As a high-school student who almost never calls anyone other than my parents (IM is preferable because of presence data), I practically use my phone as a two-way pager -- and I pay less than $10/mo. I've got T-Mobile prepaid, and that's about.25c/min -- meaning that even if I were to make a call on it every day (I actually use it a little more than once a week), I'd still pay only $7.50/mo.
Nobody ever calls me on it; this is my way of contacting my parents a lot more easily than using a pay phone. It's cheaper than a pay phone.
Consider that: if your children are involved in enough unknown-time extracurriculars (like myself), you'll probably pay less for a cell phone than you give them to use pay phones.
Children managed to keep in touch with their parents and let them know where they were and what htey were doing for decades prior to this without posessing cell phones.
For decades prior to this, children walked 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways. Today, we have parents with cars. My parents are available enough that this is much more efficient. (For example, I had to give 2 friends a ride yesterday home from a math tourney that ended earlier than expected: one's parents had no cell phone although they would've been available. She actually used my cell phone about 3 times trying to reach them.)
putting themselves into debt
Get your kids one of those $10/mo two-way pagers. I doubt you can go into debt paying that.
like a house-key
Very true. My parents prefer that they give me a ride home (or to their workplace, as necessary) instead of letting me maybe go home or maybe stay where I am without them knowing which. In effect, this is my house key.
Not really. If I'm particularly good at something and proud of it, I don't care how many people are watching. E.g., we recently had a quiz bowl tournament whose finals were on stage in front of hundreds of students, many of whom were my classmates. I had no performance difference between finals and previous rounds (at least not due to that).
I understand the general effect, but it only seems to reach parts of me.
3) Web etc. will ALWAYS be done on the family computer under supervision until he's at least 15yrs.
Although that's quite good in theory, let me suggest a problem with it. I have some psychology that makes me more worried and less able to function when people are watching me...in piano lessons, in tennis practice, and on the computer. I know I'll be able to work more effectively/enjoyably if I don't have to worry about fitting someone else's standards (which are, in my mind, unbearably higher and stricter than mine).
This is not necessarily because I waste time or look for bad things on the Internet. I think it's a psychological effect. If your child is like that, either watching the history afterwards with his knowledge, passing by the screen occasionally, or simply talking to him at other times about what he sees will be enough, and won't be as bothersome to him as being watched.
What we need is not a direct war. We need a US-sponsored proxy to get past the firewalls, or government-sponsored satellite, etc.-based Internet access over Iran. The government won't ever say they're doing it, but after rumors from the countrymen (imply it through a propaganda campaign on the airwaves; the smart ones will figure it out and it'll trickle down), let the government stop short of denying it.
If Iran complains, they'll be the one starting the aggression. If they think of attacking Iraq to 'get' the US, propaganda quickly (most Iraqis who dislike the US also dislike any other imperial regime, including Saddam's), and let the Iraqis themselves fight. It'll be a huge embarrasment for Iran.
Oh, and set the home page after login to some nice "Welcome" title with a few links to exposés on the government. Psychology dictates that all but the most loyal Iranians will feel rebellious enough to believe it, seeing as they're using unauthorized Internet access.
One thing that they don't seem to be addressing is that _everyone_ is biased in some way or another on some topic. They seem to forget this.
No, they don't. Have you read Wikipedia? From the heated discussions on the mailing lists, Talk: pages, edit histories, and so forth, you would not at all expect for the article to be anywhere close to neutral. I'm very surprised that petty vandalism is more prevalent (in the sense of lasting longer) than obvious or dangerous bias.
I guess how it works is that everybody writes slightly towards their own POV and rephrases things that offend them, and the page molds itself towards a compromise. If you can't compromise, you can always have two sections "Liberal viewpoint" and "Conservative viewpoint" or whatever.
Somebody will write the article with an inherent yet unintentional bias towards their side; somebody else from the other side will remove the biased references, and at worst introduce a smaller bias to his side.
The moderation scheme is the Wiki scheme - readers can moderate, rephrase, remove bias, and so forth. If you want it to show liberal viewpoints, by all means write some stories of liberal interest -- just don't get didactic or biased. If I'm not mistaken, Wikinews will carry over the same neutral POV / avoid-bias policy that Wikipedia uses to remain nonpartisan on more visible issues.
