I haven't been following C++0x, but after reading the C++0x FAQ I am very pleased. It really fills a lot of the simple, practical holes in the language.
I think the success of C# is part of why these things are being considered. For example, C# recently added an advanced form of initializer lists - which is now in C++0x. Another example is the scoping of enums, which has long been a pain. Many coding standards require enums to be ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDER_SCORES because they don't obey scoping rules: this is fixed. NULL is now replaced with nullptr, which is a minor improvement that looks much like how this was done in C++/CLI. (That's the bastardized C++ for.NET). Namespace cleanups, foreach,... the list is huge, and it looks like C++ is "borrowing back" from Java and C#.
Competition is good.
I know that everything I just listed probably exists in many other languages, but C# and Java are very prominent in enterprise development, and are making huge gains. I will be very very glad to see a real ISO standard gaining ground again.
Same thing happened with DDR. I love it, and there will always be a hardcore group of DDR players. But the market is saturated, and it isn't new anymore, so sales won't continue to climb forever.
The article doesn't really provide enough information to support the conclusion. All
Summary: Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm. The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks.
Right, but that doesn't help because it discounts the quantity of coal, and the fact that it is being burned and released into the atmosphere. It didn't answer at all the amount of radiation released in total, only the density of the radiation. The question is: Does a coal plant release more or less radiation than a nuclear plant with equivalent output?
About Coal Creek Station: In 1993, the Nation consumed more than 2 million tons of coal per day.
And the article you linked to says:
concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm)
But don't know what 2 million tons x 1 part per million means.... soo... Aha!
*Editor's Note (posted 12/30/08): In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ashâ"a by-product from burning coal for powerâ"and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plantâ"a by-product from burning coal for electricityâ"carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
How did you manage that? When I plugged my iPhone into my Windows box, it appeared as a read-only camera. Same thing with my Linux box.
As far as I know, if you want to put anything onto an iPhone, you have to be using iTunes, and one is subject to its limitations. Same goes for bookmarks - everybody talks about sorting bookmarks - ehhh.. only if you sync them with Safari. Otherwise, you can sort SOME bookmarks, so long as they aren't the preloaded forced-upon-you bookmarks like "Google" "Yahoo" and "iPhone User Guide"
I have no opinion on labor laws, nor did I represent one.
cause there are no laws preventing people from being fired
Incorrect. To name a few: racial/religions discrimination, public policy violations, whistle-blower protections, personal injury, defamation,... These are often lumped together as "wrongful termination" and companies can be sued for them.
I am starting to agree. I got an iPhone because I knew so many people who raved over it, and it is a great device. But right out of the box I was shocked at how little I could do with it. I can't put my documents on it, or my pictures (which are all nicely organized into folders and subfolders like 99% of the population does). I can't use it as a flash drive, can't even sort my bookmarks, which I can't sync to the device anyway since I don't use Safari. It is so severely crippled I'm debating taking it back.
Whereas a jailbroken phone can do all of the above with no difficult at all. As can every other smartphone on the market.
I agree with your logic, and it serves to prove my point. Since the individuals are not responsible, they have no incentive to follow the law. If the law held them responsible, then employees would no longer engage in illegal activities.
In that scenario, if your boss threatens to fire you over your refusal, then they violate labor laws and face blackmail charges. If you go along with it, then the boss is also an accomplice. So the individuals would have disincentive to ask employees to do illegal actions.
Therefore, holding individuals responsible for their actions makes individuals less likely to commit crimes. Since corporations are a group of individuals, corporations are less likely to commit crimes.
The problem is not the fine. The problem is that the individuals who did this can hide under the corporation and not be held responsible. Why is it that if I did this on my own, I would personally be liable, but if I did so working for a corporation, the corporation is liable? Can I just do anything I want, so long as I have a shell corporation with a boss who tells me to do it?
If we held individuals responsible, then individuals would stand-up to the corporations and say no. But so long as they can clear their conscience by blaming their boss, and on up the chain, these things will happen. Oh, and punishing the CEOs doesn't fix it either, unless the CEO was really involved. Everybody seems to want to go to the person at the top. I want to beat the person at the bottom who actually did it.
