Wow! so here is still intelligent life in the programming world.
This is exactly right. OO coding techniques, UML, Use Cases etc. are (potentially!) useful TOOLS. They are not the SOLUTION.
There are far too many big companies that think that these will allow cheap (inexperienced/poor) programmers to generate acceptable quality applications/code.
They may help, but the lack of experience and overall view and understanding of what they are trying to do (which you don't get from reading use cases) will bite in the end.
---------
To the OP: What you learned with ALGOL (particularly if that included ALGOL68) and Pascal will stand you in good stead when using almost any of the currently used languages.
Perl is a little different. You can use your current styles, but to get the most out of it will require breaking out of the mold.
The basic principles of object oriented cod are relatively easy to understand. Thinking in OO style is difficult for someone from a functional language background, but not impossible. OO programmers that have never known anything else tend not to see how that distorts their view to make the problem fit the paradigm, and how that is not a good thing.
Java is superficially easy, but has so many contortions to make reality match what they want to achieve in the language that it becomes somewhat hard to learn.
Reminds me of a problem my son had with his VW Jeta (turbo).
He complained that there was a noticeable miss-fire under hard acceleration. Took it to the VW shop. They plugged in their computer analyzer and pronounced no problem. He eventually persuaded the tech to get in the car took him out on the highway and floored it - misfire.
Back to the shop, plug in the analyzer - no reported misfire.
Basically, they told him to get lost. Especially since this was under warranty and if the VW computer showed no issue, they would not get paid.
I think you are the one that needs lessons in English language comprehension. You took one small part, completely out of context, and placed your own interpretation on it.
Here it is WITH context:
In order to use the Solaris operating system for perpetual commercial use, each system running Solaris must be expressly licensed to do so. An Entitlement Document comprises such license and is delivered to you either with a new Sun system or from Sun Services as part of your service agreement. Customers who did not receive an Entitlement Document with their new Sun system or through their service agreement must register each system running Solaris with Sun. Before you install Solaris on additional systems, you must first register those systems to receive an additional Entitlement Document.
The registration process to receive an Entitlement Document is part of the Solaris download process, with the Entitlement Document being returned to you via e-mail. For this reason, YOU MUST PROVIDE A WORKING E-MAIL ADDRESS AS PART OF YOUR SUN DOWNLOAD CENTER ACCOUNT. If you fail to do so, you will not receive an Entitlement Document and will only have the right to evaluate Solaris for 90 days.
What it says is that you need an entitlement document to be able to use Solaris perpetually (that means forever). This entitlement is ONLY delivered with a new machine, or with a support contract. So you have to either buy a machine or a support contract to get this entitlement.
If you didn't get one with your machine, then we move on to the paragraph you quoted. You have to register either your new machine, or your support contract, and in return will get your entitlement. If you use a non-working email address, the registration will not complete, and you will only be able to use the software under the terms of the evaluation agreement - for 90 days.
I expect that those people who were dumb enough to buy Linux "licenses" from SCO and Microsoft must be feeling like complete idiots about now (possibly because they are).
Just wonder when the first lawsuits against SCO and Microsoft will begin? Actually, suing SCO is a waste of time, they are effectively bankrupt, but Microsoft has a nice stash of cash available.
You are making a lot of assumptions about how the content gets delivered. Historically, and still true for the majority of content it is not delivered on a "channel" specific to the subscriber. Its essentially "broadcast" over the cable network, and subscribers tap into the broadcast.
There is no way an individual subscriber can change the service provider on this sort of network.
As systems move to digital delivery it becomes feasible, but requires much more investment than simply the physical cable/fiber network. To do what you describe would require an "exchange" which would receive content from all supported providers, and a means ot switching incoming streams to individual subscribers.
I suspect that you would not like the price of this system.
... and this is the problem. The move from direct government grants to research to "industry partnerships".
Well, (IMHO) if industry wants to make use of the resources of academic institutions, they need to understand the price: all the work becomes public property. I would go one step further, and say that one penny of public money in a project means it all becomes publicly available.
Those that want to keep their toys to themselves are free to do so, but not with public money.
Remember that a lot of people are behind firewalls and end up sharing an IP - maybe several thousand people at a time. Blocking on IP only works in the most simplistic of cases.