There are moderators (administrators), but they don't seem to be radically liberal. Unless I'm mistaken, Mr. Wales himself is quite Randian Objectivist.
Setting a trashcan on fire will generally be described as "an attention-getting stunt that seemed to attract some positive opinion from the local community, but was generally discredited by members of the larger public and city authorities" or somesuch.
Only on Slashdot do we see attacks on Christian fundamentalism in an article about something that might lead to a cure of AIDS.
I love this place...I guess. It's quite amusing. I'm not sure I'd like it to be.
As a reasonable response, 1) any so-called Christian who thinks he's part of a "God-selected" group is completely ignorant of the fundamental doctrines of Christ coming for all people. For God so loved the world, not just parts of Northern Europe alone.... 2) anyone who claims AIDS is a "gay disease" is only one inch closer to sanity than those who claim it's a "US bioweapon against Africa." They're ignorant of the facts, and they're probably ignoring the inconvenient parts of the Bible, too. As an almost-fundamentalist Christian, I suggest you ignore the crazies.
Silly old science - how could it possibly be right.
I think you're quite right in implying that religion shouldn't be used in a job for science, like this. Please, let's start making that retrovirus and forget any complaints the nutters might have. It bothers me that people don't see the converse; that philosophical questions, like "why are we here" and "what is moral", are jobs for religion and that science will here fail in the same way.
It doesn't work on Windows, either. Did you mean "winword.exe"? I guess I congratulate you on not using MS Word that much...or laugh at you for using menus instead of the run line, depending.
More specifically, did you mean "start winword"? Winword is in the registry's App Paths, not in the DOS path, so you need "start" to be able to system() it.
Oh, and it ought to work fine on Linux using system("wine winword.exe");.
Perhaps there have been lawsuits against DOWNLOADERS, but I'm not aware of any. P2P applications make "downloaders" into instant "uploaders" as well, which is hwere they get into trouble.
That's what I'm suggesting -- that P2P applications are offered leave-alone-ness (I don't like to use the word indemnity since the RIAA isn't a judicial organization) if they tell who is uploading. The only commercialy feasible way to do this is not to make everyone an automatic uploader, or to have a big red warning "we log all uploaders of files copyrighted by the RIAA and will give this to them if we get subpoenaed - do you still want to leave the default on?"
Just take this one step further. Encourage the software to limit uploaders of RIAA materials. It's a lot cheaper than lawsuits.
See those hippie Linux criminals? They sell their crack using Red Hat!
Of course, "crack" in this context is starting to sound like a keygen or something....
Re:Xbox is a nice cheap wonderfully mod-able syste
on
State of the Xbox
·
· Score: 1
Base the system on MSDOS 3.0
Sorry not to let you troll (try harder next time;-)) but that would be awesome for modding.
First, DOS 3 will run in real mode, meaning that any user application can switch to protected mode and use the processor without worry from anything else.
Second, DOS 3 implies that it'll use a standard and known partitioning/booting method. The Xbox drive setup is not quite standard.
Third, DOS 3 is so well-known that it can much more easily be hacked than whatever random OS they cobbled together for the Xbox.
Fourth, it would easily and properly support most PC peripherals -- and let you boot Windows and Linux with little trouble.
The best thing Microsoft can do for its side is to remake the fundamental system and drop all vestiges of PC inspiration from its Xbox OS. Let them use a custom microkernel for boot and some psycho database for the HD, and we'll not figure it out for enough time that modding won't be a problem.
The MPAA and RIAA should say, "We know we're suffering some from piracy, but it's bad PR to go after teenagers and bad strategy not to go after large pirates. So here's what we'll do: we won't go after anyone only downloading our materials for their own use. If it's already on the servers, oh well.
"We will, however, go after people who upload the material (willingly or by default [this includes BitTorrent]) or who distribute the material for others, and press criminal charges if they request payment. After all, if fewer people are uploading, then downloading will be harder.
