"Don't work on anything that could possibly have a bad use" covers an awful lot of ground.
What one must do is determine whether what they are working will do more good or bad. Everything ends up being used for bad purposes. There is no advancement that ends up being completely benign. That said, I don't think smart landmines are very ambiguous in the "bad use" category. I don't see any good use to them. So, good for you for standing up for your principles and leaving your job. There are a lot of people who will throw around accusations that someone is a monster for working on some project, but the truth is that they would have a difficult time leaving if they were in the situation themselves. It's easy to be a hero when we talk about hypotheticals. And it's easy to vilify when using hypotheticals. I hope that in a similar situation, I would have the courage to stand up for my principles as well. Good for you.
So, by this same argument, I suppose we should not be allowed to speak with others in the car while driving. Carpool lanes are probably the most dangerous freeway development in years.
The fact that apple doesn't want to tell what they cost to produce makes me think that their margins are pretty obscene, and they know it would make people angry to know just how much they're pocketing.:P
Very good point. And if I might add, people knowing how much Apple is pocketing would not be in the best interest of an investor as Apple's revenue would be injured and most likely their stock as well.
I agree that people do watch us a lot. And many times we are held to a higher standard, but I believe that to be our own fault for claiming the moral high ground. We claim that we are the most loving country. We claim that we care more about human rights than anyone else. We even have the audacity to call America the "Land of the Free," as if to imply that we are the only free country in the world. I'm guessing that I was past 10 before I realized that we are not the only democracy in the world. Since we claim to be so amazing and loving and caring, we are held to a higher standard, a standard that we took upon ourselves.
Actually, truth be told, your online presence can in fact be a boon in hiring. I have had numerous interviews where a search on the internet of my online presence has resulted in the recruiter being more interested. I have a number of tutorials and well-written articles on my website which do well to represent myself as a good hire.
I wonder how many extra sales Rockstar generated because of the whole Hot Coffee thing. Probably enough to conver that fine several times over.
Actually, I would venture to say that they lost a lot of money on this whole Hot Coffee thing. While yes, it did generate publicity, it also caused many stores to pull the game off the shelf. As far as I was aware, after the Hot Coffee thing popped up, Software Etc--or are they called Electronics Boutique--no longer stocked the game. That is a HUGE hit to sales. I'm also pretty sure that Walmart pulled it from the shelves as well (I could be wrong on that). No amount of publicity makes up for the distribution network being completely pulled out from under their feet.
(Wonder why bush is asking for a no gay marriage amendment? it's nothing but a distraction for crap like this.)
<sarcasm>Yeah, I'm sure that is why Bush is pushing for a definition of marriage amendment, to pull attention from what he really wants: a new copyright law. The Christian Right has always been secretly pushing for stricter copyright laws. All of these other bills, even the war in Iraq, has all been a clever distraction to avoid people hearing about this copyright bill. This is a most brilliant political move of the century.</sarcasm>
I loved the Lone Wolf books. I periodically pick them up and read one when I am in a particularly nostalgic mood. I loved the cross between D&D and CYOA. What a brilliant masterpiece they were. Fortunately, in the vein of open source software, the author, Joe Dever, has graciously given the rights for the electronic distribution of his books free of charge by Project Aon.
Art--of which literature is a vital member--as a given medium rarely dies completely. One could use the same argument to claim that radio is a dead concept. After all, doesn't television provide everything that radio does? Aren't 8-bit Nintendo games dead (the answer is no)? While I do believe that the concept of choose your own adventure is not as powerful as it once was before video games, I do believe that they have a niche. I strongly doubt that we will ever come up with a way to make reading books obsolete. There is something irreplaceable about reading a book. I think that many people need no explanation of this phenomenon.
I'm not sure how in the world you would come up with an XML parser that runs O(log n). I can't even right a binary parser that is O(log n). The algorithm has to be at least O(n) since fread() is O(n). That said, in many algorithms for parsing an XML file, we're actually looking at more in the range of O(n*log n) since there will most likely be a number of binary tree lookups (if applying a DTD). So, even when examining complexity, XML is going to fail against most implementations of a binary file. This is a especially the case when the file can be read directly into memory without any change. Reading a file directly in one fell swoop is going to be either O(n) or O(1) depending upon where the file size is fixed.
That all said, I also take issue with people always pulling out the complexity argument. Simply because one algorithm is less complex than another, does not necessarily make it better. If I have two algorithms, one O(n^2) and another O(n^3). The second may be faster than the first for all problems where n1,000,000. If I'm working on a project where n can never be greater than 100, well I think I know which algorithm I'll use.
