We may be pretty close to what is feasible in this universe.
Not even close to likely.:) Where did you get that idea?
We don't know what our own genetics mean; we can't manipulate them hardly at all. Or those of anything else, other than in the most crude, ham-handed ways. Our medical knowledge is at the scratch-the-surface level. We can't control aging yet. Chip tech is still at the 2D level... when it goes 3D, which will require lower power tech or some new means of heat transfer, chip complexity will leap from AxB to AxBxC. We don't have AI yet, but we will, and when we do, we'll also have a host of lesser technologies that will completely change the day to day workloads of every person living in a developed country. We're not yet off the planet except in the most baby-stepwise manner imaginable. Our crowd everything off the surface living habits could be revised to live well above the surface, turning the world back into jungle and productive farmland, no roads on the surface, no buildings, no transport. Just Lions and Tigers and Bears (and perhaps things thought long lost.) Our energy supplies are far more harmful than they eventually will become; our economic systems are based on scarcity, and scarcity is very likely to become a lost characteristic over time.
There's more change coming than any of us can reasonably anticipate, some of it purely social, but a lot of it based on technologies we don't have yet, because the underlying science isn't there yet.
if you run any operating system that either used floppies, or has been developed since floppies came into style, your operating system will read them.
Can you read Amiga format 3.5 floppies? They're not recorded the same as the ones used for Windows, you know. Can you read Burroughs 8" floppies? 6800 Flex 5" floppies? CP/m floppies?
I'm asking as the author of a Flex emulation that runs under Windows; my finding was that Windows could not, in fact, read Flex floppies. No comprehension of the filesystem, you see. And I've yet to run into anything but Amiga hardware that could read Amiga 3.5" floppies, that's more of a hardware issue at the first level.
So the fact that the AM band is full of crap that doesn't seem to affect things doesn't prove very much.
You have in no way made this point. The fact that the AM band is full of stations fading in and out all night does, in fact, just as I say, prove that broadcast stations can exist -- even under commercial pressures -- in the face of competing signals they cannot control. The technical basis for the signals competing randomly is completely irrelevant; the single fact that they do is what makes my argument -- and destroys the one where people claim that the FCC prevents the "chaos" of people running low power AM stations anywhere they want. The FCC only prevents the people -- that is, those without deep pockets -- from putting an AM station on the air. FM is different, but not in a bad way. A non-mobile audience will enjoy a relatively stable selection of stations. Mobile users don't (but this is no different from now, except they'd have a lot more variety.)
Now, as to LPFM: It is not easily available; it never has been. It remains extremely expensive (although I grant you, much less than a "real" station), subject to all manner of restrictions (I'm not talking RF now, I'm talking about where you live, how long you've been there, what you do, your on air hours, what organization you represent, when they open and close the limited grant mechanism, and so forth.) Even were you to live in a "gimme" area, like a rural town with only one radio station, that's still no assurance that you'll be allowed to fire up an LPFM station, even if you're willing and able to jump through the ridiculous, almost endless, hoops. it is a sop.
since then there's been a shift back to making it easier
It is easier to jump off a bridge than it is to walk into a fire. Neither one, however, is actually "easy." Let me explain to you what "easy" is in this context: One... I invest about $100 in radio transmission equipment. Only spending that much because I want a good quality signal without spurs, otherwise I'd build it out of old junk for nothing. Maybe I even go nuts and use SDR tech, spend a couple hundred bucks and create the Immaculate Signal. Two, I string a wire, and trim it to a precise length resulting in the lowest possible SWR. Cost, perhaps $10.00. Three... I'm on the bloody air. Perhaps I drive the station with my iPad, or my computer, or a turntable, a one op-amp mixer and a microphone. Perhaps I hook it to my CD changer and call it good. That is easy. The FCC and it's tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of requirements and the lawyers and the forms and dealing with dead eyed bureaucrats... that is not easy. Nor, other than the FCC's power grab in proxy for the corporations, is it in any way necessary.
With the Internet, you have no reason to broadcast music
Far less of the country (hell, the world) is hooked permanently or easily to the Internet than can reliably access it. Even were this not the case, broadcast content is significantly different from connected content in cost to the listener, accessibility, limits, restrictions, coverage, locality and so on. You really need to take some basic communications courses.
