Regarding your statement about bicyclists and pedestrians: I live in the Northwest, and I'm frankly tired of the pedestrian friendliness. I went to San Francisco about a year ago and found a refreshingly different attitude. Cars go first!
You should move to North Carolina then... try riding a bicycle on a main road around here, and some (probably drunk) redneck will run your ass over with his jacked-up four wheel drive pickup.
Seriously, in the Triangle area, pedestrian friendliness is NOT a problem... because there is none... walk out into the street here without looking both ways twice, waving a warning flag, and sounding an airhorn, and you are just begging to get hit by a car. And even if you do that, you still better sprint your ass across the road, not take a leisurely stroll.
But it isn't, and the world changed when they left us. Radically.
The world did not change just because 9/11 happened. What happened was horrible, tragic, and saddening.. As a firefighter myself, I was very disturbed by losing so many of my brothers... BUT, what happened still does not justify radically altering our way of life, and saying that "the world changed."
It's not like we didn't know there were terrorist groups dedicated to attacking our country, before 9/11, ya know...
Now you say, that sounds horrible---but look at it this way. I don't think any libertarian of any ilk would say gun control is a good thing. But what about nuclear weapons--should anyone be allowed to have nuclear weapons? One guy could kill millions just like that. A lot of libertarians would say no--nukes should not be allowed.
I agree. I see no compelling reason for private citizens to own nuclear weapons, although I do believe that in general, citizens should be allowed to own "military class" weaponry.
Likewise, things like biolabs in a house are extremely hazardous, for reasons I'd be happy to elaborate in a reply.
No need, I can fully appreciate why a bio-lab *could* be dangerous. However, my point is that not all "home laboratories" are dangerous, and there is a danger in allowing the government too much power to declare someone dangerous because they happen to be an amateur scientist or enjoy hobby electronics. In this case, again, the articles make it clear that the materials found in his home were determined to be essentially harmless. To quote:
The bacteria included E. coli, bacillus globigii and serratia, all of which da Costa described as "completely harmless" and commonly used in research.
Keep in mind, I'm operating from the point of view that all governments eventually descend into repressive, totalitarian regimes (if they do not fall first, for some other reason), and that we, as citizens, must constantly work to keep our government from exercising more control over the affairs of private citizens.
In this case, it appears that the government is overstepping it's bounds. There appears to be no reason to believe that any crime was committed, that anybody was murdered, or that this guy was brewing up biological weapons in his secret bio-terror lab.
this guy is associated iwth groups that advocate radical activities. His wife was found dead under very suspicious circumstances. He had very suspicious things in his house.
Ok, 3 things:
1. what radical activities do the groups he's associated with promote, exactly? Neither linked article mentions anything but writing papers and making art. Nothing I could find on the website of the Critical Art Ensemble suggests that they promote any "radical activities."
2. what was so suspicious about his wife's death? The article(s) clearly say the coroner found nothing unusual about her death and ruled it as "natural causes." Neither article I read added anything to suggest that her death was anything out of the ordinary.
3. what was so suspicious about the materials found in his home? The only lab equipment specifically named (in the Wired article) were Petri dishes... Oooh, boy, those evil, scary Petri dishes... can't allow ordinary folks access to those, can we?
This is the only way to deal with those whose intentions are unknown but threatening - whether on a plane or next door. Pro-active is what you stated - and that is all our government is attempting to do.
Talk about "apples and oranges."
There's a huge difference between someone who has just hijacked an airplane, and some guy next door who does something vaguely suspicious.
even if you did not know he simply wanted to only have 15 minutes of "air time" on national TV to talk about alien conspiracy theories.
Just out of curiosity.. has this ever actually happened? Someone hijacking a plane just to get their "15 minutes of fame to babble about aliens?"