"We also offer a deal to people who make generic file-sharing software that is often used for legal purposes or infringing works not copyrighted by us: if you give us identifying information of uploaders of our material using your software or your networks, we, our members, and anyone who later owns our copyright will never go after you for software substantially similar to the present version. You may display this notice as boldly as you want; you may also choose to block these uploaders instead, and truthfully respond there are no such uploaders. We're not so stupid as to pay lawyers when out-of-court options are more effective and cheaper."
people really cannot tell the difference (or don't care) between a real CD and a POS CDR
Is the difference in music 'quality' noticeable?:-)
Re:Xbox is a nice cheap wonderfully mod-able syste
on
State of the Xbox
·
· Score: 1
arcade machine emus
Is this the next thing in the "flightless bird video game" series after Tux Racer?
There is nothing about an extra C variable that necessitates the consumption of any more memory.
Good point. Registers. I forgot about those.
Although as a high-level programmer I wonder how you can use registers usefully yet make system calls that require all the registers.
That sort of approach to string copying is also rather inefficient in terms of cache utilization and makes no attempt to exploit alignment and leaves inlining at the discretion of the optimizer.
That's relevant assuming that s and t are both char*s.
input_iterator s = str1.begin(); output_iterator t = str2.begin(); while ((*s++ = *t++) != str1.end());
In fact, the *s++ method is exactly how my compiler implements STL copy(), and (apart from losing the over-conciseness) is the only valid way to copy the contents of one iterator to another.
By the way, people, USE strcpy() IF YOU CAN! It's been tested and optimized and so forth. Use operator=() on STL strings. I'm just saying that, without using strcpy(), the while method is the standard idiom for string copying, and you should be able to understand it and work with code containing it.
True, though it would probably have been too complicated to put up on the subject line at Ebay. "5000 gold UO example.com server -- CrazyJoe.us helping victims of tsunami" It doesn't say that the site is a charity (in fact, it sounds quite like it isn't), yet it gives him an opportunity to explain twice - in the body, and on the site. Pity that he didn't get it right the first time, and can't reference the site.
He sells that game gold (for cash...unless Ebay's system lets you sell things with the money going to charity?) They do...couldn't he have used that? Or at least say "send the money to charity, send me your receipt"?
And then he uses the money to donate (or refund himself for his donation.) It's the latter. I still didn't understand that after reading through his site and two auctions. He could've said it in the body.
What happens when the string isn't properly null terminated?
Then it isn't much of a string, then, is it? Use memcpy() preferably, while ((*s++=*t++)!='$'); or whatever terminator, or for (int i=0; iHow about if the buffer overflows?
Don't you check for that sort of stuff? Who in their right mind copies a string from one buffer of unknown or greater length to a buffer of shorter length? Use a proper string class, or modify the loop to for (int i=0; iArrogant assholes like you work at Microsoft
I'm too arrogant to work at Microsoft.;-) They'd probably make me use something like HRESULT D3DCopyStringEx(LPINTERFACE iHowToCopyStuff, LPCTSTR strStringOne, LPCTSTR strStringTwo, DWORD flags, HWND wndWhereToDoTheCopying, etc.) or whatever.
which is why they have so many bugs.
Too afraid to upgrade from Win95? XP is relatively stable. If Microsoft has bugs for anything, it's by having their code too complex and redundant, not too inscrutably inefficient.
First, a 2-second lag is not workable by my system. I'm expecting only a lag enough to affect buzzing, but not necessarily answering. In the time it takes for a human operator to call your name (around 500-800 ms), all the network operations should be complete and the computer should light up a second light to recognize you globally. If you've got a two-second lag, switch to a private modem connection (dial to each other, not to an ISP). Phone lines don't lag noticeably.
Second, let me repeat that timing is done locally. When the end of the question arrives at each location, the computer starts timing. When someone buzzes in, the computer sends the local time since answering. Thus, the message "30000" is kept on location A, and the same message "30000" is sent to location A from B -- although it arrives half a second later. Count time since local reading, not time of packet arrival.
1) He could've made it more clear, though; I'm sure Ebay wouldn't have had a problem with him saying "I've already donated to the Red Cross; this money goes to me to pay for that donation."
2) At least one of his auctions says that the money goes straight to the Red Cross and never to his pockets. If I'm understanding you and him right, he is refilling his pockets after that (admittedly quite large and applaudable) donation, right?
