The idea that smart people don't make mistakes is thoroughly ridiculous.
They make mistakes, they don't make that mistake.
Smart people recognize that they make mistakes, so they create systems that help them catch and prevent their own mistakes. If you're foolish enough to believe that you can't make mistakes, then you should just turn off all the warnings on the compiler and not bother with lesser workarounds like redefining a single symbol.
That's not the issue. The new function is still relying on the programmer not making a mistake. What makes you think that anyone who would make a mistake on the number of bytes to copy wouldn't make a mistake on the size of the buffer? Alternatively, what happens if the src buffer size isn't large enough? Do we need to add another length parameter here?
I have nothing against making a language safer, but if the language can't ensure the size of the buffers itself (and it can't in this case), relying on the programmer to pass in the correct number is exactly as safe as relying on the programmer to do the bounds checking. Exactly as safe, no safer.
The goal of asking you to specify the length of the destination buffer is to force you to think about the data you're working with *while* you're writing the code and not afterwards in an unconnected security audit. Furthermore, it provides documentation to other people reading the code who may not have the same mental model of what's going on as you do. And as usual "other people" includes you, six months after you wrote the code.
Uh-huh. Because everyone is not just going to add a line of code to one of the base headers:
C is not a safe language, and stupid programmers will always find ways to mess it up. There are safer languages where you can't hang yourself as easily, and if you don't understand C, you should use them. Microsoft can't fix this problem.
His legal right to control the fate of his work is derived from the moral right. But I can "rip you a new one" on either basis, for they aren't really distinct...
No, it is not. The concept of copyright and patents were intended to increase the number of quality public domain works by giving people an incentive to create and publish. So the public gives up their moral rights rights to copy and distribute however they wish for a limited time in the expectation that the increased profit artists and inventors get within that time will result in more for us later on.
There's no such thing as a "moral right" to control the copying and distribution of texts or songs you write. After all, I "copy" and "distribute" songs every day when I'm whistling. I "copy" texts anytime I discuss the plot of a book with someone. By reading or listening, those things become part of me, they are no longer yours.
There is only physical property. The entire concept of "intellectual property" is flawed, and protection of this so-called right was not the intention of copyright (at least not in the US).
Not only acid fumes. I still remember back when I was in high school, as part of a chemistry lab experiment we were required to dissolve aluminum foil with some strong base. I don't remember what or why, it's been a decade since I took any chemistry, but I do remember that my labmate, who was performing that particular part of the experiment, didn't read the part of the procedure that said, "do this in a fume hood." All I remember is turning around to talk to him (not realizing he was already dissolving the thing), taking a deep breath, and having the taste of aluminum foil in my mouth for the next 4 hours.
Didn't make me want to puke, and the disgustin factor is nothing like what these people are talking about in this thread, but it is definitely not an experience I'd like to repeat.
The mere fact that supposedly responsible journalists are even citing Wikipedia shows what an intellectual cancer Wikipedia is on the Internet.
It most certainly is not. It's exactly as bad for a journalist to quote wikipedia as it is for a journalist to quote britannica or any other encyclopedia. Journalists are supposed to use primary sources, and they're supposed to check those sources.
Hell, I wasn't allowed to use encyclopedias as a source for my middle school papers, and you're saying the availability of wikipedia and it being "difficult to avoid" is an excuse for journalists? You don't go to a website to get a quote from the guy who just died, you call his estate and get information and statements from them.
Wikipedia is fantastic when used for the purpose of an encyclopedia. In others words, it's a great place to get a general idea about a subject and figure out what aspects you want to look at when you start your research. You don't ever, ever cite one or use information from one directly.
Ok, I should have said, "any intelligent person who actually took the time to think this through," not just "anyone."
No, I'm not insulting your intelligence yet, but I don't think you've thought this through. Here's why:
I know plenty of "stupid" people with rather successful careers doing electrical work, carpentry, plumbing, and factory labor and they make more than I do as a degreed child behavioral worker.
They're not "stupid," they're uneducated. I didn't say "uneducated parents" would want to keep their children home doing chores, I think many of them would see the benefit in their child getting the education they lack. I said "stupid parents" were those who chose to believe an education is not important to their children.
There's no reason someone with a high school diploma, or even a college degree would be unable to also pick up the skills and have a rather successful career doing electrical work, carpentry, pumbling, and factory labor. You take someone whose parents kept them from school and now unskilled jobs are their only choice. If they want a career that requires a college education, that opportunity has been taken from them by their parents, before they were old enough to make a decision by themselves.
You don't need a degree to succeed in this country, if you have work ethic and a good market for your skills
You don't? I just did a search for the types of jobs you mentioned, and every single one of them had the same requirement, as in this example. They require a High School diploma or GED.
Sure, you could start your own business, if you're smart enough and good enough, but "Good market for your skills" is a key phrase you used there, especially in a place where you'll be competing with large amounts of immigrants who have the trade skills you mentioned, as well as outsourcing for unskilled jobs such as call centers.
No, success isn't a given with education. However, not having an education can hurt you, while having it never will.
eBook readers will take off the same time that mp3 players and smart phones did... when apple releases the 'iRead' (or whatever they call it.)
Wait...you think mp3 players and smart phones only took off after Apple released their products? They might have immediately taken control of said market, but the market was already flourishing long before apple made their play in each one of those areas.
'm convinced that apples the only company out there with enough sense (and cojones) to make an eBook reader that will actually be a useful substitute for the printed word.
It's already here. The iRex Iliad is fantastic. It's also $600, which is what is holding up adoption, and why the Kindle, despite being an inferior product, is doing so well, compared to all the others (much lower price point). Apple isn't exactly known for making things cheaper so they're not going to help here. I predict they'll get into the market when every other reader costs $100, and sell theirs for $300, which will undoubtedly still take over the market, despite lacking several features that the $100 readers have. I say this for the same reason that I own an iPhone, despite it lacking features my phone of 5 years ago had. The one thing it does well, it does really well, and that's the browser.