And that is my problem you and your ilk--you so strongly overreact to what is an incredibly minor problem at WORST, or (and in this case, imho) a 100% desirable action, that when something really bad does come about, you're like the boy who called wolf--no one cares anymore, and you've given everyone else who cares about such things a bad name,
Well, I can respect your position, despite the fact that I disagree. For what you see as "crying wolf", I see as "not waiting until it's too late."
And if I err on the side of extremism, I feel that I'm only helping to offset somebody who takes a completely opposite, but equally extreme, position.
You don't think terrorists can take over a small community and hold them at will? (um, if they can take over a plane of 100+ passengers - what makes you think they cannot hold a community hostage?)
Interestingly enough, it's already been proven that terrorists *cannot* take over a plane of 100+ passengers, when the passengers are aware that it's not in their best interests to cooperate.
The passengers on the first two 9/11 planes did not know that the terrorists intended to fly the planes into buildings and kill everyone onboard... in the past, passengers on hijacked planes had almost always been released / rescued eventually, so everyone would have assumed it made sense to cooperate.
On the third plane, once people found out what was going on, we see that the passengers were able to resist and thwart the terrorists plans. Yes, it cost them their lives, but we see that hijackers cannot just take over a plane and do their will, when the passengers know the score.
In fact, I expect there will never be another attempt to hijack a plane and use it in that manner, even again... just because the would be terrorists now know that the passengers on board almost certainly will resist.
How about a better idea--you actually RTFA and realize that once again, you and your ilk are overreacting because you don't know the facts.
How about this.. I *did* read the article.. and unlike you, I appear to be capable of reading between the lines, seeing the connections between this event **and others like it** and seeing the "big picture" of what's going on around me.
This country is descending away from the principles of freedom, liberty, and democracy it was based on, and I don't like it. What's next, are we going to say that anytime the police have to come to your house for any reason, if they see a chemistry set, some hobby electronics gear, or a few books on nuclear physics, that the government should launch an "investigation?"
It's easy to sit back and say "Well, if they didn't investigate the guy, and he did turn out to be a terrorist, blah, blah..." But the flipside is, once the citizens of this nation get adjusted to that mindset, and begin to accept those types of intrusions of their civil liberties, it will be too late to go back. (Maybe it already is).
Sorry if you disagree, but as far as I'm concerned, the old "Live Free or Die" saying is NOT just a historical legacy... it's a very real principle that, IMO, represents the most fundamental nature or fabric of what the U.S. is all about.
No, they haven't. Not other than to the extend that people are buying into that very line.
Times have NOT changed... this WAS, and IS a free country, where the people do not tolerate the government trampling on their civil liberties and natural rights. IF we begin to allow ourselves to believe that we must change THAT, then the terrorists have won, game over.
Just as it was before, and just as it always will be, life is dangerous. Do it long enough and you die. Every one of us.... And so life in a truly free country may be a little more dangerous than life in a more tightly controlled country. Big deal... we're all gonna die eventually eitherway, and there's a reason that things like:
Live Free or Die! and Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
are rallying cries in this country. It's better to live, and die, having liberty, freedom, and the "right to the pursuit of happiness" than to live without freedom, IMNSFHO. And in the opinions of a great many Americans who have preceded me.
The truth is, most Americans have more to fear from George W. Bush or John Ashcroft than they do from this professor, or even from Osama Bin Laden.
Shit like this is only going to continue to happen more and more often...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again(I wasn't first to say this, mind you)...
if you want an unlimited source of free energy, just attach a turbine to George Orwell's body
Orwell's vision is coming true, little by little by little... and if the American people don't stand up and do something about it, pretty soon it will be too late (if it's not already).
There's an election coming up folks... think long and hard about whether the people you're voting for are FOR or AGAINST this kind of shit. My suspicion is that any major party candidate is FOR this shit, personally.
Atleast if they keep it closed, they'll retain some control, and have the ability to possibly make money off of it.
But they don't make any money off of it now, so how would it be any different? If anything, this move might help Java as a platform, overall, in terms of competing against things like.Net.