3) Why couldn't he have used Ebay's system to send only the profits to charity, instead of doing this roundabout way? Surely he could've donated whatever remainder on his own, after the auctions.
you'd get a talking-to if you were one of my programmers and actually checked in code that looked like that.
I assume you'd prefer we use strcpy(). while (*s++ = *t++); is the standard method of copying a string by hand; almost anything significantly easier to understand will waste either memory (an extra variable) or time. Do you accept while (instream >> variable)...; or while (a=result()) parse(a);? Do you accept do(something) || die();, a very common idiom but a phrasing that has the spirit of the above few examples?
Would you accept the copying code slightly less "cool" but still effectively the same: while (*s) {*s=*t; s++; t++;}?
Oh, and as far as "the rest of the programmers": I'm curious what your estimate would be of a team composed solely of the type of programmer the unmaintainable debugger is. I know I'm an overcomplex coder, something like him I suppose, and I don't think I'd be able to work well on a very large project with "normal" coders.
Knowing what happens under the hood is a good thing. Writing code like you're under the hood isn't.
This I agree. My weird code is more of a mental exercise than anything. With today's insanely fast processors and insanely good compilers, there's no reason to spend your own effort writing concise code. With the storage space we have, you can almost afford to cut-and-paste instead of writing too many template functions.
For validity of who buzzed/answered first, you'd have to a) have a system to offset for the latency between the locations or b) conduct the timing and answering separately, and mayhaps do a bonus or whatnot for whoever answered first.
Send it as a DMCA complaint to MS's registered agent.
Only problem is that it's going to be a bit hard to find the rightsholder. If I remember my Greek mythology correctly, Atalanta was last alive about, oh, 4000 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
a $10/mo company-paid two-way pager.
.25c/min -- meaning that even if I were to make a call on it every day (I actually use it a little more than once a week), I'd still pay only $7.50/mo.
As a high-school student who almost never calls anyone other than my parents (IM is preferable because of presence data), I practically use my phone as a two-way pager -- and I pay less than $10/mo. I've got T-Mobile prepaid, and that's about
Nobody ever calls me on it; this is my way of contacting my parents a lot more easily than using a pay phone. It's cheaper than a pay phone.
Consider that: if your children are involved in enough unknown-time extracurriculars (like myself), you'll probably pay less for a cell phone than you give them to use pay phones.
Children managed to keep in touch with their parents and let them know where they were and what htey were doing for decades prior to this without posessing cell phones.
For decades prior to this, children walked 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways. Today, we have parents with cars. My parents are available enough that this is much more efficient. (For example, I had to give 2 friends a ride yesterday home from a math tourney that ended earlier than expected: one's parents had no cell phone although they would've been available. She actually used my cell phone about 3 times trying to reach them.)
putting themselves into debt
Get your kids one of those $10/mo two-way pagers. I doubt you can go into debt paying that.
like a house-key
Very true. My parents prefer that they give me a ride home (or to their workplace, as necessary) instead of letting me maybe go home or maybe stay where I am without them knowing which. In effect, this is my house key.
Not really. If I'm particularly good at something and proud of it, I don't care how many people are watching. E.g., we recently had a quiz bowl tournament whose finals were on stage in front of hundreds of students, many of whom were my classmates. I had no performance difference between finals and previous rounds (at least not due to that).
I understand the general effect, but it only seems to reach parts of me.
even if you view that as free because what he pays never reaches your pocket
So true. In many cases, proprietary licenses or in-house development may be far cheaper economically than a share-alike license such as the GPL.
3) Web etc. will ALWAYS be done on the family computer under supervision until he's at least 15yrs.
Although that's quite good in theory, let me suggest a problem with it. I have some psychology that makes me more worried and less able to function when people are watching me...in piano lessons, in tennis practice, and on the computer. I know I'll be able to work more effectively/enjoyably if I don't have to worry about fitting someone else's standards (which are, in my mind, unbearably higher and stricter than mine).
This is not necessarily because I waste time or look for bad things on the Internet. I think it's a psychological effect. If your child is like that, either watching the history afterwards with his knowledge, passing by the screen occasionally, or simply talking to him at other times about what he sees will be enough, and won't be as bothersome to him as being watched.
