India is the world's largest democracy, not the United States of America.
India is the world's most populous democracy. We're still the largest (square-footage-wise;).
Oh, and all news agencies - privately held, government sponsored, or otherwise - will report their news with some bias. There is no area of human endeavor untainted by group or individual bias or prejudice. The news media is especially susceptible to introducing bias, or adding spin, to its reporting: they're trying to get eyeballs, folks, and keep them. The best way to do that is to present sensationalist, skewed stories as fact, and keep shovelling it on an undereducated and gullible public.
You obviously don't know many talented artists or musicians. My brother plays the piano, the guitar (now) and pretty much anything else he wants to. All he has to do to play an instrument is pick it up, knock out a few notes to get an idea, and that's all she wrote.
There is no magic bullet or even way of thinking that is overnight going to make IT projects run on time and on budget.
Amen. Unfortunately, most publishers would find it difficult to sell a book entitled "This Book Will Not Magically Solve All of Your Software Development Problems".
Software Engineering has a substantial creative component to it that is far more akin to music or art than to other forms of engineering.
Agreed, however... the substantial creative component is utterly useless without at least a modicum of technical proficiency. I once watched my younger brother, who has an amazing talent for music, pick up a violin for the first time ever and, after a few quick plucks, play a Johnathan Kingham (JK rocks, BTW, another amazingly talented musician) tune off the cuff perfectly. On the other hand, I have never seen someone with the creative talent for programming, but no technical profiency (like even being able to explain what O(1) means) produce anything other than amazingly creative pieces of crap. My job allows me to influence the hiring of developers for my company, and I will approve an unimaginative bore with a strong technical skillset over a brilliant, dynamic, non-educated h4x0r any day. Why? Because I can depend on the bore, instead of hoping for a flight of creative fancy from the h4x0r to get a project in on time.
And just like music or art;
* a few of us are REALLY GOOD
* some of can perform the programming equivalent of playing "Three Blind Mice" on the piano
* and some of us SUCK.
I have to say you're completely wrong here. The real list:
1) Less than 1% of us are the Mozarts, Bachs, and Chopins of our profession. Think Linus, RMS, Gosling, etc.
2) Less than 20% of us are talented and skilled, but not brilliant - Dave Matthews Band, Bob Marley, Norah Jones, so on and so forth.
3) The majority of us have a modicum of talent, and the solid skillset to keep us working in this business. The bar bands and lounge acts of our profession - not making it big, but still making it.
The guys who suck don't make the list because this is a profession and the people who really suck are weeded out fairly quickly. And no, just because somebody does things differently from the way you would do them, or uses a proven, solid technique rather than a tricky one, does not mean they suck. It means they have a different way of doing things. Deal with it.
That said, it does seem that the people who suck are the most vocal about their 31337 sk1llz, and therefore the most annoying.
I just got a 12" PowerBook, replacing my 12" iBook. My thoughts:
1) Aluminum was a poor choice for case construction, considering the heat a G4 puts off, and the limited airflow inside a laptop case. This thing gets hot. I've burned my fingers on the spot just above the function keys (right over the power supply and CPU) twice.
2) I think they changed the keyboard. Key travel on the 12" PB seems slightly shorter than on the iBook, and with less tactile response (the keys feel "mushier" than the iBook). I don't like the keyboard.
3) It's an 867Mhz G4 in a machine smaller than my old iBook. It's easily the most powerful portable I've ever owned (in addition to the iBook I've also had a Fujitsu E-Series and Sony Vaio in the last 6 months).
4) AirPort range is the same, if not better, than my iBook, and I have had no problems operating the AirPort Extreme card with my 802.11b network (with a Linksys WAP).
These are just the major points I can think of off the top of my head. Overall, except for the heat issue (and it's a serious problem), I am very happy with the 12" PowerBook, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who needs a lightweight, powerful, portable machine.
Let's begin: 1) Code must be written for a SMP architecture.
For an individual application to use both processors at the same time, it must be threaded. If the application is not threaded, the scheduler will run another process on the unused CPU (this is of course greatly simplifying things).
3) The PowerPC is dated, and built on a process that cannot compete. So what if a PPC is slightly more efficient - its still slow.