Which means opportunities for Sun to make money off other parts of the "stack" like App servers, messaging servers, directory servers, blah... plus consulting and services.
It does seem odd though, that on one hand, Sun is talking openly about hardware being free one day, and making money off software subscriptions, and on the other hand talking about open-sourcing two of their major products (Java and Solaris).
You're completely wrong. Simply put, in certain arenas all of the "easy things" have already been invented. The things left are incredibly complex and costly to develop. What motive does Drug Company 1 have to create a new pharmaceutical if Drug Company 2 can immediately turn around and start selling it without having had to invest hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money in the process? The answer: none whatsoever. Why do your own research when you can just let the other guy do it for you?
That comes off as a narrow minded and naive view of things. Even IF companies were not granted a short-term monopoly on their inventions, they WOULD still have an incentive to innovate. For example: the first company to roll out a new product still has the "first to market" advantage, and gains brand recognition / etc., by mere virtue of being first. Also, even if there were no patents, that doesn't automatically mean that "Company B" could come along and start marketing "Company A"'s drug... they'd have to work out how to make it, first. Nobody is saying "Company A" would be forced to publish the details of their private research... There can be "trade secrets" even in a world without patents.
And all that aside... companies compete on other factors besides who has a monopoly and who doesn't. If a monopoly was *required* to be successful in business, why are there a gazillion companies making cars, batteries, toasters, rice cookers, beef jerky, etc?
Finally, even without patent protection, companies would STILL need to innovate, due to the "arms race" effect. That is, if Company A sits on it's ass and doesn't innovate, they risk having Company B come out with something radically new and better, and steal the marketshare / mindshare away, before Company A can respond (by reverse engineering Company B's product and starting to sell it).. the same goes for Company B.. for all they know, Company A still has a lab full of researchers working night and day, and Company B must still compete.
Hell, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a world with no patents resulted in MORE innovation. Right now the patent system is so hosed that it favors large / rich corporations over the "small, private, individual inventor" type that it was meant to protect.
That's just ridiculous. Libertarians have much in common with the Right... so much so that we're often referred to as "Right of Right." Likewise, we have much in common with the Left... so much so that we're often referred to as "Left of Left."
Given your logic, it makes just as much sense to suggest that "the Libertarian party is the best trick the left has ever come up with."
Any idea when a war on an emotion (terror) can be declared over? Somehow I expect this will be like the War on Drugs and will never end.
Ding, ding!!!! We have a winner! Somebody give this person a cookie.
The "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs" are both just a front for the real war... the "War on Civil Liberties" and will continue until either the American people are as subjugated as the people in the Peoples Republic of China, or the American people revolt, overthrow the government, and restore liberty and freedom to their rightful position(s).
If you're in their service area, you might check out FeatureTel. AFAIK, they only service the Raleigh / RTP / Durham / Chapel Hill area of NC right now.
Also, in at least some areas, Time Warner Cable is now offering home VOIP service. So if you're in the TWC area, you might give them a call.
Re:No Pointers?
on
Hardcore Java
·
· Score: 3, Informative
That's a reference:p
Then why do you get a NullPointerException instead of a NullReferenceException, if you try to access it while it's null?;-)
If Monsanto's patented genes are allowed to escape into the wild, then their monopoly privledge is lost and there goes any reason to create such innovations.
That's just not true. It's not **necessary** to have a monopoly to make a profit. Patents are only a limited-time monopoly anyway, and serve to ensure that innovations will (eventually) make their way into the public domain... Yes a monopoly helps, but it's entirely reasonable for a company to need to compete on things like price, quality, customer service, etc., in the absence of a monopoly. And the company that comes out with an innovation is still going to have "first to market" advantage, and possible "trade secret" status for their innovation. There would still be reasons to innovate even if there were no patents.