No, but I know of several nations with better standards of living that, not un-coincidentally, have a "compulsory" education system that properly rewards excellence and punishes failure, rather than letting the kids simply slide through and come out the other end uneducated due to their own stupidity and misbehavior.
Relax pal, there's a reason why I replied to the other guy, and not to you. You were arguing against the overall culture of being afraid to give bad grades to students / have them repeat a grade lest the parents file a lawsuit. I agree with you, that's insane.
The person I was replying to was arguing against compulsory education, and that simply doesn't work. Too many fucking stupid parents would love to have their kids around as slave labor all day, doing chores while the parents watch tv (I've seen that happening in Brazil where, at the time, compulsory education was law, but not always enforced). Not sending your child to school (homeschooling is fine, if standards are set and the children are tested periodically to ensure they're learning the required subjects) is denying them the opportunity to have a successful career in the future. Anyone has to agree that's child abuse.
Yeah, yeah... an educated citizenry is a cornerstone of a healthy, productive society. How's that working out, anyway?
As far as I know, it's working out fantastically. Do you have an example of a nation without compulsory education that has a standard of living greater than ours?
I'm one of the few people who actually likes a simple form of hungarian notiation. I understand the arguments against, and I understand the "apps hungarian" was the original intent, as a poster below notes, but I would still rather also see the type information. There's nothing wrong with additional information, as long as you still get all the other information you need, and as long as it's not confusing. Allow me to explain:
1)Variables change type. And then you have to rename everything. Its a pain
This was never an issue for me. The vast majority of the time a variable is constrained to a single file, for the rest of the times, I still have multiple-file replace tools.
2)The extra information it gives you is minimal. I want to know what data is in a variable, not the language type used to hold it.
Ah, yes. The information might be minimal, but it still saves me the pain in the ass to go look at the declaration if I need to. Yes, I know IDEs will give you that information automatically these days, but often I just ssh into a machine and do less on the source file (for this reason, I also limit my source lines to 80 characters).
I agree that what data is in the variable is much more important, and I also include that in the variable name.
If the name of the variable is firstName, I don't need it to be called lpcstrzFirstName, I know it's a string.
True, and lpcstrz is more information than I would need to know with just a glance, so I wouldn't use it. If I really need to know if it's a long pointer or some other type of string, that happens so infrequently that it's not too bad to go look at the definition. However, is it a member variable for the class or a local variable within the function only? sFirstName would instantly tell me the string is local m_sFirstName would tell me it's a member of the class, without me having to go check.
And the language type is rarely interesting- I want to know that the variable outsideTemp holds degrees farenheit, not that it's an integer
Yes, but why are you so resistant to knowing both? I don't know if outsideTemp holds F, C, or K. I also don't know if it's an integer or a float, or for that matter, I don't know if it's a string representation of the temperature. I don't know if it's local or a member of the class. But if I name it, m_fOutsideCelsiusTemp, you get everything.
3)It makes searching the code for a variable that much more annoying, because they all start with freaking 'i' and 'p'.
Yes, but who cares what it starts with? If you're looking for the variable that holds outside temperature, you're not going to guess at the type or whether it's in F or C. You're just going to type grep -inH "temp" *.c, and vary the query depending on what comes up.
This is fundamental misleading about copyright. You replaced the comma with something to make it seem like that line stopped without mentioning author's rights: "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
It is about their right, and their right is compatible with the best interest of the nation, hence the preamble.
Not at all. It was considered that the public domain is the proper location for those works, and thus everybody has the right to those works. However, since that encourages people to keep trade secrets and to generally not publish their works, then in order to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," congress grants this "exclusive right." Note that this power does not exist prior to congress legislating it, and congress can only legislate such a thing because that power is enumerated in the constitution, with a justification for removing the natural rights of the people to do what they want with the works they buy or otherwise legally acquire, including copying and distributing said copies. Since granting this right is obviously infringing on the public's right, it is also specified that congress may only grant these rights for limited times, before the rights revert to the people.
Rights to their respective writings and discoveries isn't described as a right to protect such as freedom of speech (where the wording is, Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom). Instead, it's described as something congress must grant, because it does not exist without this act.
Your assertion that I'd have to suffer the "punishment" of writing my own is a false dichotomy that hinges on me either being able to "write my own" or use GPL code. This isn't the case.
It's true there are other open source licenses, but if you're looking a GPL project, there's only one of that project, and it might be the only one (or the best one) that suits you. If you can find an alternative, with a license more suitable for your needs, go ahead.
Don't think of it as "punishment." If I write something and GPL it, and you want to use it, I'm allowing you to use it provided you fulfill the conditions I establish. You do the same thing with your super-duper proprietary source portfolio that you don't want to open up. If I want to use it, you'll allow me to use it, as long as I fulfill your conditions (give you money, don't distribute the derived work as GPL, etc.).
The reason you're at odds with the GPL isn't because it's a bad open source license, but rather because you obviously have fundamental philosophical differences. You talk about how using the GPL "reduces control over your IP." Of course it does: the entire motivation behind the GPL is that the concept of "Intellectual Property" is flawed, in that there can be no such thing. If it's not a physical thing, it cannot be property, and you shouldn't have any control over it. However, if you want to play the control over code game, we'll use the system to enforce that any code we write remains open. Thus, copyleft was born.
If you don't believe that's right, if you believe you have the right to maintain control over the code you wrote, then you have a fundamental philosophical difference with the FSF, and you're not going to like the GPL. If you agree with the FSF, then the GPL is the license for you. If you want to run a business, you do whatever is going to get you the most money, and that depends on exactly what it is that you're selling. If you want to run a business AND you agree with the FSF, then again, the GPL is for you, because your ability to make money does not (and should not) trump your morals.
