[This Reminds Me] of the episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where Rocksteady and Bebop have to pedal to keep the Technodrome's power running. Yes it does.
Ladies and Gentlemen, a man who will never, ever, have sex.
Sun took it a step beyond the 'roaming profile.' Sun makes the location of the worker be the office, as opposed to the office being the location of the worker.
As long as the worker is located in the office, that is.
Can I, as an amateur computer scientist, claim a tax deduction on the "computer lab" I've set up in my apartment? That would be sweet. I use it to fascilitate my research into the storage and retrieval of vast amounts of porn... err...I mean archival image files.
Mathematicians have also had a long history of mental disorders; as my supervisor once said, "you can count on your fingers the number of sane great 20th century mathematicians". (which is just slightly worrying...)
I think it's worrying that a mathematician still needs to use his fingers to count...
On the gun thing: I agree that people should have a choice, but I have no problem with the prohibitive time and cost requirements for obtaining the licenses required. Sure you're not a psychotic murderer, but the more time and training required of you before you can obtain a gun, the better (within reason, I'd say about a year from application to obtaining it would be about right). The point is, it's better than the three-day (or less at a gun show), ultra-superficial check you'd get in the states. We want to make sure those who can obtain firearms are responsible.
> but if you're responsible, and aren't going to
> go around and abusing a right to bear arms,
> you should have the right to do so.
I disagree with you here. You should be able to, ideally: yes. You should have an unalienable, constitutional, no-law-can-fuck-with-me right to own a gun: no. Why? For the very reason you said "... if you're responsible...". Hard to write "Responsible citizens have the right to blahblahblah" into the constitution, so we're safer having no right and letting the government deny guns to those who shouldn't have them (the untrained, insane, criminal, etc).
> We have those rights, but they can be taken
> away if the government feels it necessary. The
> Charter doesn't GUARANTEE those rights in the
> same way they're guaranteed to the people of
> the USA.
True, but only in exceptional circumstances (which does suck, admitedly), and to a certain extent the guarantees the americans have aren't all that different anyways, if you look at their new anti-terrorism bill.
> But to those who believe in the right to bear
> arms up here - we can't.
We can bear arms. We don't consider it some sort of fundamental right. What, exactly, about being human confers the inalienable right to posses objects whose primary purpose is to kill other humans? You may want that right, but that doesn't mean the majority of people agree with you.
> To those who believe
> that we have freedom of speech? Freedom of the > press? Not in Canada. The government can
> censor you if they so choose.
What in the gibbering fuck are you talking about?!
From The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.
>It not only punishes the guilty, it can also
>keep the innocent from becoming the guilty.
>Without stiff punishment there is no deterrent
>effect to their peers. If you think there may
>actually be a chance of something bad happening
>to you for doing something wrong, you are less
>likely to do it (unless you're an idiot of
>course).
Of course, criminals are bascially either idiots or forced into their crimes through social and psychological forces outside their control. The detterent argument doesn't hold water. Nobody commits a crime because they're thinking "When I get caught, the punishment is pretty light". They're usually either not thinking (crimes of passion) or they're thinking "I'll never get caught..."
If strong punishments were an effective detterent, far fewer murders would be commited in those states with the death penalty, but statistically this is not the case.
In a more general sense, too, you have to consider whether the criminal justice system exists to punish criminals, or to reform them. The popular view these days is that if we just punish the criminals hard enough, crime will go away. This is basically a bullshit attitude though. In order to reduce crime one needs to analyze and correct the psychological, social, and economic conditions that give rise to it. The way jails are these days, people are more psychologically fucked-up coming out of them then they were going in. Because of that, we'd be better off locking everyone in for life, rather than letting them out after a specified period of time, pretending that somehow they were reformed by the experience, and then acting surprised at the extremely high rate of recidivism. Let's say these kids were American. Shoving them in some juvenille institution, or worse yet trying them as adults (they're terrorists after all, under the draconian laws we have now) for 5 years wouldn't help anything. They're not going to come out of that experience as productive members of society. The mental, physical, and sexual abuse they'd experience would mean that they'd come out of jail far more dangerous to society then they were when they went in. Putting kids in with hardened criminals is no way to reform them.
>Any sources know how this affects Rogers and Cogeco?
It shouldn't affect them at all. AFAIK all of the cable internet providers here in Canada are not actually members of the @home network, they just make use some of the @home content for things like the default homepage they setup during installation on windows boxen. This is certainly the case for Shaw out west anyways, I don't know much about Cogeco, but I'm pretty sure Roger's is semi-independent of excite@home too.