Truth be told, patents today have become more of a hindrance to business than anything. Especially smaller companies / solo inventors without the funding for armies of patent attorneys to research, file, and litigate over these things.
So I guess all the folks who think Slashdot is nothing but a bunch of M$ hating Linux fan-boys can go back in the closet now. Sadly, only to be replaced by a new crew crowing about how/. has sold out to the Evil Empire...
It's your opinion that learning things such as pointers, references, pass-by-value, method pointers, macro's, STL, virtual, pure virtual, operator overloading, destructors, no-GC, etc, etc is perfectly fine to learn all in one shot without any prior knowledge
What does any of that have to do with learning C before C++? C++ includes pretty much everything that's in C, but renders some of those things obsolete because it has better features. All one does by learning C first is learn the bad / old way of doing things.
Learning C++ in isolation is roughly equivelant to learning Java in the first place. I for one don't see any point in spending the time to learn the C specific stuff first, then spend time unlearning that to learn to do things "the C++ way."
I would hate to have to see the code of some experienced Java coder having to see all of these things at once.
Nobody says you have to use everything that's in C++. It's perfectly OK to spend many happy hours coding in C++ without ever using operator overloading or templates or function pointers. But they're there if you need / want them.
I was a computer operator / network tech for Reeds Jewelers, in their corporate IT center. I had two managers I reported to, since my full-time job was the amalgamation of two previous part-time jobs... and each reported to a different manager. And out of 14 people in the IT department, two were men; me, and the IT Director (who was never around.)
And of course all the girls were the man hating, feminist types, had their little clique going, blah, blah, so I was doomed to forever be an "outsider" as long as I worked there.
Rhonda, one of the two managers, was an ignorant bitch who knew shit about IT. I swear she went to one of those 1 week "how to speak management speak" seminars, and then landed her job. All she knew how to do was run around saying "Let's proactively strategize to leverage our multi-disciplinary attributes, blah, blah." I overheard her on the phone once talking to a vendor about some kit... about two minutes in, I realized this bitch had NO idea what she was talking about. None.. zero, zilch, nada.
And of course she disliked me with a passion, and played favorites really badly. There were two of "her girls" in particular that could do no wrong, and were perfect in her eyes. Unfortunately neither one was exactly an IT genius, and on several occassions I showed one or the other (or both) of them up by fixing something they couldn't. Instead of getting any thanks or acknowledgement, Rhonda acted like she was pissed off that I made her precious babies look bad...
Did I mention that I really hated that whore?
Anyway, one incident really stands out... they had this Paradox for DOS database they wanted to convert to MS Access (God only knows why, ok?).. anyway, they managed to create the Access database, but couldn't figure out how to move the data. After A FULL FUCKING WEEK of fucking with this thing, they gave up, and decided to RE-KEY ALL 2 GAZILLION RECORDS!?! No kidding.. they printed all this shit out, distributed the print-outs, and had people re-keying this shit. I came into work that night, found a big stack of print-outs on my desk, and a note saying "start keying in as much of this as you can."
Needless to say, I just went to the machine with the Paradox DB, dumped it to a file, and imported it into the Access DB. Had to write an update query to do it, because there was a calculated field in their or something, but the whole thing took me maybe an hour.
The next day, Rhonda is like "Did you get any of those records keyed in?" LOL... I was like "no, I did it the smart way and exported and re-imported them, it's done." Gawd, she looked like she'd seen a ghost... like she couldn't BELIEVE that I could do something that her precious girls couldn't do..
It was pretty much a nightmare from day one... luckily I was only there about 3 or 4 months, and then found a real programming job and said goodbye to that place (hopefully forever!)
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding your statement about bicyclists and pedestrians: I live in the Northwest, and I'm frankly tired of the pedestrian friendliness. I went to San Francisco about a year ago and found a refreshingly different attitude. Cars go first!
You should move to North Carolina then... try riding a bicycle on a main road around here, and some (probably drunk) redneck will run your ass over with his jacked-up four wheel drive pickup.
