You fail at reading comprehension. If an Amazon employee is given the authority within the Amazon organization to act on the company's name on a given area then that person is an official. Therefore, if one of Amazon's employees as been granted the authority to filter through Amazon's book catalogue and remove all the books that may offend his morals or political views then it is quite obvious that the company is engaged in censorship.
The act of being engaged in censorship does not depend on the range of that person's power, the nature of the organization that person belongs or other far-fetched loop holes that may be conceived to avoid being labelled as censors. If someone intentionally tries to suppress a piece of information just because he personally finds it to be offensive then that person is engaged in censorship. If that person is given that authority by an organization to act on it's behalf then that organization is engaged in censorship.
It's bad when either of these organizations do it, but the difference is that corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
And guess who actually controls governments or at least manipulates them?
What cave have you been living in? Almost every day slashdot posts a new story about the Australian or French or British or US or EU trying to censor the internet. And they have the power to enforce that censorship by throwing your body into jail, or sucking money out of your wallet (fines). Neither amazon nor any other corporation has that kind of power.
Oddly enough, you accuse others of living in a cave but yet you failed to notice that the real cause of the actions the governments you mentioned have implemented are none other than multinational corporations which, directly or indirectly, pressured those governments into compliance with their views. Measures such as the so called internet 3 strikes law or even the imposition of a sales tax that directly and blindly benefits particular corporations are a good example of the power over governments that some corporations already enjoy and use.
An "official" is nothing more than a member of an organization which has been granted power and responsibility over a specific subject. Therefore, it is quite clear that this also applies to Amazon and it's organization.
Referring to the decision to carry products, if someone in power within the organization of a specific retailer decides that a book that they have been selling conveys information which they personally see as objectionable and, as a consequence, they decide to boycott the product and suppress the information due to it's content then they are clearly engaged in censorship.
censor/snsr/ Show Spelled[sen-ser] Show IPA –noun 1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds. 2. any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
According to the definition, if someone is actively engaged in suppressing information "deemded objectionable on moral, political, military or other grounds" then that person is engaged in censorship. Knowing that, it becomes pretty obvious that if Amazon is actively engaged in suppressing information that they deemed objectionable on those grounds then they are guilty of engaging in censorship. There is no room for doubt.
I don't get that sort of specious reasoning. This is frequently repeated, that it is only censorship if it is done by the government, that private companies have all the rights to censor everything that they see fit and that it is always possible to purchase stuff elsewhere, which would mean that somehow these censorship accusations lack any merit.
Frankly, I don't get it. This is censorship in it's purest form. We have an organization which is actively denying the distribution of information, which they have been distributing already, just because someone in power had an epiphany and discovered he was somehow displeased by said information. You may argue that they have the right to censor the works they distribute and you may argue that they may censor the authors by choosing to stop selling their works which are offensive to them. Yet, no one can possibly argue that they aren't actively engaged in censorship, in filtering the content they control in order to stop the distribution of information they don't approve.
By comparing one to the other you conflate them in the mind of the typical reader;
That would only be true if the "typical reader" lacks any reading comprehension skills and suffers from functional illiteracy. What I wrote was pretty clear and the fact that a set of fellow slashdotters managed to overcome my poor grasp of the english language and were quite capable of understanding exactly what I said is a clear sign that no, the "typical reader" does not "conflate" these two issues.
Come on, man. It's at least 5th grade reading comprehension.
You fail at reading comprehension. No one insinuated that Wired's alleged wrongdoings and unethical behaviour has any relation to the "illegal incarceration of human beings". The parallel which was pointed out between Wired's unethical mishaps and Portugal's foreign affairs minister's fuckup is that both have been responding to the series of suspicions that they are involved in unethical and even criminal acts not by denying but by simply claiming "you can't prove that", which is a convenient way to appear to claim they haven't done it while safeguarding the fact that when they are caught they can also claim that they haven't been lying.
Not one single fact has been brought to light suggesting Wired.com did anything wrong in pursuit of this story.
I've seen this word play before. In fact, it was done by Portugal's foreign affairs minister, when discussing the issue of CIA flights passing through portuguese territory to move kidnapped "terrorists" to Guantanamo. He also repeatedly iterated that no one had any proof that these flights existed and that the Portuguese government authorized them. Yet, thanks to the cablegate posts from the US embassy in Lisbon, it has become clear that that very same minister not only knew those flights were passing through Portuguese territory, and some even making stops in Portuguese airports, but he also had an understanding with the US government that, whenever he was asked about them, he would simply iterate that there wasn't any proof they existed. And notice the subtle detail: he never said they never existed, and only claimed that no one could prove they existed. Subtle and important.
