[...] Java was only sold as a silver bullet for portability, not speed, not efficiency, not scalability, but solely for it's ability to be shifted from one vendor's platform to another's.
Your memory is partially correct. What it was actually touted as was:
Using 0b is dumb. They should of used a letter that isn't in hex, say 0z1101.
There's nothing dumb about it at all. First of all, the prefix 0b cannot be confused with a hex digit because you need the prefix 0x to get hex.
Secondly, if you're concerned about b looking like a hex digit, well, there's your problem. Lowercase hex digits are the devil's work. Always write hex digits using uppercase letters, as $DEITY intended.
Finally, what the hell is the z supposed to stand for in 0z?
And that is why autonomous cars will NEVER be programmed with a "choice" to hit person X in order to avoid hitting person A.
I completely, totally, utterly, and vehemently disagree with you on that.
Given a choice, I think autonomous cars at some point WILL be programmed with such a choice. For example, hitting an elderly person in order to avoid hitting a small child.
Header files are totally optional. You can write all your code in one big file if you want to. You just need to make sure no function calls any function that hasn't been defined or declared yet. No problem!
And the ship just happened to have enough fuel to change its course and make its way to a some star instead of wherver it was going? In a time-frame short enough that the human brain inside the robot didn't die? Doesn't seem likely to me. Also, that fireball that was supposed to be a sun exploding was pretty unrealistic. I mean, a sun doesn't look like a fireball, and a supernova explodes pretty much instantaneously from your ship's point of view. It's doesn't gradually expand like that. You get hit by it expoloding and you're gone. There's no pretty fireball.
Thanks for posting that explanation. It helps me not completely feel like I wasted my time watching it. That said, I think it would have been much better as a 10-page short story.
C forcing you to interrupt the flow of typing by reaching for the shift key on identifiers, whether you use camel case or underscores. Although I still remember the magnificent ADM-3A, where underscore was a gorgeous UNSHIFTED keystroke.
That's your keyboard's fault, not C's.
And just one's own laziness. I mean, if someone has a disability that makes using the shift key difficult (for example, you only have one good hand, or you are looking at pr0n while writing code), then I sympathize. But if they have no such disability, then they're just lazy. It's not that difficult to type an underscore character.
If you say some person's weight is 400 pounds, and it's pointed out to you that no, their weight is in fact only 208 pounds, and you try to argue that 400 was "close" to 208, then you probably would only have about 1 person in a million agreeing with you. A factor of 2 is not "close", and a factor of 10 is not even remotely close. I think you're confusing logarithmic closeness with geometric closeness.
Fine; we can agree to disagree on what "close" means. But back to the original point... Why did you quote the wrong figure (400k/day) on an article that you yourself linked to?
400k/day is wrong by a factor of two. That's not "close" by any stretch of the imagination, especially considering that 400k/day is a yearly growth rate of 2%, while 200k/day is a yeary growth rate of 1%. Those growth rates are fundamentally different when compounded.
Anyone who knows anything about compression knows that universal lossless compression is impossible to always do, because if such an algorithm existed, you could run it repeatedly on a data source until you were down to a single bit. And uncompresing a single bit that could be literally anything is problematic.
Actually, anyone who knows anything about compression knows that universal lossless compression is always possible to do. Sometimes you get good compression, sometimes you get shitty compression, and sometimes you get 0% compression. Note that 0% compression is still compression — it's just a degenerate case.
You are right, of course, that you can't repeatedly compress something down to a single bit — there is always a point of diminishing returns. But just because you can't compress something down to a single bit doesn't mean that no universal lossless compression algorithm exists. For example, f(x) = x is a universal lossless compression algorithm. It's a shitty algorithm, but it is lossless and it does compress.
it's worth being skeptical whenever someone's argument involves their not being able to comprehend the magnificence of their own creation (it's a form of argument from ignorance).
Not really. Not if they're using a genetic hillclimbing approach with neural networks, mutation, and evolution. Chances are, you'll never have any hope of understanding what evolves in that case. That's normal, and nothing to be skeptical about. And that would be a great way to win Core Wars.
You can fill your car in 5 minutes and go another 600KM. You can battery swap a Model S in 90 seconds and go another 500KM. Or you can wait 20 minutes and get a supercharge that will get you 250KM for zero cost.
Seems like the electric car not only meets your expectations, but rather exceeds them.
In theory. I mean, there are more than 100,000 gas stations in the United States, compared to how many Tesla supercharging/swapping stations?
Don't get me wrong; I think electric is here to stay and will win out in the long run... but to say it meets or exceeds expectations of convenience is not right.
Slashdot Mirror
[...] Java was only sold as a silver bullet for portability, not speed, not efficiency, not scalability, but solely for it's ability to be shifted from one vendor's platform to another's.
Your memory is partially correct. What it was actually touted as was:
“Java: A simple, object-oriented, network-savvy, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture neutral, portable, high-performance, multithreaded, dynamic language.”
So which symbol would you pick??
Well I would pick b, because it isn't a hexadecimal digit.
{ 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F } are hexadecimal digits.
Using 0b is dumb. They should of used a letter that isn't in hex, say 0z1101.