Seriously, in the Triangle area, pedestrian friendliness is NOT a problem... because there is none... walk out into the street here without looking both ways twice, waving a warning flag, and sounding an airhorn, and you are just begging to get hit by a car. And even if you do that, you still better sprint your ass across the road, not take a leisurely stroll.
But it isn't, and the world changed when they left us. Radically.
The world did not change just because 9/11 happened. What happened was horrible, tragic, and saddening.. As a firefighter myself, I was very disturbed by losing so many of my brothers... BUT, what happened still does not justify radically altering our way of life, and saying that "the world changed."
It's not like we didn't know there were terrorist groups dedicated to attacking our country, before 9/11, ya know...
-1 (Boring / Useless)
Now you say, that sounds horrible---but look at it this way. I don't think any libertarian of any ilk would say gun control is a good thing. But what about nuclear weapons--should anyone be allowed to have nuclear weapons? One guy could kill millions just like that. A lot of libertarians would say no--nukes should not be allowed.
I agree. I see no compelling reason for private citizens to own nuclear weapons, although I do believe that in general, citizens should be allowed to own "military class" weaponry.
Likewise, things like biolabs in a house are extremely hazardous, for reasons I'd be happy to elaborate in a reply.
No need, I can fully appreciate why a bio-lab *could* be dangerous. However, my point is that not all "home laboratories" are dangerous, and there is a danger in allowing the government too much power to declare someone dangerous because they happen to be an amateur scientist or enjoy hobby electronics. In this case, again, the articles make it clear that the materials found in his home were determined to be essentially harmless. To quote:
The bacteria included E. coli, bacillus globigii and serratia, all of which da Costa described as "completely harmless" and commonly used in research.
Keep in mind, I'm operating from the point of view that all governments eventually descend into repressive, totalitarian regimes (if they do not fall first, for some other reason), and that we, as citizens, must constantly work to keep our government from exercising more control over the affairs of private citizens.
In this case, it appears that the government is overstepping it's bounds. There appears to be no reason to believe that any crime was committed, that anybody was murdered, or that this guy was brewing up biological weapons in his secret bio-terror lab.
this guy is associated iwth groups that advocate radical activities. His wife was found dead under very suspicious circumstances. He had very suspicious things in his house.
Ok, 3 things:
1. what radical activities do the groups he's associated with promote, exactly? Neither linked article mentions anything but writing papers and making art. Nothing I could find on the website of the Critical Art Ensemble suggests that they promote any "radical activities."
2. what was so suspicious about his wife's death? The article(s) clearly say the coroner found nothing unusual about her death and ruled it as "natural causes." Neither article I read added anything to suggest that her death was anything out of the ordinary.
3. what was so suspicious about the materials found in his home? The only lab equipment specifically named (in the Wired article) were Petri dishes... Oooh, boy, those evil, scary Petri dishes... can't allow ordinary folks access to those, can we?
This is the only way to deal with those whose intentions are unknown but threatening - whether on a plane or next door. Pro-active is what you stated - and that is all our government is attempting to do.
Talk about "apples and oranges."
There's a huge difference between someone who has just hijacked an airplane, and some guy next door who does something vaguely suspicious.
even if you did not know he simply wanted to only have 15 minutes of "air time" on national TV to talk about alien conspiracy theories.
Just out of curiosity.. has this ever actually happened? Someone hijacking a plane just to get their "15 minutes of fame to babble about aliens?"
And that is my problem you and your ilk--you so strongly overreact to what is an incredibly minor problem at WORST, or (and in this case, imho) a 100% desirable action, that when something really bad does come about, you're like the boy who called wolf--no one cares anymore, and you've given everyone else who cares about such things a bad name,
Well, I can respect your position, despite the fact that I disagree. For what you see as "crying wolf", I see as "not waiting until it's too late."
