I've worked with (actually, had to replace) a visual programming language before.
One huge problem with the language was printouts. It's very hard to print large programs. If you have a conventional text-based programming language, you can print out a 10000 line program on a printer, and it's comprehendable.Now try that with a visual program with 10000 interconnected blocks. You have to print it in sections on letter-sized paper, then tape it all together, and it becomes about 20 ft wide and 15 ft tall. In order to show someone a bug in the program, you needed to schedule a conference room so you have a large enough table to unfold the printout.
Another huge problem was inserting new code. With a text-based programming language, you can just insert a new line. With this visual programming language, you had to move all the graphical elements out of the way to create space so you could plop down a new graphical element. It turned what should have been a single keypress operation into a five minute task for rearranging graphical elements.
I could go on and on, but needless to say, managment thought the visual programming language was a "differentiating feature against our competitors".
The people who actually used it hated it.
This is not "how to exploit NULL pointers"... this is "how to exploit a kernel NULL function pointer".
Well, duh.
In other news, security researches find exploit for systems with blank root password.
I think this is just one facet of a larger problem, which I call the "impeding American Cultural Revolution" aka "The rise of the idiocracy". If you look at conditions today, they are similar to the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: disrespect for the science and facts (climate change deniers, creationists, birthers, teabaggers, health care death panelers, etc) and the glorification of the common man (Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Gretchen Carlson dumbing herself down, etc). The scenario which scares me is: the idiots vote Sarah Palin into office, and she prevents control of greenhouse gases until a massive global catastrophe (where we lose a significant portion of the world's arable land) that makes the Three Years of Natural Disasters look like a minor problem...
Let me translate the original post so non-programmers can understand it:
"Upper management at the car garage I work at recently declared that all car repairs should be done with a single tool. The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one car repair project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch. Of course the tool used by everybody does not need to be the best tool for the job, but it should be good enough to allow every project to get done. What does Slashdot think about this? Is it OK to use the same repair tool for every repair project, instead of choosing what fits best? Will the time saved be sufficient to offset the time lost to the 'not the best tool for the job' mechanics will be forced to use?"
In a survey of 1 Slashdot user, 100% of the users were found to think Evans Data are idiots for asking Open Source developers if they plan to switch to a Free Software license.
The basic problem with this article is that it confuses Open Source with Free Software.
They probably polled BSD, MSPL, Mozilla, etc developers and asked if they were planning to switch to the GPLv3, and as would be expected, most said "no".
To me, it's just the obvious restated as something insightful.
When someone truly figures out how to take a group of beginning artists and make them able to create something like a masterpiece, then that will be the end of high paying jobs for artists. At that point, art jobs will be kinda like jobs at Taco Bell.
1) Reverse-engineer the Alexa toolbar protocol 2) Write a program which can fake being the Alexa toolbar 3) Raise the Alexa rank of lots of useless sites, like goatse.cx to prove how useless Alexa is
o Former e-marketing company produces energy technology breakthrough
This is about as likely as:
o Intel admits defeat against AMD and exits processor market; introduces new line of men's fashionwear for fall modeled after clean room suits o Reports of global warming proved false; caused by errors in temperature calibration procedures at NIST o Israel and Hezbollah announce new strategic partnership and joint Christmas Party 2006 o Al-Quaeda issues formal apology for destruction of Twin Towers and plans reparations o Paris Hilton joins convent and becomes a nun o Tom Cruise addicted to antidepressants...
Taping out is the equivalent of an alpha release of software, I think.
I've worked with new processor designs before. On the project on which I worked, the first processors were designated "Engineering Samples" and were marked ES1, ES2, ES3, etc. Then after most of the major bugs were worked out, they were designated "Working Samples" and they were marked WS1, WS2, WS3, etc. After all the known bugs were fixed, it went into production and was designated "Final Cut" and marked FC1, and subsequent bugfixes in the production version were FC2, FC3, etc.
So with this naming convention, basically "taping out" means they have a ES1.
Toshi
I played an Amazon in Diablo II for two reasons.
One of the reasons was yeah, I'd rather stare at a female character all day.
The other was: amazons are the only char class with long-distance weapons.
I must have been playing incorrectly, because nobody every gave me free stuff.
This is a cute story, but really..
o Will this car pass crash testing?
o Will this car pass emissions?
If you don't need to pass crash test and emissions, heck...you can just put an engine on a go-kart and do 0-60mph in 4 seconds.
This story is only a half-step above the recent perpetual motion machine stories.
It sounds like all your modules need to be separate processes, and then you need a central module which handles restarting crashed modules and handles and logs all communications between processes. When a crashed module restarts, it needs to query the central module to retrieve a log of the prior messages to reconstruct its state. This obviously requires careful design of the protocols between the modules - they protocols need to be either non-state-dependent or you need to send a full state dump periodically to allow the central module to dump old state info.
He's a politician.
Politicans are expected to make random statements regarding matters about which they know nothing.
Kinda like marketing people, but worse.
If you read the Call of Duty 2 part, you'll realize there's a high probability this guy is a marketing shill. "Call of Duty 2 (CoD 2) has earned its reputation as the cream of the 360 launch title crop. The game powerfully recaptures the thrill of the original title, placing you in the shoes of a grunt on the Russian, British, or American fronts of World War II. " How many casual gamers spout that kind of marketing drivel?