Dude, complaining about a Deus Ex Machina in an episode of Star Trek is like complaining about a talking dog in an episode of Scooby-Doo. It goes with the territory.
I'd give it a chance if I were you. God knows I hated voyager with a passion, but Enterprise premiered here in Canada last night and it was a LOT better than I expected it to be. Prolly the best pilot episode of any Star Trek series yet (not that's difficult or anything, but...).
As another current user of shaw at home...
what the hell is the address of shaw@homes news server? I've been trying to find this out for a couple days, and can't find it written down anywheres.
You mention "white-space nonsense" as a reason not to use python, yet your examples are all indented. Since you're so concerned about whitespace being nonsense, why indent? Why not simply write:
def writeln(str)
print(str, "\n")
end
Readability, right? If there were a lot of statements and nested blocks in writeln, we want to be able to pick out the block structure clearly. As it is, writeln is practically a python function. If it were it would look like:
def writeln(str):
print str
Wow, it's indented exactly the same as yours! Even better, there's no lame end keyword! The block structure we perceive is the same block structure that the interpreter will see. No more problems like those you occasionally make (in C, for instance):
if(foo)
bar();
baz();
Where your eye sees baz indented under foo, and you think it will only be executed if foo is true. It seems a lot better to me to have the compiler and person writing the code use the same things to delimit a block of code, rather than have one for the compiler, and another that people use for readability anyways. I've never met anybody who didn't indent their code.
There's fairly good evidence that Hubbard didn't believe his own bullshit when he first created scientology. Harlan Ellison has an essay somewhere about how he was there when Hubbard came up with the idea to create a religion because it was an easy way to sucker people out of money. Whether he went nuts and started to by his own crap later on is a different question.
Bruce Tognazzini is a really, really bad source for information. Anything he says should be taken with a huge, industrial sized grain of salt. He's got a history of writing articles on subjects he clearly does not understand. Witness his article
How Programmers Stole the Web, in which he argues that the web has been ruined because it is not programmed in his favorite language, BASIC!! It's also worth mentioning that the Mac's user interface was developed before he created the user interface group at Apple, and that his entire approach to UI criticism amounts to little more than "The original Mac interface rules, everything different sucks". I know that UI design is hardly an exact science, but this guy treats his most subjective opinions as if they are universal laws. I make it a point not to take a single thing he says seriously.
It might be a helicopter
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 1
So? The point of CS is to teach you concepts like algorithms and data structures, not to teach you a specific tool or programming language. If you can't see how the concepts apply across all languages, and if you're incapable of picking up a new language without four months of hand-holding, get the hell out of Comp Sci. Here at the University of Alberta, courses are taught in the language most suited to their concepts, and if you can't adapt to a new language you're fucked. After you've learned a couple of programming languages you realize they all can use exactly the same concepts, with only marginal variations in notation, especially between languages as similar as c++ and java.
Of course, the gamecube will be far cheaper than the PS2, and may have larger developer support because it lacks the weird ass dual vector processor design of the PS2. At least here in canada, buying a Gamecube(at a projected release price of, say $300) and a dedicated, quality DVD player would be cheaper than buying a PS2 right now (if there were any to be had).
Yeah that's a great idea. I mean, Apple only makes like 90% of its profits of hardware. It's not as though they like making money or anything. And moving over to intel had such a huge effect on Be's market share too. You're brilliant!
It seems to me that those are the same folks who hold the copyright on nethack. Hmmm... (Checks www.nethack.org)... Yup, here it is on the bottom of the page:
NetHack is Copyright 1985-2000 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum and M. Stephenson. See our license for details.
These guys can't be all bad if they gave us nethack AND python, can they?
Slashdot Mirror
[This Reminds Me] of the episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where Rocksteady and Bebop have to pedal to keep the Technodrome's power running. Yes it does.
Ladies and Gentlemen, a man who will never, ever, have sex.
The idea that Yellow #5 is a spermicidal is a fairly prevalent urban legend. Snopes, as always, has the real story.
You didn't say which technical topics, but here are some of the classic works that I've read and would recommend, in no particular order:
The C Programming Language - Kernighan & Ritchie
The C++ Programming Language - Bjarne Stroustrup
Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment - W. Richard Stevens
Operating Systems: Design and Implementation - Andrew Tanenbaum
Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools - Aho, Sethi, and Ullman
Introduction to Algorithms - Thomas H. Cormen, et al.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Harold Abelson, et al.