This is exactly the same approach Wired is making to this problem. Wired doesn't claim they never did so. Wired doesn't claim they are innocent nor wired's spokesperson tries to dispel the accusation. Wired only claims that no one can prove they did it. But that, as we've seen before, is not the same thing as not making them.
You are wrong. The currency may be the euro but the plural of euro is still euros. Just like there is the dollar and you are paid in dollars. Just like there is the GBP and you are paid in pounds. Just like there is the yuan and you are paid in yuans. So please don't try to bastardize the language to fit your misconceptions.
An analogy is to compare a gourmet and a bulimic. Typing fast is similar to eating large quantities of food in the fastest way, instead of appreciating the food you eat.
Your analogy is wrong from the start. You are assuming that stating that someone types fast implies that whenever that person is in front of a keyboard writing code, all that person does is mindlessly machinegunning code "in the fastest way". That is wrong.
Fast typists, in this context, refers only to those who, during the years, managed to develop the ability to feel at ease with a keyboard and therefore manage to, whenever it is called for, type stuff fast. The ability to type fast is being used as a synonym of being a skilled typist, in the sense that those who are unable to type fast never managed to develop their typing skill. Maybe they are still forced to look at the keyboard while typing, maybe they only type with their index fingers, including the space key. What matters is that they suck at typing and therefore are unable to type as fast as those who spent a considerable time in front of a monitor hacking code away.
When was the last time you ran a program where the WPM of the developer affected the quality of the code?
I don't believe that it was insinuated that there was a linear relation between WPM and code quality. Yet, there is a clear connection between coding experience and the time spent hacking away on a keyboard. Therefore, if someone happens to be unable to type at a reasonable speed then that person certainly hasn't spent enough time in front of a computer, and at best only a fraction of that time developing software.
A short simple anecdote was my Greek professor in college. Taught me pattern recognition and I went to his office hours where he was pecking away at the keyboard having just been forced onto English QWERTY.
Notice the relevant detail here? You are claiming that someone who hasn't yet got used to a particular keyboard layout, but is certainly more proficient in a more familiar keyboard layout, is also capable of churning good code. That is, your anecdotal example boils down to "he was forced to switch to a foreign keyboard but he still writes good code, although slower". The thing is, no one suddenly becomes dumber or forgets his experience and academic knowledge just because he switches keyboards. Yet, those who never bothered to develop their typing skills most certainly never bothered to invest their time gaining any experience or academic knowledge related to software development. Hence, they aren't as good as those who did invested their time. See the difference?
There is a reasonable basis to assume that a slow typist is not a decent coding. After all, typing speed is something which is naturally developed as the person keeps hammering away at the keyboard. So, although typing speed does not guarantee coding proficiency, if someone does not pass enough time in front of a keyboard to develop any decent speed then it is expected that that person hasn't spent much time writing software. And if someone hasn't invested all that time writing code then quite certainly that person sucks at coding.
The use of the "alegal" adjective sounds like a bunch of crap. An action can only be illegal (i.e., explicitly stated to be against a law) or legal (i.e., the law either authorizes or does not mention). Trying to impose on the people this "alegal" concept is a lame attempt to sell the idea that although an action is perfectly legal, in the eyes of some irrelevant people it should not be considered as such. To put it in other words, it is yet another "piracy" or "dowloading is stealing". It's a loaded word to try to impose onto some innocuous action the idea that it is somehow bad and a no-no.
So, just call a spade a spade: sharing files in Spain is perfectly legal. It is also perfectly legal in the rest of the world, except a couple of jurisdictions which were corrupted by US pressure.
Again, look at the damned options I've mentioned. Click on the drop-down menu and select "History". There. Why spend so much energy whining when you can simply tell the damned program what to wish it to do? What else do awesome bar-haters want? Being spoon-fed their porridge?
Me too. The combination of the aweseome bar with the Ctrl+L shortcut key let's me use my browser without having to rummage through countless menus and sub-menus of bookmarks and the like.
