However, they're treating anyone who likes Fallout 3 (thus far) as if they must be a shill (among other things, like unnecessary personal attacks, but this is the one that irked me the most). Is it incomprehensible to these people that someone might actually DISAGREE with them? "Oh, you claim to like the first two games, and the third too... you're on Bethesda's payroll, buddy."
Since Fallout 3 is unpublished and, indeed, unfinished at this point in time, anyone who claims to like it is very likely either a) judging by Bethesda's marketing materials or b) on Bethesda's payroll. Given this, I'd say that assuming they're on Bethesda's payroll is assuming the best, since that means the opinion just might be based on the actual game rather than a commercial.
Not if the BIOS loader is designed to be extremely flexible and customizable, or if the BIOS itself is open source and can be easily updated to support new operating system:-)
Customizability implies complexity. I don't think such a system would actually be any more reliable than LiLo or GRUB; in fact it would be more complex, since nothing could be hard-coded. And finally, I simply fail to see the advantage of putting the OS loader into the BIOS chip rather than at the beginning of the hard disk.
Nope. The old scheduler, for example, attempted to give more CPU tasks to "interactive" - as determined by heuristics - tasks more CPU time than other tasks by increasing their priority. Not only did this mean that nice levels would not be respected except as a general guideline, but it also made latency unpredictable, since a task could suddenly and unpredictably get an increase or decrease of priority. This would then lead to stalls in program execution, resulting in skips in audio and video and jerky gameplay.
Con's SD scheduler doesn't have these issues, since it doesn't have dynamic priority; latency, in any given situation, has a deterministic upper limit. I don't know if Ingo's CFS has any heuristics built-in; if it does, it is open to the same problems as the old scheduler.
So basically, the old scheduler was broken by design, and would had always remained broken no matter how it timed CPU usage. Oh well, now, thank's to Con's hard work, we have a deterministic one (or at least more deterministic than the old one) in the mainline. Pity that the -ck patches had to die, thought - I don't trust the kernel people to not reintroduce heuristics back to the scheduler to try to fix broken software.
Fundamentally I think the name CFS is a little bit odd - how does one define "fair"?
Fair, in this context, means that the scheduler will give all the running tasks CPU time in proportion to their priority (nice level). It follows from this that all the tasks in a given nice level are given equal amount of CPU time, and a higher-priority task (lower nice level) is given more CPU time than a lower-priority one.
SD scheduler (but not CFK, AFAIK) also had idle priority, which means a task that only runs if nothing else at any nice level wants to run. Very useful for running FoldingAtHome.
In fact, I probably don't want my scheduler to be fair at all - I want it to run the stuff I want fast, and the other stuff it can run slow. That's not very fair.
That's what "nice" is for. A fair scheduler respects nice levels, as stated above.
If we could all use LinuxBIOS, which can boot Linux or *BSD or Windows directly, we wouldn't need any separate bootloader software.
Using separate bootloeader software is what made running Linux or *BSD on x86 possible in the first place. Hardcoding OS loading code into BIOS, beyond the absolute minimum neccessary, is a really bad idea, since it prevents you from running any OS the BIOS loader doesn't support.
Yes, but AFAIK no law says that the customer is responsible for the correct function of casino-operated machines.
You right, But when people aren't using the machines for their intended design and only to exploit a discovered flaw, they are acting in a criminal manor.
Are they or are they not breaking some specific law, and if they are, what law ? What law, specifically speaking, forbids one from using a malfunctioning slot machine to get money ?
Please understand that a "criminal" is someone who commits a crime, which means breaking a specific law, not merely someone who acts in a way you happen to disagree with or think should be illegal. "Acting in a criminal manner" is ambigious; you either break a law or not. What law has been broken in this case ?
There is no law saying I can't buy a car from you. But when I exploit some flaw to cheat you out of the car, or the money owe to you, I have still committed a criminal act. and more to the point, if no one liked you, does that mean I should never be punished and you should never be made whole again?
Exploit a flaw in what ? And what law have you broken ? And in what way am I not "whole" so I need to be made so again ?
