You know, I've been dealing with a lot of Lisp lately, which means wading through a lot of "Lisp is the perfect programming language" stuff, and I see their point--I still have the occasional moment of grokking something subtle and elegant that feels so damn good. From a certain perspective, Lisp really is the perfect programming language. Certainly, just about any language feature I've ever seen in C++, Java, C#, etc. already exists in Lisp in some form, and has for just about forever.
And yet Lisp is virtually nowhere, and the Lisp guys can't seem to figure it out. They've got the perfect programming language: Why isn't everyone using it all the time? The answer is that it's been an academic language and a moving target for so long that nobody's trusted it enough to settle on it for a long-lived platform. The compsci side of it prevailed too heavily over the marketing side, and so now, as an IT guy at a corporation with a homegrown ERP, I can't use Lisp. Even if I sell it on its technical merits, the business concerns sink us over time--the difficulty staffing, incompatibility with our parent company, greater difficulties interfacing with outside packages, etc., etc., etc.
So what I demand now in any technology into which I invest serious time is commercial viability, and while Visual Basic may be a horseshit language, you can have a satisfying career as a VB programmer. You can be fairly certain that time spent learning C# in detail won't hurt you in the long run by pigeonholing your skillset. You can become a Java guru and be as confident as anyone of gainful employment. And if getting that means writing (String) enum.nextElement();, then that's a reasonable sacrifice to make, and confusing a pragmatic attitude with a lack of strategic vision is simply insulting.
Okay, I didn't realize that you have such a hate-on for Java, so I'm not sure I should even engage you in this, but: where was the demand for autoboxing and generics before C# (quite publically) had it? I certainly don't recall hearing about them except on language lawyer mailing lists--meaning that the market wasn't howling for them. How would implementing those things create an industry that would keep Java momentum up? For all of the mixed blessing that J2EE is, you must admit that, it having been the focus of Java development for the last few years, has kept Java moving at the front of the market, which is what keeps it alive long enough to evolve as a language.
As for 16B/36K employees, there's prioritizing limited resources, and I think it's pretty obvious where those priorities went. Considering how successful Java's been so far, I don't think you can fault their market choices.
Sun wasn't working on the language because they were busy building up the libraries--arguably a better choice. Instead of generics and autoboxing, we have J2EE, which (in the right parts) is probably a larger productivity gain. One place Java still has a huge advantage over ASP.NET is the size of the standard libraries/APIs.
Please note: The website formerly known as Googlegear.com is not now and has never been associated with Google Inc., and is now zipzoomfly.com.
To go to zipzoomfly.com, click here.
Upshot: the 9th in 2002, at 75%, was marginally worse than the 2nd, 7th and 6th (67%, 67%, and 71%, respectively), and much better than the 4th, 5th and 8th (100%, all). It was also noticeably better than state courts (81%). Only the 11th, D.C., and the federal circuit were noticeably better at 50% each.
The 'heavily reversed and overly liberal 9th' is one of those memes that has an ounce of truth to it obscured by a ton of partisan bravado.
He has a successful software house with what most people here would view as ideal programmer working conditions. If he were unix-centered instead of a Microsoftie, he'd probably be considered a god here. That's why you should give a shit.
The only problem with this is that, if the cops figure it out (well, their technicians figure it out), you're sunk: you've wilfully hidden something from them that they were looking for or wanted to look at. You couldn't do more to convince them of your guilt if you signed a confession.
No, it would suck if that happened. But it would also suck if crimes couldn't be prosecuted because the police couldn't secure evidence... my computer, his car, your bank account. Imagine this post on./: "Ha ha! Stupid fucking FBI grabbed my hard drives, copied them, and handed them back. Here's me uploading the HL2 source code to every FTP server in Asia... let them stop me now!"
Fundamentally, there's a point when innocent people have to be inconvenienced because the enforcement of law isn't perfect, and the choice is to allow some of that inconvenience to avoid letting guilty people go free because law enforcement's hands are tied too tightly.
