The poster who mentioned the forces of nature is correct. Another force of nature that comes into play is efficiency - nothing is 100% efficient, there is always energy lost in any transformation.
There are however, schemes that do something like this - hydroelectric dams where the water is pumped up in off-peak times and used to cope with peak demand.
As far as teaching plain ol' reading, writing, and 'rythmetic, a pencil and paper would do just as good a job for a lot less money. As a teaching device, they won't be a smashing success. However, what they will do is usher kids in third world poverty into the global communication revolution.
I agree with you up to a point, however given a search engine and some other online resources, e.g. wikipedia, science texts, programming texts, online graphing calculators, etc., some of the more self-starting kids will go a lot further a lot faster with a laptop than without.
SQL Server may have some extra features, but to web developers they're lost behind the "Server Management Studio" and its buggy, archaic and inefficient UI.
What, you would maybe prefer maybe the buggy, archaic and utterly lacking-in-functionality tools that oracle gives? You do know that SQL server has commandline tools too?
I haven't encountered any PC application in the past 5 years more buggy than SQL server.
That's a very odd statement. This opinion isn't shared by anyone that I have spoken to.
But isn't "type-intelligent" GC difficult in a language that isn't? And languages that are C-compatible aren't, by definition. If there is little difference between an int and a pointer, how "type-intelligent" can the GC be?
Of course, you're overlooking all the overhead of monitoring the code long enough to determine which on-the-fly optimisations are worth performing
Except sometimes there is no overhead to optimising: Simply use the appropriate compiler for your CPU's feature set. E.g 64-bit or SIMD machine code could come out at no extra cost.
You have no idea how fast C/C++ can be. no one that knows both languages very well will claims that.
This is a typical C++ programmer attitude. C++ can be faster or as fast as other approaches, and it can be free of the memory leaks, access violations and assorted other pointer error to which it is prone. The problem is, it very seldom is.
There are of course cases where a low-level bare-metal language like C/C++ is just the thing - e.g. Os'es, Device drivers, Virtual machines. However in many other cases using C/C++ is not generally a good thing. This is not just my opinion, look at IT jobs listings sometime.
dont EVER say that a high level language can have the same speed as a low level program.
In some cases, it can. In some cases, the compiler does a better job of optimising than a person. And in many other cases, the compiled high-level code is slower, but by a fraction that is totally insignificant compared to the increased ease of producing the code.
If I read that FAQ right, it is possible that "integer or other random data be misinterpreted as a pointer by the collector" since given the nature of C - no VM, the difference between a pointer and an int is at best a gentleman's agreement - anything in memory *could* be a pointer. Well, I suppose it works if he says so. But it certainly isn't pretty.
How many OS'es are written in Python? Neither Java, ruby, perl nor python attempt be appropriate languages for writing OS'es. This doesn't make them good or bad. Other factors might.
I don't know if D gives the features of Perl with the speed of C
Hell, I hope not. Perl might collapse into a black hole if any more features are piled into it
The same way as countless other programming languages have in the past, I imagine. Why do you think garbage collection requires running your code under a VM?
Because in a non-vm language like C with its use of pointers for everything, it is very hard if not impossible to tell if an object on the heap is in fact still in use and can not be automatically reclaimed. Sure you could have a Vm with pointers, but one of the main advantages of the Java or.net VM is that it can better track memory use.
Every time someone posts on here that they perceive java as slow, they get jumped on. I wouldn't know the reality, It's been a while since I used some java, but the perception is real.
Just In Time Compilation in C# or Java has "Native code speed", in fact it goes one better - since the compilation happens at a later time, more processor or other specific optimisations can be made. That's not the slow part. GC has a lot to do with the perceived slowness. Isn't it disingenuous to tout both "native code speed" and "garbage collection"?
Having read the page, it looks as if the Slashdot article may be incorrect. Users operating from that IP address and who are not logged in have been denied editing privileges due to abuse.
This is a far lesser issue, it's more accountability than censorship.
Linux needs a modern, stable, bytecode-based, object-oriented, cross-platform language and runtime. Kylix was supposed to be the solution.
But Kylix was not bytecoded and so does not meet that important role. It is Delphi - a language with pointers that compiles to machine code. You can leak resources by forgetting to free, and you can cause access violations by referring to objects that you have already freed. Like C++.
Now Delphi.net is a different story, and also a less interesting one - if you're going to write for.net, C# is a better fit. Delphi.net could probably be compiled for mono, but even fewer people would care.