Nothing science has put forth even attempts to explain why I have a sense of me.
People put way too much importance on that. Your brain is telling you that you have a sense of yourself. Take some of the right drugs and suddenly you can have your brain giving you a sense that you're everyone and everything else too. Doesn't make it true.
It's possible, and in fact likely, that what you perceive as free will and consciousness is an illusion of very complex, but completely deterministic behavior. You haven't offered anything to explain why that wouldn't be the case.
If we manage to figure that one out, the next step would be to explain why anything exists at all.
The question of "why does anything exist at all" is utterly meaningless. If nothing existed at all, the mystery would be "why is there only nothingness?" except there would be nobody to ask the question. The mysteries are still equivalent.
My basic issue with RMS's logic is that he doesn't want to trust anyone. Because if you don't trust anyone, you can't be double-crossed. Right?
The only problem is, society cannot operate without trust. At some point I have to trust someone else to handle a repetitive task, least I needlessly waste my time. Not to mention the myriad of skills I'd need for basic survival!
Strictly speaking, you should only trust people if you believe they share compatible goals with your own. You can generally trust the people you buy food from, because killing their customers is incompatible with their goals. You can trust your friends and family because you believe they value their relationship with you as much as you value your relationship with them.
On the other hand, if your goal is to keep source code open, then that goal is contrary to that of the business model of many other companies. They believe in hindering competition, and in profiting from selling you improvements you could create yourself. So we need the GPL in order to enforce that anytime someone uses GPL'd code and distributes the result, the code and any changes to it are also kept open. Software as a service bypasses that. They can use modified open source software, but since they're never distributing the software itself, they never have to distribute the changes. Since their goals are clearly contrary to RMS's goals, why should he trust them?
I agree completely. The Star Trek: Judgment Rites released following that game was also great and seemed to capture to a suprising degree the flavor of the old show.
I actually think Judgment Rites was significantly better than 25th Anniversary. The away teams had varied members instead of just Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Ensign Ricky, so sometimes you got Scotty or Chekov to be engaged in the storyline.
This variety also led to more entertaining puzzles, such as during a mission at a museum where Scotty had to harvest parts from museum pieces to solve the problem at hand (and I can't remember what it was...it's been a long time).
You'd take less of a morale hit by engaging in orbital bombardments until everybody was dead
When I found out you could do that, it became my conquering method of choice while playing as everyone except the Cardassians. Sure, other races didn't get the morale hit the Federation did, but the Cardassians (and to a smaller extent the Klingons) were the only ones capable of actually getting acceptable productivity out of the conquered planets, whereas with the genocide option, you could get all the planet bonuses and your own people in control, happily working.
About the only time you could get away with ground invasions as the Federation was when you liberated conquered races from the other major powers. Those were actually kind of fun because you'd get a HUGE morale boost and liberated race would usually want to join the Federation within a turn or two.
Ugh...unless they were the member of another major empire before they were conquered. Then they'd immediately join the other empire back.
First, sorry it took so long to reply to you. Slashdot's new front page doesn't seem to warn me when I have replies to posts...
You lost A game, but not the game you cared about playing - winning for the team. For example, I would not consider losing your life while rescuing that of another person "losing", as long as that was your intention. If your intention was to live long and prosper, then yes, you failed.
Well, we're no longer talking about the same game here, so of course strategy differs. Of course you can choose to "take one for the team" and consider that a "win" if your goal is to protect the team. If the other prisoner is your brother, your best friend, your daughter, what have you, then you have two things going for you: one, you know they're likely to cooperate. Two, even if they don't, you'll be happy that they're not in jail (or you'll be really pissed off that they're not willing to protect you as much as you are willing to protect them, but let's assume you're just full of love here).
Basically, the dominant strategy you dislike assumes that winning means that you (not the prisoner's team, but you in particular) spending the least time in jail is the goal of the game for you. It assumes you don't have any type of relationship with the other prisoner that would make you value his freedom more than yours or that would make you believe that he's not just trying to minimize his own time in jail with no regard for you. If you change these assumptions, then yes, the dominant strategy is to cooperate, but that's a completely different game. It's like playing chess and saying that your goal is to capture as many pawns as possible. Your strategy will be completely different because your objective is different.
(I still cherish my recordings of the original radio series 'Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy).
As do I, they're freaking awesome. That's why I thought of radio theater. However, even though we still have radio, and we still have some radio dramas, I think the reason the culture changed was due to TV. People have alternative entertainment medium and most prefer it, or at least spend much more of their entertainment time in front of a TV than listening to the radio.
I'm just expressing a general personal hope that the format doesn't become a de facto standard to the exclusion of normal 2D presentations
I don't think it will, you don't have much to worry about on that front, which is why I was even really puzzled at the original poster's attitude. Even those of us who can see the 3D effects don't want to see EVERY movie in 3D, at least not with with current technology. It's gimmicky, and it might be cool to see a movie once a year with full 3d effects on, but anything more than that and we just get tired of it.
There are people who don't like it at all. That's probably why your movie theater was showing bolt in 2D as well.
These satellites were designed and built in the 70's, when jamming of satellite transmissions was considerably harder than it would be today.
Fair enough.
and while "pirating" them appears to be all too easy today, it was hard to imagine it being possible then
By random truckers with $100-$500 equipment, sure. However, what about well funded foreign governments? Did it really not occur to them back then that, "we're spending a ton of money on this satellite system, and even though our transmissions will be encrypted and the enemy won't be able to decrypt them, by not preventing actual access we're basically allowing them to use our expensive satellite communication network to send their encrypted transmissions that we can't intercept without having to bother paying to put their own birds up"?
We should be trying to create hurricanes, not stop them. Then put... Wind turbines in the way to harvest the energy.