The PowerPC is dated how? It's based on a more modern and efficient instruction set than the creaking x86 of the P4. As for the design of the processor itself, do you know how much a cache miss costs on a hyperthreaded P4? It's pretty spendy to flush a twenty-stage pipeline with two separate execution contexts in it at the same time. Meanwhile, Motorola is continually refining their manufacturing process, and getting higher and higher yields of faster and faster chips. Oh, and if the PPC is so dated, why does IBM ship so many Power4-based machines? Surely if the x86 was sooo much better they would be shipping Intel-based mainframes like mad, wouldn't they?
Or the most common answer from Oracle tech team is "we know its a problem but we will not fix it in this release. Just buy the next version if you want it fixed ?
Actually, they suggest you upgrade to the newest version, not that you buy anything new. Licenses purchased from Oracle are for a product family for a length of time determined by the license. For example: if you bought a four-year single cpu Enterprise Edition license two years ago when 8i was the current release, you have the right to use 9i, and 10i when it appears, until the end of your license term.
To our disgust and surprise, we found that Oracle had completely dropped FORTRAN support from their product.
At first they told us that it was still there, but our new system wasn't configured right. Dozens of emails later, they finally found out the truth, and admitted it to us: you cannot rely on Oracle.
If you can't rely on Oracle, you either have unrealistic expectations of their support department, or you do not understand the system. That's not a personal attack - Oracle is huge, and it takes an enormous investment of time and energy to become an Oracle expert; that is why people build whole careers solely around working with Oracle. But it does mean that before you attack Oracle, you should do your best to understand it.
Case in point: I have sitting behind me the Pro*FORTRAN manual for Oracle 8i, which we are currently using (8i, not FORTRAN), and just reviewed the installation requirements for 9i, which included a section on installation requirements for Pro*FORTRAN.
At least I'm covered when a new game comes out, but even then I'm faced with difficult decisions. When we want a game that's available for more than one platform, we have to decide which version to get, resigned to the knowledge that we're gonna be committed to playing said game at one of three locations (The Home Theater, the kids' playroom, or my son's bedroom).
Do what I did: buy a big-screen HDTV with multiple component inputs, and then get the component video cables for each console. Of course, then you just end up fighting because your girlfriend wants to play Animal Crossing while you want to play BMX XXX. That's when I go into the bedroom and watch a DVD, or into the office and veg out to BF1942 or Earth and Beyond. Or space out with some tunes from the iPod. Or play Advance Wars on the GBA.
Wow...I'm a complete electronics whore.
Oh, and exclusivity does suck for the consumer, but at the end of the day these companies aren't in business to please us - they're in business to take our money with as little overhead for them as possible. Pleasing the customer is an ancillary concern at best.
I have to disagree. Secrets and Lies is a great book because it is not technical. It presents clearly the problems and challenges associated with securing a system, and then discusses means to solve the problems and overcome the challenges. It makes you realize that security must be an integral part of a system, not a bolted-on afterthought.
In discussing these things in a non-technical manner, Schneier gets you (as a developer) to stop thinking about which trendy algorithm or PKI you're going to tack on to your product to call it secure, and start thinking about the security of the system itself. So you use cryptography; so what? What's the point in encrypting your data if you don't also ensure its authenticity and origin? You're using PKI to secure communications; so what? Are you also ensuring the security and integrity of the keys' local storage? Security is a process, not a product, and the biggest problem with purely technical books on cryptography or security (they're not the same thing) is that they give the impression that you can sprinkle their code samples throughout your project and have it be magically secure.
It's a bit like me reading a book on security and declaring myself an expert because I read a book on security. Knowledge != understanding.
Whitfield Diffie, who has probably has forgotten more about crypto than 99.9% of us will ever know, explains why secrecy does not equal security.
For an excellent treatment of this important point, that secrecy != security, read Bruce Schneier's "Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World".
It's the best book on the topic available.
Maybe there's a compromise. How about a modest PHP opcode cache that has only some of zend's features; ie. a little bit slower and more conservative than zends.
The problem with this idea is that it's neither practical or smart to build a partial opcode cache. In a vanilla install, a PHP script goes through three stages: interpretation, compilation, and execution.
The script is first read, parsed for correct syntax and validity. It is then translated to a bytecode format that the Zend engine understands, and executed. The main thing the Zend Performance Suite does is to make the bytecode persistent, so the expensive interpretation phase happens only once per script.
So, given this simple process, how do you make a partial opcode cache? Only make every other script that is run persistent? Only make certain parts of the script persistent? It's pretty much an all-or-nothing thing. You could say that a partial opcode cache would not perform the optimizations that Zend's product does, but that doesn't work either - Zend already gives away the Zend Optimizer for free (which itself is a great product for speeding up your overall PHP performance).