I think the Federation as a Utopia still holds true even in the far later seasons of Voyager. Yes, there are humans who leave the federation and do shit like join the Orion Syndicate, but if you live on earth or any number of colonies or civilized worlds, you're guaranteed a relatively comfortable life. Despite section 31 and the dirty dealings therein,
By this standard, all Western nations are utopias.
If rape and murder is illegal when it happens to a 17 year old white cheerleader, then it should be just as bad and illegal when it happens to a cracked out black prostitute.
The casino isn't a junked-out prostitute, it is the pimp who got her addicted and forced her into prostitution in the first place. And while raping that pimp is illegal and wrong - since it lowers the perperator to his level - the pimp certainly deserves it.
Everyone deserves the equal protection of the law.
Yes, but AFAIK no law says that the customer is responsible for the correct function of casino-operated machines.
We're talking about scenes which involve a person being concious and emotional while they're disembowelled, we get off on seeing the fear in their eyes, and their blood-curtling screams.
Well, of course. Public executions, by disembowelment or the far nastier methods human imagination has come up over the centuries, used to be public spectacles. We aren't genetically different from ancient romans who got their kicks watching people getting torn apart by lions and getting nailed to crosses, so why are you so surprised seeing us behave similarly ?
Besides, is this really any different from watching Bond push the bad guy out of an airlock in Moonraker ?
Personally, I think "torture porn" is a really really scary trend in today's culture. It's basically snuff, but with the ability to justify it to yourself because you're not REALLY watching someone die. It's actually a very small step to snuff films, themselves... of which I heard are growing in number, every year.
Understandable, actually. The generation which saw WW2 is dying out. Consequently we are heading towards another world war, and you need to train people for it; they need to learn to see scenes of death and torture without pity or remorse. The shadowy people who pull the strings are training the masses for a massive war, or so my conspiracy sense tells me;(.
We're becoming perverted with our love of power from inflicting pain.
From historic perspective, we are returning back to our evil selves after a short flirt with something somewhat resembling benevolence.
Type lengths in C/C++ can be specified with uint32_t, int8_t, etc. If they are not available for a certain platform, they are just a typedef away.
In other words, if you take great care you can write C/C++ code which might work under another platform with only minimal modifications.
'dependant on external systems such as Gtk, Gnome or KDE', you don't know crap about programming, do you? There are libraries, not 'systems', and Gnome and KDE are not libraries (although there are gnome and KDE libraries).
That was quite incoherent.
I'm not sure what you are suggesting, but I'm sure it's stupid.
I think this sums your post nicely.
Even MS Windows no longer includes all the graphical system in the kernel.
What does this has to do with C/C++ ?
If you think Java solves all the programming problems, you're nuts. It doesn't solve most of them, it just hides them; and it creates a whole host of new ones.
Of course Java doesn't solve all programming problems, but it does solve the buffer overruns, dangling pointers and arbitrary code execution problems which plague C/C++.
And btw, Java doesn't include a 'graphical system', it just has a couple of libraries that can be used for that (and awt sucks majorly, swing is not so crappy but hardly a panacea).
Pray tell, what do you think a "graphical system" means ?
While fewer people are proficient at it, C/C++ will outlast us all for a language. Virtually every commodity computer today uses it in it's core.
Which is why they are so crash-prone. With C/C++, any mistake whatsoever will likely crash the program/machine, and possibly also allow crackers to make the program execute arbitrary code.
Many others have come and gone yet all our OSes and scripting tools rely on it. So any dooms day predictions would be premature, and if your want fast, efficient and lean code you do C/C++....
If you want fast, efficient and lean code, write it. Simply picking C/C++ doesn't make your code so, nor does not picking them make the code slow. What C/C++ does it make programs hard to port due to the ambigious definitions of some critical parts (such as type lengths), prone to crashing due to manual memory management, and dependant on external systems such as Gtk, Gnome or KDE for their graphical user interface due to C predating widespread adoption of computer graphics.
