I wonder what his take on it would be if he was the one running the rental agency. People are running around shouting "invasion of privacy" but all they are doing is moitoring where you take the car. It's not like they've bugged the car and are taping everything you say. I think, as you guys do, that this is a group of irresponsible folks who are trying to dodge responsibility for their misdeeds while labeling Budget as invasive and untrustworthy...and make a buck at the same time.
What I think the rental companies should do is blacklist people who do this sort of thing...or charge them much, much higher fees.
This is all about Budget protecting its investment (cars) and maintaining some degree of control over it. I think this is particularly important in light of the rented vehicles that were used in bombing both the World Trade Center (in the 90's) and the Murrah building.
Then again, the irresponsible individuals in society will never see themselves as being out of line. The whole point of dodging responsibility is to get what you want without the adverse consequences.
If somebody can show me a laptop with two 15" screens where one unfolds out and sits beside the other, I might be interested. As it is, this thing looks more like a gimic than a useful tool. Wake me up when there's something worth looking at.
I don't have a non-US region disc need, so it isn't like it affects me. However, it is still a crippling feat^h^h^h^hbug.
I guess I understand why they put in region encoding (create an artificial market so they can inflate the prices), but I think that just underscores the greed of MPAA-affiliated companies.
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, issued a statement calling the lawsuit "frivolous" and defending the labels' recent efforts to deter digital piracy.
It must be a frivolous lawsuit. Has to be. The RIAA has filed so many, it has to know one when it sees one:)
I guess it's sort of believable...theoretically you can do the same thing (natively) with a Crusoe chip. What I have a hard time believing is that you can store this new "run anything" OS (how does it handle Mac programs? Palm? *NIX? Be?...?) and the software, and the runtime libraries, etc., and that file storage is actually seamless and transparent. My take is that they might have a proof of concept for some limited applications, but I'd love to see what happens when they let an independent person give the thing a spin in a real-world environment. Besides which, I don't see the utility of doing this. The whole point of a handheld is to do mobile tasks...schedule, planning, task list, contact list, finance, and a few cheap games. Laptops were designed for mobile application computing, not handhelds.
For some reason I thought you were trying to express valid opinions rather than just trolling. Sadly, I was mistaken. I'd sit here and argue with you about whether I was being anal retentive, Episodes 4-6, acting, writing and dialogue, etc., but as a troll you probably wouldn't have the capacity to make a reasoned, thoughtful, cogent, and (shocker) cleanly written response...
Out of all the whiny brats who hate Star Wars because it doesn't live up to their outrageous expectations, I finally find someone with exactly the same perspective I have. I just wish more people enjoyed the movies for what they are rather than griping about what they aren't.
Notice as Anubis Army overruns the city...the head Anubis Warrior has his foot on a severed head....I forget the rating on that movie, but it's PG-something.
Yoda was obviously trying to help Luke grow. Part of that was physical and mental conditioning. Luke would be running through the forest with Yoda giving him Force lessons.
A good Jedi doesn't let anger/hate/etc. affect him. Hence, you can't just 'piss Yoda off.'
Jedi will act to protect others. Dooku was setting up to wipe out Obi-Wan and Anakin. Yoda was simply coming to the rescue. You'll notice from the dialog that Yoda retains his composure throughout the entire sequence. Contrast this with Luke facing the Emperor and Darth Vader. Luke in that situation is quite obviously struggling with his hate and anger.
The fight scene, instead of making you feel dirty, should make you proud of Yoda as an exemplary Jedi Master.
That's your opinion. There are plenty of people who go to movies (especially, Star Wars movies) for the entertainment value. I'm not looking for a philosophical treatise on the universe. I'm looking for decent action, grand vistas, and cute gags. Part of the charm from Ep. 4-6 was the gags, the inconsistency, etc. Maybe you prefer something that looks like it is a photo clip from an actual event...but that doesn't necessarily make movies that don't look that way bad.