Expect legislation requiring browsers to support some form of locked cookie that users have no control over in the not too distant future.
Is this deliberate flamebait? Or are you really that ignorant?
The Internet existed way before "The Web", which is what most people think of the Internet as being these days. IE has no claim to be even "The Web". Microsoft ignored the web until they were forced to acknowledge its existence and to provide some basic tools to allow users of its software to connect -- little things, like a TCP/IP stack and browser.
For the browser, they did the usual M$ trick of getting the technology from an existing source (Mosaic -- which was also the original core of Netscape browsers), waving the illusion of untold wealth in front of them, but carefully writing the contract such that they ended up with the Mosaic sources and no obligation to pay Mosaic anything beyond the initial teaser.
Microsoft then did various unethical and illegal tricks to attempt to destroy Netscape -- tricks which ended up getting themselves in deep trouble with the US and EU, paying some huge fines and having to submit to government oversight from both -- but not until they had achieved their aim and Netscape was no more.
So you might say that "IE hijacked the Internet", but never that "IE is the Internet".
Finished the book a couple of weeks ago.
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 1
Maybe having long airplane trips helped to keep me concentrating on it.
The beginning is slow. Slow wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to deal with the words and dictionary definitions. For those that haven't looked at the book yet, history of the planet is divided into different epochs, mostly separated by civilization destroying wars and catastrophies.
Some of the words have very similar meanings in each epoch. Some have quite different meanings. the dictionary definitions give all the meanings. Sometimes you have to remember the context to get the right meaning.
Initially (first few hundred pages) its a pain to deal with, but towards the end of the book I think you come to the conclusion that it adds to the book.
I found the "after dinner discussions" to be the weakest part. They imparted detail quickly, but I could have lived without the exaggerated interpersonal crap.
The end wrapped up the main story quite reasonably, but didn't really cleanly end it for the characters. It was sort of a "and they all live happily ever after" sort of ending.
This is only true because people write such terrible and incomplete manual pages.
The original Bell Labs man pages completely described the system from the point of view of an administrator or user. The only better documentation was the source.
The current blight of wimpy, inaccurate and incomplete man pages seems to originate from the GNU developers who insist on using the terrible "info" crap, writing huge volumes of text with no real content, and the tradition is continued by Linux developers who generally provide little or no man page documentation -- presumably in the hope that users of their software will be tempted to ask questions on various mailing lists where they can be ritually disemboweled for displaying such a lack of understanding and disturbing the peace of the cognoscenti who have much more important things to do than answer questions of mere users of their software.
Well, if you had listened to your teacher in science classes at school one of the things that they would undoubtedly have talked about would have had a tile a lot like "The anomalous behavior of water".
Most liquid materials get progressively more and more dense as they are cooled, until they eventually get to a phase transition where they turn solid.
Water is different.
It gets more and more dense until it gets to 4 degrees C (actually, I think the more precise value is something like 3.92 degrees C), then as it is cooled further, its density decreases, still true even after its phase transition to its solid form (ice).
This is why ice floats, and if you think about it a little, it becomes obvious why the ocean depths are 4 degrees C -- because that is the most dense that water gets, so all the water at 4C sinks to the bottom.
One of my other thoughts was that these orders should probably be provisional for (say) 30 days. During that time the Supreme Court *must* review them and declare them constitutional.
If they are not reviewed, or if found unconstitutional after 30 days, they are void, and any convictions or penalties on individuals are rescinded - with appropriate compensation.
That was effectively what I was saying. We could argue over whether its 6 or 12 months, but the principle is the same -- the order will expire, but may be renewed (how many times?) by the same president - no games by changing a few words, if any part of the effect is the same as a previous order - its invalid.
They will ALL expire permanently when the presidential term expires (4 years max)and the effect of the order may not be incorporated in any new order, ever again.
To become permanent, it must be passed into law by congress.
There are HUGE numbers of executive orders, including some really scary ones from the Clinton years. These all need to go (not *just* the Clinton ones!)
Executive orders are an affront to the constitutional principles of the US Constitution.
This is NOT a power of the President as enumerated by the constitution. It has been tolerated by congress and the judiciary because they see it as useful. If very fast response to some issue is needed an executive order can be made in hours, as opposed to days, weeks, months or years if it has to be passed by congress. From that point of view, it is reasonable to allow this power.