Also, if there are two algorithms, both O(n) yet one is twice as fast as another, people argue that it doesn't matter. But if the execution takes a minute, well a full 2x gain is amazing and significant. In twenty years when the same algorithm runs in less than a second, well, it won't matter anymore.
While complexity of algorithms is a useful study, many people show a complete inability to crasp the concept of what it really tells you.
The parent had a lot of good things to say except this comment: The idea that XML-based documents are "inherently" slow is silly.
No, the idea that XML-based documents AREN'T "inherently" slow is silly. Of course an XML-based document will be slower than a binary document. XML gives a number of niceties, in the form of maintainability and platform-independence, but it can never be made faster than a well designed binary document. That's just the trade-off.
How are ticket prices artificially inflated through an auction? There's no artificial inflation, it's natural inflation based upon supply and demand. The artificial inflation comes from the scalpers and brokers who buy up huge number of tickets thus creating a scarcity that does not exist. The result is that demand is increased (false demand that is), so the price goes up and the winner is the scalper/broker.
Doesn't seem like Orwell and friends really accomplished much, does it? They showed us the future but we're just walking right smack into it anyway, eyes wide shut.
No, thanks to Orwell and friends, we do not live in a 1984 world. Governments have tried to pull off this private key disclosure thing in the past, and have failed (can anyone say "key escrow"?). Even if the UK does pass this measure, good law-abiding citizens will probably not adhere to it. If the US passed a law like this, I would not accept it. If enough people do not adhere to a law it becomes unenforceable. What country is going to send all of their brightest folks to prison in order to catch pediphiles?
I am so tired of becoming better educated about things. I recently attended a meeting at work where I learned about our new health care plan in which they told us that we need to be "better educated." I wish someone would start providing some deals where I can be less educated. I don't need to know how a transistor works to use a computer. I don't need to understand physics to drive a car. Sure it helps, but it isn't necessary. I don't have time to become better educated about everything in my life. I would rather spend my time becoming better educated about my profession and my family. As every year passes, the cannon of human knowledge expands at an ever increasing rate. Whereas it was once possible to be educated about everything in your universe, it no longer is. So, stop asking me to be better educated and just provide me with a good deal from your wealth of knowledge. I'll try to do the same in the areas where I am proficient. It's called specialization.
I truly hate to admit how much I enjoyed Wing Commander. I saw it twice in the movie theatre, by choice (once by myself, for obvious reasons). I am so ashamed.
If I need to use a command, I will go look at the man page, but I do not read the man page for every command I use. My first step is to run [cmd] --help. If that does not give me the information I need I will then head to the man page or the internet. I think man pages are great, but I'm not interested in reading the entire man page for every command I use. The man page for gcc is practically a book in itself. I use this command on a daily basis, but I am not about to read the entire man page since the vast majority of it would be data that I will never need in a million years. I figure that it would take me months to read all of the documentation for every command and utility that I use. I don't have the time to do that. Sure, I might be able to use the utilities a little better in the end, but I would also be out of a job because I will not have produced anything for months.
Therein lies the problem with the RTFM response. Manuals are not to be read like novels. They are to be used as reference guides. So a preferrable response to RTFM is to say check page 12 of the manual. Rather than telling someone that they are expected to have read the entire manual cover to cover for libxml2 before they are allowed to ask what function loads a DTD.
Maybe people will disagree with me, put I can name only one good video game based movie. If you like anime and haven't seen Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, do. It's really good.
I'm just amazed at how few people actually read man's man page.
Why is that amazing? I don't have time to go read every man page for every command. That is the problem with all the RTFM responses. I am not going to go read an entire manual for every single command or utility that I wish to use. I don't have that sort of time, and I highly doubt many people do. A better response than RTFM is simply check page number XX of the manual.
Good comments, but I disagree that you would have to change the instruction set. You would have to add to the instruction set is all. Adding an instruction to "mov" into some new register, say "egx", would not make the current instructions stop working.
I imagine Intel and AMD are not very concerned with ease of assembly programming these days.
It's not the ease that is the issue. The issue is the fact that you have to move things in and out of the CPU a lot more because there are not enough registers. Take a look at the clock ticks involved and you'll see that this is actually significant when doing highly processor based calculations.
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't work on anything that could possibly have a bad use" covers an awful lot of ground.