I don't have the answer to this question, but considering that neither do Zend or the PHP team, there must be something to my reasoning.
I appreciate the work the zend guys have done, trust me I do. But that's an important feature to leave out.
I disagree completely. Variable variables, regex, and disk I/O are important features to leave out. PHP is a *language*. Do you bug IBM's javac team, or the Blackdown project because Java doesn't support covariant return typing? No. Why not? Because that's a language feature, and those guys deal with the runtime. Conversely if you want something that's a runtime issue (such as persistent bytecode), then you talk to the guys who are responsible for the runtime. The PHP developers are responsible for developing PHP as a language, and the API which supports it. They're not responsible for the runtime, Zend is.
Re:consider running an opcode cache
on
PHP 4.3.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Why no official PHP Opcode cache [weblogs.com]? 30-200% performance gain
Simply asked, simply answered: there is no "official" PHP opcode caching because PHP relies on the Zend engine and the PHP developers work very closely with the people at Zend, who sell the Zend Performance Suite (formerly Zend Accelerator), and the guys at PHP are not about to cut into Zend's livelihood by bundling a product with PHP which makes the Zend product redundant.
Actually, the prefork MPM module is the old 1.3-style model. Worker is a well-known threading model wherein a "boss" thread delegates work to a pool of "workers" and queues work requests when all workers are busy. Of course, it's more involved than that, and there are several sub-models of the Boss/Worker model, but you get the point.
Actually, the more modern anti-radar missles have a loiter capability - they'll circle until the radar comes back on. not sure what the heck they do if it never comes back on....
True, but those aren't AGM-88 HARMs. And yes, I am an anal bastard.
This was a decent attempt at a troll, but I feel you could have gone much further with this. You see, the hallmark of a truly great troll is the ability to push something to such an extreme that it greatly offends everybody, even people who agree with you. With that simple principle in mind, allow me to re-format your original post so that it fits snugly into the mold of a great troll.
Ahem...
I learned php a few months ago, but I think I'll stick to perl. If you're making some simple web pages that just need to be marked up, I guess php is okay, but why bother adding a php module to Apache when you've got mod-perl?
Should read:
I learned PHP a few months ago, but I think I'll stick to machine code on the bare hardware. If you're making simple web pages, why bother letting an enormous pile of cruft (like all of Linux) get in your way when you've got all the power and simplicity of machine code available? Besides, who really trusts a big, creaking mass of code put together by a bunch of Communists in Finland?
In Perl, the language helps you, but php just seems to get in the way. Without the equivalent of Perl's excellent DBI/DBD, I don't see much use for php.
You missed a golden opportunity here. Here's an easy fix:
In machine code, the machine helps you by locking up and smoking when you make a typo, but PHP just seems to get in the way by spitting out a bunch of cryptic error messages. Why pollute an already clean error-reporting mechanism (the machine locking up and setting my desk on fire), with a bunch of crud like "Error: Syntax error in line 16", when high-level messages like that only abstract away the true source of the error? Frankly, without the equivalent of machine code's clear and easy-to-understand near and far pointers (on x86, of course, but who really uses that RISC crap, right?), I don't see much use for PHP.
So now, armed with a more complete understanding of the True Way of the Troll, the next time you make a boob of yourself in front of all of Slashdot, you'll do it in a thoughtful, thorough manner.
HARM missiles are designed to quickly knock out enemy AA and SAM sites - that is, after the site has lit up, but before they can engage friendly aircraft. Feel free to try to outrun a missile with the term 'high-speed' right in its' name.
Also, HARMs only lock on to the signal they're targeted at on launch. If the signal is lost, the missile's guidance software assumes the site has simply turned off their radar/radiation source, flies to the last known location of said source, and blows up. End result: you're still dead.
They were talking about Militia's so that states would be able to protect themselves from an oppressive federal government. NOT so that all people could have guns.
Uhh...a militia is a body of citizens organized for military service. A citizen is an inhabitant of a city or town; especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman. These are dictionary definitions, not my own.
So, a militia is a group of *private citizens* organized for military action, usually in defense of their township or state, and armed not through federal funds or subsidies, but through their own means.
Tell me again how the second amendment doesn't guarantee private citizens the right to bear arms?
Slashdot Mirror
Just one thing:
;).
India is the world's largest democracy, not the United States of America.