Oh, please. LPFM is virtually unavailable. Openings anywhere anyone can hear you are so rare as to be irrelevant, and the LP part ensures that should you get one of the rare licenses granted in a rural area, no one will hear you. Even if they did, there are severe limits for LPFM station applications and the practical result of commercial stations having got there first (way first!) in non-rural areas is that you aren't even slightly likely to get any of that precious neighboring airspace.
In other words, you want to run a 100 watt or 10 watt station, you almost certainly can't. It's a sop, not any kind of equal footing or honest offering.
You want everything, but don't realize that this shared resource can't be decided by the selfish.
No, I want something, not everything, and I realize already that this resource is (a) not shared and (b) entirely controlled by the selfish, and (c) that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
As I pointed out to you, the AM band demonstrates that these resources can, in fact, be shared, and no particular earth shaking problems result. What you have right now is essentially no sharing with the public; just between commercial entities. I maintain that is unfair, imbalanced, and downright abusive of the public. It's an intentional muzzle, and WRT the principles of liberty, it's downright evil.
The FCC has never helped anyone in licensing the airwaves other than deep pocket (usually commercial) interests. They literally stole the entire spectrum for nothing, and then sold it off at prices no ordinary citizen could ever afford. Some bones, carefully neutered to be of little use in mass communication, were thrown: citizens band and amateur radio. Both forbid broadcast use, meaning one-to-many-unspecified listeners, both forbid transmission of music (even if it's your own, which is bizarre to say the least.)
The FCC is an object lesson in the perils of out of control government. Current-policy (no pun intended) FCC apologists are object lessons in people who don't understand liberty or broadcast technology.
What would be fair? Perhaps half of the broadcast bands given to the people, half to commercial interests.
Preemptive strike: Apologists argue that letting the public broadcast when and where they want would be chaos. I simply point you to the AM bands at night; propagation being what it is, only strong local stations or "clear channel" stations can be reliably received, while sections of the band without these fade from one signal to the next in an unending (and frankly, entertaining) medley of opinions, music, news, and so forth. Both the AM broadcast industry and the public have, somehow, survived this admittedly chaotic nightly onslaught. I expect the same would be true if you drove around town and heard different stations as you traveled in the day.
I don't see what "the government" has to do with any of the things you listed.
The article's premise was that pervasive surveillance can be viewed as acceptable under the aegis of "trading" privacy for government transparency, which, in the surveillance context, means that we are watching them.
I'm suggesting that's very likely a bad idea. You're saying the tech is unavoidable. I'm saying that the use of that tech is governed by law, particularly privacy laws of various stripes (you can't record audio in many cases, you have to have a warrant to record a telephone conversation, you can't convey what you hear on certain radio frequencies, etc.) The idea that we accept pervasive surveillance as a trade for the ability to watch the government, couched as an argument for "transparency", is going to be mediated by law, which in turn we might have a chance to stick an opinion in the mix before pervasive tech turns into pervasive exposure.
Sorry I was unclear, I didn't mean to be. It's a big issue for people concerned with privacy. It's a non-issue for those who don't understand what privacy was and can be. In between, there are a lot of levels of understanding.
Pseudonyms and rude behavior are separable issues, and should be treated as such. Rude behavior can be addressed with moderation (and should be.)
Pseudonyms are important for a number of reasons, including protection from stalkers, rouge governments (but I repeat myself), troll shadowing, bullying, ex-(wives|husbands|jackbooted thugs|etc), revolutionary ideas that step on other people's turf, or could, critical political commentary, and, oh yes, privacy, should one desire that.
The fact that pseudonyms are the first layer for many trolls is irrelevant if moderation is adequate. And that, in turn, can be addressed in many ways. Slashdot, for instance, reduces visibility of trolls by rare (unfortunately) moderation. Other sites let the users detect and suppress the trolls; that kills trolls faster, but it also kills contrary ideas and that's not good.
So it seems to me that the most important thing here is to get moderation up to the highest possible standard. When you run a site, after all, it's your barbecue... you should get right in there and see that the level of discourse you want is maintained. If you don't, it's your fault. Don't blame the pseudonymous folks for your failings.
TFS talks about balancing the scales between the citizen's loss of privacy and some enforced transparency on government.
Remember who has the power here. What the government can do with pervasive data about you is extensive, from arresting you to disappearing you; none of which are likely to have serious consequences to the government or its actors.