OpenGL Programming Guide - Opengl Architecture Review Board
Sun took it a step beyond the 'roaming profile.' Sun makes the location of the worker be the office, as opposed to the office being the location of the worker.
As long as the worker is located in the office, that is.
Can I, as an amateur computer scientist, claim a tax deduction on the "computer lab" I've set up in my apartment? That would be sweet. I use it to fascilitate my research into the storage and retrieval of vast amounts of porn... err ...I mean archival image files.
Mathematicians have also had a long history of mental disorders; as my supervisor once said, "you can count on your fingers the number of sane great 20th century mathematicians". (which is just slightly worrying...)
I think it's worrying that a mathematician still needs to use his fingers to count...
On the gun thing: I agree that people should have a choice, but I have no problem with the prohibitive time and cost requirements for obtaining the licenses required. Sure you're not a psychotic murderer, but the more time and training required of you before you can obtain a gun, the better (within reason, I'd say about a year from application to obtaining it would be about right). The point is, it's better than the three-day (or less at a gun show), ultra-superficial check you'd get in the states. We want to make sure those who can obtain firearms are responsible.
> but if you're responsible, and aren't going to
> go around and abusing a right to bear arms,
> you should have the right to do so.
I disagree with you here. You should be able to, ideally: yes. You should have an unalienable, constitutional, no-law-can-fuck-with-me right to own a gun: no. Why? For the very reason you said "... if you're responsible...". Hard to write "Responsible citizens have the right to blahblahblah" into the constitution, so we're safer having no right and letting the government deny guns to those who shouldn't have them (the untrained, insane, criminal, etc).
> We have those rights, but they can be taken
> away if the government feels it necessary. The
> Charter doesn't GUARANTEE those rights in the
> same way they're guaranteed to the people of
> the USA.
True, but only in exceptional circumstances (which does suck, admitedly), and to a certain extent the guarantees the americans have aren't all that different anyways, if you look at their new anti-terrorism bill.
> But to those who believe in the right to bear
> arms up here - we can't.
We can bear arms. We don't consider it some sort of fundamental right. What, exactly, about being human confers the inalienable right to posses objects whose primary purpose is to kill other humans? You may want that right, but that doesn't mean the majority of people agree with you.
> To those who believe
> that we have freedom of speech? Freedom of the > press? Not in Canada. The government can
> censor you if they so choose.
What in the gibbering fuck are you talking about?!
From The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.
Read it yourself
>It not only punishes the guilty, it can also
>keep the innocent from becoming the guilty.
>Without stiff punishment there is no deterrent
>effect to their peers. If you think there may
>actually be a chance of something bad happening
>to you for doing something wrong, you are less
>likely to do it (unless you're an idiot of
>course).
Of course, criminals are bascially either idiots or forced into their crimes through social and psychological forces outside their control. The detterent argument doesn't hold water. Nobody commits a crime because they're thinking "When I get caught, the punishment is pretty light". They're usually either not thinking (crimes of passion) or they're thinking "I'll never get caught..."
If strong punishments were an effective detterent, far fewer murders would be commited in those states with the death penalty, but statistically this is not the case.
In a more general sense, too, you have to consider whether the criminal justice system exists to punish criminals, or to reform them. The popular view these days is that if we just punish the criminals hard enough, crime will go away. This is basically a bullshit attitude though. In order to reduce crime one needs to analyze and correct the psychological, social, and economic conditions that give rise to it. The way jails are these days, people are more psychologically fucked-up coming out of them then they were going in. Because of that, we'd be better off locking everyone in for life, rather than letting them out after a specified period of time, pretending that somehow they were reformed by the experience, and then acting surprised at the extremely high rate of recidivism. Let's say these kids were American. Shoving them in some juvenille institution, or worse yet trying them as adults (they're terrorists after all, under the draconian laws we have now) for 5 years wouldn't help anything. They're not going to come out of that experience as productive members of society. The mental, physical, and sexual abuse they'd experience would mean that they'd come out of jail far more dangerous to society then they were when they went in. Putting kids in with hardened criminals is no way to reform them.
>Do you people even PROOF-READ your own stories? >I mean as usual you didnt even PROOF-READ your >own stories.
You missed an apostrophe. Maybe next time you should try a little of this "proof-reading". Idiot.
GameCube will rule
Miyamoto is a God
XBox will suck
>Any sources know how this affects Rogers and Cogeco?