The beauty of the Star Wars universe is (and always has been) about the little guy making it big against the oppressive regime...Luke helping take down the Empire...Anakin making it from slavery to a position of importance in the galactic republic.
Besides all that, if you want to complain about bad writing, that's your prerogative, but you'd better make sure *your* writing isn't bad...and I think you failed in that regard.
Re:Most languages stick around through inertia
on
Apocalypse 5 Released
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· Score: 2
CPAN-style modularity comes at the price of security.
How do you mean? If you mean "security through obscurity", then that isn't security at all...
Lisp/Scheme unmaintainability is (IMHO) a direct result of the structure of the language, at least, from my experience. When the entire 'program' is embedded in a single expression, you sometimes have to rewrite entire parts of the expression to change a trivial amount of functionality. One of our ongoing class assignments in Scheme was to make a grammar parser, and the changes that the professor showed from stage to stage as the assignments progressed were fairly major.
Perhaps part of my bias against Scheme and Lisp is due to a lack of intimate understanding, therefore what appears unmaintainable to me really isn't, but I'm not sure of that. It seems far easier to maintain code written in a language where you have discrete graspable constructs than code written in a language with almost none.
I've used Ada for school projects, JavaScript and Perl in corporate environments (I've only been out for a couple of years), and had classes in C, C++, Lisp, Scheme (there *is* a difference), x86 ASM, and (theoretically) Java. (I could include Apple Basic in the list, but it really doesn't apply).
The JavaScript was used in both server- and client-side applications (my last company was a BroadVision shop), and I certainly appreciated the OO, one-way approach it offered. It was also considerably easier than my experiences trying to learn Java. Maybe it's just me, but I found that compared with Ada (another strongly-typed language) that Java was a real pain to learn. I've heard all the arguments about its robustness, built-in OO, etc., but I find it difficult to justify using it as an all-around tool, and even have trouble with the idea of using it for CGI applications.
I've forgotten a lot of my C/C++ syntax (writing too much Perl code;)), but I certainly understand why you'd use that for application and system programming over, say, Java. (Perl really isn't designed for those tasks, although it is useful in a web-based ASP model).
I still don't quite get the Lisp and Scheme obsession. Yes, it is certainly novel to be able to have a program recurse on itself and create its own anonymous routines, but the code is nearly unmaintainable and unless you take drastic measures, quite unreadable.
I haven't used Python, but from what I've heard, it could probably do good service in some of the same areas Perl does. I guess my biggest point is that Perl is so flexible that it saves you from having to know a dozen different languages to do a dozen different things. It certainly isn't an end-all language; there are limits to anything, even to a language that tries to do (almost) everything.
You did mention that you disliked Perl because you ended up with code that was difficult to maintain. However, that isn't a Perl limitation. It is a design limitation. If you carefully write readable Perl code and leave plenty of comments...and you use a well-thought, easily extensible design to begin with, the code won't be such a beast to keep up. This is why they have Software Engineering courses at University:) Of course, I'll admit that most people don't design very carefully, but, as I said, that isn't a language limitation.
That's not a troll. That could be empirically determined. I can't count the times when I've seen my worst posts modded up as funny and my better ones modded down as flamebait or overated. Unfortunately, there isn't any room for appeal that I've seen....but this is going OT, so I'll stop here.
I don't have a use for kuro5hin, so I don't consider that a flame.
I do still wish there had been more subject matter in the original post that people could consider... free response to an ambiguous post is a two-edged sword...and on slashdot, that ambiguity is likely to result in getting cut with both sides of the sword:)
What's the point? Java, C, C++, COBOL, Mantis, VB, you name it...even Ada. The point is not whether something is bad because it has become such a widely used language that it has legacy code dating back to a few generations, but whether it serves a useful purpose.
People (especially on/.) will argue that COBOL or FORTRAN or what have you is obsolete because it isn't the latest, sexiest language. That's not a valid argument. COBOL finds uses in every day environments that maintain our IT infrastructure...in places most people wouldn't even notice.