India is the world's most populous democracy. We're still the largest (square-footage-wise
Oh, and all news agencies - privately held, government sponsored, or otherwise - will report their news with some bias. There is no area of human endeavor untainted by group or individual bias or prejudice. The news media is especially susceptible to introducing bias, or adding spin, to its reporting: they're trying to get eyeballs, folks, and keep them. The best way to do that is to present sensationalist, skewed stories as fact, and keep shovelling it on an undereducated and gullible public.
I call Bullshit.
You obviously don't know many talented artists or musicians. My brother plays the piano, the guitar (now) and pretty much anything else he wants to. All he has to do to play an instrument is pick it up, knock out a few notes to get an idea, and that's all she wrote.
There is no magic bullet or even way of thinking that is overnight going to make IT projects run on time and on budget.
Amen. Unfortunately, most publishers would find it difficult to sell a book entitled "This Book Will Not Magically Solve All of Your Software Development Problems".
Software Engineering has a substantial creative component to it that is far more akin to music or art than to other forms of engineering.
Agreed, however... the substantial creative component is utterly useless without at least a modicum of technical proficiency. I once watched my younger brother, who has an amazing talent for music, pick up a violin for the first time ever and, after a few quick plucks, play a Johnathan Kingham (JK rocks, BTW, another amazingly talented musician) tune off the cuff perfectly. On the other hand, I have never seen someone with the creative talent for programming, but no technical profiency (like even being able to explain what O(1) means) produce anything other than amazingly creative pieces of crap. My job allows me to influence the hiring of developers for my company, and I will approve an unimaginative bore with a strong technical skillset over a brilliant, dynamic, non-educated h4x0r any day. Why? Because I can depend on the bore, instead of hoping for a flight of creative fancy from the h4x0r to get a project in on time.
And just like music or art;
* a few of us are REALLY GOOD
* some of can perform the programming equivalent of playing "Three Blind Mice" on the piano
* and some of us SUCK.
I have to say you're completely wrong here. The real list:
1) Less than 1% of us are the Mozarts, Bachs, and Chopins of our profession. Think Linus, RMS, Gosling, etc.
2) Less than 20% of us are talented and skilled, but not brilliant - Dave Matthews Band, Bob Marley, Norah Jones, so on and so forth.
3) The majority of us have a modicum of talent, and the solid skillset to keep us working in this business. The bar bands and lounge acts of our profession - not making it big, but still making it.
The guys who suck don't make the list because this is a profession and the people who really suck are weeded out fairly quickly. And no, just because somebody does things differently from the way you would do them, or uses a proven, solid technique rather than a tricky one, does not mean they suck. It means they have a different way of doing things. Deal with it.
That said, it does seem that the people who suck are the most vocal about their 31337 sk1llz, and therefore the most annoying.
import standard.disclaimer;
...there's too much prior art.
Oh, wait...
FYI, IBM produces most of the G3 processors used in Apple's iBook product line.
IBM and Apple is not weird at all, unless you don't bother to research a platform before commenting on it.
I just got a 12" PowerBook, replacing my 12" iBook. My thoughts:
1) Aluminum was a poor choice for case construction, considering the heat a G4 puts off, and the limited airflow inside a laptop case. This thing gets hot. I've burned my fingers on the spot just above the function keys (right over the power supply and CPU) twice.
2) I think they changed the keyboard. Key travel on the 12" PB seems slightly shorter than on the iBook, and with less tactile response (the keys feel "mushier" than the iBook). I don't like the keyboard.
3) It's an 867Mhz G4 in a machine smaller than my old iBook. It's easily the most powerful portable I've ever owned (in addition to the iBook I've also had a Fujitsu E-Series and Sony Vaio in the last 6 months).
4) AirPort range is the same, if not better, than my iBook, and I have had no problems operating the AirPort Extreme card with my 802.11b network (with a Linksys WAP).
These are just the major points I can think of off the top of my head. Overall, except for the heat issue (and it's a serious problem), I am very happy with the 12" PowerBook, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who needs a lightweight, powerful, portable machine.
Let's begin:
1) Code must be written for a SMP architecture.
3) The PowerPC is dated, and built on a process that cannot compete. So what if a PPC is slightly more efficient - its still slow.
Or the most common answer from Oracle tech team is "we know its a problem but we will not fix it in this release. Just buy the next version if you want it fixed ?
...according to my Oracle sales rep.
Actually, they suggest you upgrade to the newest version, not that you buy anything new. Licenses purchased from Oracle are for a product family for a length of time determined by the license. For example: if you bought a four-year single cpu Enterprise Edition license two years ago when 8i was the current release, you have the right to use 9i, and 10i when it appears, until the end of your license term.