It shouldn't affect them at all. AFAIK all of the cable internet providers here in Canada are not actually members of the @home network, they just make use some of the @home content for things like the default homepage they setup during installation on windows boxen. This is certainly the case for Shaw out west anyways, I don't know much about Cogeco, but I'm pretty sure Roger's is semi-independent of excite@home too.
Dude, complaining about a Deus Ex Machina in an episode of Star Trek is like complaining about a talking dog in an episode of Scooby-Doo. It goes with the territory.
I'd give it a chance if I were you. God knows I hated voyager with a passion, but Enterprise premiered here in Canada last night and it was a LOT better than I expected it to be. Prolly the best pilot episode of any Star Trek series yet (not that's difficult or anything, but ...).
As another current user of shaw at home... what the hell is the address of shaw@homes news server? I've been trying to find this out for a couple days, and can't find it written down anywheres.
You mention "white-space nonsense" as a reason not to use python, yet your examples are all indented. Since you're so concerned about whitespace being nonsense, why indent? Why not simply write:
def writeln(str)
print(str, "\n")
end
Readability, right? If there were a lot of statements and nested blocks in writeln, we want to be able to pick out the block structure clearly. As it is, writeln is practically a python function. If it were it would look like:
def writeln(str):
print str
Wow, it's indented exactly the same as yours! Even better, there's no lame end keyword! The block structure we perceive is the same block structure that the interpreter will see. No more problems like those you occasionally make (in C, for instance):
if(foo)
bar();
baz();
Where your eye sees baz indented under foo, and you think it will only be executed if foo is true. It seems a lot better to me to have the compiler and person writing the code use the same things to delimit a block of code, rather than have one for the compiler, and another that people use for readability anyways. I've never met anybody who didn't indent their code.
There's fairly good evidence that Hubbard didn't believe his own bullshit when he first created scientology. Harlan Ellison has an essay somewhere about how he was there when Hubbard came up with the idea to create a religion because it was an easy way to sucker people out of money. Whether he went nuts and started to by his own crap later on is a different question.
Bruce Tognazzini is a really, really bad source for information. Anything he says should be taken with a huge, industrial sized grain of salt. He's got a history of writing articles on subjects he clearly does not understand. Witness his article How Programmers Stole the Web, in which he argues that the web has been ruined because it is not programmed in his favorite language, BASIC!! It's also worth mentioning that the Mac's user interface was developed before he created the user interface group at Apple, and that his entire approach to UI criticism amounts to little more than "The original Mac interface rules, everything different sucks". I know that UI design is hardly an exact science, but this guy treats his most subjective opinions as if they are universal laws. I make it a point not to take a single thing he says seriously.
Didn't log in the first time I posted this. A 1999 article by Bob Metcalfe. Check out the opening line:
INVENTOR DEAN KAMEN insists his IBOT is not a wheelchair. Nobody pushes you around in an IBOT. You wear it, like Kamen wears his helicopters.
So? The point of CS is to teach you concepts like algorithms and data structures, not to teach you a specific tool or programming language. If you can't see how the concepts apply across all languages, and if you're incapable of picking up a new language without four months of hand-holding, get the hell out of Comp Sci. Here at the University of Alberta, courses are taught in the language most suited to their concepts, and if you can't adapt to a new language you're fucked. After you've learned a couple of programming languages you realize they all can use exactly the same concepts, with only marginal variations in notation, especially between languages as similar as c++ and java.
Of course, the gamecube will be far cheaper than the PS2, and may have larger developer support because it lacks the weird ass dual vector processor design of the PS2. At least here in canada, buying a Gamecube(at a projected release price of, say $300) and a dedicated, quality DVD player would be cheaper than buying a PS2 right now (if there were any to be had).
>It's time for a change. Stockwell Day has MY vote!
Experience is the result of bad judgement. Good judgement? Comes from experience.
And voting Stockwell Day is a bad judgement! QED.
Gee, and here I thought standards were defined by groups like the International standards organization...
Yeah that's a great idea. I mean, Apple only makes like 90% of its profits of hardware. It's not as though they like making money or anything. And moving over to intel had such a huge effect on Be's market share too. You're brilliant!
It seems to me that those are the same folks who hold the copyright on nethack. Hmmm... (Checks www.nethack.org)... Yup, here it is on the bottom of the page: NetHack is Copyright 1985-2000 by Stichting Mathematisch Centrum and M. Stephenson. See our license for details. These guys can't be all bad if they gave us nethack AND python, can they?