The same thing goes for Perl. It may not have the newness of Ruby, and it may have code dating back to release 4 on web servers the world over, but that doesn't mean it is dated or that it is time to scrap the language.
One of the nice things that Perl has going for it is the modularity. You go to CPAN, download a new module, and all of a sudden, your toolbox has a whole new tray of useful tools that save you from re-inventing the wheel. These tools let you perform system administration tasks, provide CGI applications with ease, or handle back end tasks. It is more powerful than shell scripting and more flexible than C/C++/Java.
As much as I'd like to think you're being reasonable, it seems to me you've made a blanket, baseless statement. If you want to provide some evidence that your point of view has merit, I'm sure we'd all be interested. In the meantime, you're likely to be dismissed as a troll....
Provoking a flamewar is still considerably different from provoking thoughtful discussion. Saying "Perl sucks, let's find a new language" is a flame. Saying "I think language X better serves the purposes Perl addresses" is thoughtful and provocative. See the difference? Unfortunately, the parent thread came down on the "Perl sucks" side of things...
I still disagree with the parent flame, but I think Mason really does a service handling at least the CGI tasks. On the sysadmin front, I have no idea, since Perl is my hammer:}
You really think Osama would sign up on eBay as bLaden?
As a side note, this sports entertainment place I frequent has a picture of Osama on the pee mat....I guess someone decided he could turn a profit and make every red-blooded American man pleased with himself for contributing to his country's honor...
In 2001, NPR had a story about how a sizable portion of Canada's ground hardware was stuck on a Russian shipping vessel just off the east coast because the vessel's owners wanted to be paid for the shipment back to Canada, the Canadian government had paid a contractor, and the contractor had gone out of business without paying the Russian shipper.
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I wonder what his take on it would be if he was the one running the rental agency. People are running around shouting "invasion of privacy" but all they are doing is moitoring where you take the car. It's not like they've bugged the car and are taping everything you say. I think, as you guys do, that this is a group of irresponsible folks who are trying to dodge responsibility for their misdeeds while labeling Budget as invasive and untrustworthy...and make a buck at the same time.
What I think the rental companies should do is blacklist people who do this sort of thing...or charge them much, much higher fees.
This is all about Budget protecting its investment (cars) and maintaining some degree of control over it. I think this is particularly important in light of the rented vehicles that were used in bombing both the World Trade Center (in the 90's) and the Murrah building.
Then again, the irresponsible individuals in society will never see themselves as being out of line. The whole point of dodging responsibility is to get what you want without the adverse consequences.
For a moment I thought you were going to say she was this guy's poor wife!
If somebody can show me a laptop with two 15" screens where one unfolds out and sits beside the other, I might be interested. As it is, this thing looks more like a gimic than a useful tool. Wake me up when there's something worth looking at.
I don't have a non-US region disc need, so it isn't like it affects me. However, it is still a crippling feat^h^h^h^hbug.
I guess I understand why they put in region encoding (create an artificial market so they can inflate the prices), but I think that just underscores the greed of MPAA-affiliated companies.
I think you forgot about region encoding ;)
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, issued a statement calling the lawsuit "frivolous" and defending the labels' recent efforts to deter digital piracy.
:)
It must be a frivolous lawsuit. Has to be. The RIAA has filed so many, it has to know one when it sees one
I guess it's sort of believable...theoretically you can do the same thing (natively) with a Crusoe chip. What I have a hard time believing is that you can store this new "run anything" OS (how does it handle Mac programs? Palm? *NIX? Be? ...?) and the software, and the runtime libraries, etc., and that file storage is actually seamless and transparent. My take is that they might have a proof of concept for some limited applications, but I'd love to see what happens when they let an independent person give the thing a spin in a real-world environment. Besides which, I don't see the utility of doing this. The whole point of a handheld is to do mobile tasks...schedule, planning, task list, contact list, finance, and a few cheap games. Laptops were designed for mobile application computing, not handhelds.