What one must do is determine whether what they are working will do more good or bad. Everything ends up being used for bad purposes. There is no advancement that ends up being completely benign. That said, I don't think smart landmines are very ambiguous in the "bad use" category. I don't see any good use to them. So, good for you for standing up for your principles and leaving your job. There are a lot of people who will throw around accusations that someone is a monster for working on some project, but the truth is that they would have a difficult time leaving if they were in the situation themselves. It's easy to be a hero when we talk about hypotheticals. And it's easy to vilify when using hypotheticals. I hope that in a similar situation, I would have the courage to stand up for my principles as well. Good for you.
By the way, "Whats" should have an apostrophe.
So, by this same argument, I suppose we should not be allowed to speak with others in the car while driving. Carpool lanes are probably the most dangerous freeway development in years.
The fact that apple doesn't want to tell what they cost to produce makes me think that their margins are pretty obscene, and they know it would make people angry to know just how much they're pocketing. :P
Very good point. And if I might add, people knowing how much Apple is pocketing would not be in the best interest of an investor as Apple's revenue would be injured and most likely their stock as well.
I agree that people do watch us a lot. And many times we are held to a higher standard, but I believe that to be our own fault for claiming the moral high ground. We claim that we are the most loving country. We claim that we care more about human rights than anyone else. We even have the audacity to call America the "Land of the Free," as if to imply that we are the only free country in the world. I'm guessing that I was past 10 before I realized that we are not the only democracy in the world. Since we claim to be so amazing and loving and caring, we are held to a higher standard, a standard that we took upon ourselves.
Actually, truth be told, your online presence can in fact be a boon in hiring. I have had numerous interviews where a search on the internet of my online presence has resulted in the recruiter being more interested. I have a number of tutorials and well-written articles on my website which do well to represent myself as a good hire.
I wonder how many extra sales Rockstar generated because of the whole Hot Coffee thing. Probably enough to conver that fine several times over.
Actually, I would venture to say that they lost a lot of money on this whole Hot Coffee thing. While yes, it did generate publicity, it also caused many stores to pull the game off the shelf. As far as I was aware, after the Hot Coffee thing popped up, Software Etc--or are they called Electronics Boutique--no longer stocked the game. That is a HUGE hit to sales. I'm also pretty sure that Walmart pulled it from the shelves as well (I could be wrong on that). No amount of publicity makes up for the distribution network being completely pulled out from under their feet.
(Wonder why bush is asking for a no gay marriage amendment? it's nothing but a distraction for crap like this.)
<sarcasm>Yeah, I'm sure that is why Bush is pushing for a definition of marriage amendment, to pull attention from what he really wants: a new copyright law. The Christian Right has always been secretly pushing for stricter copyright laws. All of these other bills, even the war in Iraq, has all been a clever distraction to avoid people hearing about this copyright bill. This is a most brilliant political move of the century.</sarcasm>
I loved the Lone Wolf books. I periodically pick them up and read one when I am in a particularly nostalgic mood. I loved the cross between D&D and CYOA. What a brilliant masterpiece they were. Fortunately, in the vein of open source software, the author, Joe Dever, has graciously given the rights for the electronic distribution of his books free of charge by Project Aon.
Art--of which literature is a vital member--as a given medium rarely dies completely. One could use the same argument to claim that radio is a dead concept. After all, doesn't television provide everything that radio does? Aren't 8-bit Nintendo games dead (the answer is no)? While I do believe that the concept of choose your own adventure is not as powerful as it once was before video games, I do believe that they have a niche. I strongly doubt that we will ever come up with a way to make reading books obsolete. There is something irreplaceable about reading a book. I think that many people need no explanation of this phenomenon.
I'm not sure how in the world you would come up with an XML parser that runs O(log n). I can't even right a binary parser that is O(log n). The algorithm has to be at least O(n) since fread() is O(n). That said, in many algorithms for parsing an XML file, we're actually looking at more in the range of O(n*log n) since there will most likely be a number of binary tree lookups (if applying a DTD). So, even when examining complexity, XML is going to fail against most implementations of a binary file. This is a especially the case when the file can be read directly into memory without any change. Reading a file directly in one fell swoop is going to be either O(n) or O(1) depending upon where the file size is fixed. That all said, I also take issue with people always pulling out the complexity argument. Simply because one algorithm is less complex than another, does not necessarily make it better. If I have two algorithms, one O(n^2) and another O(n^3). The second may be faster than the first for all problems where n1,000,000. If I'm working on a project where n can never be greater than 100, well I think I know which algorithm I'll use. Also, if there are two algorithms, both O(n) yet one is twice as fast as another, people argue that it doesn't matter. But if the execution takes a minute, well a full 2x gain is amazing and significant. In twenty years when the same algorithm runs in less than a second, well, it won't matter anymore. While complexity of algorithms is a useful study, many people show a complete inability to crasp the concept of what it really tells you.
