Just as an aside, it's kind of weird to read these tales from a European (Norwegian) perspective. Doing something like they did to you would be highly illegal here. Nobody would even bother trying to deny you your earned vacation money, and if they did you would easily get it by court order.
In Norway they can't fire you without giving you a mandatory notice a _month_ in advance (or more in some cases.) But this goes both ways though, and you can't just quit without giving a notice first.
I don't know, this just reeks of desperation. I personally think it's utopic to think that air travel as we know it will survive until 2030, with oil prices at the current and rising levels. By 2030 (by 2010, really) we will have much bigger fuel shortage problems to worry about than jet fuel.
Why yes, yes it does. That's called stability and flexibility. Some of us are still running "busted ass trash heaps" and can really appreciate that. Of course, it runs perfectly on shiny new computers as well.
I agree. This looks more like an attempt at legalizing and legitimizing censorship domestically rather than (and disguised as) an attempt at curtailing censorship abroad.
That's almost correct. However, if there is a strong statistical correlation between A and B, then they are very unlikely to be unrelated. And there are more options than the ones you list:
1) A => B
2) B => A
3) Both, thus they reinforce each other and give a strong correlation even if both links are weak.
4) Third cause C, which causes both A and B.
5) A mix of the above, with each individual being affected by one or more of the options.
An example of option 4 would be someone with low self esteem or other issues in life, that both makes them more prone to drinking and less prone to be successful in their career. And since high alcohol intake often correlates with lifestyle and personal issues, I'm not really that surprised that they found this result.
Yes, you are right. A queued event system works great in parallel in many cases, and probably in more cases than it is being used. A great example is the standard Windows or X desktop, where each window is a thread (program) and everything is done through a central event handler.
For many systems however, where you have writeable shared data, you would still have to invent some kind of locking and you end up with the same problems as when using threads directly. This works on the desktop because programs seldom have to use the same resources or files simultaneously, and if they do its acceptable to just let them fail.
I think this story is interesting because it shows a general trend: increased focus on multi-threading. We will see much more of this in the future as multi-core and multi-processor systems become more common. This trend is driven not by porn though, but by that other big driving force behind the computer industry, gaming.
I agree. And as a lot of people are now finding out, if you go to the bank to pay for your house, then it's not really your house at all.
Everyone is ignorant until taught otherwise. That is why basic financial sense and responsibility should be taught in school, along with a great deal of other things that are missing. Unfortunately, western schools (it's the same here in Europe) are still geared towards creating industry workers in countries that hardly have any industrial production left.
You're closing in, but not quite there yet. Yes, the plan is to monitor US citizens. Eventually, the plan is to keep tabs on ALL US citizens, or at least enough to keep the rest in constant fear of being put on 'the list'. It's a wonder if you haven't understood this already, with all the wiretapping and spying going on. The border crossing part is only the beginning, a stepping stone that will later be expanded to all air travel, then all interstate travel.
Since the terms Rails and Ruby on Rails are trademarked, I doubt the "on Rails" name will survive for very long. BBC should probably have checked that out first.
It's a wiki, right? Why not just put up a note that says "we do not handle printers or scanners, but you can write them up anyway", and then share the data with the CUPS and SANE people?
I think the OP meant that the company got lucky in having good people to
design and implement the first system.
I disagree - as he pointed out, getting and keeping good people is not "luck". And losing them was certainly not "bad luck", but bad management based on short-sighted thinking and lack of understanding of what is really valuable in your business (assuming the lay-offs is what happened, which seems likely.)
I'm sorry, but these peope write code for free. If you really want a feature, why don't you go write it yourself? I really don't see any reason to criticize people who have given up THEIR free time to help YOU.
'Fascism should be called 'Corporatism' more properly, because it's the perfect merger of power between the corporation and the State' --Benito Mussolini
"It boggles the mind the lengths this administration will go to to systematically erode the rights and privileges we have all counted on and held up as the granite pillars of our society since our nation was founded."
It only boggles the mind if you haven't read much history or have little idea how totalitarian states arise and work. USA is turning into the textbook example of a fledgeling police state. It's not too late to turn back, but it is unlikely to happen at this point because the majority of the population is either uneducated or in denial about the fact.
We're on the slope. I saw the "potential" in the 90's, and some have seen it much earlier than that. But it's still not steep enough that it is too late to turn back. Slipping into panick and despair won't help anything, but neither will ignoring the problem.
Why would you want to justify rewriting all your C++ code into D? That's like converting all your MP3s to OGG because it's new and shiny. Nobody is forcing (or even asking) you to use D, if it doesn't fit your needs just don't use it.
For my part I've been using the language almost exclusively for about two years now, but most of my projects have been new projects. What little I had of personal "helper" libraries in C++ were either easy to convert or unnecessary in D.
This has more to do with compiler implementation than with language features. Walter Bright has stated that a more "type-intelligent" GC will be implemented later.
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Just as an aside, it's kind of weird to read these tales from a European (Norwegian) perspective. Doing something like they did to you would be highly illegal here. Nobody would even bother trying to deny you your earned vacation money, and if they did you would easily get it by court order.