For some reason I thought you were trying to express valid opinions rather than just trolling. Sadly, I was mistaken. I'd sit here and argue with you about whether I was being anal retentive, Episodes 4-6, acting, writing and dialogue, etc., but as a troll you probably wouldn't have the capacity to make a reasoned, thoughtful, cogent, and (shocker) cleanly written response...
Out of all the whiny brats who hate Star Wars because it doesn't live up to their outrageous expectations, I finally find someone with exactly the same perspective I have. I just wish more people enjoyed the movies for what they are rather than griping about what they aren't.
Notice as Anubis Army overruns the city...the head Anubis Warrior has his foot on a severed head....I forget the rating on that movie, but it's PG-something.
And he's the same person as Dooku.
- Yoda was obviously trying to help Luke grow. Part of that was physical and mental conditioning. Luke would be running through the forest with Yoda giving him Force lessons.
- A good Jedi doesn't let anger/hate/etc. affect him. Hence, you can't just 'piss Yoda off.'
- Jedi will act to protect others. Dooku was setting up to wipe out Obi-Wan and Anakin. Yoda was simply coming to the rescue. You'll notice from the dialog that Yoda retains his composure throughout the entire sequence. Contrast this with Luke facing the Emperor and Darth Vader. Luke in that situation is quite obviously struggling with his hate and anger.
The fight scene, instead of making you feel dirty, should make you proud of Yoda as an exemplary Jedi Master.That's your opinion. There are plenty of people who go to movies (especially, Star Wars movies) for the entertainment value. I'm not looking for a philosophical treatise on the universe. I'm looking for decent action, grand vistas, and cute gags. Part of the charm from Ep. 4-6 was the gags, the inconsistency, etc. Maybe you prefer something that looks like it is a photo clip from an actual event...but that doesn't necessarily make movies that don't look that way bad.
The beauty of the Star Wars universe is (and always has been) about the little guy making it big against the oppressive regime...Luke helping take down the Empire...Anakin making it from slavery to a position of importance in the galactic republic.
Besides all that, if you want to complain about bad writing, that's your prerogative, but you'd better make sure *your* writing isn't bad...and I think you failed in that regard.
CPAN-style modularity comes at the price of security.
How do you mean? If you mean "security through obscurity", then that isn't security at all...
Lisp/Scheme unmaintainability is (IMHO) a direct result of the structure of the language, at least, from my experience. When the entire 'program' is embedded in a single expression, you sometimes have to rewrite entire parts of the expression to change a trivial amount of functionality. One of our ongoing class assignments in Scheme was to make a grammar parser, and the changes that the professor showed from stage to stage as the assignments progressed were fairly major.
Perhaps part of my bias against Scheme and Lisp is due to a lack of intimate understanding, therefore what appears unmaintainable to me really isn't, but I'm not sure of that. It seems far easier to maintain code written in a language where you have discrete graspable constructs than code written in a language with almost none.
That's a more meaty response :)
;)), but I certainly understand why you'd use that for application and system programming over, say, Java. (Perl really isn't designed for those tasks, although it is useful in a web-based ASP model).
:) Of course, I'll admit that most people don't design very carefully, but, as I said, that isn't a language limitation.
I've used Ada for school projects, JavaScript and Perl in corporate environments (I've only been out for a couple of years), and had classes in C, C++, Lisp, Scheme (there *is* a difference), x86 ASM, and (theoretically) Java. (I could include Apple Basic in the list, but it really doesn't apply).
The JavaScript was used in both server- and client-side applications (my last company was a BroadVision shop), and I certainly appreciated the OO, one-way approach it offered. It was also considerably easier than my experiences trying to learn Java. Maybe it's just me, but I found that compared with Ada (another strongly-typed language) that Java was a real pain to learn. I've heard all the arguments about its robustness, built-in OO, etc., but I find it difficult to justify using it as an all-around tool, and even have trouble with the idea of using it for CGI applications.