I asked a lawyer this afternoon about this, and if my computer with crucial business info on it was confiscated, I would petition the court to get a copy of the hard drive back, or at least specific files I needed that could be verified not to contain [kiddie porn|HL2 source code|anthrax bomb making instructions], with reasonably good chances of success. The courts aren't nearly as stupid and thuggish as people here are portraying them to be.
So, since everyone is innocent until proven guilty, then no search warrant should ever be granted since that has a negative effect on someone's life? And because Valve's security was less than perfect, it's their fault they got hacked? And because she had on too much makeup, and was wearing a short skirt, she was "asking for it"?
Because you'd be ordered by a judge to turn over the key, and "I forgot what the key is" or "I lost it" would get you thrown in jail for contempt and obstruction.
The last thing we need in a discussion of security is half-baked and thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories. People wearing tinfoil hats should be automatically excluded from these discussions.
We've had a palm-reading system for four years now, and once some people's initial concerns about being finger-printed were relieved (which isn't what's happening, at our place or at McDonald's), no one cared. There's no invasion of privacy in making sure that it's you who are punching in.
Ah, the 'property is theft' defense. Call me when someone rips off your car and let me know how you feel about its liberation.
His wrongdoing wasn't accessing Lexis/Nexis, it was incurring fees for the NYT under false pretenses. You shouldn't have to pay a licence fee for an operating system, but if you did, and someone charged more licences on your account, for which you had to pay, his act is still wrong even if the fundamental software licencing is wrong in and of itself. It's about harm, not about "information wants to be free".
Calling him a 'building inspector' implies some sort of official capacity for what he did, something he was completely lacking. He's much more a random stranger than any sort of municipal official, however much the hacker community likes to imagine itself as the first among equals in a community of anarcho-libertarians on the Internet.
I assume that the way this would work is that the standard air corridors, as they neared urban centers and military installations and such, would have soft walls preventing course deviations.
So what happens during an emergency mechanical failure when the plane is veering out of the standard air corridor, the pilot's wrestling with the stick to get the nose up enough for a non-perpendicular landing, and the soft wall override kicks in, trying to steer the plane back into the air corridor? Remember, it's not a terrorist preventative if it's easily disabled from the cockpit.
It's easy to imagine that there'd be some sort of cutoff for emergency situtations, just as it's easy to imagine another scenario in which the soft wall override kicks in at the wrong moment, dooming a plane that might have been saved otherwise.
Even 'at-will' states like Illinois and Wisconsin (where I am) have to be careful dismissing people, since 'at-will' termination cannot contravene *anything* that is contrary to labor law. In other words, 'at-will' versus 'right-to-work' is a bogus distinction used by lawmakers to cozy up to the left or the right.
When you think about the amount you use the web, and the things for which you use it, what percentage of that is animated, or could be usefully animated?
For me, 0%. For your average websurfer, I'd say less than 3-4%. If there even is a battle (since this announcement smacks of MS's classic vaporware announcement tactic), it will be a minor skirmish that decides nothing.
What's the next email? What's the next browser? What's the next IM? When I see an announcement of something from MS, or any other company, of a technology with that much potential, I'll pay attention.
You know, I avoided the RPM of apache when I built my webserver, instead choosing to download it and compile 2.0 from source, and get it working myself. Which I did. Having done it once, I know it pretty well now, and it took me five minutes to go from 2.0.45 to 2.0.48 after seeing this story, having saved my./configure in an executable file. I ran that, make, make install, copy the conf files and the resin.so, test it, and switch the symbolic link that the sys V script goes to.
So. Untinstall the deb, download it, compile it, install it, and get it working. It's no harder to configure, and you're free of package tyranny.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I've been dealing with a lot of Lisp lately, which means wading through a lot of "Lisp is the perfect programming language" stuff, and I see their point--I still have the occasional moment of grokking something subtle and elegant that feels so damn good. From a certain perspective, Lisp really is the perfect programming language. Certainly, just about any language feature I've ever seen in C++, Java, C#, etc. already exists in Lisp in some form, and has for just about forever.