In Norway they can't fire you without giving you a mandatory notice a _month_ in advance (or more in some cases.) But this goes both ways though, and you can't just quit without giving a notice first.
I don't know, this just reeks of desperation. I personally think it's utopic to think that air travel as we know it will survive until 2030, with oil prices at the current and rising levels. By 2030 (by 2010, really) we will have much bigger fuel shortage problems to worry about than jet fuel.
Why yes, yes it does. That's called stability and flexibility. Some of us are still running "busted ass trash heaps" and can really appreciate that. Of course, it runs perfectly on shiny new computers as well.
I agree. This looks more like an attempt at legalizing and legitimizing censorship domestically rather than (and disguised as) an attempt at curtailing censorship abroad.
See? His statistics skills are mediocre.
That's almost correct. However, if there is a strong statistical correlation between A and B, then they are very unlikely to be unrelated. And there are more options than the ones you list:
1) A => B
2) B => A
3) Both, thus they reinforce each other and give a strong correlation even if both links are weak.
4) Third cause C, which causes both A and B.
5) A mix of the above, with each individual being affected by one or more of the options.
An example of option 4 would be someone with low self esteem or other issues in life, that both makes them more prone to drinking and less prone to be successful in their career. And since high alcohol intake often correlates with lifestyle and personal issues, I'm not really that surprised that they found this result.
Yes, you are right. A queued event system works great in parallel in many cases, and probably in more cases than it is being used. A great example is the standard Windows or X desktop, where each window is a thread (program) and everything is done through a central event handler.
For many systems however, where you have writeable shared data, you would still have to invent some kind of locking and you end up with the same problems as when using threads directly. This works on the desktop because programs seldom have to use the same resources or files simultaneously, and if they do its acceptable to just let them fail.
I think this story is interesting because it shows a general trend: increased focus on multi-threading. We will see much more of this in the future as multi-core and multi-processor systems become more common. This trend is driven not by porn though, but by that other big driving force behind the computer industry, gaming.
I agree. And as a lot of people are now finding out, if you go to the bank to pay for your house, then it's not really your house at all.
Everyone is ignorant until taught otherwise. That is why basic financial sense and responsibility should be taught in school, along with a great deal of other things that are missing. Unfortunately, western schools (it's the same here in Europe) are still geared towards creating industry workers in countries that hardly have any industrial production left.
You mean like the Germans stood up to Hitler or the Russians are standing up to Putin?
You're closing in, but not quite there yet. Yes, the plan is to monitor US citizens. Eventually, the plan is to keep tabs on ALL US citizens, or at least enough to keep the rest in constant fear of being put on 'the list'. It's a wonder if you haven't understood this already, with all the wiretapping and spying going on. The border crossing part is only the beginning, a stepping stone that will later be expanded to all air travel, then all interstate travel.
Since the terms Rails and Ruby on Rails are trademarked, I doubt the "on Rails" name will survive for very long. BBC should probably have checked that out first.
It's a wiki, right? Why not just put up a note that says "we do not handle printers or scanners, but you can write them up anyway", and then share the data with the CUPS and SANE people?
I think the OP meant that the company got lucky in having good people to design and implement the first system.
I disagree - as he pointed out, getting and keeping good people is not "luck". And losing them was certainly not "bad luck", but bad management based on short-sighted thinking and lack of understanding of what is really valuable in your business (assuming the lay-offs is what happened, which seems likely.)
Yes, the efficiency is important. If already existing technology can do it better then why bother?
I'm sorry, but these peope write code for free. If you really want a feature, why don't you go write it yourself? I really don't see any reason to criticize people who have given up THEIR free time to help YOU.
Reminds me of a quote:
'Fascism should be called 'Corporatism' more properly, because it's the perfect merger of power between the corporation and the State'
--Benito Mussolini
Limiting speech and eventual persecution of intellectuals is one of the first steps of any fascist or totalitarian regime.
It was the buttler!
"It boggles the mind the lengths this administration will go to to systematically erode the rights and privileges we have all counted on and held up as the granite pillars of our society since our nation was founded."
It only boggles the mind if you haven't read much history or have little idea how totalitarian states arise and work. USA is turning into the textbook example of a fledgeling police state. It's not too late to turn back, but it is unlikely to happen at this point because the majority of the population is either uneducated or in denial about the fact.
We're on the slope. I saw the "potential" in the 90's, and some have seen it much earlier than that. But it's still not steep enough that it is too late to turn back. Slipping into panick and despair won't help anything, but neither will ignoring the problem.
Won't work, because you can't turn it into a right-vs-left issue, and thus everyone will just ignore it.
Ahh, that brings back memories from the old Turbo Pascal days...
Why would you want to justify rewriting all your C++ code into D? That's like converting all your MP3s to OGG because it's new and shiny. Nobody is forcing (or even asking) you to use D, if it doesn't fit your needs just don't use it.
For my part I've been using the language almost exclusively for about two years now, but most of my projects have been new projects. What little I had of personal "helper" libraries in C++ were either easy to convert or unnecessary in D.
This has more to do with compiler implementation than with language features. Walter Bright has stated that a more "type-intelligent" GC will be implemented later.