I've forgotten a lot of my C/C++ syntax (writing too much Perl code
I still don't quite get the Lisp and Scheme obsession. Yes, it is certainly novel to be able to have a program recurse on itself and create its own anonymous routines, but the code is nearly unmaintainable and unless you take drastic measures, quite unreadable.
I haven't used Python, but from what I've heard, it could probably do good service in some of the same areas Perl does. I guess my biggest point is that Perl is so flexible that it saves you from having to know a dozen different languages to do a dozen different things. It certainly isn't an end-all language; there are limits to anything, even to a language that tries to do (almost) everything.
You did mention that you disliked Perl because you ended up with code that was difficult to maintain. However, that isn't a Perl limitation. It is a design limitation. If you carefully write readable Perl code and leave plenty of comments...and you use a well-thought, easily extensible design to begin with, the code won't be such a beast to keep up. This is why they have Software Engineering courses at University
almost makes you wonder how a +4 post can be a troll.... :)
That's not a troll. That could be empirically determined. I can't count the times when I've seen my worst posts modded up as funny and my better ones modded down as flamebait or overated. Unfortunately, there isn't any room for appeal that I've seen....but this is going OT, so I'll stop here.
I don't have a use for kuro5hin, so I don't consider that a flame.
:)
I do still wish there had been more subject matter in the original post that people could consider... free response to an ambiguous post is a two-edged sword...and on slashdot, that ambiguity is likely to result in getting cut with both sides of the sword
What's the point? Java, C, C++, COBOL, Mantis, VB, you name it...even Ada. The point is not whether something is bad because it has become such a widely used language that it has legacy code dating back to a few generations, but whether it serves a useful purpose.
/.) will argue that COBOL or FORTRAN or what have you is obsolete because it isn't the latest, sexiest language. That's not a valid argument. COBOL finds uses in every day environments that maintain our IT infrastructure...in places most people wouldn't even notice.
People (especially on
The same thing goes for Perl. It may not have the newness of Ruby, and it may have code dating back to release 4 on web servers the world over, but that doesn't mean it is dated or that it is time to scrap the language.
One of the nice things that Perl has going for it is the modularity. You go to CPAN, download a new module, and all of a sudden, your toolbox has a whole new tray of useful tools that save you from re-inventing the wheel. These tools let you perform system administration tasks, provide CGI applications with ease, or handle back end tasks. It is more powerful than shell scripting and more flexible than C/C++/Java.
As much as I'd like to think you're being reasonable, it seems to me you've made a blanket, baseless statement. If you want to provide some evidence that your point of view has merit, I'm sure we'd all be interested. In the meantime, you're likely to be dismissed as a troll....
Provoking a flamewar is still considerably different from provoking thoughtful discussion. Saying "Perl sucks, let's find a new language" is a flame. Saying "I think language X better serves the purposes Perl addresses" is thoughtful and provocative. See the difference? Unfortunately, the parent thread came down on the "Perl sucks" side of things...
I still disagree with the parent flame, but I think Mason really does a service handling at least the CGI tasks. On the sysadmin front, I have no idea, since Perl is my hammer :}
I dunno where you get them, but I visit this sports place that has Osama bin Laden pee mats...top that!
You really think Osama would sign up on eBay as bLaden?
As a side note, this sports entertainment place I frequent has a picture of Osama on the pee mat....I guess someone decided he could turn a profit and make every red-blooded American man pleased with himself for contributing to his country's honor...
In 2001, NPR had a story about how a sizable portion of Canada's ground hardware was stuck on a Russian shipping vessel just off the east coast because the vessel's owners wanted to be paid for the shipment back to Canada, the Canadian government had paid a contractor, and the contractor had gone out of business without paying the Russian shipper.