Search warrant. Rights waived by judicial system. You have the right to bear arms, not use them indescriminantly. There is no conflict here, it is set up so 2 distant parties, one of them neutral, must come to an agreement before this can happen.
Although I do see another poster in this threads point that you might have a smidgen of a case if you pursued the fact that you shot them do to trespassing without giving opportunity to inspect the warrant. You'd lose of course, but its a good point.
The idea of "play" strongly influences overt behavior, and at some level it is common sense. For humans, as for other animals, play models behavior-- this especially true for kids. Those cute wolf cubs rolling around onscreen in Mutual Of Omaha practice tearing the shit out of each other and prey animals; but when play gets too rough or passes some indefinite period, they immediately shift to more friendly modes of action: grooming, bonding. In Quake OTOH the asskicking and gibbing goes on without end or respite. It's almost a perfect realization of the fantasy world of a disassociative paranoid schizo --all deathwish and adreno-fear-rushes *all* the time! I know that I have experienced increased violent urges after long periods of playing quake and --my old favorite!--Carmaggedon (possibly the *perfect* game of all time except DOS grfx suck). It's hard exactly to explain the nature of the urges, it's not like they are totally new, heretofore unexperienced feelings --the games introduce nothing new-- they just kind of spread more freely after I've done a lot of kill-play games. I am generally too busy to play these things anymore so I am comparing on and off periods in my life when I could. No question about it: after a bout of Carmaggedon, I am in greater danger of doing something stupid with my car when rudely cutoff by another driver. And woe to the pedestrian who decides to test my tolerance of jaywalking !(I live in an urban area, so passive-aggressive jaywalking streetpeople are common hazard)
When we are in adolescence, the autonomous imaginative dreamworld of childhood is still a truly formidable and unpredictable god moving our limbs and suddenly usurping our thoughts: the kid who is to all appearances a little adult 6 days out of seven, may say or do anything, anything at all, on that seventh day. Lots of exposure to ultraviolence, aggression without the slimmest veil of sublimation with blood and guts and heads bouncing down stairs, will unquestionably have an negative impact on the personality dev of anybody. Gameplay like Art is profoundly meaningful, valuative, and exemplary. Better the kids spend their time learning C, taking piano, playing tennis, going to raves, having sex and staring at Botticelli paintings than doing this stuff. Sadly our society makes a lot of these more difficult to attain than it should and almost completely forbids them to some of its members, which gives so much financial incentive for pushing the bloodsport fantasy games.
Alas, I've tried that, but he just didn't seem to fit in my life in that regard. Maybe there is another way. It's so frustrating trying to become a christian when there are so few people willing to help you turn your life over to Jesus.
After reading about the sexy encounter with the mechanic, I realized that my feelings of emptiness might subside if I were to let Jesus into my life. I have thought about doing this for years now, and have tried various ways to let him into my life, but unfortunately I have never been successful. Perhaps you could help me accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior?
Libraries have had books and magazines with nudity in them and books and magazines with violent pictures in them, many parents have complained, a few have sued, I don't know of anybody who has won a lawsuit (the library is, afterall, not a babysitting service, though some parents treat it as such).
The Library Bill of Rights, created by the American Library Association states in part:
Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas. A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
It's amazing that something as revolutionary as the single chip computer could come out of an engineer staring at thirteen separate schematics and saying, "Ok, but what about doing this with one chip?" And then being in the right circumstances to do it.
The single-chip CPU is arguably the most important development of late 20th century, and it's exponential improvement (Moore's Law) is what drives the information economy. So what happens when Moore's law runs out?
If current trends are projected forward, by 2020 a bit of memory will be a single electron transistor, traces will be one molecule wide, and the cost of the fabrication plant will be the GNP of the planet. The speed of light imposes practical limits on how large you can make a chip and how fast you can clock one. This is why we'll have GHz chips, but fundamental physical laws prevent THz chips.
More importantly, the physical limits that shut down THz electronic computers apply to _any_ classical computing architecture; optical computing and other exotic technology can't beat the speed of light, or single-particle storage problems.
You can't win by going to SMP, because at best you get a linear increase with each processor; exponential increases in power require exponential increases in processor number, which require exponential increases in space and power consumption.
The only basis in physics for continuing Moore's law past classical computing is quantum computing. In a quantum computer N quantum bits (qbits) equals 2^N classical bits. This allows you to build a computer which scales exponentially with the physical resources of the computer. Quantum computing isn't a solved problem, but if and when it is it will be a revolution as big as the first single-chip CPU.
I'm not particularly concerned about hitting a theoretical limit to hardware power. At the moment, I'm typing on a system that has unimaginable 20 years ago.
Yet it crashes often enough to be noticeable.
It runs so slowly (a "mere" Pentium 400) that I can actually see my windows redraw.
Booting takes 5 minutes (NT 4.0)
Shutting down takes several minutes, too.
Maybe hitting a limit to processor power will encourage programmers to reintroduce the concept of "knowing how to write good code." Lord knows processor speed and cheap memory have made it possible for even the best programmers to stop thinking about code quality.
I've seen a presentation by some Mainsoft folks. The license fees aren't that bad. Basically you need a Mainsoft client runtime license for each desktop you want to run your "ported" applications on (I'm fairly sure that it's a per-seat, not per-app license), and, IIRC, the desktop license was in the range of $50 - $100 USD. Which is the same ballpark as a Windows 9x license, but Mainsoft's target is companies, where WinNT/2000 are the more likely desktop equivalents. So it's much cheaper than VMWare ($300 USD per commercial license + you still need an MS OS license). And, if you're having trouble with Windows, the increased overall stability and other benefits of Linux or Unix may easily justify the per seat fee.