To our disgust and surprise, we found that Oracle had completely dropped FORTRAN support from their product.
At first they told us that it was still there, but our new system wasn't configured right. Dozens of emails later, they finally found out the truth, and admitted it to us: you cannot rely on Oracle.
If you can't rely on Oracle, you either have unrealistic expectations of their support department, or you do not understand the system. That's not a personal attack - Oracle is huge, and it takes an enormous investment of time and energy to become an Oracle expert; that is why people build whole careers solely around working with Oracle. But it does mean that before you attack Oracle, you should do your best to understand it.
Case in point: I have sitting behind me the Pro*FORTRAN manual for Oracle 8i, which we are currently using (8i, not FORTRAN), and just reviewed the installation requirements for 9i, which included a section on installation requirements for Pro*FORTRAN.
At least I'm covered when a new game comes out, but even then I'm faced with difficult decisions. When we want a game that's available for more than one platform, we have to decide which version to get, resigned to the knowledge that we're gonna be committed to playing said game at one of three locations (The Home Theater, the kids' playroom, or my son's bedroom).
Do what I did: buy a big-screen HDTV with multiple component inputs, and then get the component video cables for each console. Of course, then you just end up fighting because your girlfriend wants to play Animal Crossing while you want to play BMX XXX. That's when I go into the bedroom and watch a DVD, or into the office and veg out to BF1942 or Earth and Beyond. Or space out with some tunes from the iPod. Or play Advance Wars on the GBA.
Wow...I'm a complete electronics whore.
Oh, and exclusivity does suck for the consumer, but at the end of the day these companies aren't in business to please us - they're in business to take our money with as little overhead for them as possible. Pleasing the customer is an ancillary concern at best.
Thanks for the pointer. I'll be sure to read Dr. Anderson's book next.
I'm looking forward to Schneier's next one, as well.
I have to disagree. Secrets and Lies is a great book because it is not technical. It presents clearly the problems and challenges associated with securing a system, and then discusses means to solve the problems and overcome the challenges. It makes you realize that security must be an integral part of a system, not a bolted-on afterthought.
In discussing these things in a non-technical manner, Schneier gets you (as a developer) to stop thinking about which trendy algorithm or PKI you're going to tack on to your product to call it secure, and start thinking about the security of the system itself. So you use cryptography; so what? What's the point in encrypting your data if you don't also ensure its authenticity and origin? You're using PKI to secure communications; so what? Are you also ensuring the security and integrity of the keys' local storage? Security is a process, not a product, and the biggest problem with purely technical books on cryptography or security (they're not the same thing) is that they give the impression that you can sprinkle their code samples throughout your project and have it be magically secure.
It's a bit like me reading a book on security and declaring myself an expert because I read a book on security. Knowledge != understanding.
Whitfield Diffie, who has probably has forgotten more about crypto than 99.9% of us will ever know, explains why secrecy does not equal security.
For an excellent treatment of this important point, that secrecy != security, read Bruce Schneier's "Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World".
It's the best book on the topic available.
while() { drink_guiness(); }
:)
Will fail to compile. Should be while(1).
-the sig source Nazi
Maybe there's a compromise. How about a modest PHP opcode cache that has only some of zend's features; ie. a little bit slower and more conservative than zends.
The problem with this idea is that it's neither practical or smart to build a partial opcode cache. In a vanilla install, a PHP script goes through three stages: interpretation, compilation, and execution.
The script is first read, parsed for correct syntax and validity. It is then translated to a bytecode format that the Zend engine understands, and executed. The main thing the Zend Performance Suite does is to make the bytecode persistent, so the expensive interpretation phase happens only once per script.
So, given this simple process, how do you make a partial opcode cache? Only make every other script that is run persistent? Only make certain parts of the script persistent? It's pretty much an all-or-nothing thing. You could say that a partial opcode cache would not perform the optimizations that Zend's product does, but that doesn't work either - Zend already gives away the Zend Optimizer for free (which itself is a great product for speeding up your overall PHP performance).
I don't have the answer to this question, but considering that neither do Zend or the PHP team, there must be something to my reasoning.
I appreciate the work the zend guys have done, trust me I do. But that's an important feature to leave out.