Although a somewhat funny joke...how are you going to do that? By dumping enough energy to form a hurricane next to the wind turbines only to harvest that energy back out? That's just an energy conversion at an efficiency
If you're going to go sci-fi humor on us, you might as well get the best of both worlds. We shouldn't bother to create hurricanes, we should stop them by harvesting their energy.
How you're going to do that probably involves inverting the polarity on something.
To a deaf person there is no difference between a talkie and a sound picture (assuming subtitles)
Which are typically not available at every theater, so they need to wait until the dvd release.
To a color-blind person there is no difference between a monochrome film and a color film.
That's not true. Color-blind people don't see in black and white, they just don't see the difference between a small subset of colors (there is total color blindness, but that's quite rare). I had a lab partner in college who was red-green color-blind and the rest of us, because we did not know of her disability, color coded certain wires red and green in our project. This caused a lot of difficulty, so we changed colors.
If the artist of a color film or a painting uses those colors to demarcate objects, a color blind person would be really annoyed, as they would simply see a single large object.
However, to me and the OP, the 3D films are not simply unimproved from the 2D, they are actually *worse* because of the supposed enhancement.
And TV is not simply "unimproved" radio to the blind. There used to be quite a lot more radio theater back in the day, which has been almost completely supplanted by TV. Sure, the blind can still listen to the TV, but you'd be surprised how much information is lost. With radio, the artists were forced to described the setting, we're expected to notice the visual details ourselves. However, if you see a completely blind person posting, "thanks an effn lot, I can't see the tv picture" you're not going to sympathize with their belief that TV shows shouldn't be made. I'm sorry they can't enjoy it, but I still can.
Honestly, I'm not trying to make light of the situation you and the person I originally replied to are in. I'm saying that it's unreasonable to expect that because you can't enjoy something, even if it actually makes the movie worse for you, that nobody else should get to experiment with the format.
I'm serious when I say I am blind in one eye, and as a result any gimmicky attempt to project 3d at me fails miserably.
Honestly, you were modded as funny, because your complaint is funny. Especially since you phrased it in an lewis black-like, angry comic, fashion. You know, "thanks an effn lot."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not laughing at the fact you're blind in one eye. My father is also blind in one eye, and I get your frustration that you can't participate in the 3d movie experience. That said, complaining that they're making 3d movies because you can't see the 3d effect is a little bit like a completely blind man complaining that they're making movies and tv shows because he can only hear the sound, but not see the picture, or a green-red colorblind person complaining about the choice of colors used in a painting because it all looks the same. The rest of us can see the pictures, the rest of us can see a bigger color spectrum, the rest of us can see the 3d effects.
Your one-eye blindness is called a handicap for a reason. Just because you're lucky that it doesn't affect most of the things you do on a day-to-day basis doesn't mean you should be bitter when it does affect you.
You can unilaterally decide that you are on the other prisoner's team, even if he does not realize it or agree. All that matters is that YOUR goal is "Prisoner team wins".
It really matters. If you "unilaterally decide that you are on the other prisoner's team" and he does not agree, then you go to jail for the full 10-year sentence. Congratulations, you lost the game.
On the other hand, if I'm the other prisoner, and I know that you feel the way you do and that you'll always be on the "prisoner's team" I can play against you and go home free.
In other words, being on "the prisoners' team" can potentially screw you for 10 years because you had "wishful thinking" that the other guy would also remain silent. If your wishful thinking was correct, it's true that you'd only get six months, but then again if you betray him you guarantee that the worst you'll get is 5 years, which is half the full sentence that you would be risking, plus the possibility of going free without serving any time at all if the other player is behaving according to his wishful thinking.
It's a no-brainer really. It's like choosing between two different lotteries. One of them gives you a 50% prize of no jail time with a 50% chance of serving five years. The other gives you a 50% prize of six months in jail with a 50% chance of serving ten years. The prize is better and the punishment is lower when you choose to betray the other guy, and the odds are the same for the two cases.
Then your probably shouldn't buy any consoles. Consoles that use discs are going to fail a lot quicker than the old ones that used cartridges.
Heh...I didn't feel the need to mention that the SegaCD plugged to my genesis is also still in working condition, but if you're going to argue that point, I guess I should. My Saturn and Dreamcast are also fine. I gave away my PS2 when I got a PS3, and as far as I know, that's also still working.
Not to mention, of course, that the Red Ring of Death isn't being caused by optical drive failures.
Seriously, the failure rate of consoles other than the 360 are pretty low. They do fail, and the optical drive can be one of the first things to go, but those failures are pretty bad. The 360 failure rate is an outlier, it's not a trend of disc-based consoles.
The 3 years warrenty on the new one should comfortably carry me over into the next console generation.
Personally, carrying me over into the next console generation isn't good enough. I want my systems to last until, at the very least, emulators are good enough to replace it. It's not like I'm going to stop playing the current games just because new ones come out.
Back in the last generation, I had 2 Gamecubes die on me...Having to replace dead console isn't actually a new or uncommon experience.
I've never had to replace a console. I still have my genesis in working condition. I have an old friend that still has the same Atari 2600 I used to play at his house when we were kids, and it's in perfect working condition. I do know multiple people who got the RROD with their xbox 360's, but the 360 really is the exception, not the rule.
That's not to say I think other consoles never break. I'm not even saying you shouldn't buy another one. If you have fun playing your 360 games, then the cost you'd pay for not playing those games anymore is greater than the cost you pay for replacing the console. I'm just saying failing consoles should be an extremely rare occurrence, and we really shouldn't just start accepting that as normal in the same way we used to accept that computers crashing 5 times a day was normal behavior back in the Windows 9x days.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea that smart people don't make mistakes is thoroughly ridiculous.
They make mistakes, they don't make that mistake.