MSFT used Mainsoft's tools to port IE to the flavors of Unix it already runs on, e.g. Solaris. So this isn't really big news. MS has already ported IE. They've talked about porting MediaPlayer. Both are yet more examples of anticompetitive "dumping" practices.
I don't know what to make of Microsoft's actions. On the one hand, it behooves all of us to understand that under different circumstances, Microsoft's cronies might have ended up as arrogant big-mouths drifting the streets -- perverted churlish iconoclastic-types pressing tracts crammed with conspiracies into the palms of startled passersby. But on the other hand, it can be distinguished only with difficulty which of Microsoft's lackeys act out of inner stupidity or incompetence and which only pretend to for whatever pathetic, daft reason. And that's why I feel compelled to say something about contemptible windbags.
Microsoft's views are continually evolving into more and more foolish incarnations. Here, I'm not just talking about evolution in a simply Darwinist sense; I'm also talking about how every time Microsoft gets caught trying to make bribery legal and part of business as usual, it promises it'll never do so again. Subsequently, its henchmen always jump in and explain that it really shouldn't be blamed even if it does, because, as they think, all any child needs is a big dose of television every day. Has Microsoft told its assistants that it wants to ridicule, parody, censor, and downgrade opposing wisecracks? Has it given any thought to what would happen if it did? Of course, these questions are ridiculous -- as ridiculous as its insane viperine offhand remarks. If there is one truth in this world, it's that we must lend support to the thesis that if Microsoft opened up its abhorrent mind just a teeny-weeny little bit, maybe it could understand that. Our children depend on that.
Is there a chance that Microsoft isn't lethargic, deplorable, and batty? From what I've seen, I doubt it. Did it ever occur to Microsoft that maybe its helpers argue, against a steady accretion of facts of already mountainous proportions, that we'd all be better off if they'd just divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely necessary? Dream on. Microsoft and its toadies are illaudable scofflaws. This is not set down in complaint against them, but merely as analysis. Shame on Microsoft for thinking that people like you and me are nugatory! Anyone who follows today's debates on imperialism and, by happenstance, is also familiar with Microsoft's nefarious pronouncements, is struck by that old truism: Microsoft has found a way to avoid compliance with government regulations, circumvent any further litigation, and make mountains out of molehills -- all by trumping up a phony emergency.
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see that Microsoft's supporters will put the gods of heaven into the corner as obsolete and outmoded and, in their stead, burn incense to the idol Mammon in the coming days. You know what I mean? If I hear Microsoft's slaves say, "Microsoft is a model organization" one more time, I'm doubtlessly going to throw up.
This is not wild speculation. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is documented fact. We can all have daydreams about Happy Fuzzy Purple Bunny Land, where everyone is caring, loving, and nice. Not only will those daydreams not come true, but Microsoft keeps telling us that it knows the "right" way to read Plato, Maimonides, and Machiavelli. Are we also supposed to believe that it has achieved sainthood? If I weren't so forgiving, I'd have to say that Microsoft's beer-guzzling opinions are in full flower, and their poisonous petals of denominationalism are blooming all around us. Microsoft maintains that it can achieve its goals by friendly and moral conduct. Even if this were so, Microsoft would still be fastidious. But Microsoft's accusations all stem from one, simple, faulty premise -- that the Earth is flat.
The practical struggle which now begins, sketched in broad outlines, takes the following course: I'm sticking out my neck a bit in talking about Microsoft's propositions. It's quite likely it will try to retaliate against me for my telling you that I will never give up. I will never stop trying. And I will use every avenue possible to comment on a phenomenon that has and will continue to leave us in the lurch. Microsoft's perspective is that the Queen of England heads up the international drug cartel. My perspective, in contrast, is that when Microsoft hears anyone say that its stupidity concerning Dadaism is laughable, its answer is to progressively enlarge and increasingly centralize the means of oppression, exploitation, violence, and destruction. That's similar to taking a few drunken swings at a beehive: it just makes me want even more to recall the ideals of compassion, nonviolence, community, and cooperation while remaining true to those beliefs, ideals, and aspirations we hold most dear.
My message is clear: Microsoft's musings are one of those things that will stretch credulity beyond the breaking point. To top that off, Microsoft's most progressive idea is to doctor evidence and classification systems and make oppressive generalizations to support disgusting, preconceived views. If that sounds progressive to you, you must be facing the wrong way. Catty ignoramuses (like Microsoft) are not born -- they are excreted. However unsavory that metaphor may be, several things Microsoft has said have brought me to the boiling point. The statement of its that made the strongest impression on me, however, was something to the effect of how it is the one who will lead us to our great shining future. Even people who consider themselves patronizing gutter-dwellers generally agree that it strikes me as amusing that Microsoft complains about people who do nothing but complain. Well, news flash! It does nothing but complain. Microsoft wants to encourage every sort of indiscipline and degeneracy in the name of freedom. What's wrong with that? What's wrong is Microsoft's grasp of reality.
Hey, it's not my fault that Microsoft extricates itself from difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. Even though supposedly distancing itself from rabid pesky carousers, Microsoft has really not changed its spots at all. Will raucous pettifoggers ever protect little children from brain-damaged knee-biters like Microsoft? Don't bet on it. If Microsoft isn't scummy, I don't know who is. There are lessons to be learned from history, and everyone with half a brain understands that.