And yet Lisp is virtually nowhere, and the Lisp guys can't seem to figure it out. They've got the perfect programming language: Why isn't everyone using it all the time? The answer is that it's been an academic language and a moving target for so long that nobody's trusted it enough to settle on it for a long-lived platform. The compsci side of it prevailed too heavily over the marketing side, and so now, as an IT guy at a corporation with a homegrown ERP, I can't use Lisp. Even if I sell it on its technical merits, the business concerns sink us over time--the difficulty staffing, incompatibility with our parent company, greater difficulties interfacing with outside packages, etc., etc., etc.
So what I demand now in any technology into which I invest serious time is commercial viability, and while Visual Basic may be a horseshit language, you can have a satisfying career as a VB programmer. You can be fairly certain that time spent learning C# in detail won't hurt you in the long run by pigeonholing your skillset. You can become a Java guru and be as confident as anyone of gainful employment. And if getting that means writing (String) enum.nextElement();, then that's a reasonable sacrifice to make, and confusing a pragmatic attitude with a lack of strategic vision is simply insulting.
Okay, I didn't realize that you have such a hate-on for Java, so I'm not sure I should even engage you in this, but: where was the demand for autoboxing and generics before C# (quite publically) had it? I certainly don't recall hearing about them except on language lawyer mailing lists--meaning that the market wasn't howling for them. How would implementing those things create an industry that would keep Java momentum up? For all of the mixed blessing that J2EE is, you must admit that, it having been the focus of Java development for the last few years, has kept Java moving at the front of the market, which is what keeps it alive long enough to evolve as a language.
As for 16B/36K employees, there's prioritizing limited resources, and I think it's pretty obvious where those priorities went. Considering how successful Java's been so far, I don't think you can fault their market choices.
Sun wasn't working on the language because they were busy building up the libraries--arguably a better choice. Instead of generics and autoboxing, we have J2EE, which (in the right parts) is probably a larger productivity gain. One place Java still has a huge advantage over ASP.NET is the size of the standard libraries/APIs.
Go to http://www.googlegear.com/, and notice how the URL changes to http://www.google.com/googlegear.html. The message displayed:
Please note: The website formerly known as Googlegear.com is not now and has never been associated with Google Inc., and is now zipzoomfly.com. To go to zipzoomfly.com, click here.
Here's one: http://www.centerforindividualfreedom.org/legal/re versal_rates.pdf
Upshot: the 9th in 2002, at 75%, was marginally worse than the 2nd, 7th and 6th (67%, 67%, and 71%, respectively), and much better than the 4th, 5th and 8th (100%, all). It was also noticeably better than state courts (81%). Only the 11th, D.C., and the federal circuit were noticeably better at 50% each.
The 'heavily reversed and overly liberal 9th' is one of those memes that has an ounce of truth to it obscured by a ton of partisan bravado.
Actually, it's neither. Check your facts.
He has a successful software house with what most people here would view as ideal programmer working conditions. If he were unix-centered instead of a Microsoftie, he'd probably be considered a god here. That's why you should give a shit.
The only problem with this is that, if the cops figure it out (well, their technicians figure it out), you're sunk: you've wilfully hidden something from them that they were looking for or wanted to look at. You couldn't do more to convince them of your guilt if you signed a confession.
No, it would suck if that happened. But it would also suck if crimes couldn't be prosecuted because the police couldn't secure evidence... my computer, his car, your bank account. Imagine this post on ./: "Ha ha! Stupid fucking FBI grabbed my hard drives, copied them, and handed them back. Here's me uploading the HL2 source code to every FTP server in Asia... let them stop me now!"
Fundamentally, there's a point when innocent people have to be inconvenienced because the enforcement of law isn't perfect, and the choice is to allow some of that inconvenience to avoid letting guilty people go free because law enforcement's hands are tied too tightly.