What you can do with videos of government action is quite limited, both by the difficulty in bringing actors shielded by multiple levels of bureaucracy to bay, and by the government's ability to muzzle you, punish you, and otherwise intimidate and repress. Your life could be ruined in just a few minutes. Is your imagination telling you that "they" won't know where "the video" comes from? Look at your phone. You know it tells anyone who has the power to ask exactly where you are, right? You do know that? Think on that for a bit and how it might affect video. Think about what it means if you're recording "them", but everyone else, including "them", are recording you. Think they can't pick out who took what imaging data simply from the angle of the dangle? Think again.
The privacy some citizens seem so willing to give up for some measure of security (or the illusion thereof) used to allow you to restart your life; keep tragedy personal; rein in the pervasiveness of mistakes; undertake risks without compromising everything, allow innocent bystanders to avoid being entangled in dangerous situations, and much more. The government has willingly taken all these things from us to one degree or another. At the same time, modern "social" media has trained up an entire generation (perhaps more than one) to piss away their privacy on the sidewalks of Facebook and Twitter; it seems to me that the majority of these folks aren't very clear on what privacy used to be -- that's why they don't value it.
But to actively consider trading what little privacy one has left for a mostly illusory power to watch the government back... Be careful what you wish for. You're likely to get it.
So they did; thank you for that, much appreciated. Always loved his early work, really twisted my tail when I read of the original denial, stuck in my craw, as it were. Well, see, I'm wrong a bit already. lol.
Arizona vs. United States last year ended identity demands "on suspicion of brown-ness."
Sadly, it'll just move the corruption to a manufactured pretext mode: "I saw him swerve", etc. It'll no more stop this than NY cops pulling over black people preferentially has stopped despite loads of negative publicity, etc. It'll no more stop than the USG will let Cat Stevens back into the country. The whole damned shooting match is corrupt. I suspect it will serve as a lesson for Governor Brewer to treat Obama with more respect. But yeah, the decision went the right way. So did Heller -- but for many of the wrong reasons, and under an opinion that was batshit crazy. It can happen.
Pacific Operators Offshore v. Valladolid, kept big business from slithering out of it's medical obligations
This was such an edge case that it will have almost no impact on anyone, anywhere. Which in my admittedly cynical view, probably serves to explain how it went this way.
US v. Jones let a known-complete-dirtbag walk because the GPS tracker was placed on his car a day after the warrant expired. I can think of few better cases of upholding the 4th amendment than this
Yeah, that's a win, no doubt. If you count having to chase totally obvious government malfeasance all the way to SCOTUS a win, sigh. I know I couldn't afford to do it. But -- hopefully -- it'll make future cases expire on contact. Assuming there aren't other circumstances, like, the federal government actually caring about the case and claiming no one can see the reasons because they're state secrets and other such highly fragrant fertilizer.
I don't think we've quite lost yet.
Well, here's to you and your optimism. I'd buy you a beer if I could. I'd just as soon be completely, utterly wrong.
Yeah. Except this David doesn't even have a sling. It's going to go to SCOTUS, they'll side with the save-the-children, oh-no-terrorists, and it's-for-your-own-good crackpottery that dominates the mindset of our legislature and our judiciary.
Interstate = intrastate, ex post facto = go ahead and add punishment (just call it something else), probable cause = "well, we thought it was a reasonable search", borders = 100mi from the.... borders.
Come on, we know exactly how this is going to go.
Although I have to say, three fucking big cheers for trying, little people.
Can you give me an example of OO code you can write in C that you cannot write in "C++ - the good parts", or rather a limited subset of C++?
Of course not. What I can do, however, is point out that people who write in C++ don't write those things; they use the language's own constructs, and so they don't know what's going on -- only that it is.
Why do you want to roll your own OO code when C++ can do it for you?
Because then I know what it does and so can both modify it at the most basic level if need be, it's generally (much) lighter weight as it doesn't drag in all manner of other stuff, there's no "mystery code" or sudden jumps of megabytes in size and/or unexplained slowdowns. I write high performance code -- live signal processing, etc. Full control lets me shave here and fatten there, all very much under my direct control.
What makes C OO code more maintainable?
You wrote it. It's right there. When you make an object or a class, there's no "mystery meat." In HLL OO, ask yourself: How did your parameters get parsed or set to their defaults? When? Does it always happen, or does it happen only when it needs to? Can you even tell? What's on the stack? In what order? In what format? How is memory cleanup handled? Do you know? In C, you know. I like knowing, I like being able to change things any way I want (relates to your question) and I also like being able to set things up any way I want.