As long as our computers keep on depending on C, C++ or any other language with such horrendous features, except to see a new buffer overload or other such exploit every week. I, for one, welcome our new garbage-collected bounds-checked Java overlords which don't crash randomly as C programs do.
The point in the previous post may have been obscured in that post's bombast--it was an emotional response to an obvious kook, but the point still stands: the police are the enforcers of the state, they are the protectors of property (not people); they are NOT forces for justice.
The police are the arm of the state and the enforcers of the law. If that law places protection of property higher than protection of people, don't blame the police for it.
Another thing to remember is that there are far more thieves than murderers, so of course the police will spend more time protecting property than people - there are more people trying to destroy property than other people. Don't forget, either, that destroying someone's property - say, burning his car - will directly affect him - he can't get to work in the morning and loses his job - so protecting property also protects people, just indirectly.
On the whole, it might be easier for us if we get someone other than ourselves to "take out the trash", but that doesn't absolve us from the shared responsibility of that trash's creation. In my opinion, THAT is the greatest, yet most subtle, victimization the state creates in us: the separation of powers separates us from our responsibility to ourselves, our world and each other. Police are just the most obvious example of this dislocation of individual power, but they are hardly the only one.
I happen to think that it's a good thing that you aren't allowed to carry out vigilante justice with whatever lynch mob you can gather against whoever you accuse of crimes real, imagined, or performed by someone else, but maybe it's just me.
While I realize that it's oh so fashionable amongst the intelligentsia so make all sorts of wild accusations against the United States as the very incarnation of Cthulu, it just rings hollow here.
I agree. Cthulhu is just a tentacled man-eating monster from beyond; there's no reason to slander it so.
BTW. Now that the Antarctic ice is melting, all kinds of thing imprisoned beneath it are going to be exposed again. However, at the same time, the seass are rising so R'lyeh is going to be buried deeper beneath the waves. Which phenomenom do you think will have a greater influence on the world in the near term ?
Look, I agree with you that there's no reason for anyone to starve in this day and age, but the Social Security program is deeply flawed at best and on the verge of collapse at worst, so I don't really see any reason to champion it. If it worked like it was intended to work, I'd agree with you. As it is, though, I can't.
I didn't refer to any specific country's (I guess you're from the US, since most Slashdotters seem to be) social security program in general, but to the idea of the society taking care of the less well of in general. There is undoubtedly room for improvement, but that's always true for any program, and can't be an excuse to leave people with nothing if they can't support themselves for whatever reason.
Social Security - it's better than Social Darwinism.
How? I guess what I am asking is, do you really believe this? If so, why?
Yes. The reason is that I don't want to worry starving to death if I ever lose my ability to work due to an illness, injury or something. Also, the Western countries of today are vastly richer than any empire in history; the poor can be fed without compromising any other function of society, so not doing so and watching people die on streets would be simply monstrous.
Go form your own network. call it Kids-net. Right wing christians could use it too.
Personally, I happen to think that christian - or any other kind: islamist, free market, etc. - fundamentalism is the most damaging thing children can be exposed to. I don' want some semi-insane creep telling my kids they'll burn in hell if they don't obey him. Nor do I want them to pick up an adamant faith that not imposing any kinds of rules or controls on a bunch of greedy bastards will magically cause those bastards to behave. I'd much rather have them browse porn all day long. Won't someone please think of the children ?
Your other points are good. But with this one, a recurring theme in the book is that life is not fair. In her world, often bad people go unpunished and good people die cruelly. I think this is one of the more adult themes of the book that makes the book so appealing.
The problem is that such realism directly contradicts the "Harry beats all obstacles and saves the day" -style the rest of the books offer. Realistically speaking, Harry should had been dead a long time before the final fight.
One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art. Since you can choose the ending, it's art just as much as someone slapping a happy ending on romeo and juliet is art.
Which it would be; specifically, it would be a derived work. Would it be good art is another question. In any case, since Rome and Juliet is a theatrical play, and since it is impossible to make each performance exactly like any other, this particular argument is void - Romeo and Juliet is already a dynamic work.
His assertions seem to say that art needs to teach, and to teach you can't have choice in the story.