I asked a lawyer this afternoon about this, and if my computer with crucial business info on it was confiscated, I would petition the court to get a copy of the hard drive back, or at least specific files I needed that could be verified not to contain [kiddie porn|HL2 source code|anthrax bomb making instructions], with reasonably good chances of success. The courts aren't nearly as stupid and thuggish as people here are portraying them to be.
So, since everyone is innocent until proven guilty, then no search warrant should ever be granted since that has a negative effect on someone's life? And because Valve's security was less than perfect, it's their fault they got hacked? And because she had on too much makeup, and was wearing a short skirt, she was "asking for it"?
Time for what? Time to make friends with the guy in the top bunk? If the computer's in their control, they've got all the time they need.
Because you'd be ordered by a judge to turn over the key, and "I forgot what the key is" or "I lost it" would get you thrown in jail for contempt and obstruction.
Contempt of court. The judge will say "bullshit, you forgot", and lock you up until you "remember".
The last thing we need in a discussion of security is half-baked and thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories. People wearing tinfoil hats should be automatically excluded from these discussions.
We've had a palm-reading system for four years now, and once some people's initial concerns about being finger-printed were relieved (which isn't what's happening, at our place or at McDonald's), no one cared. There's no invasion of privacy in making sure that it's you who are punching in.
Ah, the 'property is theft' defense. Call me when someone rips off your car and let me know how you feel about its liberation.
His wrongdoing wasn't accessing Lexis/Nexis, it was incurring fees for the NYT under false pretenses. You shouldn't have to pay a licence fee for an operating system, but if you did, and someone charged more licences on your account, for which you had to pay, his act is still wrong even if the fundamental software licencing is wrong in and of itself. It's about harm, not about "information wants to be free".
Calling him a 'building inspector' implies some sort of official capacity for what he did, something he was completely lacking. He's much more a random stranger than any sort of municipal official, however much the hacker community likes to imagine itself as the first among equals in a community of anarcho-libertarians on the Internet.
I assume that the way this would work is that the standard air corridors, as they neared urban centers and military installations and such, would have soft walls preventing course deviations.
So what happens during an emergency mechanical failure when the plane is veering out of the standard air corridor, the pilot's wrestling with the stick to get the nose up enough for a non-perpendicular landing, and the soft wall override kicks in, trying to steer the plane back into the air corridor? Remember, it's not a terrorist preventative if it's easily disabled from the cockpit.
It's easy to imagine that there'd be some sort of cutoff for emergency situtations, just as it's easy to imagine another scenario in which the soft wall override kicks in at the wrong moment, dooming a plane that might have been saved otherwise.
Even 'at-will' states like Illinois and Wisconsin (where I am) have to be careful dismissing people, since 'at-will' termination cannot contravene *anything* that is contrary to labor law. In other words, 'at-will' versus 'right-to-work' is a bogus distinction used by lawmakers to cozy up to the left or the right.
*whoosh*
That ad is fucking great.
Am I the only one who noticed how much "Farquad" sounds like "fuckwad" when spoken with a Scottish accent?
When you think about the amount you use the web, and the things for which you use it, what percentage of that is animated, or could be usefully animated?
For me, 0%. For your average websurfer, I'd say less than 3-4%. If there even is a battle (since this announcement smacks of MS's classic vaporware announcement tactic), it will be a minor skirmish that decides nothing.
What's the next email? What's the next browser? What's the next IM? When I see an announcement of something from MS, or any other company, of a technology with that much potential, I'll pay attention.
Neither did the OP. Nor 2.045, nor 2.0 at all.
You know, I avoided the RPM of apache when I built my webserver, instead choosing to download it and compile 2.0 from source, and get it working myself. Which I did. Having done it once, I know it pretty well now, and it took me five minutes to go from 2.0.45 to 2.0.48 after seeing this story, having saved my ./configure in an executable file. I ran that, make, make install, copy the conf files and the resin .so, test it, and switch the symbolic link that the sys V script goes to.
So. Untinstall the deb, download it, compile it, install it, and get it working. It's no harder to configure, and you're free of package tyranny.