Slashdot Mirror
1. Find person on Facebook 2. Print out their picture on color printer 3. Use picture to login to their account
I've worked with (actually, had to replace) a visual programming language before. One huge problem with the language was printouts. It's very hard to print large programs. If you have a conventional text-based programming language, you can print out a 10000 line program on a printer, and it's comprehendable.Now try that with a visual program with 10000 interconnected blocks. You have to print it in sections on letter-sized paper, then tape it all together, and it becomes about 20 ft wide and 15 ft tall. In order to show someone a bug in the program, you needed to schedule a conference room so you have a large enough table to unfold the printout. Another huge problem was inserting new code. With a text-based programming language, you can just insert a new line. With this visual programming language, you had to move all the graphical elements out of the way to create space so you could plop down a new graphical element. It turned what should have been a single keypress operation into a five minute task for rearranging graphical elements. I could go on and on, but needless to say, managment thought the visual programming language was a "differentiating feature against our competitors". The people who actually used it hated it.
This is not "how to exploit NULL pointers" ... this is "how to exploit a kernel NULL function pointer".
Well, duh.
In other news, security researches find exploit for systems with blank root password.
I think this is just one facet of a larger problem, which I call the "impeding American Cultural Revolution" aka "The rise of the idiocracy". If you look at conditions today, they are similar to the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: disrespect for the science and facts (climate change deniers, creationists, birthers, teabaggers, health care death panelers, etc) and the glorification of the common man (Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Gretchen Carlson dumbing herself down, etc). The scenario which scares me is: the idiots vote Sarah Palin into office, and she prevents control of greenhouse gases until a massive global catastrophe (where we lose a significant portion of the world's arable land) that makes the Three Years of Natural Disasters look like a minor problem...
Let me translate the original post so non-programmers can understand it:
"Upper management at the car garage I work at recently declared that all car repairs should be done with a single tool. The main rationale is that people can be relocated from one car repair project to another faster, because they don't need to learn a new environment when they switch. Of course the tool used by everybody does not need to be the best tool for the job, but it should be good enough to allow every project to get done. What does Slashdot think about this? Is it OK to use the same repair tool for every repair project, instead of choosing what fits best? Will the time saved be sufficient to offset the time lost to the 'not the best tool for the job' mechanics will be forced to use?"
Cloud computing is the new name for mainframe computing. It's a marketating word, devised by some marketating person.
I think another good example is the Sony PS3. Bloated, expensive hardware.
In a survey of 1 Slashdot user, 100% of the users were found to think Evans Data are idiots for asking Open Source developers if they plan to switch to a Free Software license.
The basic problem with this article is that it confuses Open Source with Free Software. They probably polled BSD, MSPL, Mozilla, etc developers and asked if they were planning to switch to the GPLv3, and as would be expected, most said "no". To me, it's just the obvious restated as something insightful.
The obvious conclusion is all the workers should be fired and replaced with viruses.
The article says efficiency was boosted by 60% IN THE ULTRAVIOLET REGION. Not overall efficiency.
When someone truly figures out how to take a group of beginning artists and make them able to create something like a masterpiece, then that will be the end of high paying jobs for artists. At that point, art jobs will be kinda like jobs at Taco Bell.
It's obvious what needs to be done.
1) Reverse-engineer the Alexa toolbar protocol
2) Write a program which can fake being the Alexa toolbar
3) Raise the Alexa rank of lots of useless sites, like goatse.cx to prove how useless Alexa is
"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana
o Former e-marketing company produces energy technology breakthrough
...
This is about as likely as:
o Intel admits defeat against AMD and exits processor market; introduces new line of men's fashionwear for fall modeled after clean room suits
o Reports of global warming proved false; caused by errors in temperature calibration procedures at NIST
o Israel and Hezbollah announce new strategic partnership and joint Christmas Party 2006
o Al-Quaeda issues formal apology for destruction of Twin Towers and plans reparations
o Paris Hilton joins convent and becomes a nun
o Tom Cruise addicted to antidepressants
Taping out is the equivalent of an alpha release of software, I think. I've worked with new processor designs before. On the project on which I worked, the first processors were designated "Engineering Samples" and were marked ES1, ES2, ES3, etc. Then after most of the major bugs were worked out, they were designated "Working Samples" and they were marked WS1, WS2, WS3, etc. After all the known bugs were fixed, it went into production and was designated "Final Cut" and marked FC1, and subsequent bugfixes in the production version were FC2, FC3, etc. So with this naming convention, basically "taping out" means they have a ES1. Toshi
I played an Amazon in Diablo II for two reasons. One of the reasons was yeah, I'd rather stare at a female character all day. The other was: amazons are the only char class with long-distance weapons. I must have been playing incorrectly, because nobody every gave me free stuff.
Electric RC flyers have been dealing with this issue for a while.
0 9187
Here is an informational thread about lipo batteries:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2
There's a difference between rumor and speculation, and this is more speculation than rumor.
This is a cute story, but really.. o Will this car pass crash testing? o Will this car pass emissions? If you don't need to pass crash test and emissions, heck...you can just put an engine on a go-kart and do 0-60mph in 4 seconds. This story is only a half-step above the recent perpetual motion machine stories.
From my experience: Analyst: a fiction writer who doesn't work in your industry
It sounds like all your modules need to be separate processes, and then you need a central module which handles restarting crashed modules and handles and logs all communications between processes. When a crashed module restarts, it needs to query the central module to retrieve a log of the prior messages to reconstruct its state. This obviously requires careful design of the protocols between the modules - they protocols need to be either non-state-dependent or you need to send a full state dump periodically to allow the central module to dump old state info.
He's a politician. Politicans are expected to make random statements regarding matters about which they know nothing. Kinda like marketing people, but worse.
If you read the Call of Duty 2 part, you'll realize there's a high probability this guy is a marketing shill. "Call of Duty 2 (CoD 2) has earned its reputation as the cream of the 360 launch title crop. The game powerfully recaptures the thrill of the original title, placing you in the shoes of a grunt on the Russian, British, or American fronts of World War II. " How many casual gamers spout that kind of marketing drivel?
That's actually funnier than I expected...thanks for the laugh!