims something along the lines of "fuck copy protection". In Europe, problems with copy-protected CDs that don't play in many (or even most) players already started surfacing years ago, and many people became so fed up with them that they stopped buying CDs altogether. Now lots of those bought the Aerzte CD because they like to display it on their shelves and they can be sure it works in all of their players.
Pornography is not as much of a problem in Europe because it is accepted. I guess the same is true of racism.
Your guess is wrong. There is no EU country (I don't know much about the rest, sorry) in which a significant proportion openly or even secretly approves of racism. There are a few countries in which right-wing parties are very popular. Among the politicians and voters of most of these parties, nationalism is not only accepted, but even desired. But note that this problem has little to do with racism and is non-existant in most EU countries.
Racism is absolutely not accepted in Europre. Of course in many regions there just cannot be racism because everyone is of the same ethnicity. But where it occurs, it's a big no-no for the majority of the population.
Also note that there are still many people living in Europe who experienced national socialism first-hand; others have to deal with the fact that they work for some high-tech factory that has a high reputation worldwide now, but used to build weapons for Hitler 60 years ago. They know their history, and they're able to learn from past mistakes. There are _far_ fewer Nazis in Europe than in the USA today.
Your definition of coding might not really what many people here consider it to be [...]
In casual conversation, I might consider to be roughly equivalent of programming
Yes, certainly. I just meant to use two different terms to make a distinction for the purpose of my little writeup, not to give dictionary-style definitions of these terms.
Nowadays what you describe as coding is something only suitable for machines, or as part of job for person who does "more", ie. does not just act as medium between someone with brains and keyboard.
You are right, there are tools for lots of work that had to be done manually in earlier times. But we also know that the tools aren't as powerful as we were promised ten years ago. We still are not able to produce a finished application from UML diagrams that show data models, use cases etc.
Automation helps with repetitive tasks. If you have to write ten parsers, it's a good idea to learn something like flex that generates them from grammars given in a high-level description language. But when you learn flex, you still have to learn what it does exactly, how to write a parser manually, etc. in order to be able to understand it and all the funny error messages it generates. So if you have to write just one parser, learning flex just for that one project could be a big waste of your precious time.
This is a situation in which a human coder, who might be fresh from college and has far less skills than you, and gets only half your salary, but has the skills required to generate a parser (manually or with a tool) in a reasonable amount of time, could very well be preferable to a machine. He would be much more than a medium between your brain and his keyboard, he would read documentation, write code, and test the code, while you can mind other tasks. Describing a problem to a human often is far less of a hassle than describing it to a machine.
Of course, the quality of the software would be much better if you had the time to do everything yourself, or if the team consisted only of highly skilled, very intelligent, experienced programmers. The problem is, this description fits only a minority of all programmers out there, and there are big companies that require hundreds or even thousands of programmers. They won't hire idiots, but they have to hire programmers that are just good enough, and have more experienced ones to be their bosses and tell them what to do. Heck, I often _wished_, when doing small projects, that I _had_ someone who gives me advice, instead of just a PHB who wants me to implement by yesterday the feature request he'll send me tomorrow...
...
If he was a MBA who was trying to score the quarterly bonus, and who doesn't expect to be in charge of this group after the project... well, this is why it's even possible to talk about shipping stuff overseas. My question is, after they write the inital code, who's going to be responsible for maintaining it?
Even if some PHB definitely _will_ be in charge of the project in the future, there's a chance he will harm maintainability by making his coders delivering something on schedule. Often it's "on time, on budget, maintainable: choose any two", and if you have limited ressources and a few programmers requiring payment, you often have no other choice than delivering something that earns you money before your copany goes bankrupt.
But you're totally right, assuming that no one will ever read/use your code again is a mistake. If a program never requires any changes, it most likely is never really used, while it might be more usable if it was better designed.
Even GUI glue benefits from well-planned rewrites, and copious commenting. Unless you plan on writing nothing but GUI glue, and don't mind writing the same thing over and over (in which case, programming is NOT the field for you),...
Okay, let's have a look at rather unskilled programmers (which I would have called 'coders' in my comment above, but just to keep consistency with the original quote; I don't want to demonize the word per se) that write GUI glue: A bad programmer who has to implement three similar GUI classes writes one, then copy&pastes it two times and modifies the copies to fit the other two specifications. A better programmer with training in software engineering and a snooty, elitist attitude would write very reusable, easily maintainable meta-code and three configuration files that make it fulfill the three specifications, but it would take him at least three times as long and it he'd maybe even do it if no one ever reuses that code. An excellent programmer with lots of experience would implement a solution that is as good, but not overengineered, in the time in which the rookie hacks together his solution that just barely works, but he would demand at least three times the salary.
Now consider a project manager who has to make sure the software is ready on time and on budget... whom would he hire? And which description fits best the jobs that are outsourced offshore?
Slashdot Mirror
But I'm intersted in the NYT story you mention; care to cite any sources?
Yay, right, let's /. the Google servers!