Smart people recognize that they make mistakes, so they create systems that help them catch and prevent their own mistakes. If you're foolish enough to believe that you can't make mistakes, then you should just turn off all the warnings on the compiler and not bother with lesser workarounds like redefining a single symbol.
That's not the issue. The new function is still relying on the programmer not making a mistake. What makes you think that anyone who would make a mistake on the number of bytes to copy wouldn't make a mistake on the size of the buffer? Alternatively, what happens if the src buffer size isn't large enough? Do we need to add another length parameter here?
I have nothing against making a language safer, but if the language can't ensure the size of the buffers itself (and it can't in this case), relying on the programmer to pass in the correct number is exactly as safe as relying on the programmer to do the bounds checking. Exactly as safe, no safer.
Some of these reactions are quite funny.
The goal of asking you to specify the length of the destination buffer is to force you to think about the data you're working with *while* you're writing the code and not afterwards in an unconnected security audit. Furthermore, it provides documentation to other people reading the code who may not have the same mental model of what's going on as you do. And as usual "other people" includes you, six months after you wrote the code.
Uh-huh. Because everyone is not just going to add a line of code to one of the base headers:
#define memcpy(dst, len, src) memcpy_s((dst),(len),(src),(len))
C is not a safe language, and stupid programmers will always find ways to mess it up. There are safer languages where you can't hang yourself as easily, and if you don't understand C, you should use them. Microsoft can't fix this problem.
His legal right to control the fate of his work is derived from the moral right. But I can "rip you a new one" on either basis, for they aren't really distinct...
No, it is not. The concept of copyright and patents were intended to increase the number of quality public domain works by giving people an incentive to create and publish. So the public gives up their moral rights rights to copy and distribute however they wish for a limited time in the expectation that the increased profit artists and inventors get within that time will result in more for us later on.
There's no such thing as a "moral right" to control the copying and distribution of texts or songs you write. After all, I "copy" and "distribute" songs every day when I'm whistling. I "copy" texts anytime I discuss the plot of a book with someone. By reading or listening, those things become part of me, they are no longer yours.
There is only physical property. The entire concept of "intellectual property" is flawed, and protection of this so-called right was not the intention of copyright (at least not in the US).
Acid fumes teach you that lesson real quick.
Not only acid fumes. I still remember back when I was in high school, as part of a chemistry lab experiment we were required to dissolve aluminum foil with some strong base. I don't remember what or why, it's been a decade since I took any chemistry, but I do remember that my labmate, who was performing that particular part of the experiment, didn't read the part of the procedure that said, "do this in a fume hood." All I remember is turning around to talk to him (not realizing he was already dissolving the thing), taking a deep breath, and having the taste of aluminum foil in my mouth for the next 4 hours.
Didn't make me want to puke, and the disgustin factor is nothing like what these people are talking about in this thread, but it is definitely not an experience I'd like to repeat.
The mere fact that supposedly responsible journalists are even citing Wikipedia shows what an intellectual cancer Wikipedia is on the Internet.
It most certainly is not. It's exactly as bad for a journalist to quote wikipedia as it is for a journalist to quote britannica or any other encyclopedia. Journalists are supposed to use primary sources, and they're supposed to check those sources.
Hell, I wasn't allowed to use encyclopedias as a source for my middle school papers, and you're saying the availability of wikipedia and it being "difficult to avoid" is an excuse for journalists? You don't go to a website to get a quote from the guy who just died, you call his estate and get information and statements from them.
Wikipedia is fantastic when used for the purpose of an encyclopedia. In others words, it's a great place to get a general idea about a subject and figure out what aspects you want to look at when you start your research. You don't ever, ever cite one or use information from one directly.
Oh? I don't agree.
Ok, I should have said, "any intelligent person who actually took the time to think this through," not just "anyone."
No, I'm not insulting your intelligence yet, but I don't think you've thought this through. Here's why:
I know plenty of "stupid" people with rather successful careers doing electrical work, carpentry, plumbing, and factory labor and they make more than I do as a degreed child behavioral worker.
They're not "stupid," they're uneducated. I didn't say "uneducated parents" would want to keep their children home doing chores, I think many of them would see the benefit in their child getting the education they lack. I said "stupid parents" were those who chose to believe an education is not important to their children.
There's no reason someone with a high school diploma, or even a college degree would be unable to also pick up the skills and have a rather successful career doing electrical work, carpentry, pumbling, and factory labor. You take someone whose parents kept them from school and now unskilled jobs are their only choice. If they want a career that requires a college education, that opportunity has been taken from them by their parents, before they were old enough to make a decision by themselves.
You don't need a degree to succeed in this country, if you have work ethic and a good market for your skills
You don't? I just did a search for the types of jobs you mentioned, and every single one of them had the same requirement, as in this example. They require a High School diploma or GED.
Sure, you could start your own business, if you're smart enough and good enough, but "Good market for your skills" is a key phrase you used there, especially in a place where you'll be competing with large amounts of immigrants who have the trade skills you mentioned, as well as outsourcing for unskilled jobs such as call centers.
No, success isn't a given with education. However, not having an education can hurt you, while having it never will.
eBook readers will take off the same time that mp3 players and smart phones did... when apple releases the 'iRead' (or whatever they call it.)
Wait...you think mp3 players and smart phones only took off after Apple released their products? They might have immediately taken control of said market, but the market was already flourishing long before apple made their play in each one of those areas.
'm convinced that apples the only company out there with enough sense (and cojones) to make an eBook reader that will actually be a useful substitute for the printed word.
It's already here. The iRex Iliad is fantastic. It's also $600, which is what is holding up adoption, and why the Kindle, despite being an inferior product, is doing so well, compared to all the others (much lower price point). Apple isn't exactly known for making things cheaper so they're not going to help here. I predict they'll get into the market when every other reader costs $100, and sell theirs for $300, which will undoubtedly still take over the market, despite lacking several features that the $100 readers have. I say this for the same reason that I own an iPhone, despite it lacking features my phone of 5 years ago had. The one thing it does well, it does really well, and that's the browser.