And if I err on the side of extremism, I feel that I'm only helping to offset somebody who takes a completely opposite, but equally extreme, position.
You don't think terrorists can take over a small community and hold them at will? (um, if they can take over a plane of 100+ passengers - what makes you think they cannot hold a community hostage?)
Interestingly enough, it's already been proven that terrorists *cannot* take over a plane of 100+ passengers, when the passengers are aware that it's not in their best interests to cooperate.
The passengers on the first two 9/11 planes did not know that the terrorists intended to fly the planes into buildings and kill everyone onboard... in the past, passengers on hijacked planes had almost always been released / rescued eventually, so everyone would have assumed it made sense to cooperate.
On the third plane, once people found out what was going on, we see that the passengers were able to resist and thwart the terrorists plans. Yes, it cost them their lives, but we see that hijackers cannot just take over a plane and do their will, when the passengers know the score.
In fact, I expect there will never be another attempt to hijack a plane and use it in that manner, even again... just because the would be terrorists now know that the passengers on board almost certainly will resist.
How about a better idea--you actually RTFA and realize that once again, you and your ilk are overreacting because you don't know the facts.
How about this.. I *did* read the article.. and unlike you, I appear to be capable of reading between the lines, seeing the connections between this event **and others like it** and seeing the "big picture" of what's going on around me.
This country is descending away from the principles of freedom, liberty, and democracy it was based on, and I don't like it. What's next, are we going to say that anytime the police have to come to your house for any reason, if they see a chemistry set, some hobby electronics gear, or a few books on nuclear physics, that the government should launch an "investigation?"
It's easy to sit back and say "Well, if they didn't investigate the guy, and he did turn out to be a terrorist, blah, blah..." But the flipside is, once the citizens of this nation get adjusted to that mindset, and begin to accept those types of intrusions of their civil liberties, it will be too late to go back. (Maybe it already is).
Sorry if you disagree, but as far as I'm concerned, the old "Live Free or Die" saying is NOT just a historical legacy... it's a very real principle that, IMO, represents the most fundamental nature or fabric of what the U.S. is all about.
You know, times HAVE changed.
No, they haven't. Not other than to the extend that people are buying into that very line.
Times have NOT changed... this WAS, and IS a free country, where the people do not tolerate the government trampling on their civil liberties and natural rights. IF we begin to allow ourselves to believe that we must change THAT, then the terrorists have won, game over.
Just as it was before, and just as it always will be, life is dangerous. Do it long enough and you die. Every one of us.... And so life in a truly free country may be a little more dangerous than life in a more tightly controlled country. Big deal... we're all gonna die eventually eitherway, and there's a reason that things like:
Live Free or Die!
and
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
are rallying cries in this country. It's better to live, and die, having liberty, freedom, and the "right to the pursuit of happiness" than to live without freedom, IMNSFHO. And in the opinions of a great many Americans who have preceded me.
The truth is, most Americans have more to fear from George W. Bush or John Ashcroft than they do from this professor, or even from Osama Bin Laden.
Shit like this is only going to continue to happen more and more often...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again(I wasn't first to say this, mind you)...
if you want an unlimited source of free energy, just attach a turbine to George Orwell's body
Orwell's vision is coming true, little by little by little... and if the American people don't stand up and do something about it, pretty soon it will be too late (if it's not already).
There's an election coming up folks... think long and hard about whether the people you're voting for are FOR or AGAINST this kind of shit. My suspicion is that any major party candidate is FOR this shit, personally.
Atleast if they keep it closed, they'll retain some control, and have the ability to possibly make money off of it.
.Net.
But they don't make any money off of it now, so how would it be any different? If anything, this move might help Java as a platform, overall, in terms of competing against things like
Which means
opportunities for Sun to make money off other parts of the "stack" like App servers, messaging servers, directory servers, blah... plus consulting and services.