What is wrong with it is that the orders are permanent. IMHO, it should work like this:
Executive orders should automatically expire after one year or at the end of the presidency, whichever comes first. A president *may* renew an order, but only one he has issued. No president may renew an order issued by a predecessor, either in word or effect (no re-writing it in his own words) - if congress thought it a good idea, there has been time to convert it into (real) law.
When I was living in France on of our neighbors did a house swap with a family in Michigan. The guy worked for Ford. He was AMAZED at the EU Fords. He knew that they were supposedly superior to the US versions, but always assumed that the supposed difference was mostly hype to try to convince the US workers to work harder.
There was nothing at all wrong with the toilets it appears, but a more serious problem with the denizens of Seattle.
The versions in use in Paris work just fine, and have worked so for close to 20 years. Initially there was a (small) problem with people spending too long in there (for whatever reason), but a simple change to the software to open the doors after a reasonable amount of time to do what these were intended for fixed that problem.
The only other adjustment that was made was to reduce the sensitivity of the pressure sensor in the floor so that it registered small children - this after a dumb parent ignored the sign saying that children under 5 had to be accompanied by an adult, the toilet thought it was empty, and began its cleaning cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! so here is still intelligent life in the programming world.
This is exactly right. OO coding techniques, UML, Use Cases etc. are (potentially!) useful TOOLS.
They are not the SOLUTION.
There are far too many big companies that think that these will allow cheap (inexperienced/poor) programmers to generate acceptable quality applications/code.
They may help, but the lack of experience and overall view and understanding of what they are trying to do (which you don't get from reading use cases) will bite in the end.
---------
To the OP: What you learned with ALGOL (particularly if that included ALGOL68) and Pascal will stand you in good stead when using almost any of the currently used languages.
Perl is a little different. You can use your current styles, but to get the most out of it will require breaking out of the mold.
The basic principles of object oriented cod are relatively easy to understand.
Thinking in OO style is difficult for someone from a functional language background, but not impossible.
OO programmers that have never known anything else tend not to see how that distorts their view to make the problem fit the paradigm, and how that is not a good thing.
Java is superficially easy, but has so many contortions to make reality match what they want to achieve in the language that it becomes somewhat hard to learn.
C# is a Microsoft honey trap. Avoid.
You truly do need to be an Anonymous Coward to cite anything on realclimate,org as a reference.
Get a life.
Get an education.
Get better friends.
Reminds me of a problem my son had with his VW Jeta (turbo).
He complained that there was a noticeable miss-fire under hard acceleration.
Took it to the VW shop. They plugged in their computer analyzer and pronounced no problem.
He eventually persuaded the tech to get in the car took him out on the highway and floored it - misfire.
Back to the shop, plug in the analyzer - no reported misfire.
Basically, they told him to get lost. Especially since this was under warranty and if the VW computer showed no issue, they would not get paid.
We replaced the spark plugs.
Problem fixed.
Several times. The FCC cleared up what it meant by business use -- its means what it says, plain and simple.
That makes it ok for things like ordering pizza over a phone patch, or offering odd items for sale or swap on a net.
Actually ... you can, and many do. There are frequent swap/sell nets, where people do offer their telescopes (etc) for sale.
What you can't do is to use it to conduct a business, say telling your workers out in the field what to do, or running a business selling telescopes.
K7UF
I think you are the one that needs lessons in English language comprehension.
You took one small part, completely out of context, and placed your own interpretation on it.
Here it is WITH context:
In order to use the Solaris operating system for perpetual commercial use, each system running Solaris must be expressly licensed to do so. An Entitlement Document comprises such license and is delivered to you either with a new Sun system or from Sun Services as part of your service agreement. Customers who did not receive an Entitlement Document with their new Sun system or through their service agreement must register each system running Solaris with Sun. Before you install Solaris on additional systems, you must first register those systems to receive an additional Entitlement Document.
The registration process to receive an Entitlement Document is part of the Solaris download process, with the Entitlement Document being returned to you via e-mail. For this reason, YOU MUST PROVIDE A WORKING E-MAIL ADDRESS AS PART OF YOUR SUN DOWNLOAD CENTER ACCOUNT. If you fail to do so, you will not receive an Entitlement Document and will only have the right to evaluate Solaris for 90 days.
