If you want real fun, talk to a trained anesthesiologist about drug side-effects. The number of new drugs released every year and tracking which could have ill effects on others is nearly impossible even for someone who does it full-time.
Information from experts in your life is how you make decisions on which video card to get, which new TV to get, which video game system to buy, which new game to get for it.
Nobody alive is an expert in all fields, and everyone has to put trust in others. That trust is sometimes misplaced, sometimes misplaced in authority, sometimes in lack of authority.
Blaming people for listening to 'other people' and not doing their own research is just stupid -- there's no possibility, and I mean _NONE_ that any human being can do the necessary research to make anything better than an educated guess in 90% of basic life situations.
Should you call a plumber or put baking soda and vinegar down your sink? Should you leave a cover on your AC unit in the winter or not? Should you have your carpet steam-cleaned or not?
Assuming unlimited money to pay for experts in each case, you still won't get all the right answers, and you'll have missed out on most of your life being paranoid.
What's insane is that some of the arguments presented were very valid -- including that anonymous Nazi photos were considered public domain, a point completely ignored by the final reviewer(s).
Python is actually well-enough documented that sending new users to the doc page is worthwhile and they often actually figure out how to do what they wanted to do as a result.
The Firefox "smart bookmarks" feature is quite nice too, but honestly, I want to tag my own bookmarks, and share or not share them with others (del.icio.us) explicitly, and not have my browser 'helpfully' remember all the annoying pop-unders a Poker site happens to display.
See, I have additional knowledge the computer doesn't have -- I know what's important, and what's not. Now granted, bookmarking should be MUCH simpler; I'd love a simple true/false box of some form on each tab allowing me to mark it as 'yeah I like this' with no other interface involved.
Actually, if you think about how Microsoft designed their VM system (mapping an app's VM to its EXE file), or how the Apple Newton Soup system worked, it would be possible in many cases to allow all software to be essentially in stasis at the same time, mapped into actual RAM as necessary.
Of course, in practice, it won't work because people like using more software than they have VM to handle such a situation, and software likes to believe its always running and deserves cycles.
A complex algorithm written in each C, Python, Assembler, Lisp and Haskell will probably look different in each situation and that's not including knowledge of the underlying hardware the programmer may have (leading to code refactoring for threads and such).
The implementation of an algorithm is highly dependant on the language used.
The PC however eats them all - it's hard to deny that fact.
At a price point that's hard to swallow.
If I want better graphics than a PS3 on a PC on modern games at HD resolutions, I'm paying a lot more than the price of a PS3 for that experience.
If I wanted to do it two years ago when I got my PS3, I'd be paying even more.
Also note, the PS3 has exclusives, not a huge library of them, but enough that I wouldn't actually be happy gaming on just my PC instead. But I do have both.
The music track composer in Amplitude for the PS2 is more advanced than Wii Music within its own confines, has better quality sound, and has full range samples.
Expanding that to current consoles should lead to something MUCH better than Wii Music.
Yes, I've seen those too. Its nasty some days. Worse is people who do that with unbraced if-then's in C. Trying to figure out which result goes with with 'if' becomes a nightmare.
Ironically, somehow I got moderated a troll for the comment in question though:-)
You might think it would be dumb, but if you're providing something like an Operating System for computers everyone buys, who cares if you provide what the consumer wants or not when you can essentially force them to purchase it anyway?
People who believe in truly free markets often ignore the barrier to entry for competition. Competition is not a given, and competition may be essentially impossible under some circumstances (the local telco's owning all the copper and poles and rights thereto and new competition not having the right to erect new poles).
Using encrypted swap is really easy on a modern Linux distribution. A random key is assigned to the swap partition on boot-up, so that after power-off, the data's almost as good as gone.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want real fun, talk to a trained anesthesiologist about drug side-effects. The number of new drugs released every year and tracking which could have ill effects on others is nearly impossible even for someone who does it full-time.
Information from experts in your life is how you make decisions on which video card to get, which new TV to get, which video game system to buy, which new game to get for it.
Nobody alive is an expert in all fields, and everyone has to put trust in others. That trust is sometimes misplaced, sometimes misplaced in authority, sometimes in lack of authority.
Blaming people for listening to 'other people' and not doing their own research is just stupid -- there's no possibility, and I mean _NONE_ that any human being can do the necessary research to make anything better than an educated guess in 90% of basic life situations.