It does seem odd though, that on one hand, Sun is talking openly about hardware being free one day, and making money off software subscriptions, and on the other hand talking about open-sourcing two of their major products (Java and Solaris).
Talk about "dissociative identity disorder"...
4. If you wear a cloak and don't own any shirts, you have no need of a
Not true, see: http://www.dataman.ro/dforth/
You're completely wrong. Simply put, in certain arenas all of the "easy things" have already been invented. The things left are incredibly complex and costly to develop. What motive does Drug Company 1 have to create a new pharmaceutical if Drug Company 2 can immediately turn around and start selling it without having had to invest hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money in the process? The answer: none whatsoever. Why do your own research when you can just let the other guy do it for you?
That comes off as a narrow minded and naive view of things. Even IF companies were not granted a short-term monopoly on their inventions, they WOULD still have an incentive to innovate. For example: the first company to roll out a new product still has the "first to market" advantage, and gains brand recognition / etc., by mere virtue of being first. Also, even if there were no patents, that doesn't automatically mean that "Company B" could come along and start marketing "Company A"'s drug... they'd have to work out how to make it, first. Nobody is saying "Company A" would be forced to publish the details of their private research... There can be "trade secrets" even in a world without patents.
And all that aside... companies compete on other factors besides who has a monopoly and who doesn't. If a monopoly was *required* to be successful in business, why are there a gazillion companies making cars, batteries, toasters, rice cookers, beef jerky, etc?
Finally, even without patent protection, companies would STILL need to innovate, due to the "arms race" effect. That is, if Company A sits on it's ass and doesn't innovate, they risk having Company B come out with something radically new and better, and steal the marketshare / mindshare away, before Company A can respond (by reverse engineering Company B's product and starting to sell it).. the same goes for Company B.. for all they know, Company A still has a lab full of researchers working night and day, and Company B must still compete.
Hell, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a world with no patents resulted in MORE innovation. Right now the patent system is so hosed that it favors large / rich corporations over the "small, private, individual inventor" type that it was meant to protect.
That's just ridiculous. Libertarians have much in common with the Right... so much so that we're often referred to as "Right of Right." Likewise, we have much in common with the Left... so much so that we're often referred to as "Left of Left."
Given your logic, it makes just as much sense to suggest that "the Libertarian party is the best trick the left has ever come up with."
That *some guy* is Ken Thompson. Here, here, and here is some more info about the infamous "compiler backdoor."
Any idea when a war on an emotion (terror) can be declared over? Somehow I expect this will be like the War on Drugs and will never end.
Ding, ding!!!! We have a winner! Somebody give this person a cookie.
The "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs" are both just a front for the real war... the "War on Civil Liberties" and will continue until either the American people are as subjugated as the people in the Peoples Republic of China, or the American people revolt, overthrow the government, and restore liberty and freedom to their rightful position(s).
If you're in their service area, you might check
out FeatureTel. AFAIK, they only service the Raleigh / RTP / Durham / Chapel Hill area of NC right now.
Also, in at least some areas, Time Warner Cable is now offering home VOIP service. So if you're in the TWC area, you might give them a call.
That's a reference :p
;-)
Then why do you get a NullPointerException
instead of a NullReferenceException, if you
try to access it while it's null?
If Monsanto's patented genes are allowed to escape into the wild, then their monopoly privledge is lost and there goes any reason to create such innovations.
That's just not true. It's not **necessary** to have a monopoly to make a profit. Patents are only a limited-time monopoly anyway, and serve to ensure that innovations will (eventually) make their way into the public domain... Yes a monopoly helps, but it's entirely reasonable for a company to need to compete on things like price, quality, customer service, etc., in the absence of a monopoly. And the company that comes out with an innovation is still going to have "first to market" advantage, and possible "trade secret" status for their innovation. There would still be reasons to innovate even if there were no patents.
Truth be told, patents today have become more of a hindrance to business than anything. Especially smaller companies / solo inventors without the funding for armies of patent attorneys to research, file, and litigate over these things.