What it says is that you need an entitlement document to be able to use Solaris perpetually (that means forever).
This entitlement is ONLY delivered with a new machine, or with a support contract. So you have to either buy a machine or a support contract to get this entitlement.
If you didn't get one with your machine, then we move on to the paragraph you quoted.
You have to register either your new machine, or your support contract, and in return will get your entitlement.
If you use a non-working email address, the registration will not complete, and you will only be able to use the software under the terms of the evaluation agreement - for 90 days.
I expect that those people who were dumb enough to buy Linux "licenses" from SCO and Microsoft must be feeling like complete idiots about now (possibly because they are).
Just wonder when the first lawsuits against SCO and Microsoft will begin? Actually, suing SCO is a waste of time, they are effectively bankrupt, but Microsoft has a nice stash of cash available.
You are making a lot of assumptions about how the content gets delivered.
Historically, and still true for the majority of content it is not delivered on a "channel" specific to the subscriber.
Its essentially "broadcast" over the cable network, and subscribers tap into the broadcast.
There is no way an individual subscriber can change the service provider on this sort of network.
As systems move to digital delivery it becomes feasible, but requires much more investment than simply the physical cable/fiber network.
To do what you describe would require an "exchange" which would receive content from all supported providers, and a means ot switching incoming streams to individual subscribers.
I suspect that you would not like the price of this system.
I have driven manual transmission cars for many years.
People that roll back, even on the steepest of hills have no place driving.
Get some real driving lessons!
... and this is the problem. The move from direct government grants to research to "industry partnerships".
Well, (IMHO) if industry wants to make use of the resources of academic institutions, they need to understand the price: all the work becomes public property. I would go one step further, and say that one penny of public money in a project means it all becomes publicly available.
Those that want to keep their toys to themselves are free to do so, but not with public money.
SPAM
Google "Level Up Really Fast using the plow/plant/destroy trick" 1010 hits for that exact phrase.
Go find somewhere else to market your stuff!
Carbon footprint?
That's so 2007-ish.
Al Gore will have to invent something else now.
Whatever next?
Internet - check.
Global warming - check.
Profit - almost worked!
Not so easy.
Remember that a lot of people are behind firewalls and end up sharing an IP - maybe several thousand people at a time.
Blocking on IP only works in the most simplistic of cases.
Expect legislation requiring browsers to support some form of locked cookie that users have no control over in the not too distant future.
Delete the cookie, go to prison.
"IE was "The Internet"
Is this deliberate flamebait? Or are you really that ignorant?
The Internet existed way before "The Web", which is what most people think of the Internet as being these days. IE has no claim to be even "The Web". Microsoft ignored the web until they were forced to acknowledge its existence and to provide some basic tools to allow users of its software to connect -- little things, like a TCP/IP stack and browser.
For the browser, they did the usual M$ trick of getting the technology from an existing source (Mosaic -- which was also the original core of Netscape browsers), waving the illusion of untold wealth in front of them, but carefully writing the contract such that they ended up with the Mosaic sources and no obligation to pay Mosaic anything beyond the initial teaser.
Microsoft then did various unethical and illegal tricks to attempt to destroy Netscape -- tricks which ended up getting themselves in deep trouble with the US and EU, paying some huge fines and having to submit to government oversight from both -- but not until they had achieved their aim and Netscape was no more.
So you might say that "IE hijacked the Internet", but never that "IE is the Internet".
Maybe having long airplane trips helped to keep me concentrating on it.
The beginning is slow. Slow wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to deal with the words and dictionary definitions. For those that haven't looked at the book yet, history of the planet is divided into different epochs, mostly separated by civilization destroying wars and catastrophies.
Some of the words have very similar meanings in each epoch. Some have quite different meanings. the dictionary definitions give all the meanings. Sometimes you have to remember the context to get the right meaning.
Initially (first few hundred pages) its a pain to deal with, but towards the end of the book I think you come to the conclusion that it adds to the book.
I found the "after dinner discussions" to be the weakest part. They imparted detail quickly, but I could have lived without the exaggerated interpersonal crap.