The parent had a lot of good things to say except this comment: The idea that XML-based documents are "inherently" slow is silly.
No, the idea that XML-based documents AREN'T "inherently" slow is silly. Of course an XML-based document will be slower than a binary document. XML gives a number of niceties, in the form of maintainability and platform-independence, but it can never be made faster than a well designed binary document. That's just the trade-off.
How are ticket prices artificially inflated through an auction? There's no artificial inflation, it's natural inflation based upon supply and demand. The artificial inflation comes from the scalpers and brokers who buy up huge number of tickets thus creating a scarcity that does not exist. The result is that demand is increased (false demand that is), so the price goes up and the winner is the scalper/broker.
Or just use vsound. It's very easy to use and great quality without the trouble of hooking up two computers.
Doesn't seem like Orwell and friends really accomplished much, does it? They showed us the future but we're just walking right smack into it anyway, eyes wide shut.
No, thanks to Orwell and friends, we do not live in a 1984 world. Governments have tried to pull off this private key disclosure thing in the past, and have failed (can anyone say "key escrow"?). Even if the UK does pass this measure, good law-abiding citizens will probably not adhere to it. If the US passed a law like this, I would not accept it. If enough people do not adhere to a law it becomes unenforceable. What country is going to send all of their brightest folks to prison in order to catch pediphiles?
That all said, this is alarming.
I am so tired of becoming better educated about things. I recently attended a meeting at work where I learned about our new health care plan in which they told us that we need to be "better educated." I wish someone would start providing some deals where I can be less educated. I don't need to know how a transistor works to use a computer. I don't need to understand physics to drive a car. Sure it helps, but it isn't necessary. I don't have time to become better educated about everything in my life. I would rather spend my time becoming better educated about my profession and my family. As every year passes, the cannon of human knowledge expands at an ever increasing rate. Whereas it was once possible to be educated about everything in your universe, it no longer is. So, stop asking me to be better educated and just provide me with a good deal from your wealth of knowledge. I'll try to do the same in the areas where I am proficient. It's called specialization.
I truly hate to admit how much I enjoyed Wing Commander. I saw it twice in the movie theatre, by choice (once by myself, for obvious reasons). I am so ashamed.
I'm still going to guess that Google gets a lot more out of the deal than Firefox.
Oh, and has anyone thought that maybe, just maybe, Google gets to be the default search engine because they host the default homepage?
You make it sound like Google is doing Firefox a favor by allowing themselves to be the default homepage. I think it's the other way around.
If I need to use a command, I will go look at the man page, but I do not read the man page for every command I use. My first step is to run [cmd] --help. If that does not give me the information I need I will then head to the man page or the internet. I think man pages are great, but I'm not interested in reading the entire man page for every command I use. The man page for gcc is practically a book in itself. I use this command on a daily basis, but I am not about to read the entire man page since the vast majority of it would be data that I will never need in a million years. I figure that it would take me months to read all of the documentation for every command and utility that I use. I don't have the time to do that. Sure, I might be able to use the utilities a little better in the end, but I would also be out of a job because I will not have produced anything for months. Therein lies the problem with the RTFM response. Manuals are not to be read like novels. They are to be used as reference guides. So a preferrable response to RTFM is to say check page 12 of the manual. Rather than telling someone that they are expected to have read the entire manual cover to cover for libxml2 before they are allowed to ask what function loads a DTD.
Maybe people will disagree with me, put I can name only one good video game based movie. If you like anime and haven't seen Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, do. It's really good.
I'm just amazed at how few people actually read man's man page.
Why is that amazing? I don't have time to go read every man page for every command. That is the problem with all the RTFM responses. I am not going to go read an entire manual for every single command or utility that I wish to use. I don't have that sort of time, and I highly doubt many people do. A better response than RTFM is simply check page number XX of the manual.
No
Good comments, but I disagree that you would have to change the instruction set. You would have to add to the instruction set is all. Adding an instruction to "mov" into some new register, say "egx", would not make the current instructions stop working.
I imagine Intel and AMD are not very concerned with ease of assembly programming these days.
It's not the ease that is the issue. The issue is the fact that you have to move things in and out of the CPU a lot more because there are not enough registers. Take a look at the clock ticks involved and you'll see that this is actually significant when doing highly processor based calculations.