There's nothing dumb about it at all. First of all, the prefix 0b cannot be confused with a hex digit because you need the prefix 0x to get hex.
Secondly, if you're concerned about b looking like a hex digit, well, there's your problem. Lowercase hex digits are the devil's work. Always write hex digits using uppercase letters, as $DEITY intended.
Finally, what the hell is the z supposed to stand for in 0z?
And that is why autonomous cars will NEVER be programmed with a "choice" to hit person X in order to avoid hitting person A.
I completely, totally, utterly, and vehemently disagree with you on that.
Given a choice, I think autonomous cars at some point WILL be programmed with such a choice. For example, hitting an elderly person in order to avoid hitting a small child.
Header files are totally optional. You can write all your code in one big file if you want to. You just need to make sure no function calls any function that hasn't been defined or declared yet. No problem!
FTFY.
And the ship just happened to have enough fuel to change its course and make its way to a some star instead of wherver it was going? In a time-frame short enough that the human brain inside the robot didn't die? Doesn't seem likely to me. Also, that fireball that was supposed to be a sun exploding was pretty unrealistic. I mean, a sun doesn't look like a fireball, and a supernova explodes pretty much instantaneously from your ship's point of view. It's doesn't gradually expand like that. You get hit by it expoloding and you're gone. There's no pretty fireball.
Thanks for posting that explanation. It helps me not completely feel like I wasted my time watching it. That said, I think it would have been much better as a 10-page short story.
That's your keyboard's fault, not C's.
And just one's own laziness. I mean, if someone has a disability that makes using the shift key difficult (for example, you only have one good hand, or you are looking at pr0n while writing code), then I sympathize. But if they have no such disability, then they're just lazy. It's not that difficult to type an underscore character.
It should be possible to image more-or-less the complete inside of the comet with this system.
What is meant by "inside" in this context?
I hope it's more like Stalag 13 than like Stalag 17.
That issue was great.
https://archive.org/stream/sta...
200mb is a joke at 20mbit/s.
The GP said 200MB, not 200mb.
That said, yeah, even 200MB is a joke at 20mbit/s.
If you say some person's weight is 400 pounds, and it's pointed out to you that no, their weight is in fact only 208 pounds, and you try to argue that 400 was "close" to 208, then you probably would only have about 1 person in a million agreeing with you. A factor of 2 is not "close", and a factor of 10 is not even remotely close. I think you're confusing logarithmic closeness with geometric closeness.
Fine; we can agree to disagree on what "close" means.
But back to the original point... Why did you quote the wrong figure (400k/day) on an article that you yourself linked to?
400k/day is wrong by a factor of two. That's not "close" by any stretch of the imagination, especially considering that 400k/day is a yearly growth rate of 2%, while 200k/day is a yeary growth rate of 1%. Those growth rates are fundamentally different when compounded.
> Now it (worldwide population) is growing by millions a day.
400k/day. But gettin there..
No. Not even close. At that rate, we would be adding a billion people every 6.8 years.
Actual numbers (2011 data): Adding 360k per day, subtracting 151.6k per day, for a net increase of 208.4k per day.
Pluto is a planet. It's a dwarf planet.
Anyone who knows anything about compression knows that universal lossless compression is impossible to always do, because if such an algorithm existed, you could run it repeatedly on a data source until you were down to a single bit. And uncompresing a single bit that could be literally anything is problematic.
Actually, anyone who knows anything about compression knows that universal lossless compression is always possible to do. Sometimes you get good compression, sometimes you get shitty compression, and sometimes you get 0% compression. Note that 0% compression is still compression — it's just a degenerate case.
You are right, of course, that you can't repeatedly compress something down to a single bit — there is always a point of diminishing returns. But just because you can't compress something down to a single bit doesn't mean that no universal lossless compression algorithm exists. For example, f(x) = x is a universal lossless compression algorithm. It's a shitty algorithm, but it is lossless and it does compress.
Less than 50 musicians in history have [...]
Fewer than.
it's worth being skeptical whenever someone's argument involves their not being able to comprehend the magnificence of their own creation (it's a form of argument from ignorance).
Not really. Not if they're using a genetic hillclimbing approach with neural networks, mutation, and evolution. Chances are, you'll never have any hope of understanding what evolves in that case. That's normal, and nothing to be skeptical about. And that would be a great way to win Core Wars.
That was awesome to read. Thank you for writing and posting that.
(which you can solve by running away to living in outer space,)
Oh, sure. Because nothing can kill you in outer space.
C-x M-c M-butterfly.
The best way to program for sure.
Madame butterfly?
You can fill your car in 5 minutes and go another 600KM. You can battery swap a Model S in 90 seconds and go another 500KM. Or you can wait 20 minutes and get a supercharge that will get you 250KM for zero cost.
Seems like the electric car not only meets your expectations, but rather exceeds them.
In theory. I mean, there are more than 100,000 gas stations in the United States, compared to how many Tesla supercharging/swapping stations?
Don't get me wrong; I think electric is here to stay and will win out in the long run... but to say it meets or exceeds expectations of convenience is not right.
What is this, Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock Plank Fractal-Universe Heisenberg?
Well at least Chewbacca NEVER EVER stepped on poo.
If he did, he would find the person who left it there and pull their arms out of their sockets.