You're kidding? You shouldn't be.
What we need is not a direct war. We need a US-sponsored proxy to get past the firewalls, or government-sponsored satellite, etc.-based Internet access over Iran. The government won't ever say they're doing it, but after rumors from the countrymen (imply it through a propaganda campaign on the airwaves; the smart ones will figure it out and it'll trickle down), let the government stop short of denying it.
If Iran complains, they'll be the one starting the aggression. If they think of attacking Iraq to 'get' the US, propaganda quickly (most Iraqis who dislike the US also dislike any other imperial regime, including Saddam's), and let the Iraqis themselves fight. It'll be a huge embarrasment for Iran.
Oh, and set the home page after login to some nice "Welcome" title with a few links to exposés on the government. Psychology dictates that all but the most loyal Iranians will feel rebellious enough to believe it, seeing as they're using unauthorized Internet access.
One thing that they don't seem to be addressing is that _everyone_ is biased in some way or another on some topic. They seem to forget this.
No, they don't. Have you read Wikipedia? From the heated discussions on the mailing lists, Talk: pages, edit histories, and so forth, you would not at all expect for the article to be anywhere close to neutral. I'm very surprised that petty vandalism is more prevalent (in the sense of lasting longer) than obvious or dangerous bias.
I guess how it works is that everybody writes slightly towards their own POV and rephrases things that offend them, and the page molds itself towards a compromise. If you can't compromise, you can always have two sections "Liberal viewpoint" and "Conservative viewpoint" or whatever.
Somebody will write the article with an inherent yet unintentional bias towards their side; somebody else from the other side will remove the biased references, and at worst introduce a smaller bias to his side.
Does Wikinews have a similar moderation scheme?
The moderation scheme is the Wiki scheme - readers can moderate, rephrase, remove bias, and so forth. If you want it to show liberal viewpoints, by all means write some stories of liberal interest -- just don't get didactic or biased. If I'm not mistaken, Wikinews will carry over the same neutral POV / avoid-bias policy that Wikipedia uses to remain nonpartisan on more visible issues.
There are moderators (administrators), but they don't seem to be radically liberal. Unless I'm mistaken, Mr. Wales himself is quite Randian Objectivist.
Setting a trashcan on fire will generally be described as "an attention-getting stunt that seemed to attract some positive opinion from the local community, but was generally discredited by members of the larger public and city authorities" or somesuch.
Only on Slashdot do we see attacks on Christian fundamentalism in an article about something that might lead to a cure of AIDS.
I love this place...I guess. It's quite amusing. I'm not sure I'd like it to be.
As a reasonable response, 1) any so-called Christian who thinks he's part of a "God-selected" group is completely ignorant of the fundamental doctrines of Christ coming for all people. For God so loved the world, not just parts of Northern Europe alone.... 2) anyone who claims AIDS is a "gay disease" is only one inch closer to sanity than those who claim it's a "US bioweapon against Africa." They're ignorant of the facts, and they're probably ignoring the inconvenient parts of the Bible, too. As an almost-fundamentalist Christian, I suggest you ignore the crazies.
Silly old science - how could it possibly be right.
I think you're quite right in implying that religion shouldn't be used in a job for science, like this. Please, let's start making that retrovirus and forget any complaints the nutters might have. It bothers me that people don't see the converse; that philosophical questions, like "why are we here" and "what is moral", are jobs for religion and that science will here fail in the same way.
It doesn't work on Windows, either. Did you mean "winword.exe"? I guess I congratulate you on not using MS Word that much...or laugh at you for using menus instead of the run line, depending.
More specifically, did you mean "start winword"? Winword is in the registry's App Paths, not in the DOS path, so you need "start" to be able to system() it.
Oh, and it ought to work fine on Linux using system("wine winword.exe");.
Perhaps there have been lawsuits against DOWNLOADERS, but I'm not aware of any. P2P applications make "downloaders" into instant "uploaders" as well, which is hwere they get into trouble.