Adding to that, I simply don't understand those "OMG awesoembar is teh suck!!1!" people, not because they don't like it (or even gave it a try) but because they can simply turn the god-damned feature off in the options menu. It isn't even necessary to go through the about:config. Just click on the dropdown menu and presto: no awesome suggestions in your location bar.
Yes, awesomebar IS that infuriating. Paralyzed by seeing options, no, but give us the option to turn off behavior we don't like. Is it THAT hard to do?
No, you only need to hit "edit"->"Preferences"->"Privacy" and in the "Location bar" section, where it says "when using the location bar, suggest:" just select "Nothing" from the dropdown menu.
Now that you know that, if it is that infuriating then how come you failed to even look at Firefox's preferences to disable it?
On the side note, I love the awesome bar. I configured it to display only bookmarked links (that option is also available in the dropdown menu I mentioned) and now, instead of clicking through multiple menus or, *ghasp*, use a search engine, I just hit Ctrl+L, type a couple of keys and voila: I'm opening the link. You say infuriating? I say godsend.
I don't see multiple inheritance as a vital feature. As you've stated, it is possible to work around it without much hassle. So, it may be very useful and convenient but it is not a vital feature.
That being said, the reason I made a point of mentioning multiple inheritance was to point out how absurd LizardKing's comment was. You simply cannot claim that a particular implementation is "so much better" than another when the allegedly better implementation at best implements some fundamental features in a half-assed way and at worse simply fails to implement them. As this is a (somewhat) technical forum, people must limit themselves to the facts regarding the technology and avoid unleashing the fanboy in them to boast about their pet tech through absurd and patently false statements such as the ones which I've pointed out. It diminishes the technology and it denigrates the people who are seriously invested in it.
I have modpoints but as no one bothered to reply to this post and point it's naive, fanboy inconsistencies then I felt the need to do that myself.
First, you've claimed the following:
With the increased speed of both hardware and the JVM since Java first arrived, it's got to the point where I can rarely justify using a language like C or C++ on the grounds of performance.
If by "performance" you mean noticeable lag on your regular GUI operations then your comment is reasonable. The advances in the hardware world brought us in the last decade hardware powerful enough to run a GUI written even in the most bloated interpreted language you can find in a smooth enough way to not notice any lag any more. Yet, java still lags far behind languages such as C and C++ in performance, with some data crunching benchmarks running java at least twice as slow as the C++ program compiled with G++ and and also with the C program compiled with GCC. So, in the end what you said amounts to nothing more than claiming that writing programs in C or C++ instead of Java is rarely justifiable on the grounds of performance if and only if performance is irrelevant for the application you are developing.
Then you moved on to the OO paradigm, where you made another silly claim. You stated that
Java's implementation of OO is so much better than C++ (methods always virtual for example)
This statement is absurd. Do you happen to know what any C++ programmer must do in order to get all the methods in a class to be virtual? Well, he only needs to state that they are virtual. That is it. There is absolutely nothing in C++ that forces any class method to not be virtual. As a side note, not having a method to be virtual by default is a terribly useful feature, particularly in performance terms, as a method can be called without having to waste cycles checking up with a vtable to realize what method to call.
And just to drive the point home, which is that your comment regarding the implementation of the OO paradigm in Java Vs C++ doesn't make sense, let me just mention a single issue plaguing Java that C++ implements just fine: multiple inheritance. That, alone, is a big thorn in the side of the "Java's OO implementation is much better than C++", simply because it makes it just plain wrong.
Because most of us aren't morons who need to have a full multimedia presentation with cartoons and pretty animations in order to just learn what a product and/or a service does. In this particular case a single sentence would do just nicely: dropbox is an online file repository that also provides a software program that automatically keep files in sync in multiple computers. Nothing more, nothing less.
If I'm not mistaken the point of building another pair of carriers is to replace existing ones which are becoming quite old and outdated. To put things in perspective,the USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1961, which means it is pulling 50 years by now. If you aren't familiar with engineering practices, important equipment is designed with a design life of 50 years. Only civil engineering structures which are considered fundamental for a society to function, such as bridges, damns, hospitals, power plants and the like, are designed with a greater design life, which is around 100 years. Just to drive the point home, the expression "design life" refers to the projected time frame that spans from the commission in which it is probable that the structure does not require major repairs.