I wonder what Mona Lisa is supposed to teach, then - that smiling makes people wonder what you're up to ? or is he claiming it is not, in fact, art ? Or what about the statue of David ? I suppose it could be considered an anatomical lesson...
Anyway, his second assertion is flat-out wrong. Teaching usually involves having the student perform exercises and providing feedback on the results; the student certainly has choice over the outcome, and in fact the whole purpose of exercise is to learn what choices provide the best results.
This is one of those scary areas where we have to resort to the shrinks. Abusing animals doesn't always mean you'll move on to killing people but it seems like all the serial killers have done so.
Neither Guro nor Lolicon is animal abuse, or abuse of any other living thing for that matter, with the possible exception of the viewer himself.
I don't know if there are any rules related to guro. But I do think anyone caught possessing shit like this is in for one hell of a problem if it comes up in a court of law. Might not go to jail for it but friends and neighbors will be treating them differently.
I wonder if these same friends will then go on to watch pretty much any action movie, and see the corpse piles mount.
If we go back to talking about the Potterverse, there is no need for law-enforcement wizards and other good guys to use killing curses because the stunning curses are perfectly good at disabling opponents so they can be arrested. If our own cops had perfect Star Trek phasers with a stun option, one that could drop a bad guy as effectively as a bullet but not kill them, then we could talk about doing away with the need for deadly force.
The problem is the case where the suspect has a chance to escape, but risks being shot while doing so. If getting shot merely makes him stunned, he has no reason not to try, especially sinced the alternative is Azkaban; if failing runs a serious risk to get him killed, he might think twice about it.
Having the option of deadly force means that your threats are taken seriously, which is an asset for a cop-equivalent.
The only proper use of the killing curses I can think of is when the good guys are not capable of taking prisoners and any enemy wizard left alive will be free to commit future violence against innocents. To quote a certain captain, if they're trying to kill you, you kill them right back.
Of course, this is the Potterverse, where the standard punishment is endless torture in Azkaban, and the nasty punishment means your soul gets eaten, making you "worse than dead". Doesn't seem to me that those good guys are much better than Death Eaters in that department...
But black magic always seems to be used for nasty stuff, it should be classed more like child pornography and snuff films.
Lolicon and Guro, the Japanese-drawn forms of said vices, don't seem to lead their practitioners to raping children or killing people. Masturbating on th sight of spilled guts isn't exactly glorious, but it isn't something which dooms you to become a monster either, anymore than seeing the villain die in any action movie will.
Besides, it's not like guns can be used for anything but killing (or threatening to kill) something, yet they are tolerated in several real societies.
Slashdot Mirror
Since Fallout 3 is unpublished and, indeed, unfinished at this point in time, anyone who claims to like it is very likely either a) judging by Bethesda's marketing materials or b) on Bethesda's payroll. Given this, I'd say that assuming they're on Bethesda's payroll is assuming the best, since that means the opinion just might be based on the actual game rather than a commercial.
Customizability implies complexity. I don't think such a system would actually be any more reliable than LiLo or GRUB; in fact it would be more complex, since nothing could be hard-coded. And finally, I simply fail to see the advantage of putting the OS loader into the BIOS chip rather than at the beginning of the hard disk.
Nope. The old scheduler, for example, attempted to give more CPU tasks to "interactive" - as determined by heuristics - tasks more CPU time than other tasks by increasing their priority. Not only did this mean that nice levels would not be respected except as a general guideline, but it also made latency unpredictable, since a task could suddenly and unpredictably get an increase or decrease of priority. This would then lead to stalls in program execution, resulting in skips in audio and video and jerky gameplay.
Con's SD scheduler doesn't have these issues, since it doesn't have dynamic priority; latency, in any given situation, has a deterministic upper limit. I don't know if Ingo's CFS has any heuristics built-in; if it does, it is open to the same problems as the old scheduler.