No, but I know of several nations with better standards of living that, not un-coincidentally, have a "compulsory" education system that properly rewards excellence and punishes failure, rather than letting the kids simply slide through and come out the other end uneducated due to their own stupidity and misbehavior.
Relax pal, there's a reason why I replied to the other guy, and not to you. You were arguing against the overall culture of being afraid to give bad grades to students / have them repeat a grade lest the parents file a lawsuit. I agree with you, that's insane.
The person I was replying to was arguing against compulsory education, and that simply doesn't work. Too many fucking stupid parents would love to have their kids around as slave labor all day, doing chores while the parents watch tv (I've seen that happening in Brazil where, at the time, compulsory education was law, but not always enforced). Not sending your child to school (homeschooling is fine, if standards are set and the children are tested periodically to ensure they're learning the required subjects) is denying them the opportunity to have a successful career in the future. Anyone has to agree that's child abuse.
Yeah, yeah... an educated citizenry is a cornerstone of a healthy, productive society. How's that working out, anyway?
As far as I know, it's working out fantastically. Do you have an example of a nation without compulsory education that has a standard of living greater than ours?
I'm one of the few people who actually likes a simple form of hungarian notiation. I understand the arguments against, and I understand the "apps hungarian" was the original intent, as a poster below notes, but I would still rather also see the type information. There's nothing wrong with additional information, as long as you still get all the other information you need, and as long as it's not confusing. Allow me to explain:
1)Variables change type. And then you have to rename everything. Its a pain
This was never an issue for me. The vast majority of the time a variable is constrained to a single file, for the rest of the times, I still have multiple-file replace tools.
2)The extra information it gives you is minimal. I want to know what data is in a variable, not the language type used to hold it.
Ah, yes. The information might be minimal, but it still saves me the pain in the ass to go look at the declaration if I need to. Yes, I know IDEs will give you that information automatically these days, but often I just ssh into a machine and do less on the source file (for this reason, I also limit my source lines to 80 characters).
I agree that what data is in the variable is much more important, and I also include that in the variable name.
If the name of the variable is firstName, I don't need it to be called lpcstrzFirstName, I know it's a string.
True, and lpcstrz is more information than I would need to know with just a glance, so I wouldn't use it. If I really need to know if it's a long pointer or some other type of string, that happens so infrequently that it's not too bad to go look at the definition. However, is it a member variable for the class or a local variable within the function only? sFirstName would instantly tell me the string is local m_sFirstName would tell me it's a member of the class, without me having to go check.
And the language type is rarely interesting- I want to know that the variable outsideTemp holds degrees farenheit, not that it's an integer
Yes, but why are you so resistant to knowing both? I don't know if outsideTemp holds F, C, or K. I also don't know if it's an integer or a float, or for that matter, I don't know if it's a string representation of the temperature. I don't know if it's local or a member of the class. But if I name it, m_fOutsideCelsiusTemp, you get everything.
3)It makes searching the code for a variable that much more annoying, because they all start with freaking 'i' and 'p'.
Yes, but who cares what it starts with? If you're looking for the variable that holds outside temperature, you're not going to guess at the type or whether it's in F or C. You're just going to type grep -inH "temp" *.c, and vary the query depending on what comes up.
This is fundamental misleading about copyright. You replaced the comma with something to make it seem like that line stopped without mentioning author's rights: "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
It is about their right, and their right is compatible with the best interest of the nation, hence the preamble.
Not at all. It was considered that the public domain is the proper location for those works, and thus everybody has the right to those works. However, since that encourages people to keep trade secrets and to generally not publish their works, then in order to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," congress grants this "exclusive right." Note that this power does not exist prior to congress legislating it, and congress can only legislate such a thing because that power is enumerated in the constitution, with a justification for removing the natural rights of the people to do what they want with the works they buy or otherwise legally acquire, including copying and distributing said copies. Since granting this right is obviously infringing on the public's right, it is also specified that congress may only grant these rights for limited times, before the rights revert to the people.
Rights to their respective writings and discoveries isn't described as a right to protect such as freedom of speech (where the wording is, Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom). Instead, it's described as something congress must grant, because it does not exist without this act.
Your assertion that I'd have to suffer the "punishment" of writing my own is a false dichotomy that hinges on me either being able to "write my own" or use GPL code. This isn't the case.
It's true there are other open source licenses, but if you're looking a GPL project, there's only one of that project, and it might be the only one (or the best one) that suits you. If you can find an alternative, with a license more suitable for your needs, go ahead.
Don't think of it as "punishment." If I write something and GPL it, and you want to use it, I'm allowing you to use it provided you fulfill the conditions I establish. You do the same thing with your super-duper proprietary source portfolio that you don't want to open up. If I want to use it, you'll allow me to use it, as long as I fulfill your conditions (give you money, don't distribute the derived work as GPL, etc.).
The reason you're at odds with the GPL isn't because it's a bad open source license, but rather because you obviously have fundamental philosophical differences. You talk about how using the GPL "reduces control over your IP." Of course it does: the entire motivation behind the GPL is that the concept of "Intellectual Property" is flawed, in that there can be no such thing. If it's not a physical thing, it cannot be property, and you shouldn't have any control over it. However, if you want to play the control over code game, we'll use the system to enforce that any code we write remains open. Thus, copyleft was born.
If you don't believe that's right, if you believe you have the right to maintain control over the code you wrote, then you have a fundamental philosophical difference with the FSF, and you're not going to like the GPL. If you agree with the FSF, then the GPL is the license for you. If you want to run a business, you do whatever is going to get you the most money, and that depends on exactly what it is that you're selling. If you want to run a business AND you agree with the FSF, then again, the GPL is for you, because your ability to make money does not (and should not) trump your morals.