Knowing that, the USS Enterprise is just starting to push 50 years. That means that it's reaching the end of it's design life, which means that it is very probable that it start to demand major repairs just to be operational and reliable. The thing is, major repairs on such a structure involves huge costs, which can be comparable with the cost of simply building a new ship from scratch. To make matters worse, the costs involved in major repairs will not extend your structure's life expectancy for another 50 years. So, to put it short, repairing an old ship is in the end a profound waste of money for a temporary fix. Can you imagine the expense you would be forced to partake in order to keep a 20 year old truck running, particularly if that truck has been working 24/7 since you've purchased it?
Another important aspect to be taken under consideration is the fact that these carriers were designed with the military needs of 50 years ago. It's terribly complicated to shoe-horn some of the new technologies in an old design. Moreover, military and ship-building technology evolved quite a bit in the last 50 years.
Therefore, it may be an odd concept to grasp but with these kind of structures it is simply better to just scrap them (or mothball them) instead of keep wasting money on an outdated equipment that doesn't quite fit today's needs. And, as anyone can easily understand, it is simply better to build these things in "peace" time than in the middle of a major confrontation. And we all know how easily the US military finds itself in new wars.
The coding horrors article claims that that given password was "cracked" in 160 seconds with a cracker kit but it fails to claim that it is a brute force attack where the attacker has physical access to the system (the cracker software is a bootable DVD, for fuck's sake). Meanwhile, in the real world, this sort of attack is practically impossible to pull off from any site which has any semblance of security. I mean, you only need to place a delay of a fraction of a second between login attempts to drive the time needed to "crack" the login/password combo to months, if not years. Adding to that the fact that it has become pretty much standard for sites to simply block any login attempt after N failed attempts then this reference to this so called cracking software goes from irrelevant to pathetic.
You are wrong. The definition of "altruism" doesn't imply anything regarding the good and/or service which is being given by someone. Altruism refers only to the motivation of those who provide the goods/services. From the dictionary:
altruism/æltruzm/ Show Spelled[al-troo-iz-uhm] –noun 1. the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others ( opposed to egoism).
So, it doesn't matter if a specific good was purchased by you or stolen from a sickly little old lady. If you give that good to someone in an unselfish manner and not wanting anything in return then, by definition, that is altruism. That includes making specific albums available for others to freely download from you.
Slashdot Mirror
You fail at reading comprehension. If an Amazon employee is given the authority within the Amazon organization to act on the company's name on a given area then that person is an official. Therefore, if one of Amazon's employees as been granted the authority to filter through Amazon's book catalogue and remove all the books that may offend his morals or political views then it is quite obvious that the company is engaged in censorship.
The act of being engaged in censorship does not depend on the range of that person's power, the nature of the organization that person belongs or other far-fetched loop holes that may be conceived to avoid being labelled as censors. If someone intentionally tries to suppress a piece of information just because he personally finds it to be offensive then that person is engaged in censorship. If that person is given that authority by an organization to act on it's behalf then that organization is engaged in censorship.
It's bad when either of these organizations do it, but the difference is that corporations don't have the power to suck money from my wallet against my will, throw me in jail for years, send out goons to give me a Rodney King-style beating, or execute me on the electric chair. Only the government holds the monopoly to do that.
And guess who actually controls governments or at least manipulates them?
What cave have you been living in? Almost every day slashdot posts a new story about the Australian or French or British or US or EU trying to censor the internet. And they have the power to enforce that censorship by throwing your body into jail, or sucking money out of your wallet (fines). Neither amazon nor any other corporation has that kind of power.
Oddly enough, you accuse others of living in a cave but yet you failed to notice that the real cause of the actions the governments you mentioned have implemented are none other than multinational corporations which, directly or indirectly, pressured those governments into compliance with their views. Measures such as the so called internet 3 strikes law or even the imposition of a sales tax that directly and blindly benefits particular corporations are a good example of the power over governments that some corporations already enjoy and use.
An "official" is nothing more than a member of an organization which has been granted power and responsibility over a specific subject. Therefore, it is quite clear that this also applies to Amazon and it's organization.
Referring to the decision to carry products, if someone in power within the organization of a specific retailer decides that a book that they have been selling conveys information which they personally see as objectionable and, as a consequence, they decide to boycott the product and suppress the information due to it's content then they are clearly engaged in censorship.