Worse yet is the systems with limitations instead of minimum requirements. For example, it must be exactly 8 characters, and cannot contain any special characters.
Sorry to reply to my own post. The article only says:
Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards So all he got was serial numbers? meh.
One must wonder why such a skilled aviator was taking a gamble with such hostile conditions, given that he was looking for a flat stretch of land to race cars on, but that is one mystery we shall probably never know the answer to."
Stated as though it was soooo-oo obvious that eeeveryone knew not to fly in that area.
I often see the opinion that "mathematical software" should not be patentable, but "non-mathematical software" should be. I appreciate the theoretical arguments on this subject, but the practical ones seem to point the other way.
When Phil Katz invented a compression algorithm, he patented it. It seems to me, to be a fair thing to do. He invented the algorithm, he should deserve the credit and (if he chose to commercialize a product), the resulting profits. Same thing with encryption algorithms - if I created a new super-encryption algorithm, I should be able to commercialize it.
The problematic software patents are not mathematical. They are things like one-click shopping and auctions done over the internet, or really all of the something done over the internet patents. These are lame and should be eliminated. But a new algorithm seems like truly inventive to me.
huh? They are even taking Microsoft's APIs (like WinForms) and porting that to Mac/Linux/Unix/BSD/Windows. And promoting other APIs like GTK# as alternatives. How is that not trying to be cross-platform?
Here's why that doesn't work: Nobody wants to be a smith because that's not fun. That's a profession.
Existing MMOs handle that by making everyone be a warrior, mage, etc - PLUS they choose a profession. The profession is handled automatically with things like "You are a level 10 chef, because you have cooked X number of items" which of course, involves gathering items by killing them and clicking the "Cook" button.
For years, we have been hearing about how you don't even need an OS any longer, and how a browser is enough. There is a queue of usual objections to this idea:
Where are my files stored?
How do I edit documents
What if I don't have internet access where I am?
Web mail clients just aren't as good
Well, for the first time, I believe that an internet-only OS is now possible. Most of these objections are dwindling. Peopel backup their files online anyway, so the fear of having someone else in control is going away. How many people have all their bills, passwords, etc. stored on a gmail server somewhere? 3G has made internet access almost ubiquitous, and web apps are getting a lot more sophisticated - enough that webmail is powerful enough for almost the most hard-core email users.
This may actually work now, whereas, even 2 years ago this would have seemed absurd.
Sounds like a very green bunch: A combination of astroturf + money.
I suspect that the energy lobby is somewhere behind these bizarre anti-sustainability movements. Maybe even convincing poor fools that they are really helping things out.
Just because the vendors do not agree to ship the codecs, that is not a reason for the codecs to be removed from the spec entirely. I assume each codec still needs some kind of unique identifier, and those identifiers should still be in there. The article is unclear on whether all mention of Ogg will be removed, or whether it simply will not be listed as required.
Of course, like any form of DRM, it can be broken. But let me point out one thing:
The only difference I see between this scheme and the one for games on the commodore 64 is the size and complexity of the key.
The big difference is that, for the most part, BD+ is working. The old schemes required a middle-school education, and time. The newer schemes required high-school maths. The schemes today require knowledge of cryptanalysis and virtual machines. The bar is being raised to the point where we are today: only a commercial company has the time and expertise to break it.
Since the designers of the DRM know it can be broken, all they are trying to do is make it hard enough to delay it until they have sold enough copies. To that end, they are actually winning.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't been following C++0x, but after reading the C++0x FAQ I am very pleased. It really fills a lot of the simple, practical holes in the language.
I think the success of C# is part of why these things are being considered. For example, C# recently added an advanced form of initializer lists - which is now in C++0x. Another example is the scoping of enums, which has long been a pain. Many coding standards require enums to be ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDER_SCORES because they don't obey scoping rules: this is fixed. NULL is now replaced with nullptr, which is a minor improvement that looks much like how this was done in C++/CLI. (That's the bastardized C++ for .NET). Namespace cleanups, foreach, ... the list is huge, and it looks like C++ is "borrowing back" from Java and C#.