Just think: Microsoft doesn't use words for communication or for exchanging information. It uses them to disarm, to hypnotize, to mislead, and to deceive. As I noted at the beginning of this letter, if Microsoft is going to talk about higher standards, then it needs to live by those higher standards. Microsoft's "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude is venal, because it leaves no room for compromise. Although I can no more change the past than see the future, it's safe to say that if Microsoft has spurred us to change the minds of those who turn the trickle of absolutism into a tidal wave, then Microsoft may have accomplished a useful thing. I must emphasize that that statement can be most easily defended, since it is not quantitative, but qualitative. Let me rephrase that: At least 80 percent of the people in this country recognize that Microsoft's ability to give voice, in a totally emotional and non-rational way, to Microsoft's deep-rooted love of despotism is astounding. The best example of this, culled from many, would have to be the time Microsoft tried to pit people against each other.
Although Microsoft has tremendous popular appeal, the last time I told its minions that I want to work together towards a shared vision, they declared in response, "But individual worth is defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin." Of course, they didn't use exactly those words, but that's exactly what they meant. Other mephitic usurers are also consumed with a desire to deny both our individual and collective responsibility to live in harmony with each other and the world, but, as you know, I'm not a psychiatrist. Sometimes, though, I wish I were, so that I could better understand what makes organizations like Microsoft want to pour a few drops of wormwood into our general enthusiasm. Does anybody else feel the way I do, or am I alone in my disgust with Microsoft?
When a star collapses the matter begins to implode upon a point, eventually crossing the point where the escape velocity becomes greater than the speed of light and a black hole is formed. The edge of this black hole is what we call the event horizon - anything passing within the event horizon cannot ever escape. The simple solution is described by the Schwartzchild metric.
The matter however is still collapsing to a point at the centre of the black hole. According to general relativity there is nothing to stop this collapse and we end up with a point of infinite density and zero volume - a singularity.
However when you come to rotating black holes (described by the Kerr metric) there are differences. The angular momentum of a collapsing star is conserved, and this causes the black hole's event horizon to bulge out along the equitorial plane, much like the Earth has a slight bulge around its equator. Indeed, the central singularity itself forms a torus rather than a point when the black hole is rotating.
As angular momentum is increased this bulge gets bigger and the polar size of the event horizon shrinks, until eventually you are left without an event horizon at all, but just a torus-shaped singularity, which is said to be "naked".
Of course, whether a naked singularity can ever exist is an open question. There is something called the "Cosmic Censorship Principle" which states that the laws of physics will never allow a naked singularity to form, but the final answer is "we don't know".
Also of interest is that since the naked singularity would be in the shape of a torus you could theoretically pass through the centre of the torus and find yourself somewhere completely different, possibly even in another universe!
For a fairly technical intro to black holes and singularities, see this article at suite101.
Black holes can be detected (in theory of course) by looking for the emissions they give off. The theory goes (extremely roughly) that as individual particles reach the "edge" (event horizon?) of the black hole (crossing this line means you never come back), some of them are torn apart, half of the particle going in, half going out, and some energy is released during this fission. It is these fissions at the edge that make a black hole appear to give off energy, and make it detectable.
That type of radiation is called Hawking Radiation (after Stephen Hawking, naturally). However, this isn't what lets us detect black holes, as Hawking Radiation is ridiculously faint. Black holes can be detected by the X-Rays that they "inadvertantly" produce. When matter is falling into a black hole it is accelerated, heated, and compressed to such a degree that it gives off large amounts of X-Rays. I believe the first black hole we detected (again, assuming black holes exist), was Cygnus X-1 (or cygnus something), and we detected it by the x-rays it gave off.
Another method of detecting black holes is to look for graviational lensing effects. Because black holes are so massive, they bend the fabric of space time. (Imagine a sheet suspended in the air. Place marbles on the sheet. The marbles make depressions on the sheet, like stars make "depressions" in space-time. A black hole is so heavy, it's like dropping something that is the size of a marble but with the weight of a bowling ball onto the sheet. The sheet bends A LOT, and it actually will have a hole where the singularity is.) Light travels in a straight line, so if space-time curves, light also curves with space-time. Gravitational lensing was proved during a solar eclipse. Astronomers observing the eclipse noted that they were able to see stars that should have been blocked by the eclipsed sun. The sun's gravitational field caused enough "lensing" so that stars directly behind the star could be seen to either side of the star. So, if we find something out in space that is causing a LARGE amount of gravitational lensing, but we can't see anything, there's a chance it's a black hole. At that point we normally observe it more to determine if it is or isn't a black hole.
As much as I have liked 3DFX products in the past, that they have made a few (fatal?) errors on this product. One, reading the review, you get the defenite impression that this product was cobbled together quickly with many shortcuts that affect the overall quality, and then rushed to market in order to keep afloat against NVIDIA. The product almost has an air of desperation about it. While they do have a few good ideas, like being able to daisy-chain the processors in future products, I would bet heat and power considerations will limit this in the future. Overall, it is almost as if 3DFX is trying to cheat thier customers with a holding action while they, hopefully, deliver a once more superior product in the future.
And this isn't meant as flamebait, but I am sure they will ensue...
#1 problem is speed and scaleability. ASP engine will only cache 90 pages in P-code so if you run a large site you are pegging your web server interpreting.
#2 Maintenence. Maintainence is a pain in the butt by not seperating presentation from logic. You can tier out to a COM layer, but why not just take that approach to the extreme and create an ISAPI DLL that tiers the logic out to a COM layer?
