The link in the story has nothing to do with the text used.. there's nothing on that page about spam being 100 years old. Worse, it's a link to an other useful resource which could do without being hammered by tens of thousands of Slashdot readers. Remember the recent stories about Wikipedia being overloaded on Slashdot recently?
Okay, I know it's not really a practical suggestion, but hear me out. If someone offered you a place to live on a volcano that was definitely going to erupt and destroy your home within the next ten years, would you buy the deeds? Or would you buy a house that was guaranteed to flood out every year? Well, yes, people do, and I really don't know why.
I've been a Perl coder for eight years, C for thirteen, and can get by in VB.. but there's no way I'd want to do high level data parsing in C or VB!
For a start, Perl is designed for the job. C is amazing for developing kernels, and doing low level stuff, but for parsing text? I think not. You can bash out a single line in Perl that would take 100+ lines to do in C or VB (unless you got some sort of regular expression control for VB, which might be against this contest anyway).
Use the tool for the job. Being language agnostic is not a bad idea when you begin a project, but it's pure idiocy to stick with a single language throughout and claim its cool because 'oh well, languages don't matter, ideas do'.. some languages are far better at certain things than others!
Perhaps they're not looking for people with true creativity or passion, because those people are already working on their own projects.
What they're looking for are typical Java, C#, and VB.NET (I'm excluding C++, as it's a catch-all) programmers who might be excellent coders, but typically lack originality and need to be spoon-fed with problems which they can then solve with some rapidly produced code.
The true masters out there aren't spoon-fed problems; they find the problems and then they solve them independently of the programming language. Google are looking for code grunts to do maintenance work. They already have the 'big minds' in the form of the many PhDs on their staff.
So you're saying that Google isn't full of 'real geeks'? I'd disagree, since it's well known they use Python and Perl in house.
Furthermore, languages like Python and Perl are far better known for doing Google-esque tasks than all of the languages in that list except C++.
There are a lot of insanely great Python and Perl programmers out there who'd need to do a few months' hard study of those other languages to be able to get up with there with the best in, say, C#.. and then find that they still need to use their old languages for all their regular work anyway.
Let's face it, this contest isn't designed for the best of the best to enter, it's designed for the best in C++, C#, VB.NET, and Java, which is a different thing entirely.
Frankly I think people who are crying that we should all ditch the MD5 hash are similarly hysterical.
It's like if the same person won the lottery two weeks in a row.. would that mean the method they used for choosing the numbers was null and void? No. Likewise, finding a collission (or even several collissions) in MD5 does not invalidate its use.
What would invalidate its use is having some programatic way of changing the hash of some data by merely throwing in some junk to make it match a hash of choice..
I recall reading an article about how Gates and Allen developed the first Microsoft BASIC, and that they had to use one of those tricks to get it into the required space.
So, for example, if the most significant byte of a single command was shared with the least significant byte of another.. they could jump into the middle of another instruction. Crazy.
I can't use [...] konqueror to access my GMail as it is.
I wonder if this will change shortly. I can use GMail fine from Safari, which is basically just Konqueror 'plus'. I wonder if Apple will feed back the updates necessary.
Yeah, I thought it was a rip-off of Sealab as soon as I saw it:-)
If an antarctic base had crazy people who drank lots, did drugs, and spoke crazy crap all the time, it'd be pretty fun. Oh, hang on, it's going to be the German base, right? Score!
A previous Slashdot story told us that Odyssey would be getting some new program featuring 'AI functions' so that it could do certain complex, but repetitive, tasks on its own without needing too much input.
What would happen, however, it this made Odyssey sentient? Could it build more robots, develop further intelligence, and then end up populating all of Mars with robots? If this happened, we might be in trouble.
it's roughly on a par with somebody who is being attacked by rabid hyenas deciding that they'd be safer if they distracted the hyenas by attaching large chunks of fresh meat all over their body
Unoriginal. This concept has already been done in the 'Predator' episode of Sealab 2021. It actually worked.
Larry is a bit off the wall, but I really wish other industry luminaries gave these annual 'State of [whatever]' doohickeys.
Or, perhaps they do, and I've missed it. Examples.. Linux could do an annual State of Linux, Bill Gates could do an annual State of Microsoft.. People I'd particularly like to see do an annual address on what they're up to would be Scott McNealy and Steve Jobs (he's great at the various Apple events, but perhaps something more.. serious).
In the UK, if you want to get permissions to build on land, or change how your land drainage works, set up certain types of businesses in residential areas, etc, you have to have the details published in the local newspaper and anyone who wants to complain about them can do so.
Why don't we do the same with patents? When a patent regarding, say, computing comes out.. why doesn't it end up in PC Magazine, or on Slashdot, for peer review? That way, anyone who has a complaint about the patent can register it with the patent office, and we can stop silly stuff like this happening.
Slashdot Mirror
God I hate those jerks in Dome C!
The link in the story has nothing to do with the text used.. there's nothing on that page about spam being 100 years old. Worse, it's a link to an other useful resource which could do without being hammered by tens of thousands of Slashdot readers. Remember the recent stories about Wikipedia being overloaded on Slashdot recently?
It's a couple of years old now, but Adrian O'Grady developed a TCP/IP stack and Web server for the GameBoy Advance as part of his degree project. Source code, tips, and a pretty interesting development diary are there.