Nothing science has put forth even attempts to explain why I have a sense of me.
People put way too much importance on that. Your brain is telling you that you have a sense of yourself. Take some of the right drugs and suddenly you can have your brain giving you a sense that you're everyone and everything else too. Doesn't make it true.
It's possible, and in fact likely, that what you perceive as free will and consciousness is an illusion of very complex, but completely deterministic behavior. You haven't offered anything to explain why that wouldn't be the case.
If we manage to figure that one out, the next step would be to explain why anything exists at all.
The question of "why does anything exist at all" is utterly meaningless. If nothing existed at all, the mystery would be "why is there only nothingness?" except there would be nobody to ask the question. The mysteries are still equivalent.
My basic issue with RMS's logic is that he doesn't want to trust anyone. Because if you don't trust anyone, you can't be double-crossed. Right?
The only problem is, society cannot operate without trust. At some point I have to trust someone else to handle a repetitive task, least I needlessly waste my time. Not to mention the myriad of skills I'd need for basic survival!
Strictly speaking, you should only trust people if you believe they share compatible goals with your own. You can generally trust the people you buy food from, because killing their customers is incompatible with their goals. You can trust your friends and family because you believe they value their relationship with you as much as you value your relationship with them.
On the other hand, if your goal is to keep source code open, then that goal is contrary to that of the business model of many other companies. They believe in hindering competition, and in profiting from selling you improvements you could create yourself. So we need the GPL in order to enforce that anytime someone uses GPL'd code and distributes the result, the code and any changes to it are also kept open. Software as a service bypasses that. They can use modified open source software, but since they're never distributing the software itself, they never have to distribute the changes. Since their goals are clearly contrary to RMS's goals, why should he trust them?
I agree completely. The Star Trek: Judgment Rites released following that game was also great and seemed to capture to a suprising degree the flavor of the old show.
I actually think Judgment Rites was significantly better than 25th Anniversary. The away teams had varied members instead of just Kirk, McCoy, Spock, and Ensign Ricky, so sometimes you got Scotty or Chekov to be engaged in the storyline.
This variety also led to more entertaining puzzles, such as during a mission at a museum where Scotty had to harvest parts from museum pieces to solve the problem at hand (and I can't remember what it was...it's been a long time).
You'd take less of a morale hit by engaging in orbital bombardments until everybody was dead
When I found out you could do that, it became my conquering method of choice while playing as everyone except the Cardassians. Sure, other races didn't get the morale hit the Federation did, but the Cardassians (and to a smaller extent the Klingons) were the only ones capable of actually getting acceptable productivity out of the conquered planets, whereas with the genocide option, you could get all the planet bonuses and your own people in control, happily working.
About the only time you could get away with ground invasions as the Federation was when you liberated conquered races from the other major powers. Those were actually kind of fun because you'd get a HUGE morale boost and liberated race would usually want to join the Federation within a turn or two.
Ugh...unless they were the member of another major empire before they were conquered. Then they'd immediately join the other empire back.
First, sorry it took so long to reply to you. Slashdot's new front page doesn't seem to warn me when I have replies to posts...
You lost A game, but not the game you cared about playing - winning for the team. For example, I would not consider losing your life while rescuing that of another person "losing", as long as that was your intention. If your intention was to live long and prosper, then yes, you failed.
Well, we're no longer talking about the same game here, so of course strategy differs. Of course you can choose to "take one for the team" and consider that a "win" if your goal is to protect the team. If the other prisoner is your brother, your best friend, your daughter, what have you, then you have two things going for you: one, you know they're likely to cooperate. Two, even if they don't, you'll be happy that they're not in jail (or you'll be really pissed off that they're not willing to protect you as much as you are willing to protect them, but let's assume you're just full of love here).
Basically, the dominant strategy you dislike assumes that winning means that you (not the prisoner's team, but you in particular) spending the least time in jail is the goal of the game for you. It assumes you don't have any type of relationship with the other prisoner that would make you value his freedom more than yours or that would make you believe that he's not just trying to minimize his own time in jail with no regard for you. If you change these assumptions, then yes, the dominant strategy is to cooperate, but that's a completely different game. It's like playing chess and saying that your goal is to capture as many pawns as possible. Your strategy will be completely different because your objective is different.
(I still cherish my recordings of the original radio series 'Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy).
As do I, they're freaking awesome. That's why I thought of radio theater. However, even though we still have radio, and we still have some radio dramas, I think the reason the culture changed was due to TV. People have alternative entertainment medium and most prefer it, or at least spend much more of their entertainment time in front of a TV than listening to the radio.
I'm just expressing a general personal hope that the format doesn't become a de facto standard to the exclusion of normal 2D presentations
I don't think it will, you don't have much to worry about on that front, which is why I was even really puzzled at the original poster's attitude. Even those of us who can see the 3D effects don't want to see EVERY movie in 3D, at least not with with current technology. It's gimmicky, and it might be cool to see a movie once a year with full 3d effects on, but anything more than that and we just get tired of it.
There are people who don't like it at all. That's probably why your movie theater was showing bolt in 2D as well.
These satellites were designed and built in the 70's, when jamming of satellite transmissions was considerably harder than it would be today.
Fair enough.
and while "pirating" them appears to be all too easy today, it was hard to imagine it being possible then
By random truckers with $100-$500 equipment, sure. However, what about well funded foreign governments? Did it really not occur to them back then that, "we're spending a ton of money on this satellite system, and even though our transmissions will be encrypted and the enemy won't be able to decrypt them, by not preventing actual access we're basically allowing them to use our expensive satellite communication network to send their encrypted transmissions that we can't intercept without having to bother paying to put their own birds up"?
It just seems like a really bad idea.