Competition is good.
I know that everything I just listed probably exists in many other languages, but C# and Java are very prominent in enterprise development, and are making huge gains. I will be very very glad to see a real ISO standard gaining ground again.
Same thing happened with DDR. I love it, and there will always be a hardcore group of DDR players. But the market is saturated, and it isn't new anymore, so sales won't continue to climb forever.
The article doesn't really provide enough information to support the conclusion. All
Summary: Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm. The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks.
Right, but that doesn't help because it discounts the quantity of coal, and the fact that it is being burned and released into the atmosphere. It didn't answer at all the amount of radiation released in total, only the density of the radiation. The question is: Does a coal plant release more or less radiation than a nuclear plant with equivalent output?
About Coal Creek Station: In 1993, the Nation consumed more than 2 million tons of coal per day.
And the article you linked to says:
concentrations of uranium fall in the range from slightly below 1 to 4 parts per million (ppm)
But don't know what 2 million tons x 1 part per million means.... soo... Aha!
Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste
The editor clarifies, at the end of the article:
*Editor's Note (posted 12/30/08): In response to some concerns raised by readers, a change has been made to this story. The sentence marked with an asterisk was changed from "In fact, fly ashâ"a by-product from burning coal for powerâ"and other coal waste contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste" to "In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plantâ"a by-product from burning coal for electricityâ"carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." Our source for this statistic is Dana Christensen, an associate lab director for energy and engineering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as well as 1978 paper in Science authored by J.P. McBride and colleagues, also of ORNL.
As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.
Game developers don't complain about used games. Game publishers do. That's like confusing a musician, with an RIAA lawyer.
How did you manage that? When I plugged my iPhone into my Windows box, it appeared as a read-only camera. Same thing with my Linux box.
As far as I know, if you want to put anything onto an iPhone, you have to be using iTunes, and one is subject to its limitations. Same goes for bookmarks - everybody talks about sorting bookmarks - ehhh.. only if you sync them with Safari. Otherwise, you can sort SOME bookmarks, so long as they aren't the preloaded forced-upon-you bookmarks like "Google" "Yahoo" and "iPhone User Guide"
You have an odd opinion of labor laws.
I have no opinion on labor laws, nor did I represent one.
cause there are no laws preventing people from being fired
Incorrect. To name a few: racial/religions discrimination, public policy violations, whistle-blower protections, personal injury, defamation, ... These are often lumped together as "wrongful termination" and companies can be sued for them.
I am starting to agree. I got an iPhone because I knew so many people who raved over it, and it is a great device. But right out of the box I was shocked at how little I could do with it. I can't put my documents on it, or my pictures (which are all nicely organized into folders and subfolders like 99% of the population does). I can't use it as a flash drive, can't even sort my bookmarks, which I can't sync to the device anyway since I don't use Safari. It is so severely crippled I'm debating taking it back.
Whereas a jailbroken phone can do all of the above with no difficult at all. As can every other smartphone on the market.
I agree with your logic, and it serves to prove my point. Since the individuals are not responsible, they have no incentive to follow the law. If the law held them responsible, then employees would no longer engage in illegal activities.
In that scenario, if your boss threatens to fire you over your refusal, then they violate labor laws and face blackmail charges. If you go along with it, then the boss is also an accomplice. So the individuals would have disincentive to ask employees to do illegal actions.
Therefore, holding individuals responsible for their actions makes individuals less likely to commit crimes. Since corporations are a group of individuals, corporations are less likely to commit crimes.
QED.
The problem is not the fine. The problem is that the individuals who did this can hide under the corporation and not be held responsible. Why is it that if I did this on my own, I would personally be liable, but if I did so working for a corporation, the corporation is liable? Can I just do anything I want, so long as I have a shell corporation with a boss who tells me to do it?