#3 VBS. If this isn't the worst language ever designed..... Of course , you can embed JavaScreipt instead, or any other interpreter that is compatible, but most MS support for ASP, as well as sample code, ect.. is VBS.
All in all, ASP is fine for a small web project that needs to be built quickly. If you want to create a large site with lots of maintenence, your better off, IMHO using a 3-tier WEB/ISAPI, DCOM, SQL system, where web servers ONLY serve pages (eliminating the need for ugliness like MSMQ models), Business logic is in the DCOM layer, load balanced with MTS, and the DB is peachy on the backend (hopefully with some replication and failover).
This of course is if you insist on doing this on NT. Personally, I'd prefer CGI on apache...
I was saying "don't store scripts in a database to be pulled and used dynamically at run time"
I'm working on a database chuck full of VBScript and Java Script, with a script interpreter component loaded onto a dumb middle tier with all the business logic stored in the database as scripts!
His misconception of an SP sounded much like this system, and my recommendation is: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! It's SICK AND WRONG!
musing on finding ram in a system, I once: 1) Added nice "eye-candy" to a program... a kaleideoscopic display up in the corner that was truly hypnotising to watch. What it actually was was my datastructures being manipulated in video ram, disguised as nice eye-candy.
2) Told the printer to go off-line and used the 16K readable buffer that it had by querying the parrallell port.
Typically, from my experience, tight, memory and processor friendly code is easier to maintain and contains fewer bugs because the developer THOUGHT before implementing.
The "new school" of thought is that time to market is of utmost priority, which causes poor decisions to be made, like reliance on scripting languages and poor implementation. I have worked on multiple projects that required a ground-up rewrite because of performance and maintainability issues because rapid time to market was the only consideration.
The ironic thing about this is that the issues brought about by this philosophy almost invariably leads to a longer time to market because the bug bashing phases gets extended out so long.
Lessons to be learned: 1) ALWAYS treat performance and memory usage as prime concerns. This forces you to think algorythms through and avoids rewrites and broken code.
2) Generally it is better to implement in a tight, compiled language. These languages are exponentially more efficient and generally no harder (many times easier) to develop in then their scripted cousins (compare C++ to VBScript.. C++ is 6 months to learn, a year to master, VBScript is 12 hours to learn and a lifetime to master. Discussions about VBScript programming are invariably about how the underlying implementation works and how to opimize and overcome issues, whereas C++ programmers know what their compiler does and spend their time making their algorythms better.)
3) Keep it simple, stupid. If you can eliminate a component, do it, be it interpreter, server, datatbase, OS, GUI, Code, anything. The more peices a project has, the more things can go wrong and the less you can do about it. This is what I hate about the COM model when overused (as it often is). Sometimes a function should just be a function and a text file should just be a text file. Script, XML, multi-tier, component object models, these all have their place, but don't be afraid to not include them when they don't!
I was development lead on a Y2K support project for a major software company. We handed the project off to another division after version 1.0. When I was transfering my knowledge I was asked questions like:
Q) What database engine and model do you use? A) tab-delimited text file
Q) What what is your COM Model? A) It's just a single executable... no object model.
Q) Why didn't you use COM/DB? A) Why would I?
Turns out this team had written a similar app. Mine took about 15 seconds to do it's job and consisted of a single executable 200K in size... VERY old-school. Theirs took about 2 hours and contained about 10M of binaries.. Mine was developed and supported by a single dev and a single tester. Theirs, a team of 10 devs and 5 testers. Theirs got scrapped.
Old school rocks. You can put out more code in less time. I can put out less code in less time that does the same thing faster.
The master programmer adds features by deleting code. Until you grok how this is done, you are adding to the problem, not the solution.
He is speaking of a database concept of precompiling a batch of queries in SQL so they skip the input/parsing/optimization phase when called, which is a good idea for any complex, time consuming, or often called query.
I would have to completely agree with you on the issue of C++ being useful for fast code. I rarely use C anymore since any compiler worth it's weight will optimize stock C++ code at least as well as C as long as I know which features to avoid when I want tight code. I know how to avoid having a vtable, when not to use rtti, etc... of course, I wouldn't expect a newbie programmer to know what is good and what is bad, so therein lies the benefit of C; it forces you to write fast code. Personally, I like the flexibility of C++.. I like efficiency, but I also like a double dispatch from time to time =-)
Linux is NOT a "Hacking" tool. Linux is a viable competitor to Microsoft Windows which you are currently using. Linux competes on the free market which you speak of, just like any operating system or program. The people who use Linux are not "Hackers" but are people who prefer this operating system. "Hackers" or, more correctly, "Crackers" are the people that you are disgusted with. The creators of Linux believe that the free flow of information WITHIN A GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT MUTUALLY SUPPORT the free flow of information is beneficial to the development of new technology. They do not steal their technology from companies, they build their own. I believe strongly in the philosophies you espouse, but you are mistaken in your view of the intent of the Linux community.
Slashdot Mirror
That's where I am.
Search warrant. Rights waived by judicial system. You have the right to bear arms, not use them indescriminantly. There is no conflict here, it is set up so 2 distant parties, one of them neutral, must come to an agreement before this can happen.
Although I do see another poster in this threads point that you might have a smidgen of a case if you pursued the fact that you shot them do to trespassing without giving opportunity to inspect the warrant. You'd lose of course, but its a good point.
Scrotal inflation.