That's what I'm suggesting -- that P2P applications are offered leave-alone-ness (I don't like to use the word indemnity since the RIAA isn't a judicial organization) if they tell who is uploading. The only commercialy feasible way to do this is not to make everyone an automatic uploader, or to have a big red warning "we log all uploaders of files copyrighted by the RIAA and will give this to them if we get subpoenaed - do you still want to leave the default on?"
Just take this one step further. Encourage the software to limit uploaders of RIAA materials. It's a lot cheaper than lawsuits.
India was the first one to say no when aid was offered.
I have heard that India's aid to Sri Lanka exceeded the US's proposed aid to India.
See those hippie Linux criminals? They sell their crack using Red Hat!
Of course, "crack" in this context is starting to sound like a keygen or something....
Base the system on MSDOS 3.0
;-)) but that would be awesome for modding.
Sorry not to let you troll (try harder next time
First, DOS 3 will run in real mode, meaning that any user application can switch to protected mode and use the processor without worry from anything else.
Second, DOS 3 implies that it'll use a standard and known partitioning/booting method. The Xbox drive setup is not quite standard.
Third, DOS 3 is so well-known that it can much more easily be hacked than whatever random OS they cobbled together for the Xbox.
Fourth, it would easily and properly support most PC peripherals -- and let you boot Windows and Linux with little trouble.
The best thing Microsoft can do for its side is to remake the fundamental system and drop all vestiges of PC inspiration from its Xbox OS. Let them use a custom microkernel for boot and some psycho database for the HD, and we'll not figure it out for enough time that modding won't be a problem.
You know what?
:-)
The MPAA and RIAA should say, "We know we're suffering some from piracy, but it's bad PR to go after teenagers and bad strategy not to go after large pirates. So here's what we'll do: we won't go after anyone only downloading our materials for their own use. If it's already on the servers, oh well.
"We will, however, go after people who upload the material (willingly or by default [this includes BitTorrent]) or who distribute the material for others, and press criminal charges if they request payment. After all, if fewer people are uploading, then downloading will be harder.
"We also offer a deal to people who make generic file-sharing software that is often used for legal purposes or infringing works not copyrighted by us: if you give us identifying information of uploaders of our material using your software or your networks, we, our members, and anyone who later owns our copyright will never go after you for software substantially similar to the present version. You may display this notice as boldly as you want; you may also choose to block these uploaders instead, and truthfully respond there are no such uploaders. We're not so stupid as to pay lawyers when out-of-court options are more effective and cheaper."
people really cannot tell the difference (or don't care) between a real CD and a POS CDR
Is the difference in music 'quality' noticeable?
arcade machine emus
Is this the next thing in the "flightless bird video game" series after Tux Racer?
There is nothing about an extra C variable that necessitates the consumption of any more memory.
Good point. Registers. I forgot about those.
Although as a high-level programmer I wonder how you can use registers usefully yet make system calls that require all the registers.
That sort of approach to string copying is also rather inefficient in terms of cache utilization and makes no attempt to exploit alignment and leaves inlining at the discretion of the optimizer.
That's relevant assuming that s and t are both char*s.
input_iterator s = str1.begin();
output_iterator t = str2.begin();
while ((*s++ = *t++) != str1.end());
In fact, the *s++ method is exactly how my compiler implements STL copy(), and (apart from losing the over-conciseness) is the only valid way to copy the contents of one iterator to another.
By the way, people, USE strcpy() IF YOU CAN! It's been tested and optimized and so forth. Use operator=() on STL strings. I'm just saying that, without using strcpy(), the while method is the standard idiom for string copying, and you should be able to understand it and work with code containing it.
True, though it would probably have been too complicated to put up on the subject line at Ebay.
"5000 gold UO example.com server -- CrazyJoe.us helping victims of tsunami"
It doesn't say that the site is a charity (in fact, it sounds quite like it isn't), yet it gives him an opportunity to explain twice - in the body, and on the site. Pity that he didn't get it right the first time, and can't reference the site.
He sells that game gold (for cash...unless Ebay's system lets you sell things with the money going to charity?)
They do...couldn't he have used that? Or at least say "send the money to charity, send me your receipt"?
And then he uses the money to donate (or refund himself for his donation.)
It's the latter. I still didn't understand that after reading through his site and two auctions. He could've said it in the body.