Do you have experience with C++-style memory management, and what's your opinion of it?
You mean through a GC library, or are you just talking about heaps, new and delete as opposed to malloc and free and so on? Sure, I've got some experience there, and it's ok at the most basic level, although I would *never* use a garbage collector without a gun to my head. That's a great way to chop random execution holes in what was a smoothly running program. I have my own memory management system that I built over years of creating heavyweight applications -- image and signal processing, paint, ai, some other stuff. There are some techniques in there that make for extremely fast memory allocate/deallocate with zero fragmentation, a development-level leak detection system and over/underrun tripwires, and so far, it's worked really well for me, far better than just random use of malloc and crew.
I have lots of things like that -- really powerful and fast (and tight!) general list management, string management, threading, etc. Been writing C for one heck of a long time. Been bitten by standard libraries, other people's code, compiler bugs, suffered through inline ASM, you name it, I've seen it. If what I saw made itself known to me as a problem, I tried really hard to fix it. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and I've got (for instance) an Aperture clone that is about a megabyte of core code, creates its own UI dynamically, does quite a bit more than Aperture does, and in a CPU-only system (not counting GPUs, in other words), outperforms Aperture by leaps and bounds, the more cores, the better. My SDR software (actually written on top of C++, but basically not using anything from it except for UI) has more concurrent signal processing operations than anything else I'm aware of that's on the market right now, and it'll run in a fairly minimum system although again, the more cores, the better. These advantages can be attributed to good code, code I understand, and an ultra tight library of good stuff like blistering memory management that supplies a lot of what's needed without compromise.
I'm genuinely curious, because I have never heard someone claim that they can implement better OO code in C than in C++, and I'd like to know what I'm missing.
You know, there are a zillion coders out there, and a zillion coding styles. Speaking as a martial
I'm excited to really get into 11 just because I feel like the strong typing can really get out of the way but still give you that warm fuzzy feeling of compiled static correctness.
You can get that same warm feeling by writing good code in C, assuming only you have the skill to do it. Furthermore, when it is useful and appropriate to step outside the paradigms that C++ would force on you, but you can choose to use in C, you can. You'll understand why you did it, what you saved or cost yourself by doing it, and it won't be buried underneath some ridiculous, time-and-space wasting get/set layer, etc.
Not saying C++ is bad. Far from it. But I am saying that C is fully capable of supporting strong, highly correct programming, and that if C++ restrictions (or those of any other language) are the source of your feeling of having "done it" correctly... it's very likely there's more basic programming landscape for you to explore.
Finally, my personal experience with matter is unambiguous - professionally written high level C++ code is easier to maintain, has fewer bugs and is simply less verbose and more to the point then procedural, lower level C-style code.
C code doesn't have to be procedural. You can implement classes and objects and what's more, you can actually understand how they work when you do. You can create just about anything you want (not everything, but very near.) You'll know what you are writing. You won't be including incredibly overweight code that bloats your app and slows it down. You can manage memory intelligently, you can construct very maintainable code, and you can be quite concise about it.
What you're running into, I suspect, is programmers that aren't experts in either C or OO. They know how to use the bits of OO that C++ "cans" for them, but if you told them to build such things... C++, like any HLL, has its place holding the hands of mediocre programmers, and also in empowering truly excellent programmers. But C is enormously capable and from my personal experience, it's hugely more maintainable, less verbose, and more to the point than C++ simply by virtue of the fact that the language space is much smaller -- only as large as it actually needs to be, with very few exceptions. A true object can be built in C without any of the cruft or "mommy" limits; it can be highly efficient in terms of both memory used and execution time. It won't end up being megabytes just to get a basic UI going.
The amount of "stuff" a programmer needs to know about a language gets in the way of the amount of "stuff" that same programmer needs to know about programming techniques in general and the specific task(s) at hand.
Every once in a while, I have to write in C++. I'm pretty good at it -- experts in C tend to have a good basis to add C++ concepts on top of. I even enjoy it. But contrary to your experience, I have found that most C++ code I have to deal with from others is very bad from the POV of maintainability, bugs (and they get a lot more obscure) and in being much more verbose (just a typical C++ header file makes that point rather well, without even getting into code.)