I just saw the parent poster modded up to 5, then modded down again because some anonymous sibling poster screamed "RTFA! that quote isn't in the article!" Yes, moderators, you should really RTFA ... the quote is in fact in the article.
I also found it there at dallasnews.com, which requires registration. You can use the dummy account I just created: login: none-of-your@business.com pwd: 123456. Oh, wait a moment, I guess that's exactly the same article.
I think in Europe it's generelly common to use 'Lego' as kind of a special adjective, exactly as every company wants you to use their brand name(s). We don't have a plural form, because we haven't got a proper singular form either! We don't say "give me that Lego" or "I need a blue 2x4 Lego". 'Lego' is either used like an adjective, as in "Lego piece/part/brick/box/set", or it is used as a noun that refers to an unknown subset of all Lego parts, the company, the principle of plastic pieces snapping together or something. In that respect, it's a word like 'money' or 'poliece'. So, to us "he's playing with his Legos" sounds as horribly wrong as "he's counting his moneys". But I don't care what the Amis do. I've long given up the idea that they waste any length of time or effort bothering with superfluous things like spelling or grammar (noteworthy exceptions seem to be rather common on /., though).
thanks, that's great.
What I miss on the DOSBox download page is a MacOS X binary (bochs has one). Had no luck with Google either ... anyone else, maybe?
Excellent tip, thanks. I completely forgot about the existence of bochs since I last tried it on my PII and and the emulation of the mere DOS prompt was too slow. However, it could be worth trying it out on the G4.
By the way, does anyone know if there is a free program like DOSEMU/DOSBox for MacOS?
Moderators beware! (I have mod points myself at the moment, but if I mod this down without commenting, I guess it will be at 5 in no time again.) Apparently several people find this post insightful; however, the author actually didn't understand the intermediate language concept at all.
What the article describes is absolutely not "akin to writing machine code directly for a VM". To the contrary, the IL code would be generated automatically, thus eliminating the need of assembly micromanagement. To make it fast, effort would have to go into a compiler that does good automatic optimizations, as well as into writing efficient code in a higher level language. The idea is that you have to do this only for one well-known platform, not for every piece of iron your code runs on. Optimization is made easier, this also the "inefficiencies of high-level programming" are reduced.
Maybe the original poster didn't get that this new IL wouldn't run on top of a Java VNM, nor below it, but rather do a similar job, but in a way much better suited for big iron and big tasks ("petascale systems").
... Linus Malcolm Atterbury
I guess it's not exactly what you're looking for, but this might still interest you: I recently read that the new CD of German band 'Die Aerzte' (actually written with an umlaut-A instead of Ae, but, you know, slashdot ...) was for many people the first album they had bought in a _really_ long time, because the cover boldly exclaims something along the lines of "fuck copy protection". In Europe, problems with copy-protected CDs that don't play in many (or even most) players already started surfacing years ago, and many people became so fed up with them that they stopped buying CDs altogether. Now lots of those bought the Aerzte CD because they like to display it on their shelves and they can be sure it works in all of their players.
Racism is absolutely not accepted in Europre. Of course in many regions there just cannot be racism because everyone is of the same ethnicity. But where it occurs, it's a big no-no for the majority of the population.
Also note that there are still many people living in Europe who experienced national socialism first-hand; others have to deal with the fact that they work for some high-tech factory that has a high reputation worldwide now, but used to build weapons for Hitler 60 years ago. They know their history, and they're able to learn from past mistakes. There are _far_ fewer Nazis in Europe than in the USA today.
Automation helps with repetitive tasks. If you have to write ten parsers, it's a good idea to learn something like flex that generates them from grammars given in a high-level description language. But when you learn flex, you still have to learn what it does exactly, how to write a parser manually, etc. in order to be able to understand it and all the funny error messages it generates. So if you have to write just one parser, learning flex just for that one project could be a big waste of your precious time.
This is a situation in which a human coder, who might be fresh from college and has far less skills than you, and gets only half your salary, but has the skills required to generate a parser (manually or with a tool) in a reasonable amount of time, could very well be preferable to a machine. He would be much more than a medium between your brain and his keyboard, he would read documentation, write code, and test the code, while you can mind other tasks. Describing a problem to a human often is far less of a hassle than describing it to a machine.
Of course, the quality of the software would be much better if you had the time to do everything yourself, or if the team consisted only of highly skilled, very intelligent, experienced programmers. The problem is, this description fits only a minority of all programmers out there, and there are big companies that require hundreds or even thousands of programmers. They won't hire idiots, but they have to hire programmers that are just good enough, and have more experienced ones to be their bosses and tell them what to do. Heck, I often _wished_, when doing small projects, that I _had_ someone who gives me advice, instead of just a PHB who wants me to implement by yesterday the feature request he'll send me tomorrow
But you're totally right, assuming that no one will ever read/use your code again is a mistake. If a program never requires any changes, it most likely is never really used, while it might be more usable if it was better designed.
Now consider a project manager who has to make sure the software is ready on time and on budget