Let's look at the definition of censor :
censor /snsr/ Show Spelled[sen-ser] Show IPA
–noun
1.
an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2.
any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
According to the definition, if someone is actively engaged in suppressing information "deemded objectionable on moral, political, military or other grounds" then that person is engaged in censorship. Knowing that, it becomes pretty obvious that if Amazon is actively engaged in suppressing information that they deemed objectionable on those grounds then they are guilty of engaging in censorship. There is no room for doubt.
I don't get that sort of specious reasoning. This is frequently repeated, that it is only censorship if it is done by the government, that private companies have all the rights to censor everything that they see fit and that it is always possible to purchase stuff elsewhere, which would mean that somehow these censorship accusations lack any merit.
Frankly, I don't get it. This is censorship in it's purest form. We have an organization which is actively denying the distribution of information, which they have been distributing already, just because someone in power had an epiphany and discovered he was somehow displeased by said information. You may argue that they have the right to censor the works they distribute and you may argue that they may censor the authors by choosing to stop selling their works which are offensive to them. Yet, no one can possibly argue that they aren't actively engaged in censorship, in filtering the content they control in order to stop the distribution of information they don't approve.
By comparing one to the other you conflate them in the mind of the typical reader;
That would only be true if the "typical reader" lacks any reading comprehension skills and suffers from functional illiteracy. What I wrote was pretty clear and the fact that a set of fellow slashdotters managed to overcome my poor grasp of the english language and were quite capable of understanding exactly what I said is a clear sign that no, the "typical reader" does not "conflate" these two issues.
Come on, man. It's at least 5th grade reading comprehension.
That's precisely what I was referring to. Thanks for pointing it out in such a concise way.
You fail at reading comprehension. No one insinuated that Wired's alleged wrongdoings and unethical behaviour has any relation to the "illegal incarceration of human beings". The parallel which was pointed out between Wired's unethical mishaps and Portugal's foreign affairs minister's fuckup is that both have been responding to the series of suspicions that they are involved in unethical and even criminal acts not by denying but by simply claiming "you can't prove that", which is a convenient way to appear to claim they haven't done it while safeguarding the fact that when they are caught they can also claim that they haven't been lying.
Wired stated the following in TFA:
Not one single fact has been brought to light suggesting Wired.com did anything wrong in pursuit of this story.
I've seen this word play before. In fact, it was done by Portugal's foreign affairs minister, when discussing the issue of CIA flights passing through portuguese territory to move kidnapped "terrorists" to Guantanamo. He also repeatedly iterated that no one had any proof that these flights existed and that the Portuguese government authorized them. Yet, thanks to the cablegate posts from the US embassy in Lisbon, it has become clear that that very same minister not only knew those flights were passing through Portuguese territory, and some even making stops in Portuguese airports, but he also had an understanding with the US government that, whenever he was asked about them, he would simply iterate that there wasn't any proof they existed. And notice the subtle detail: he never said they never existed, and only claimed that no one could prove they existed. Subtle and important.
This is exactly the same approach Wired is making to this problem. Wired doesn't claim they never did so. Wired doesn't claim they are innocent nor wired's spokesperson tries to dispel the accusation. Wired only claims that no one can prove they did it. But that, as we've seen before, is not the same thing as not making them.
You are wrong. The currency may be the euro but the plural of euro is still euros. Just like there is the dollar and you are paid in dollars. Just like there is the GBP and you are paid in pounds. Just like there is the yuan and you are paid in yuans. So please don't try to bastardize the language to fit your misconceptions.
Your analogy is wrong from the start. You are assuming that stating that someone types fast implies that whenever that person is in front of a keyboard writing code, all that person does is mindlessly machinegunning code "in the fastest way". That is wrong.
Fast typists, in this context, refers only to those who, during the years, managed to develop the ability to feel at ease with a keyboard and therefore manage to, whenever it is called for, type stuff fast. The ability to type fast is being used as a synonym of being a skilled typist, in the sense that those who are unable to type fast never managed to develop their typing skill. Maybe they are still forced to look at the keyboard while typing, maybe they only type with their index fingers, including the space key. What matters is that they suck at typing and therefore are unable to type as fast as those who spent a considerable time in front of a monitor hacking code away.