The end wrapped up the main story quite reasonably, but didn't really cleanly end it for the characters. It was sort of a "and they all live happily ever after" sort of ending.
Do read it. Stick with it. Its worth it.
This is only true because people write such terrible and incomplete manual pages.
The original Bell Labs man pages completely described the system from the point of view of an administrator or user. The only better documentation was the source.
The current blight of wimpy, inaccurate and incomplete man pages seems to originate from the GNU developers who insist on using the terrible "info" crap, writing huge volumes of text with no real content, and the tradition is continued by Linux developers who generally provide little or no man page documentation -- presumably in the hope that users of their software will be tempted to ask questions on various mailing lists where they can be ritually disemboweled for displaying such a lack of understanding and disturbing the peace of the cognoscenti who have much more important things to do than answer questions of mere users of their software.
Why are the depths of the ocean cold?
Well, if you had listened to your teacher in science classes at school one of the things that they would undoubtedly have talked about would have had a tile a lot like "The anomalous behavior of water".
Most liquid materials get progressively more and more dense as they are cooled, until they eventually get to a phase transition where they turn solid.
Water is different.
It gets more and more dense until it gets to 4 degrees C (actually, I think the more precise value is something like 3.92 degrees C), then as it is cooled further, its density decreases, still true even after its phase transition to its solid form (ice).
This is why ice floats, and if you think about it a little, it becomes obvious why the ocean depths are 4 degrees C -- because that is the most dense that water gets, so all the water at 4C sinks to the bottom.
Would you care to explain what you wrote above?
Preferably in English?
One of my other thoughts was that these orders should probably be provisional for (say) 30 days. During that time the Supreme Court *must* review them and declare them constitutional.
If they are not reviewed, or if found unconstitutional after 30 days, they are void, and any convictions or penalties on individuals are rescinded - with appropriate compensation.
That was effectively what I was saying.
We could argue over whether its 6 or 12 months, but the principle is the same -- the order will expire, but may be renewed (how many times?) by the same president - no games by changing a few words, if any part of the effect is the same as a previous order - its invalid.
They will ALL expire permanently when the presidential term expires (4 years max)and the effect of the order may not be incorporated in any new order, ever again.
To become permanent, it must be passed into law by congress.
There are HUGE numbers of executive orders, including some really scary ones from the Clinton years. These all need to go (not *just* the Clinton ones!)
Executive orders are an affront to the constitutional principles of the US Constitution.
This is NOT a power of the President as enumerated by the constitution. It has been tolerated by congress and the judiciary because they see it as useful. If very fast response to some issue is needed an executive order can be made in hours, as opposed to days, weeks, months or years if it has to be passed by congress. From that point of view, it is reasonable to allow this power.
What is wrong with it is that the orders are permanent. IMHO, it should work like this:
Executive orders should automatically expire after one year or at the end of the presidency, whichever comes first. A president *may* renew an order, but only one he has issued. No president may renew an order issued by a predecessor, either in word or effect (no re-writing it in his own words) - if congress thought it a good idea, there has been time to convert it into (real) law.
When I was living in France on of our neighbors did a house swap with a family in Michigan. The guy worked for Ford. He was AMAZED at the EU Fords. He knew that they were supposedly superior to the US versions, but always assumed that the supposed difference was mostly hype to try to convince the US workers to work harder.
Until he drove one around.
Take the images and run them through uuencode.
Take the printable ascii output and dump it to paper tape.
That will easily last 25 years if properly sealed with dehydration materials.
(You may need to put a paper tape reader in the package too, along with instructions on how to interface to it.)
There was nothing at all wrong with the toilets it appears, but a more serious problem with the denizens of Seattle.
The versions in use in Paris work just fine, and have worked so for close to 20 years. Initially there was a (small) problem with people spending too long in there (for whatever reason), but a simple change to the software to open the doors after a reasonable amount of time to do what these were intended for fixed that problem.
The only other adjustment that was made was to reduce the sensitivity of the pressure sensor in the floor so that it registered small children - this after a dumb parent ignored the sign saying that children under 5 had to be accompanied by an adult, the toilet thought it was empty, and began its cleaning cycle.
Oh I could name her ... but doing so would probably get me permanently banned from /. for the name I would like to give her.