The worst thing I run into is the assumption on the part of OS documents that you will be writing in C++; pretty soon, you have to capitulate and get the C++ written, just so you can interface with the bloody system. All of a sudden, you're pulling in huge chunks of code you never heard of and have no interest in, and you have a form of the classic many-megabyte "hello whirled" program. Ugh.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more likely to stop people from staggering.
Q: How do you turn a German beer into an American beer?
A: Filter it to get the raw sewage out, then refrigerate.
It's humor, son. It doesn't rise to the standard of "pathetic."
Well, unless you miss the point...
So, just like slashdot, then?
Not even close to likely. :) Where did you get that idea?
We don't know what our own genetics mean; we can't manipulate them hardly at all. Or those of anything else, other than in the most crude, ham-handed ways. Our medical knowledge is at the scratch-the-surface level. We can't control aging yet. Chip tech is still at the 2D level... when it goes 3D, which will require lower power tech or some new means of heat transfer, chip complexity will leap from AxB to AxBxC. We don't have AI yet, but we will, and when we do, we'll also have a host of lesser technologies that will completely change the day to day workloads of every person living in a developed country. We're not yet off the planet except in the most baby-stepwise manner imaginable. Our crowd everything off the surface living habits could be revised to live well above the surface, turning the world back into jungle and productive farmland, no roads on the surface, no buildings, no transport. Just Lions and Tigers and Bears (and perhaps things thought long lost.) Our energy supplies are far more harmful than they eventually will become; our economic systems are based on scarcity, and scarcity is very likely to become a lost characteristic over time.
There's more change coming than any of us can reasonably anticipate, some of it purely social, but a lot of it based on technologies we don't have yet, because the underlying science isn't there yet.
Can you read Amiga format 3.5 floppies? They're not recorded the same as the ones used for Windows, you know. Can you read Burroughs 8" floppies? 6800 Flex 5" floppies? CP/m floppies?
I'm asking as the author of a Flex emulation that runs under Windows; my finding was that Windows could not, in fact, read Flex floppies. No comprehension of the filesystem, you see. And I've yet to run into anything but Amiga hardware that could read Amiga 3.5" floppies, that's more of a hardware issue at the first level.
You have in no way made this point. The fact that the AM band is full of stations fading in and out all night does, in fact, just as I say, prove that broadcast stations can exist -- even under commercial pressures -- in the face of competing signals they cannot control. The technical basis for the signals competing randomly is completely irrelevant; the single fact that they do is what makes my argument -- and destroys the one where people claim that the FCC prevents the "chaos" of people running low power AM stations anywhere they want. The FCC only prevents the people -- that is, those without deep pockets -- from putting an AM station on the air. FM is different, but not in a bad way. A non-mobile audience will enjoy a relatively stable selection of stations. Mobile users don't (but this is no different from now, except they'd have a lot more variety.)
Now, as to LPFM: It is not easily available; it never has been. It remains extremely expensive (although I grant you, much less than a "real" station), subject to all manner of restrictions (I'm not talking RF now, I'm talking about where you live, how long you've been there, what you do, your on air hours, what organization you represent, when they open and close the limited grant mechanism, and so forth.) Even were you to live in a "gimme" area, like a rural town with only one radio station, that's still no assurance that you'll be allowed to fire up an LPFM station, even if you're willing and able to jump through the ridiculous, almost endless, hoops. it is a sop.
It is easier to jump off a bridge than it is to walk into a fire. Neither one, however, is actually "easy." Let me explain to you what "easy" is in this context: One... I invest about $100 in radio transmission equipment. Only spending that much because I want a good quality signal without spurs, otherwise I'd build it out of old junk for nothing. Maybe I even go nuts and use SDR tech, spend a couple hundred bucks and create the Immaculate Signal. Two, I string a wire, and trim it to a precise length resulting in the lowest possible SWR. Cost, perhaps $10.00. Three... I'm on the bloody air. Perhaps I drive the station with my iPad, or my computer, or a turntable, a one op-amp mixer and a microphone. Perhaps I hook it to my CD changer and call it good. That is easy. The FCC and it's tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of requirements and the lawyers and the forms and dealing with dead eyed bureaucrats... that is not easy. Nor, other than the FCC's power grab in proxy for the corporations, is it in any way necessary.
Far less of the country (hell, the world) is hooked permanently or easily to the Internet than can reliably access it. Even were this not the case, broadcast content is significantly different from connected content in cost to the listener, accessibility, limits, restrictions, coverage, locality and so on. You really need to take some basic communications courses.