I don't believe that it was insinuated that there was a linear relation between WPM and code quality. Yet, there is a clear connection between coding experience and the time spent hacking away on a keyboard. Therefore, if someone happens to be unable to type at a reasonable speed then that person certainly hasn't spent enough time in front of a computer, and at best only a fraction of that time developing software.
Notice the relevant detail here? You are claiming that someone who hasn't yet got used to a particular keyboard layout, but is certainly more proficient in a more familiar keyboard layout, is also capable of churning good code. That is, your anecdotal example boils down to "he was forced to switch to a foreign keyboard but he still writes good code, although slower". The thing is, no one suddenly becomes dumber or forgets his experience and academic knowledge just because he switches keyboards. Yet, those who never bothered to develop their typing skills most certainly never bothered to invest their time gaining any experience or academic knowledge related to software development. Hence, they aren't as good as those who did invested their time. See the difference?
There is a reasonable basis to assume that a slow typist is not a decent coding. After all, typing speed is something which is naturally developed as the person keeps hammering away at the keyboard. So, although typing speed does not guarantee coding proficiency, if someone does not pass enough time in front of a keyboard to develop any decent speed then it is expected that that person hasn't spent much time writing software. And if someone hasn't invested all that time writing code then quite certainly that person sucks at coding.
The use of the "alegal" adjective sounds like a bunch of crap. An action can only be illegal (i.e., explicitly stated to be against a law) or legal (i.e., the law either authorizes or does not mention). Trying to impose on the people this "alegal" concept is a lame attempt to sell the idea that although an action is perfectly legal, in the eyes of some irrelevant people it should not be considered as such. To put it in other words, it is yet another "piracy" or "dowloading is stealing". It's a loaded word to try to impose onto some innocuous action the idea that it is somehow bad and a no-no.
So, just call a spade a spade: sharing files in Spain is perfectly legal. It is also perfectly legal in the rest of the world, except a couple of jurisdictions which were corrupted by US pressure.
Again, look at the damned options I've mentioned. Click on the drop-down menu and select "History". There. Why spend so much energy whining when you can simply tell the damned program what to wish it to do? What else do awesome bar-haters want? Being spoon-fed their porridge?
Me too. The combination of the aweseome bar with the Ctrl+L shortcut key let's me use my browser without having to rummage through countless menus and sub-menus of bookmarks and the like.
Adding to that, I simply don't understand those "OMG awesoembar is teh suck!!1!" people, not because they don't like it (or even gave it a try) but because they can simply turn the god-damned feature off in the options menu. It isn't even necessary to go through the about:config. Just click on the dropdown menu and presto: no awesome suggestions in your location bar.
Yes, awesomebar IS that infuriating. Paralyzed by seeing options, no, but give us the option to turn off behavior we don't like. Is it THAT hard to do?
No, you only need to hit "edit"->"Preferences"->"Privacy" and in the "Location bar" section, where it says "when using the location bar, suggest:" just select "Nothing" from the dropdown menu.
Now that you know that, if it is that infuriating then how come you failed to even look at Firefox's preferences to disable it?
On the side note, I love the awesome bar. I configured it to display only bookmarked links (that option is also available in the dropdown menu I mentioned) and now, instead of clicking through multiple menus or, *ghasp*, use a search engine, I just hit Ctrl+L, type a couple of keys and voila: I'm opening the link. You say infuriating? I say godsend.
I don't see multiple inheritance as a vital feature. As you've stated, it is possible to work around it without much hassle. So, it may be very useful and convenient but it is not a vital feature.
That being said, the reason I made a point of mentioning multiple inheritance was to point out how absurd LizardKing's comment was. You simply cannot claim that a particular implementation is "so much better" than another when the allegedly better implementation at best implements some fundamental features in a half-assed way and at worse simply fails to implement them. As this is a (somewhat) technical forum, people must limit themselves to the facts regarding the technology and avoid unleashing the fanboy in them to boast about their pet tech through absurd and patently false statements such as the ones which I've pointed out. It diminishes the technology and it denigrates the people who are seriously invested in it.
I have modpoints but as no one bothered to reply to this post and point it's naive, fanboy inconsistencies then I felt the need to do that myself.