Do you know how much easier and cheaper launching exploration vehicles, both manned and unmanned from the moon would be rather than from earth?
Not much, since everything launched from the moon first has to be launched from Earth. Making things on the moon is hard, since there's not much there.
China, however, is governed by Chinese and for Chinese
You meant to say: China, however, is governed by a few Chinese and for those Chinese.
they're allowed to act in their own best interests.
I'm not calling the Chinese government corrupt; I wouldn't know. But governing a county in your own best interest is generally neither good nor allowed, that is to say, it's illegal.
The U.S., on the other hand, is... not all that different?
Every touted improvement in Vista exists to make Microsoft's life and the life of their media and hardware partners better and more enriched... not for your benefit or enjoyment
The idea that no new features in Vista are there to make the end-user's life easier is trivially false. It is wrong. Look at The wikipedia page - Speech recognition, Mail, Search, Calendar, Backup and Restore etc. etc. all seem to have nothing to do with DRM and everything to do with benefiting users (or selling more copies of vista, if you want to see it that way).
Problems are problems and bad ideas are bad ideas, but trying to relate everything to a particular problem is the hallmark of mental illness.
I handle about 1,500 in-bound messages a day. By their calculations, I should be losing 15 or so, every day.
If the errors were evenly distributed, then yes you should. Therefore they aren't evenly distributed. That is unsurprising, such things seldom are.
e.g. Car crashes happen more often at intersections.
avoid certain IPs and IP Ranges that are known to host pots... those lists exist.
Cool. How can I get my machine on those lists?
Seriously, this means that an IP range can be "poisoned" by hosting honeypots amid the the real machines in it. And if not, you don't lose either - you have a working honeypot.
Slashdot Mirror
(shouldn't it be "the theory of creationism")?
No, because creationism is not even a theory in the scientific sense. What testable predictions does it make?
The poster who mentioned the forces of nature is correct. Another force of nature that comes into play is efficiency - nothing is 100% efficient, there is always energy lost in any transformation.
There are however, schemes that do something like this - hydroelectric dams where the water is pumped up in off-peak times and used to cope with peak demand.
RTFA
As far as teaching plain ol' reading, writing, and 'rythmetic, a pencil and paper would do just as good a job for a lot less money. As a teaching device, they won't be a smashing success. However, what they will do is usher kids in third world poverty into the global communication revolution.
I agree with you up to a point, however given a search engine and some other online resources, e.g. wikipedia, science texts, programming texts, online graphing calculators, etc., some of the more self-starting kids will go a lot further a lot faster with a laptop than without.
Other than that, an excellent post.
SQL Server may have some extra features, but to web developers they're lost behind the "Server Management Studio" and its buggy, archaic and inefficient UI.
What, you would maybe prefer maybe the buggy, archaic and utterly lacking-in-functionality tools that oracle gives? You do know that SQL server has commandline tools too?
I haven't encountered any PC application in the past 5 years more buggy than SQL server.
That's a very odd statement. This opinion isn't shared by anyone that I have spoken to.
But isn't "type-intelligent" GC difficult in a language that isn't? And languages that are C-compatible aren't, by definition. If there is little difference between an int and a pointer, how "type-intelligent" can the GC be?
Of course, you're overlooking all the overhead of monitoring the code long enough to determine which on-the-fly optimisations are worth performing
Except sometimes there is no overhead to optimising: Simply use the appropriate compiler for your CPU's feature set. E.g 64-bit or SIMD machine code could come out at no extra cost.
You have no idea how fast C/C++ can be. no one that knows both languages very well will claims that.
This is a typical C++ programmer attitude. C++ can be faster or as fast as other approaches, and it can be free of the memory leaks, access violations and assorted other pointer error to which it is prone. The problem is, it very seldom is.
There are of course cases where a low-level bare-metal language like C/C++ is just the thing - e.g. Os'es, Device drivers, Virtual machines. However in many other cases using C/C++ is not generally a good thing. This is not just my opinion, look at IT jobs listings sometime.
dont EVER say that a high level language can have the same speed as a low level program.
In some cases, it can. In some cases, the compiler does a better job of optimising than a person. And in many other cases, the compiled high-level code is slower, but by a fraction that is totally insignificant compared to the increased ease of producing the code.
Haskell, if a recall correctly, does not rely heavily on pointers.