Okay, I know it's not really a practical suggestion, but hear me out. If someone offered you a place to live on a volcano that was definitely going to erupt and destroy your home within the next ten years, would you buy the deeds? Or would you buy a house that was guaranteed to flood out every year? Well, yes, people do, and I really don't know why.
He's right, if the offense were running around between formations over and over eventually they'd either tire, strike, or start getting punchy.
I've been a Perl coder for eight years, C for thirteen, and can get by in VB.. but there's no way I'd want to do high level data parsing in C or VB!
For a start, Perl is designed for the job. C is amazing for developing kernels, and doing low level stuff, but for parsing text? I think not. You can bash out a single line in Perl that would take 100+ lines to do in C or VB (unless you got some sort of regular expression control for VB, which might be against this contest anyway).
Use the tool for the job. Being language agnostic is not a bad idea when you begin a project, but it's pure idiocy to stick with a single language throughout and claim its cool because 'oh well, languages don't matter, ideas do'.. some languages are far better at certain things than others!
Perhaps they're not looking for people with true creativity or passion, because those people are already working on their own projects.
What they're looking for are typical Java, C#, and VB.NET (I'm excluding C++, as it's a catch-all) programmers who might be excellent coders, but typically lack originality and need to be spoon-fed with problems which they can then solve with some rapidly produced code.
The true masters out there aren't spoon-fed problems; they find the problems and then they solve them independently of the programming language. Google are looking for code grunts to do maintenance work. They already have the 'big minds' in the form of the many PhDs on their staff.
So you're saying that Google isn't full of 'real geeks'? I'd disagree, since it's well known they use Python and Perl in house.
Furthermore, languages like Python and Perl are far better known for doing Google-esque tasks than all of the languages in that list except C++.
There are a lot of insanely great Python and Perl programmers out there who'd need to do a few months' hard study of those other languages to be able to get up with there with the best in, say, C#.. and then find that they still need to use their old languages for all their regular work anyway.
Let's face it, this contest isn't designed for the best of the best to enter, it's designed for the best in C++, C#, VB.NET, and Java, which is a different thing entirely.
Crossover Office lets you run iTunes on Linux now.
Frankly I think people who are crying that we should all ditch the MD5 hash are similarly hysterical.
It's like if the same person won the lottery two weeks in a row.. would that mean the method they used for choosing the numbers was null and void? No. Likewise, finding a collission (or even several collissions) in MD5 does not invalidate its use.
What would invalidate its use is having some programatic way of changing the hash of some data by merely throwing in some junk to make it match a hash of choice..
Thing is, I thought the whole reasoning behind using the year in the title was so they could release yearly 'like a sport's game'?
I recall reading an article about how Gates and Allen developed the first Microsoft BASIC, and that they had to use one of those tricks to get it into the required space.
So, for example, if the most significant byte of a single command was shared with the least significant byte of another.. they could jump into the middle of another instruction. Crazy.
So the real question is.. will we see a UT2005? If so, what will it be like?
My friend used to use a 486-DX2-66 chip as a comb. Worked pretty well too as I recall.
I can't use [...] konqueror to access my GMail as it is.
I wonder if this will change shortly. I can use GMail fine from Safari, which is basically just Konqueror 'plus'. I wonder if Apple will feed back the updates necessary.
Yeah, I thought it was a rip-off of Sealab as soon as I saw it :-)
If an antarctic base had crazy people who drank lots, did drugs, and spoke crazy crap all the time, it'd be pretty fun. Oh, hang on, it's going to be the German base, right? Score!
A previous Slashdot story told us that Odyssey would be getting some new program featuring 'AI functions' so that it could do certain complex, but repetitive, tasks on its own without needing too much input.
What would happen, however, it this made Odyssey sentient? Could it build more robots, develop further intelligence, and then end up populating all of Mars with robots? If this happened, we might be in trouble.
Well I'm not buying you a Slashdot membership either!
The first rule of being a player, and the one who gets all the chicks, is not to buy her drinks!
No, because doubling resolution would quadruple file sizes. Tripling resolution would cause the file size to be nine times larger.
So, a file size that's ten times larger would actually be a "3.1623x full-res" image.
it's roughly on a par with somebody who is being attacked by rabid hyenas deciding that they'd be safer if they distracted the hyenas by attaching large chunks of fresh meat all over their body
Unoriginal. This concept has already been done in the 'Predator' episode of Sealab 2021. It actually worked.
Larry is a bit off the wall, but I really wish other industry luminaries gave these annual 'State of [whatever]' doohickeys.
Or, perhaps they do, and I've missed it. Examples.. Linux could do an annual State of Linux, Bill Gates could do an annual State of Microsoft.. People I'd particularly like to see do an annual address on what they're up to would be Scott McNealy and Steve Jobs (he's great at the various Apple events, but perhaps something more.. serious).
Well, that's what it says in the article. If it's wrong, then this would be one of the few times reading the article didn't do any good ;-)
In the UK, if you want to get permissions to build on land, or change how your land drainage works, set up certain types of businesses in residential areas, etc, you have to have the details published in the local newspaper and anyone who wants to complain about them can do so.
Why don't we do the same with patents? When a patent regarding, say, computing comes out.. why doesn't it end up in PC Magazine, or on Slashdot, for peer review? That way, anyone who has a complaint about the patent can register it with the patent office, and we can stop silly stuff like this happening.
Uh-oh, the talking book of clichés is loose on Slashdot again!