So basically, the old scheduler was broken by design, and would had always remained broken no matter how it timed CPU usage. Oh well, now, thank's to Con's hard work, we have a deterministic one (or at least more deterministic than the old one) in the mainline. Pity that the -ck patches had to die, thought - I don't trust the kernel people to not reintroduce heuristics back to the scheduler to try to fix broken software.
Fair, in this context, means that the scheduler will give all the running tasks CPU time in proportion to their priority (nice level). It follows from this that all the tasks in a given nice level are given equal amount of CPU time, and a higher-priority task (lower nice level) is given more CPU time than a lower-priority one.
SD scheduler (but not CFK, AFAIK) also had idle priority, which means a task that only runs if nothing else at any nice level wants to run. Very useful for running FoldingAtHome.
That's what "nice" is for. A fair scheduler respects nice levels, as stated above.
Actually, if the set of bootloaders contains two entries (LiLo and GRUB), then the mean is the middle point between them.
Using separate bootloeader software is what made running Linux or *BSD on x86 possible in the first place. Hardcoding OS loading code into BIOS, beyond the absolute minimum neccessary, is a really bad idea, since it prevents you from running any OS the BIOS loader doesn't support.
Are they or are they not breaking some specific law, and if they are, what law ? What law, specifically speaking, forbids one from using a malfunctioning slot machine to get money ?
Please understand that a "criminal" is someone who commits a crime, which means breaking a specific law, not merely someone who acts in a way you happen to disagree with or think should be illegal. "Acting in a criminal manner" is ambigious; you either break a law or not. What law has been broken in this case ?
Exploit a flaw in what ? And what law have you broken ? And in what way am I not "whole" so I need to be made so again ?
By this standard, all Western nations are utopias.
Kinda reminds me of that Japanese zombie porn pic I once saw. Half-rotten zombies aren't supposed to look cute...
The casino isn't a junked-out prostitute, it is the pimp who got her addicted and forced her into prostitution in the first place. And while raping that pimp is illegal and wrong - since it lowers the perperator to his level - the pimp certainly deserves it.
Yes, but AFAIK no law says that the customer is responsible for the correct function of casino-operated machines.
Well, of course. Public executions, by disembowelment or the far nastier methods human imagination has come up over the centuries, used to be public spectacles. We aren't genetically different from ancient romans who got their kicks watching people getting torn apart by lions and getting nailed to crosses, so why are you so surprised seeing us behave similarly ?
Besides, is this really any different from watching Bond push the bad guy out of an airlock in Moonraker ?
Understandable, actually. The generation which saw WW2 is dying out. Consequently we are heading towards another world war, and you need to train people for it; they need to learn to see scenes of death and torture without pity or remorse. The shadowy people who pull the strings are training the masses for a massive war, or so my conspiracy sense tells me ;(.
From historic perspective, we are returning back to our evil selves after a short flirt with something somewhat resembling benevolence.
In other words, if you take great care you can write C/C++ code which might work under another platform with only minimal modifications.
That was quite incoherent.
I think this sums your post nicely.
What does this has to do with C/C++ ?
Of course Java doesn't solve all programming problems, but it does solve the buffer overruns, dangling pointers and arbitrary code execution problems which plague C/C++.
Pray tell, what do you think a "graphical system" means ?
But they are healthier, more comfortable, live longer and don't have to work so hard.
Which is why they are so crash-prone. With C/C++, any mistake whatsoever will likely crash the program/machine, and possibly also allow crackers to make the program execute arbitrary code.
If you want fast, efficient and lean code, write it. Simply picking C/C++ doesn't make your code so, nor does not picking them make the code slow. What C/C++ does it make programs hard to port due to the ambigious definitions of some critical parts (such as type lengths), prone to crashing due to manual memory management, and dependant on external systems such as Gtk, Gnome or KDE for their graphical user interface due to C predating widespread adoption of computer graphics.
As long as our computers keep on depending on C, C++ or any other language with such horrendous features, except to see a new buffer overload or other such exploit every week. I, for one, welcome our new garbage-collected bounds-checked Java overlords which don't crash randomly as C programs do.
The police are the arm of the state and the enforcers of the law. If that law places protection of property higher than protection of people, don't blame the police for it.