First, you've claimed the following:
If by "performance" you mean noticeable lag on your regular GUI operations then your comment is reasonable. The advances in the hardware world brought us in the last decade hardware powerful enough to run a GUI written even in the most bloated interpreted language you can find in a smooth enough way to not notice any lag any more. Yet, java still lags far behind languages such as C and C++ in performance, with some data crunching benchmarks running java at least twice as slow as the C++ program compiled with G++ and and also with the C program compiled with GCC. So, in the end what you said amounts to nothing more than claiming that writing programs in C or C++ instead of Java is rarely justifiable on the grounds of performance if and only if performance is irrelevant for the application you are developing.
Then you moved on to the OO paradigm, where you made another silly claim. You stated that
This statement is absurd. Do you happen to know what any C++ programmer must do in order to get all the methods in a class to be virtual? Well, he only needs to state that they are virtual. That is it. There is absolutely nothing in C++ that forces any class method to not be virtual. As a side note, not having a method to be virtual by default is a terribly useful feature, particularly in performance terms, as a method can be called without having to waste cycles checking up with a vtable to realize what method to call.
And just to drive the point home, which is that your comment regarding the implementation of the OO paradigm in Java Vs C++ doesn't make sense, let me just mention a single issue plaguing Java that C++ implements just fine: multiple inheritance. That, alone, is a big thorn in the side of the "Java's OO implementation is much better than C++", simply because it makes it just plain wrong.
Because most of us aren't morons who need to have a full multimedia presentation with cartoons and pretty animations in order to just learn what a product and/or a service does. In this particular case a single sentence would do just nicely: dropbox is an online file repository that also provides a software program that automatically keep files in sync in multiple computers. Nothing more, nothing less.
If I'm not mistaken the point of building another pair of carriers is to replace existing ones which are becoming quite old and outdated. To put things in perspective,the USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1961, which means it is pulling 50 years by now. If you aren't familiar with engineering practices, important equipment is designed with a design life of 50 years. Only civil engineering structures which are considered fundamental for a society to function, such as bridges, damns, hospitals, power plants and the like, are designed with a greater design life, which is around 100 years. Just to drive the point home, the expression "design life" refers to the projected time frame that spans from the commission in which it is probable that the structure does not require major repairs.
Knowing that, the USS Enterprise is just starting to push 50 years. That means that it's reaching the end of it's design life, which means that it is very probable that it start to demand major repairs just to be operational and reliable. The thing is, major repairs on such a structure involves huge costs, which can be comparable with the cost of simply building a new ship from scratch. To make matters worse, the costs involved in major repairs will not extend your structure's life expectancy for another 50 years. So, to put it short, repairing an old ship is in the end a profound waste of money for a temporary fix. Can you imagine the expense you would be forced to partake in order to keep a 20 year old truck running, particularly if that truck has been working 24/7 since you've purchased it?
Another important aspect to be taken under consideration is the fact that these carriers were designed with the military needs of 50 years ago. It's terribly complicated to shoe-horn some of the new technologies in an old design. Moreover, military and ship-building technology evolved quite a bit in the last 50 years.
Therefore, it may be an odd concept to grasp but with these kind of structures it is simply better to just scrap them (or mothball them) instead of keep wasting money on an outdated equipment that doesn't quite fit today's needs. And, as anyone can easily understand, it is simply better to build these things in "peace" time than in the middle of a major confrontation. And we all know how easily the US military finds itself in new wars.
The coding horrors article claims that that given password was "cracked" in 160 seconds with a cracker kit but it fails to claim that it is a brute force attack where the attacker has physical access to the system (the cracker software is a bootable DVD, for fuck's sake). Meanwhile, in the real world, this sort of attack is practically impossible to pull off from any site which has any semblance of security. I mean, you only need to place a delay of a fraction of a second between login attempts to drive the time needed to "crack" the login/password combo to months, if not years. Adding to that the fact that it has become pretty much standard for sites to simply block any login attempt after N failed attempts then this reference to this so called cracking software goes from irrelevant to pathetic.
Care to point out where Portugal's multibanco relies on America?
You are wrong. The definition of "altruism" doesn't imply anything regarding the good and/or service which is being given by someone. Altruism refers only to the motivation of those who provide the goods/services. From the dictionary:
altruism /æltruzm/ Show Spelled[al-troo-iz-uhm]
–noun
1.
the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others ( opposed to egoism).
So, it doesn't matter if a specific good was purchased by you or stolen from a sickly little old lady. If you give that good to someone in an unselfish manner and not wanting anything in return then, by definition, that is altruism. That includes making specific albums available for others to freely download from you.