Mod parent up!! +23 "Extremely Insightful"
Enough with the "let's hate on EP I & II groupthink" bullshit, already.
So much for the supposed anti-microsoft bias of Slashdot! This story appears to be taken straight from a Microsoft website.
/. has sold out to the Evil Empire...
So I guess all the folks who think Slashdot is nothing but a bunch of M$ hating Linux fan-boys can go back in the closet now. Sadly, only to be replaced by a new crew crowing about how
It's your opinion that learning things such as pointers, references, pass-by-value, method pointers, macro's, STL, virtual, pure virtual, operator overloading, destructors, no-GC, etc, etc is perfectly fine to learn all in one shot without any prior knowledge
What does any of that have to do with learning C before C++? C++ includes pretty much everything that's in C, but renders some of those things obsolete because it has better features. All one does by learning C first is learn the bad / old way of doing things.
Learning C++ in isolation is roughly equivelant to learning Java in the first place. I for one don't see any point in spending the time to learn the C specific stuff first, then spend time unlearning that to learn to do things "the C++ way."
I would hate to have to see the code of some experienced Java coder having to see all of these things at once.
Nobody says you have to use everything that's in C++. It's perfectly OK to spend many happy hours coding in C++ without ever using operator overloading or templates or function pointers. But they're there if you need / want them.
Very well said. Here's a "virtual" +1 (Insightful) from me.
Wasn't exactly a development job, but here goes:
I was a computer operator / network tech for Reeds Jewelers, in their corporate IT center. I had two managers I reported to, since my full-time job was the amalgamation of two previous part-time jobs... and each reported to a different manager. And out of 14 people in the IT department, two were men; me, and the IT Director (who was never around.)
And of course all the girls were the man hating, feminist types, had their little clique going, blah, blah, so I was doomed to forever be an "outsider" as long as I worked there.
Rhonda, one of the two managers, was an ignorant bitch who knew shit about IT. I swear she went to one of those 1 week "how to speak management speak" seminars, and then landed her job. All she knew how to do was run around saying "Let's proactively strategize to leverage our multi-disciplinary attributes, blah, blah." I overheard her on the phone once talking to a vendor about some kit... about two minutes in, I realized this bitch had NO idea what she was talking about. None.. zero, zilch, nada.
And of course she disliked me with a passion, and played favorites really badly. There were two of "her girls" in particular that could do no wrong, and were perfect in her eyes. Unfortunately neither one was exactly an IT genius, and on several occassions I showed one or the other (or both) of them up by fixing something they couldn't. Instead of getting any thanks or acknowledgement, Rhonda acted like she was pissed off that I made her precious babies look bad...
Did I mention that I really hated that whore?
Anyway, one incident really stands out... they had this Paradox for DOS database they wanted to convert to MS Access (God only knows why, ok?).. anyway, they managed to create the Access database, but couldn't figure out how to move the data. After A FULL FUCKING WEEK of fucking with this thing, they gave up, and decided to RE-KEY ALL 2 GAZILLION RECORDS!?! No kidding.. they printed all this shit out, distributed the print-outs, and had people re-keying this shit. I came into work that night, found a big stack of print-outs on my desk, and a note saying "start keying in as much of this as you can."
Needless to say, I just went to the machine with the Paradox DB, dumped it to a file, and imported it into the Access DB. Had to write an update query to do it, because there was a calculated field in their or something, but the whole thing took me maybe an hour.
The next day, Rhonda is like "Did you get any of those records keyed in?" LOL... I was like "no, I did it the smart way and exported and re-imported them, it's done." Gawd, she looked like she'd seen a ghost... like she couldn't BELIEVE that I could do something that her precious girls couldn't do..
It was pretty much a nightmare from day one... luckily I was only there about 3 or 4 months, and then found a real programming job and said goodbye to that place (hopefully forever!)