If we held individuals responsible, then individuals would stand-up to the corporations and say no. But so long as they can clear their conscience by blaming their boss, and on up the chain, these things will happen. Oh, and punishing the CEOs doesn't fix it either, unless the CEO was really involved. Everybody seems to want to go to the person at the top. I want to beat the person at the bottom who actually did it.
Can someone explain to me why AC power transmission would require 3 lines?
Worse yet is the systems with limitations instead of minimum requirements. For example, it must be exactly 8 characters, and cannot contain any special characters.
I think by "send them into space" he meant "send them out of orbit"
Sorry to reply to my own post. The article only says:
Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards
So all he got was serial numbers? meh.
Passports use BAC encryption, which is obviously pretty weak.
One must wonder why such a skilled aviator was taking a gamble with such hostile conditions, given that he was looking for a flat stretch of land to race cars on, but that is one mystery we shall probably never know the answer to."
Stated as though it was soooo-oo obvious that eeeveryone knew not to fly in that area.
Why would anyone want a computer that offers distinctly less functionality than their existing one?
Price.
I often see the opinion that "mathematical software" should not be patentable, but "non-mathematical software" should be. I appreciate the theoretical arguments on this subject, but the practical ones seem to point the other way.
When Phil Katz invented a compression algorithm, he patented it. It seems to me, to be a fair thing to do. He invented the algorithm, he should deserve the credit and (if he chose to commercialize a product), the resulting profits. Same thing with encryption algorithms - if I created a new super-encryption algorithm, I should be able to commercialize it.
The problematic software patents are not mathematical. They are things like one-click shopping and auctions done over the internet, or really all of the something done over the internet patents. These are lame and should be eliminated. But a new algorithm seems like truly inventive to me.
huh? They are even taking Microsoft's APIs (like WinForms) and porting that to Mac/Linux/Unix/BSD/Windows. And promoting other APIs like GTK# as alternatives. How is that not trying to be cross-platform?
Here's why that doesn't work: Nobody wants to be a smith because that's not fun. That's a profession.
Existing MMOs handle that by making everyone be a warrior, mage, etc - PLUS they choose a profession. The profession is handled automatically with things like "You are a level 10 chef, because you have cooked X number of items" which of course, involves gathering items by killing them and clicking the "Cook" button.
You should try playing Eve online. Join one of the big corporations.
For years, we have been hearing about how you don't even need an OS any longer, and how a browser is enough. There is a queue of usual objections to this idea:
Well, for the first time, I believe that an internet-only OS is now possible. Most of these objections are dwindling. Peopel backup their files online anyway, so the fear of having someone else in control is going away. How many people have all their bills, passwords, etc. stored on a gmail server somewhere? 3G has made internet access almost ubiquitous, and web apps are getting a lot more sophisticated - enough that webmail is powerful enough for almost the most hard-core email users.
This may actually work now, whereas, even 2 years ago this would have seemed absurd.
Sounds like a very green bunch: A combination of astroturf + money.
I suspect that the energy lobby is somewhere behind these bizarre anti-sustainability movements. Maybe even convincing poor fools that they are really helping things out.
How do they keep the fiber from rotting? Sewers contain all sorts of household chemicals, in addition to biological waste.
Just because the vendors do not agree to ship the codecs, that is not a reason for the codecs to be removed from the spec entirely. I assume each codec still needs some kind of unique identifier, and those identifiers should still be in there. The article is unclear on whether all mention of Ogg will be removed, or whether it simply will not be listed as required.
Of course, like any form of DRM, it can be broken. But let me point out one thing:
The only difference I see between this scheme and the one for games on the commodore 64 is the size and complexity of the key.
The big difference is that, for the most part, BD+ is working. The old schemes required a middle-school education, and time. The newer schemes required high-school maths. The schemes today require knowledge of cryptanalysis and virtual machines. The bar is being raised to the point where we are today: only a commercial company has the time and expertise to break it.
Since the designers of the DRM know it can be broken, all they are trying to do is make it hard enough to delay it until they have sold enough copies. To that end, they are actually winning.