What happens when the string isn't properly null terminated?
;-) They'd probably make me use something like HRESULT D3DCopyStringEx(LPINTERFACE iHowToCopyStuff, LPCTSTR strStringOne, LPCTSTR strStringTwo, DWORD flags, HWND wndWhereToDoTheCopying, etc.) or whatever.
Then it isn't much of a string, then, is it? Use memcpy() preferably, while ((*s++=*t++)!='$'); or whatever terminator, or for (int i=0; iHow about if the buffer overflows?
Don't you check for that sort of stuff? Who in their right mind copies a string from one buffer of unknown or greater length to a buffer of shorter length? Use a proper string class, or modify the loop to for (int i=0; iArrogant assholes like you work at Microsoft
I'm too arrogant to work at Microsoft.
which is why they have so many bugs.
Too afraid to upgrade from Win95? XP is relatively stable. If Microsoft has bugs for anything, it's by having their code too complex and redundant, not too inscrutably inefficient.
First, a 2-second lag is not workable by my system. I'm expecting only a lag enough to affect buzzing, but not necessarily answering. In the time it takes for a human operator to call your name (around 500-800 ms), all the network operations should be complete and the computer should light up a second light to recognize you globally. If you've got a two-second lag, switch to a private modem connection (dial to each other, not to an ISP). Phone lines don't lag noticeably.
Second, let me repeat that timing is done locally. When the end of the question arrives at each location, the computer starts timing. When someone buzzes in, the computer sends the local time since answering. Thus, the message "30000" is kept on location A, and the same message "30000" is sent to location A from B -- although it arrives half a second later. Count time since local reading, not time of packet arrival.
1) He could've made it more clear, though; I'm sure Ebay wouldn't have had a problem with him saying "I've already donated to the Red Cross; this money goes to me to pay for that donation."
2) At least one of his auctions says that the money goes straight to the Red Cross and never to his pockets. If I'm understanding you and him right, he is refilling his pockets after that (admittedly quite large and applaudable) donation, right?
3) Why couldn't he have used Ebay's system to send only the profits to charity, instead of doing this roundabout way? Surely he could've donated whatever remainder on his own, after the auctions.
you'd get a talking-to if you were one of my programmers and actually checked in code that looked like that.
...; or while (a=result()) parse(a);? Do you accept do(something) || die();, a very common idiom but a phrasing that has the spirit of the above few examples?
I assume you'd prefer we use strcpy(). while (*s++ = *t++); is the standard method of copying a string by hand; almost anything significantly easier to understand will waste either memory (an extra variable) or time. Do you accept while (instream >> variable)
Would you accept the copying code slightly less "cool" but still effectively the same: while (*s) {*s=*t; s++; t++;}?
Oh, and as far as "the rest of the programmers": I'm curious what your estimate would be of a team composed solely of the type of programmer the unmaintainable debugger is. I know I'm an overcomplex coder, something like him I suppose, and I don't think I'd be able to work well on a very large project with "normal" coders.
Knowing what happens under the hood is a good thing. Writing code like you're under the hood isn't.
This I agree. My weird code is more of a mental exercise than anything. With today's insanely fast processors and insanely good compilers, there's no reason to spend your own effort writing concise code. With the storage space we have, you can almost afford to cut-and-paste instead of writing too many template functions.
Can't each location simply transmit the amount of time since the person buzzed? If you've got only reasonable lag (your location's buzz was the first.
I assume spoofing is not a concern here (but use SSH if it is).
IM!? To borrow a phrase from Halo PC, "lagggggg."
For validity of who buzzed/answered first, you'd have to a) have a system to offset for the latency between the locations or b) conduct the timing and answering separately, and mayhaps do a bonus or whatnot for whoever answered first.
Supposing that this were some struggling large game by some large manufacturer, would we be yelling "astroturfing" instead of "innovative marketing"?
Just a thought...since "astroturfing" was the first thing that came to mind when I was reading the summary.
Send it as a DMCA complaint to MS's registered agent.
Only problem is that it's going to be a bit hard to find the rightsholder. If I remember my Greek mythology correctly, Atalanta was last alive about, oh, 4000 years ago.