If I read that FAQ right, it is possible that "integer or other random data be misinterpreted as a pointer by the collector" since given the nature of C - no VM, the difference between a pointer and an int is at best a gentleman's agreement - anything in memory *could* be a pointer. Well, I suppose it works if he says so. But it certainly isn't pretty.
how many OS'es are written in Java?
How many OS'es are written in Python?
Neither Java, ruby, perl nor python attempt be appropriate languages for writing OS'es. This doesn't make them good or bad. Other factors might.
I don't know if D gives the features of Perl with the speed of C
Hell, I hope not. Perl might collapse into a black hole if any more features are piled into it
The same way as countless other programming languages have in the past, I imagine. Why do you think garbage collection requires running your code under a VM?
.net VM is that it can better track memory use.
Because in a non-vm language like C with its use of pointers for everything, it is very hard if not impossible to tell if an object on the heap is in fact still in use and can not be automatically reclaimed. Sure you could have a Vm with pointers, but one of the main advantages of the Java or
Every time someone posts on here that they perceive java as slow, they get jumped on. I wouldn't know the reality, It's been a while since I used some java, but the perception is real.
garbage collection ... No virtual machine
How do they square that particular circle?
native code speed
Just In Time Compilation in C# or Java has "Native code speed", in fact it goes one better - since the compilation happens at a later time, more processor or other specific optimisations can be made. That's not the slow part. GC has a lot to do with the perceived slowness. Isn't it disingenuous to tout both "native code speed" and "garbage collection"?
Having read the page, it looks as if the Slashdot article may be incorrect. Users operating from that IP address and who are not logged in have been denied editing privileges due to abuse.
This is a far lesser issue, it's more accountability than censorship.
Linux needs a modern, stable, bytecode-based, object-oriented, cross-platform language and runtime. Kylix was supposed to be the solution.
.net, C# is a better fit. Delphi.net could probably be compiled for mono, but even fewer people would care.
But Kylix was not bytecoded and so does not meet that important role. It is Delphi - a language with pointers that compiles to machine code. You can leak resources by forgetting to free, and you can cause access violations by referring to objects that you have already freed. Like C++.
Now Delphi.net is a different story, and also a less interesting one - if you're going to write for
Do you know how much easier and cheaper launching exploration vehicles, both manned and unmanned from the moon would be rather than from earth?
Not much, since everything launched from the moon first has to be launched from Earth. Making things on the moon is hard, since there's not much there.
Nope, capital (American or otherwise) seeks profit. Power is the fetish of the pinkos, not the businessman.
Power, profit, what's the difference? Power is a sure means to profit, money is an undeniable source of and means to power.
China, however, is governed by Chinese and for Chinese
... not all that different?
You meant to say: China, however, is governed by a few Chinese and for those Chinese.
they're allowed to act in their own best interests.
I'm not calling the Chinese government corrupt; I wouldn't know. But governing a county in your own best interest is generally neither good nor allowed, that is to say, it's illegal.
The U.S., on the other hand, is
First Time? Atlantis anyone?
You do know that Atlantis is fiction, right?
Every touted improvement in Vista exists to make Microsoft's life and the life of their media and hardware partners better and more enriched ... not for your benefit or enjoyment
The idea that no new features in Vista are there to make the end-user's life easier is trivially false. It is wrong. Look at The wikipedia page - Speech recognition, Mail, Search, Calendar, Backup and Restore etc. etc. all seem to have nothing to do with DRM and everything to do with benefiting users (or selling more copies of vista, if you want to see it that way).
Problems are problems and bad ideas are bad ideas, but trying to relate everything to a particular problem is the hallmark of mental illness.
Zero gravity is a bitch at 10+ years.
.... probably completely unknown.
And the effects of lunar gravity for 10+ years are
I liked the one where the whole pirate ship jumped over a giant shark.
The whole movie was just way over the top.
How the fuck does email get "lost"?
I don't know the reasons, but it does happen.
I handle about 1,500 in-bound messages a day. By their calculations, I should be losing 15 or so, every day.
If the errors were evenly distributed, then yes you should. Therefore they aren't evenly distributed. That is unsurprising, such things seldom are.
e.g. Car crashes happen more often at intersections.
avoid certain IPs and IP Ranges that are known to host pots ... those lists exist.
Cool. How can I get my machine on those lists?
Seriously, this means that an IP range can be "poisoned" by hosting honeypots amid the the real machines in it. And if not, you don't lose either - you have a working honeypot.