Should you call a plumber or put baking soda and vinegar down your sink? Should you leave a cover on your AC unit in the winter or not? Should you have your carpet steam-cleaned or not?
Assuming unlimited money to pay for experts in each case, you still won't get all the right answers, and you'll have missed out on most of your life being paranoid.
Its a rip-off if the game doesn't come with enough content to be worth the sticker price.
Its not a rip-off if the game DID come with its full bang in content AND more content is made to add on to it later.
See Criterion's Burnout.
What's insane is that some of the arguments presented were very valid -- including that anonymous Nazi photos were considered public domain, a point completely ignored by the final reviewer(s).
Python is actually well-enough documented that sending new users to the doc page is worthwhile and they often actually figure out how to do what they wanted to do as a result.
Python is a great language imho.
The Firefox "smart bookmarks" feature is quite nice too, but honestly, I want to tag my own bookmarks, and share or not share them with others (del.icio.us) explicitly, and not have my browser 'helpfully' remember all the annoying pop-unders a Poker site happens to display.
See, I have additional knowledge the computer doesn't have -- I know what's important, and what's not. Now granted, bookmarking should be MUCH simpler; I'd love a simple true/false box of some form on each tab allowing me to mark it as 'yeah I like this' with no other interface involved.
Actually, if you think about how Microsoft designed their VM system (mapping an app's VM to its EXE file), or how the Apple Newton Soup system worked, it would be possible in many cases to allow all software to be essentially in stasis at the same time, mapped into actual RAM as necessary.
Of course, in practice, it won't work because people like using more software than they have VM to handle such a situation, and software likes to believe its always running and deserves cycles.
A complex algorithm written in each C, Python, Assembler, Lisp and Haskell will probably look different in each situation and that's not including knowledge of the underlying hardware the programmer may have (leading to code refactoring for threads and such).
The implementation of an algorithm is highly dependant on the language used.
You know that most speakers are still using analog connections to the amplifier, right? Just checking.
At a price point that's hard to swallow.
If I want better graphics than a PS3 on a PC on modern games at HD resolutions, I'm paying a lot more than the price of a PS3 for that experience.
If I wanted to do it two years ago when I got my PS3, I'd be paying even more.
Also note, the PS3 has exclusives, not a huge library of them, but enough that I wouldn't actually be happy gaming on just my PC instead. But I do have both.
The music track composer in Amplitude for the PS2 is more advanced than Wii Music within its own confines, has better quality sound, and has full range samples.
Expanding that to current consoles should lead to something MUCH better than Wii Music.
Without government interference, property rights would be a bigger problem. Someone owns the land where those poles go after all.
Programming is a form of expansion :-) It expands your thoughts into the individual commands required to do them.
def debug(stuff):
import sys
sys.stderr.write(stuff)
debug("Got here, and it works.\n")
Yes, I've seen those too. Its nasty some days. Worse is people who do that with unbraced if-then's in C. Trying to figure out which result goes with with 'if' becomes a nightmare.
Ironically, somehow I got moderated a troll for the comment in question though :-)
Whitespace makes code readable. Forcing people to use whitespace intelligently is good. Feel free to read obfuscated PERL if you don't like it.
You're free to use sys.stdout.write("Hello World") if you want.
Because of who pays off the most federal employees of course.
You should be assessed -5 pedantic for ignoring that the poster used the word correctly and that good usage overrides common parlance.
You might think it would be dumb, but if you're providing something like an Operating System for computers everyone buys, who cares if you provide what the consumer wants or not when you can essentially force them to purchase it anyway?
People who believe in truly free markets often ignore the barrier to entry for competition. Competition is not a given, and competition may be essentially impossible under some circumstances (the local telco's owning all the copper and poles and rights thereto and new competition not having the right to erect new poles).
You think that Microsoft would've backed down?
This is not predatory behaviour; they wanted to something, were told they shouldn't, and then backed down.
That's how I expect a good corporate citizen to behave.
Of course you could just put 8GB of RAM in your Linux box and enjoy phenomenal performance instead, with 7.5GB of disk cache to boot.
Using encrypted swap is really easy on a modern Linux distribution. A random key is assigned to the swap partition on boot-up, so that after power-off, the data's almost as good as gone.
/me plays another round of nethack
I'm pretty sure JRR Tolkien didn't get any of the money from the movie anyway, despite Copyright and his successors.
The fact that ReiserFS 3 kicks ass in the situations I described is exactly why I use it in those situations :-)
That said, it would've been nice to compare.