The idea of "play" strongly influences overt behavior, and at some level it is common sense. For humans, as for other animals, play models behavior-- this especially true for kids. Those cute wolf cubs rolling around onscreen in Mutual Of Omaha practice tearing the shit out of each other and prey animals; but when play gets too rough or passes some indefinite period, they immediately shift to more friendly modes of action: grooming, bonding. In Quake OTOH the asskicking and gibbing goes on without end or respite. It's almost a perfect realization of the fantasy world of a disassociative paranoid schizo --all deathwish and adreno-fear-rushes *all* the time! I know that I have experienced increased violent urges after long periods of playing quake and --my old favorite!--Carmaggedon (possibly the *perfect* game of all time except DOS grfx suck). It's hard exactly to explain the nature of the urges, it's not like they are totally new, heretofore unexperienced feelings --the games introduce nothing new-- they just kind of spread more freely after I've done a lot of kill-play games. I am generally too busy to play these things anymore so I am comparing on and off periods in my life when I could. No question about it: after a bout of Carmaggedon, I am in greater danger of doing something stupid with my car when rudely cutoff by another driver. And woe to the pedestrian who decides to test my tolerance of jaywalking !(I live in an urban area, so passive-aggressive jaywalking streetpeople are common hazard)
When we are in adolescence, the autonomous imaginative dreamworld of childhood is still a truly formidable and unpredictable god moving our limbs and suddenly usurping our thoughts: the kid who is to all appearances a little adult 6 days out of seven, may say or do anything, anything at all, on that seventh day. Lots of exposure to ultraviolence, aggression without the slimmest veil of sublimation with blood and guts and heads bouncing down stairs, will unquestionably have an negative impact on the personality dev of anybody. Gameplay like Art is profoundly meaningful, valuative, and exemplary. Better the kids spend their time learning C, taking piano, playing tennis, going to raves, having sex and staring at Botticelli paintings than doing this stuff. Sadly our society makes a lot of these more difficult to attain than it should and almost completely forbids them to some of its members, which gives so much financial incentive for pushing the bloodsport fantasy games.
Just because you don't agree with her doesn't make her a troll. Somebody mod this woman back up before I start thinking signal11 was right.
You get rid of it by removing it's reg key from the registry at something like:\ currentConfig\run
\\hkey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\windows
Alas, I've tried that, but he just didn't seem to fit in my life in that regard. Maybe there is another way. It's so frustrating trying to become a christian when there are so few people willing to help you turn your life over to Jesus.
After reading about the sexy encounter with the mechanic, I realized that my feelings of emptiness might subside if I were to let Jesus into my life. I have thought about doing this for years now, and have tried various ways to let him into my life, but unfortunately I have never been successful. Perhaps you could help me accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior?
Libraries have had books and magazines with nudity in them and books and magazines with violent pictures in them, many parents have complained, a few have sued, I don't know of anybody who has won a lawsuit (the library is, afterall, not a babysitting service, though some parents treat it as such).
The Library Bill of Rights, created by the American Library Association states in part:
Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas. A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
It's amazing that something as revolutionary as the single chip computer could come out of an engineer staring at thirteen separate schematics and saying, "Ok, but what about doing this with one chip?" And then being in the right circumstances to do it.
The single-chip CPU is arguably the most important development of late 20th century, and it's exponential improvement (Moore's Law) is what drives the information economy. So what happens when Moore's law runs out?
If current trends are projected forward, by 2020 a bit of memory will be a single electron transistor, traces will be one molecule wide, and the cost of the fabrication plant will be the GNP of the planet. The speed of light imposes practical limits on how large you can make a chip and how fast you can clock one. This is why we'll have GHz chips, but fundamental physical laws prevent THz chips.
More importantly, the physical limits that shut down THz electronic computers apply to _any_ classical computing architecture; optical computing and other exotic technology can't beat the speed of light, or single-particle storage problems.
You can't win by going to SMP, because at best you get a linear increase with each processor; exponential increases in power require exponential increases in processor number, which require exponential increases in space and power consumption.
The only basis in physics for continuing Moore's law past classical computing is quantum computing. In a quantum computer N quantum bits (qbits) equals 2^N classical bits. This allows you to build a computer which scales exponentially with the physical resources of the computer. Quantum computing isn't a solved problem, but if and when it is it will be a revolution as big as the first single-chip CPU.
I'm not particularly concerned about hitting a theoretical limit to hardware power. At the moment, I'm typing on a system that has unimaginable 20 years ago.
Yet it crashes often enough to be noticeable.
It runs so slowly (a "mere" Pentium 400) that I can actually see my windows redraw.
Booting takes 5 minutes (NT 4.0)
Shutting down takes several minutes, too.
Maybe hitting a limit to processor power will encourage programmers to reintroduce the concept of "knowing how to write good code." Lord knows processor speed and cheap memory have made it possible for even the best programmers to stop thinking about code quality.
I've seen a presentation by some Mainsoft folks. The license fees aren't that bad. Basically you need a Mainsoft client runtime license for each desktop you want to run your "ported" applications on (I'm fairly sure that it's a per-seat, not per-app license), and, IIRC, the desktop license was in the range of $50 - $100 USD. Which is the same ballpark as a Windows 9x license, but Mainsoft's target is companies, where WinNT/2000 are the more likely desktop equivalents. So it's much cheaper than VMWare ($300 USD per commercial license + you still need an MS OS license). And, if you're having trouble with Windows, the increased overall stability and other benefits of Linux or Unix may easily justify the per seat fee.