We should be trying to create hurricanes, not stop them. Then put... Wind turbines in the way to harvest the energy.
Although a somewhat funny joke...how are you going to do that? By dumping enough energy to form a hurricane next to the wind turbines only to harvest that energy back out? That's just an energy conversion at an efficiency
If you're going to go sci-fi humor on us, you might as well get the best of both worlds. We shouldn't bother to create hurricanes, we should stop them by harvesting their energy.
How you're going to do that probably involves inverting the polarity on something.
To a deaf person there is no difference between a talkie and a sound picture (assuming subtitles)
Which are typically not available at every theater, so they need to wait until the dvd release.
To a color-blind person there is no difference between a monochrome film and a color film.
That's not true. Color-blind people don't see in black and white, they just don't see the difference between a small subset of colors (there is total color blindness, but that's quite rare). I had a lab partner in college who was red-green color-blind and the rest of us, because we did not know of her disability, color coded certain wires red and green in our project. This caused a lot of difficulty, so we changed colors.
If the artist of a color film or a painting uses those colors to demarcate objects, a color blind person would be really annoyed, as they would simply see a single large object.
However, to me and the OP, the 3D films are not simply unimproved from the 2D, they are actually *worse* because of the supposed enhancement.
And TV is not simply "unimproved" radio to the blind. There used to be quite a lot more radio theater back in the day, which has been almost completely supplanted by TV. Sure, the blind can still listen to the TV, but you'd be surprised how much information is lost. With radio, the artists were forced to described the setting, we're expected to notice the visual details ourselves. However, if you see a completely blind person posting, "thanks an effn lot, I can't see the tv picture" you're not going to sympathize with their belief that TV shows shouldn't be made. I'm sorry they can't enjoy it, but I still can.
Honestly, I'm not trying to make light of the situation you and the person I originally replied to are in. I'm saying that it's unreasonable to expect that because you can't enjoy something, even if it actually makes the movie worse for you, that nobody else should get to experiment with the format.
Hopefully there will also be a 2D release;
I agree. There's nothing wrong with that.
Ok who modded me as funny?
I'm serious when I say I am blind in one eye, and as a result any gimmicky attempt to project 3d at me fails miserably.
Honestly, you were modded as funny, because your complaint is funny. Especially since you phrased it in an lewis black-like, angry comic, fashion. You know, "thanks an effn lot."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not laughing at the fact you're blind in one eye. My father is also blind in one eye, and I get your frustration that you can't participate in the 3d movie experience. That said, complaining that they're making 3d movies because you can't see the 3d effect is a little bit like a completely blind man complaining that they're making movies and tv shows because he can only hear the sound, but not see the picture, or a green-red colorblind person complaining about the choice of colors used in a painting because it all looks the same. The rest of us can see the pictures, the rest of us can see a bigger color spectrum, the rest of us can see the 3d effects.
Your one-eye blindness is called a handicap for a reason. Just because you're lucky that it doesn't affect most of the things you do on a day-to-day basis doesn't mean you should be bitter when it does affect you.
You can unilaterally decide that you are on the other prisoner's team, even if he does not realize it or agree. All that matters is that YOUR goal is "Prisoner team wins".
It really matters. If you "unilaterally decide that you are on the other prisoner's team" and he does not agree, then you go to jail for the full 10-year sentence. Congratulations, you lost the game.
On the other hand, if I'm the other prisoner, and I know that you feel the way you do and that you'll always be on the "prisoner's team" I can play against you and go home free.
In other words, being on "the prisoners' team" can potentially screw you for 10 years because you had "wishful thinking" that the other guy would also remain silent. If your wishful thinking was correct, it's true that you'd only get six months, but then again if you betray him you guarantee that the worst you'll get is 5 years, which is half the full sentence that you would be risking, plus the possibility of going free without serving any time at all if the other player is behaving according to his wishful thinking.
It's a no-brainer really. It's like choosing between two different lotteries. One of them gives you a 50% prize of no jail time with a 50% chance of serving five years. The other gives you a 50% prize of six months in jail with a 50% chance of serving ten years. The prize is better and the punishment is lower when you choose to betray the other guy, and the odds are the same for the two cases.
Then your probably shouldn't buy any consoles. Consoles that use discs are going to fail a lot quicker than the old ones that used cartridges.
Heh...I didn't feel the need to mention that the SegaCD plugged to my genesis is also still in working condition, but if you're going to argue that point, I guess I should. My Saturn and Dreamcast are also fine. I gave away my PS2 when I got a PS3, and as far as I know, that's also still working.
Not to mention, of course, that the Red Ring of Death isn't being caused by optical drive failures.
Seriously, the failure rate of consoles other than the 360 are pretty low. They do fail, and the optical drive can be one of the first things to go, but those failures are pretty bad. The 360 failure rate is an outlier, it's not a trend of disc-based consoles.
The 3 years warrenty on the new one should comfortably carry me over into the next console generation.
Personally, carrying me over into the next console generation isn't good enough. I want my systems to last until, at the very least, emulators are good enough to replace it. It's not like I'm going to stop playing the current games just because new ones come out.
Back in the last generation, I had 2 Gamecubes die on me...Having to replace dead console isn't actually a new or uncommon experience.
I've never had to replace a console. I still have my genesis in working condition. I have an old friend that still has the same Atari 2600 I used to play at his house when we were kids, and it's in perfect working condition. I do know multiple people who got the RROD with their xbox 360's, but the 360 really is the exception, not the rule.
That's not to say I think other consoles never break. I'm not even saying you shouldn't buy another one. If you have fun playing your 360 games, then the cost you'd pay for not playing those games anymore is greater than the cost you pay for replacing the console. I'm just saying failing consoles should be an extremely rare occurrence, and we really shouldn't just start accepting that as normal in the same way we used to accept that computers crashing 5 times a day was normal behavior back in the Windows 9x days.