Another thing to remember is that there are far more thieves than murderers, so of course the police will spend more time protecting property than people - there are more people trying to destroy property than other people. Don't forget, either, that destroying someone's property - say, burning his car - will directly affect him - he can't get to work in the morning and loses his job - so protecting property also protects people, just indirectly.
I happen to think that it's a good thing that you aren't allowed to carry out vigilante justice with whatever lynch mob you can gather against whoever you accuse of crimes real, imagined, or performed by someone else, but maybe it's just me.
I agree. Cthulhu is just a tentacled man-eating monster from beyond; there's no reason to slander it so.
BTW. Now that the Antarctic ice is melting, all kinds of thing imprisoned beneath it are going to be exposed again. However, at the same time, the seass are rising so R'lyeh is going to be buried deeper beneath the waves. Which phenomenom do you think will have a greater influence on the world in the near term ?
I didn't refer to any specific country's (I guess you're from the US, since most Slashdotters seem to be) social security program in general, but to the idea of the society taking care of the less well of in general. There is undoubtedly room for improvement, but that's always true for any program, and can't be an excuse to leave people with nothing if they can't support themselves for whatever reason.
Yes. The reason is that I don't want to worry starving to death if I ever lose my ability to work due to an illness, injury or something. Also, the Western countries of today are vastly richer than any empire in history; the poor can be fed without compromising any other function of society, so not doing so and watching people die on streets would be simply monstrous.
Personally, I happen to think that christian - or any other kind: islamist, free market, etc. - fundamentalism is the most damaging thing children can be exposed to. I don' want some semi-insane creep telling my kids they'll burn in hell if they don't obey him. Nor do I want them to pick up an adamant faith that not imposing any kinds of rules or controls on a bunch of greedy bastards will magically cause those bastards to behave. I'd much rather have them browse porn all day long. Won't someone please think of the children ?
The problem is that such realism directly contradicts the "Harry beats all obstacles and saves the day" -style the rest of the books offer. Realistically speaking, Harry should had been dead a long time before the final fight.
Which it would be; specifically, it would be a derived work. Would it be good art is another question. In any case, since Rome and Juliet is a theatrical play, and since it is impossible to make each performance exactly like any other, this particular argument is void - Romeo and Juliet is already a dynamic work.
I wonder what Mona Lisa is supposed to teach, then - that smiling makes people wonder what you're up to ? or is he claiming it is not, in fact, art ? Or what about the statue of David ? I suppose it could be considered an anatomical lesson...
Anyway, his second assertion is flat-out wrong. Teaching usually involves having the student perform exercises and providing feedback on the results; the student certainly has choice over the outcome, and in fact the whole purpose of exercise is to learn what choices provide the best results.
Neither Guro nor Lolicon is animal abuse, or abuse of any other living thing for that matter, with the possible exception of the viewer himself.
I wonder if these same friends will then go on to watch pretty much any action movie, and see the corpse piles mount.
The problem is the case where the suspect has a chance to escape, but risks being shot while doing so. If getting shot merely makes him stunned, he has no reason not to try, especially sinced the alternative is Azkaban; if failing runs a serious risk to get him killed, he might think twice about it.
Having the option of deadly force means that your threats are taken seriously, which is an asset for a cop-equivalent.
Of course, this is the Potterverse, where the standard punishment is endless torture in Azkaban, and the nasty punishment means your soul gets eaten, making you "worse than dead". Doesn't seem to me that those good guys are much better than Death Eaters in that department...
BTW, why didn't they get some more teeth, mount them on the front of their brooms, and then simply fly through the enemy ranks ?-)
Lolicon and Guro, the Japanese-drawn forms of said vices, don't seem to lead their practitioners to raping children or killing people. Masturbating on th sight of spilled guts isn't exactly glorious, but it isn't something which dooms you to become a monster either, anymore than seeing the villain die in any action movie will.
Besides, it's not like guns can be used for anything but killing (or threatening to kill) something, yet they are tolerated in several real societies.
Conan the Cimmerian and his axe wish to express their objection for that claim.