MSFT used Mainsoft's tools to port IE to the flavors of Unix it already runs on, e.g. Solaris. So this isn't really big news. MS has already ported IE. They've talked about porting MediaPlayer. Both are yet more examples of anticompetitive "dumping" practices.
I don't know what to make of Microsoft's actions. On the one hand, it behooves all of us to understand that under different circumstances, Microsoft's cronies might have ended up as arrogant big-mouths drifting the streets -- perverted churlish iconoclastic-types pressing tracts crammed with conspiracies into the palms of startled passersby. But on the other hand, it can be distinguished only with difficulty which of Microsoft's lackeys act out of inner stupidity or incompetence and which only pretend to for whatever pathetic, daft reason. And that's why I feel compelled to say something about contemptible windbags.
Microsoft's views are continually evolving into more and more foolish incarnations. Here, I'm not just talking about evolution in a simply Darwinist sense; I'm also talking about how every time Microsoft gets caught trying to make bribery legal and part of business as usual, it promises it'll never do so again. Subsequently, its henchmen always jump in and explain that it really shouldn't be blamed even if it does, because, as they think, all any child needs is a big dose of television every day. Has Microsoft told its assistants that it wants to ridicule, parody, censor, and downgrade opposing wisecracks? Has it given any thought to what would happen if it did? Of course, these questions are ridiculous -- as ridiculous as its insane viperine offhand remarks. If there is one truth in this world, it's that we must lend support to the thesis that if Microsoft opened up its abhorrent mind just a teeny-weeny little bit, maybe it could understand that. Our children depend on that.
Is there a chance that Microsoft isn't lethargic, deplorable, and batty? From what I've seen, I doubt it. Did it ever occur to Microsoft that maybe its helpers argue, against a steady accretion of facts of already mountainous proportions, that we'd all be better off if they'd just divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely necessary? Dream on. Microsoft and its toadies are illaudable scofflaws. This is not set down in complaint against them, but merely as analysis. Shame on Microsoft for thinking that people like you and me are nugatory! Anyone who follows today's debates on imperialism and, by happenstance, is also familiar with Microsoft's nefarious pronouncements, is struck by that old truism: Microsoft has found a way to avoid compliance with government regulations, circumvent any further litigation, and make mountains out of molehills -- all by trumping up a phony emergency.
As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see that Microsoft's supporters will put the gods of heaven into the corner as obsolete and outmoded and, in their stead, burn incense to the idol Mammon in the coming days. You know what I mean? If I hear Microsoft's slaves say, "Microsoft is a model organization" one more time, I'm doubtlessly going to throw up.
This is not wild speculation. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is documented fact. We can all have daydreams about Happy Fuzzy Purple Bunny Land, where everyone is caring, loving, and nice. Not only will those daydreams not come true, but Microsoft keeps telling us that it knows the "right" way to read Plato, Maimonides, and Machiavelli. Are we also supposed to believe that it has achieved sainthood? If I weren't so forgiving, I'd have to say that Microsoft's beer-guzzling opinions are in full flower, and their poisonous petals of denominationalism are blooming all around us. Microsoft maintains that it can achieve its goals by friendly and moral conduct. Even if this were so, Microsoft would still be fastidious. But Microsoft's accusations all stem from one, simple, faulty premise -- that the Earth is flat.
The practical struggle which now begins, sketched in broad outlines, takes the following course: I'm sticking out my neck a bit in talking about Microsoft's propositions. It's quite likely it will try to retaliate against me for my telling you that I will never give up. I will never stop trying. And I will use every avenue possible to comment on a phenomenon that has and will continue to leave us in the lurch. Microsoft's perspective is that the Queen of England heads up the international drug cartel. My perspective, in contrast, is that when Microsoft hears anyone say that its stupidity concerning Dadaism is laughable, its answer is to progressively enlarge and increasingly centralize the means of oppression, exploitation, violence, and destruction. That's similar to taking a few drunken swings at a beehive: it just makes me want even more to recall the ideals of compassion, nonviolence, community, and cooperation while remaining true to those beliefs, ideals, and aspirations we hold most dear.
My message is clear: Microsoft's musings are one of those things that will stretch credulity beyond the breaking point. To top that off, Microsoft's most progressive idea is to doctor evidence and classification systems and make oppressive generalizations to support disgusting, preconceived views. If that sounds progressive to you, you must be facing the wrong way. Catty ignoramuses (like Microsoft) are not born -- they are excreted. However unsavory that metaphor may be, several things Microsoft has said have brought me to the boiling point. The statement of its that made the strongest impression on me, however, was something to the effect of how it is the one who will lead us to our great shining future. Even people who consider themselves patronizing gutter-dwellers generally agree that it strikes me as amusing that Microsoft complains about people who do nothing but complain. Well, news flash! It does nothing but complain. Microsoft wants to encourage every sort of indiscipline and degeneracy in the name of freedom. What's wrong with that? What's wrong is Microsoft's grasp of reality.
Hey, it's not my fault that Microsoft extricates itself from difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. Even though supposedly distancing itself from rabid pesky carousers, Microsoft has really not changed its spots at all. Will raucous pettifoggers ever protect little children from brain-damaged knee-biters like Microsoft? Don't bet on it. If Microsoft isn't scummy, I don't know who is. There are lessons to be learned from history, and everyone with half a brain understands that.