I disagree completely. Variable variables, regex, and disk I/O are important features to leave out. PHP is a *language*. Do you bug IBM's javac team, or the Blackdown project because Java doesn't support covariant return typing? No. Why not? Because that's a language feature, and those guys deal with the runtime. Conversely if you want something that's a runtime issue (such as persistent bytecode), then you talk to the guys who are responsible for the runtime. The PHP developers are responsible for developing PHP as a language, and the API which supports it. They're not responsible for the runtime, Zend is.
Why no official PHP Opcode cache [weblogs.com]? 30-200% performance gain
Simply asked, simply answered: there is no "official" PHP opcode caching because PHP relies on the Zend engine and the PHP developers work very closely with the people at Zend, who sell the Zend Performance Suite (formerly Zend Accelerator), and the guys at PHP are not about to cut into Zend's livelihood by bundling a product with PHP which makes the Zend product redundant.
Actually, the prefork MPM module is the old 1.3-style model. Worker is a well-known threading model wherein a "boss" thread delegates work to a pool of "workers" and queues work requests when all workers are busy. Of course, it's more involved than that, and there are several sub-models of the Boss/Worker model, but you get the point.
Doesn't this just beat all? I posted the "cooty rat semen" anagram 33 minutes before mu did - I get modded down for being offtopic, he gets modded +1.
Not trying to claim "first post" on a f*cking anagram (that I didn't even come up with), just pointing out that some 'dot moderator is a jackass.
You must never have seen the movie 'Sneakers', as the story's poster did.
Do some research or ask around before you decide to be an asshole next time. It was a joke, topical to a reference in the posted story.
Don't you mean 'cooty rat semen'?
Actually, the more modern anti-radar missles have a loiter capability - they'll circle until the radar comes back on. not sure what the heck they do if it never comes back on....
True, but those aren't AGM-88 HARMs. And yes, I am an anal bastard.
This was a decent attempt at a troll, but I feel you could have gone much further with this. You see, the hallmark of a truly great troll is the ability to push something to such an extreme that it greatly offends everybody, even people who agree with you. With that simple principle in mind, allow me to re-format your original post so that it fits snugly into the mold of a great troll.
Ahem...
I learned php a few months ago, but I think I'll stick to perl. If you're making some simple web pages that just need to be marked up, I guess php is okay, but why bother adding a php module to Apache when you've got mod-perl?
Should read:
I learned PHP a few months ago, but I think I'll stick to machine code on the bare hardware. If you're making simple web pages, why bother letting an enormous pile of cruft (like all of Linux) get in your way when you've got all the power and simplicity of machine code available? Besides, who really trusts a big, creaking mass of code put together by a bunch of Communists in Finland?
In Perl, the language helps you, but php just seems to get in the way. Without the equivalent of Perl's excellent DBI/DBD, I don't see much use for php.
You missed a golden opportunity here. Here's an easy fix:
In machine code, the machine helps you by locking up and smoking when you make a typo, but PHP just seems to get in the way by spitting out a bunch of cryptic error messages. Why pollute an already clean error-reporting mechanism (the machine locking up and setting my desk on fire), with a bunch of crud like "Error: Syntax error in line 16", when high-level messages like that only abstract away the true source of the error? Frankly, without the equivalent of machine code's clear and easy-to-understand near and far pointers (on x86, of course, but who really uses that RISC crap, right?), I don't see much use for PHP.
So now, armed with a more complete understanding of the True Way of the Troll, the next time you make a boob of yourself in front of all of Slashdot, you'll do it in a thoughtful, thorough manner.
HARM = High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile
HARM missiles are designed to quickly knock out enemy AA and SAM sites - that is, after the site has lit up, but before they can engage friendly aircraft. Feel free to try to outrun a missile with the term 'high-speed' right in its' name.
Also, HARMs only lock on to the signal they're targeted at on launch. If the signal is lost, the missile's guidance software assumes the site has simply turned off their radar/radiation source, flies to the last known location of said source, and blows up. End result: you're still dead.
>memcpy( &yourFace , &myFoot, sizoef( myFoot ) );
undefined reference to `sizoef'
One syntax error to rule them all...
They were talking about Militia's so that states would be able to protect themselves from an oppressive federal government. NOT so that all people could have guns.
Uhh...a militia is a body of citizens organized for military service. A citizen is an inhabitant of a city or town; especially : one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman. These are dictionary definitions, not my own.
So, a militia is a group of *private citizens* organized for military action, usually in defense of their township or state, and armed not through federal funds or subsidies, but through their own means.
Tell me again how the second amendment doesn't guarantee private citizens the right to bear arms?