Just think: Microsoft doesn't use words for communication or for exchanging information. It uses them to disarm, to hypnotize, to mislead, and to deceive. As I noted at the beginning of this letter, if Microsoft is going to talk about higher standards, then it needs to live by those higher standards. Microsoft's "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude is venal, because it leaves no room for compromise. Although I can no more change the past than see the future, it's safe to say that if Microsoft has spurred us to change the minds of those who turn the trickle of absolutism into a tidal wave, then Microsoft may have accomplished a useful thing. I must emphasize that that statement can be most easily defended, since it is not quantitative, but qualitative. Let me rephrase that: At least 80 percent of the people in this country recognize that Microsoft's ability to give voice, in a totally emotional and non-rational way, to Microsoft's deep-rooted love of despotism is astounding. The best example of this, culled from many, would have to be the time Microsoft tried to pit people against each other.
Although Microsoft has tremendous popular appeal, the last time I told its minions that I want to work together towards a shared vision, they declared in response, "But individual worth is defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin." Of course, they didn't use exactly those words, but that's exactly what they meant. Other mephitic usurers are also consumed with a desire to deny both our individual and collective responsibility to live in harmony with each other and the world, but, as you know, I'm not a psychiatrist. Sometimes, though, I wish I were, so that I could better understand what makes organizations like Microsoft want to pour a few drops of wormwood into our general enthusiasm. Does anybody else feel the way I do, or am I alone in my disgust with Microsoft?
When a star collapses the matter begins to implode upon a point, eventually crossing the point where the escape velocity becomes greater than the speed of light and a black hole is formed. The edge of this black hole is what we call the event horizon - anything passing within the event horizon cannot ever escape. The simple solution is described by the Schwartzchild metric.
The matter however is still collapsing to a point at the centre of the black hole. According to general relativity there is nothing to stop this collapse and we end up with a point of infinite density and zero volume - a singularity.
However when you come to rotating black holes (described by the Kerr metric) there are differences. The angular momentum of a collapsing star is conserved, and this causes the black hole's event horizon to bulge out along the equitorial plane, much like the Earth has a slight bulge around its equator. Indeed, the central singularity itself forms a torus rather than a point when the black hole is rotating.
As angular momentum is increased this bulge gets bigger and the polar size of the event horizon shrinks, until eventually you are left without an event horizon at all, but just a torus-shaped singularity, which is said to be "naked".
Of course, whether a naked singularity can ever exist is an open question. There is something called the "Cosmic Censorship Principle" which states that the laws of physics will never allow a naked singularity to form, but the final answer is "we don't know".
Also of interest is that since the naked singularity would be in the shape of a torus you could theoretically pass through the centre of the torus and find yourself somewhere completely different, possibly even in another universe!
For a fairly technical intro to black holes and singularities, see this article at suite101.
Black holes can be detected (in theory of course) by looking for the emissions they give off. The theory goes (extremely roughly) that as individual particles reach the "edge" (event horizon?) of the black hole (crossing this line means you never come back), some of them are torn apart, half of the particle going in, half going out, and some energy is released during this fission. It is these fissions at the edge that make a black hole appear to give off energy, and make it detectable.
That type of radiation is called Hawking Radiation (after Stephen Hawking, naturally). However, this isn't what lets us detect black holes, as Hawking Radiation is ridiculously faint. Black holes can be detected by the X-Rays that they "inadvertantly" produce. When matter is falling into a black hole it is accelerated, heated, and compressed to such a degree that it gives off large amounts of X-Rays. I believe the first black hole we detected (again, assuming black holes exist), was Cygnus X-1 (or cygnus something), and we detected it by the x-rays it gave off.
Another method of detecting black holes is to look for graviational lensing effects. Because black holes are so massive, they bend the fabric of space time. (Imagine a sheet suspended in the air. Place marbles on the sheet. The marbles make depressions on the sheet, like stars make "depressions" in space-time. A black hole is so heavy, it's like dropping something that is the size of a marble but with the weight of a bowling ball onto the sheet. The sheet bends A LOT, and it actually will have a hole where the singularity is.) Light travels in a straight line, so if space-time curves, light also curves with space-time. Gravitational lensing was proved during a solar eclipse. Astronomers observing the eclipse noted that they were able to see stars that should have been blocked by the eclipsed sun. The sun's gravitational field caused enough "lensing" so that stars directly behind the star could be seen to either side of the star. So, if we find something out in space that is causing a LARGE amount of gravitational lensing, but we can't see anything, there's a chance it's a black hole. At that point we normally observe it more to determine if it is or isn't a black hole.
As much as I have liked 3DFX products in the past, that they have made a few (fatal?) errors on this product. One, reading the review, you get the defenite impression that this product was cobbled together quickly with many shortcuts that affect the overall quality, and then rushed to market in order to keep afloat against NVIDIA. The product almost has an air of desperation about it. While they do have a few good ideas, like being able to daisy-chain the processors in future products, I would bet heat and power considerations will limit this in the future. Overall, it is almost as if 3DFX is trying to cheat thier customers with a holding action while they, hopefully, deliver a once more superior product in the future.
And this isn't meant as flamebait, but I am sure they will ensue...
#1 problem is speed and scaleability. ASP engine will only cache 90 pages in P-code so if you run a large site you are pegging your web server interpreting.
#2 Maintenence. Maintainence is a pain in the butt by not seperating presentation from logic. You can tier out to a COM layer, but why not just take that approach to the extreme and create an ISAPI DLL that tiers the logic out to a COM layer?
#3 VBS. If this isn't the worst language ever designed..... Of course , you can embed JavaScreipt instead, or any other interpreter that is compatible, but most MS support for ASP, as well as sample code, ect.. is VBS.
All in all, ASP is fine for a small web project that needs to be built quickly. If you want to create a large site with lots of maintenence, your better off, IMHO using a 3-tier WEB/ISAPI, DCOM, SQL system, where web servers ONLY serve pages (eliminating the need for ugliness like MSMQ models), Business logic is in the DCOM layer, load balanced with MTS, and the DB is peachy on the backend (hopefully with some replication and failover).
This of course is if you insist on doing this on NT. Personally, I'd prefer CGI on apache...
I was not saying don't to n-tier.
I was saying "don't store scripts in a database to be pulled and used dynamically at run time"
I'm working on a database chuck full of VBScript and Java Script, with a script interpreter component loaded onto a dumb middle tier with all the business logic stored in the database as scripts!
His misconception of an SP sounded much like this system, and my recommendation is: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! It's SICK AND WRONG!
Business logic goes in code. not a DB.
hehe.. you sudder, I get homesick feelings..
musing on finding ram in a system, I once:
1) Added nice "eye-candy" to a program... a kaleideoscopic display up in the corner that was truly hypnotising to watch. What it actually was was my datastructures being manipulated in video ram, disguised as nice eye-candy.
2) Told the printer to go off-line and used the 16K readable buffer that it had by querying the parrallell port.
Those were the days *sigh*
Yea, but he's right.
Typically, from my experience, tight, memory and processor friendly code is easier to maintain and contains fewer bugs because the developer THOUGHT before implementing.
The "new school" of thought is that time to market is of utmost priority, which causes poor decisions to be made, like reliance on scripting languages and poor implementation. I have worked on multiple projects that required a ground-up rewrite because of performance and maintainability issues because rapid time to market was the only consideration.
The ironic thing about this is that the issues brought about by this philosophy almost invariably leads to a longer time to market because the bug bashing phases gets extended out so long.
Lessons to be learned:
1) ALWAYS treat performance and memory usage as prime concerns. This forces you to think algorythms through and avoids rewrites and broken code.
2) Generally it is better to implement in a tight, compiled language. These languages are exponentially more efficient and generally no harder (many times easier) to develop in then their scripted cousins (compare C++ to VBScript.. C++ is 6 months to learn, a year to master, VBScript is 12 hours to learn and a lifetime to master. Discussions about VBScript programming are invariably about how the underlying implementation works and how to opimize and overcome issues, whereas C++ programmers know what their compiler does and spend their time making their algorythms better.)
3) Keep it simple, stupid. If you can eliminate a component, do it, be it interpreter, server, datatbase, OS, GUI, Code, anything. The more peices a project has, the more things can go wrong and the less you can do about it. This is what I hate about the COM model when overused (as it often is). Sometimes a function should just be a function and a text file should just be a text file. Script, XML, multi-tier, component object models, these all have their place, but don't be afraid to not include them when they don't!
I was development lead on a Y2K support project for a major software company. We handed the project off to another division after version 1.0. When I was transfering my knowledge I was asked questions like:
Q) What database engine and model do you use?
A) tab-delimited text file
Q) What what is your COM Model?
A) It's just a single executable... no object model.
Q) Why didn't you use COM/DB?
A) Why would I?
Turns out this team had written a similar app. Mine took about 15 seconds to do it's job and consisted of a single executable 200K in size... VERY old-school. Theirs took about 2 hours and contained about 10M of binaries.. Mine was developed and supported by a single dev and a single tester. Theirs, a team of 10 devs and 5 testers. Theirs got scrapped.
Old school rocks. You can put out more code in less time. I can put out less code in less time that does the same thing faster.
The master programmer adds features by deleting code. Until you grok how this is done, you are adding to the problem, not the solution.
I've done this. One word. Don't.
He is speaking of a database concept of precompiling a batch of queries in SQL so they skip the input/parsing/optimization phase when called, which is a good idea for any complex, time consuming, or often called query.
I would have to completely agree with you on the issue of C++ being useful for fast code. I rarely use C anymore since any compiler worth it's weight will optimize stock C++ code at least as well as C as long as I know which features to avoid when I want tight code. I know how to avoid having a vtable, when not to use rtti, etc... of course, I wouldn't expect a newbie programmer to know what is good and what is bad, so therein lies the benefit of C; it forces you to write fast code. Personally, I like the flexibility of C++.. I like efficiency, but I also like a double dispatch from time to time =-)
Agreed. As I learned day 1:
char - guaraunteed to be = char and = int
With these definitions, you can do anything and code is never broken if you make sure that nothing is guaraunteed BUT THIS.
Win2k 64bit for merced should look something like this:
char - 2 bytes
short - 4 bytes
int - 8 bytes
long - 16 bytes
and let any code that was not written to the c/c++ standard break when the platform changes, as it should.
Linux is NOT a "Hacking" tool. Linux is a viable competitor to Microsoft Windows which you are currently using. Linux competes on the free market which you speak of, just like any operating system or program. The people who use Linux are not "Hackers" but are people who prefer this operating system. "Hackers" or, more correctly, "Crackers" are the people that you are disgusted with. The creators of Linux believe that the free flow of information WITHIN A GROUP OF PEOPLE THAT MUTUALLY SUPPORT the free flow of information is beneficial to the development of new technology. They do not steal their technology from companies, they build their own. I believe strongly in the philosophies you espouse, but you are mistaken in your view of the intent of the Linux community.
So much more informative in his stupidity.
*MEEP*
_*sigh*_