...and it is worth next to nothing. What's your point?
Oh, please. LPFM is virtually unavailable. Openings anywhere anyone can hear you are so rare as to be irrelevant, and the LP part ensures that should you get one of the rare licenses granted in a rural area, no one will hear you. Even if they did, there are severe limits for LPFM station applications and the practical result of commercial stations having got there first (way first!) in non-rural areas is that you aren't even slightly likely to get any of that precious neighboring airspace.
In other words, you want to run a 100 watt or 10 watt station, you almost certainly can't. It's a sop, not any kind of equal footing or honest offering.
No, I want something, not everything, and I realize already that this resource is (a) not shared and (b) entirely controlled by the selfish, and (c) that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
As I pointed out to you, the AM band demonstrates that these resources can, in fact, be shared, and no particular earth shaking problems result. What you have right now is essentially no sharing with the public; just between commercial entities. I maintain that is unfair, imbalanced, and downright abusive of the public. It's an intentional muzzle, and WRT the principles of liberty, it's downright evil.
Cheers.
The FCC has never helped anyone in licensing the airwaves other than deep pocket (usually commercial) interests. They literally stole the entire spectrum for nothing, and then sold it off at prices no ordinary citizen could ever afford. Some bones, carefully neutered to be of little use in mass communication, were thrown: citizens band and amateur radio. Both forbid broadcast use, meaning one-to-many-unspecified listeners, both forbid transmission of music (even if it's your own, which is bizarre to say the least.)
The FCC is an object lesson in the perils of out of control government. Current-policy (no pun intended) FCC apologists are object lessons in people who don't understand liberty or broadcast technology.
What would be fair? Perhaps half of the broadcast bands given to the people, half to commercial interests.
Preemptive strike: Apologists argue that letting the public broadcast when and where they want would be chaos. I simply point you to the AM bands at night; propagation being what it is, only strong local stations or "clear channel" stations can be reliably received, while sections of the band without these fade from one signal to the next in an unending (and frankly, entertaining) medley of opinions, music, news, and so forth. Both the AM broadcast industry and the public have, somehow, survived this admittedly chaotic nightly onslaught. I expect the same would be true if you drove around town and heard different stations as you traveled in the day.
The article's premise was that pervasive surveillance can be viewed as acceptable under the aegis of "trading" privacy for government transparency, which, in the surveillance context, means that we are watching them.
I'm suggesting that's very likely a bad idea. You're saying the tech is unavoidable. I'm saying that the use of that tech is governed by law, particularly privacy laws of various stripes (you can't record audio in many cases, you have to have a warrant to record a telephone conversation, you can't convey what you hear on certain radio frequencies, etc.) The idea that we accept pervasive surveillance as a trade for the ability to watch the government, couched as an argument for "transparency", is going to be mediated by law, which in turn we might have a chance to stick an opinion in the mix before pervasive tech turns into pervasive exposure.
Sorry I was unclear, I didn't mean to be. It's a big issue for people concerned with privacy. It's a non-issue for those who don't understand what privacy was and can be. In between, there are a lot of levels of understanding.
Pseudonyms and rude behavior are separable issues, and should be treated as such. Rude behavior can be addressed with moderation (and should be.)
Pseudonyms are important for a number of reasons, including protection from stalkers, rouge governments (but I repeat myself), troll shadowing, bullying, ex-(wives|husbands|jackbooted thugs|etc), revolutionary ideas that step on other people's turf, or could, critical political commentary, and, oh yes, privacy, should one desire that.
The fact that pseudonyms are the first layer for many trolls is irrelevant if moderation is adequate. And that, in turn, can be addressed in many ways. Slashdot, for instance, reduces visibility of trolls by rare (unfortunately) moderation. Other sites let the users detect and suppress the trolls; that kills trolls faster, but it also kills contrary ideas and that's not good.
So it seems to me that the most important thing here is to get moderation up to the highest possible standard. When you run a site, after all, it's your barbecue... you should get right in there and see that the level of discourse you want is maintained. If you don't, it's your fault. Don't blame the pseudonymous folks for your failings.
TFS talks about balancing the scales between the citizen's loss of privacy and some enforced transparency on government.
Remember who has the power here. What the government can do with pervasive data about you is extensive, from arresting you to disappearing you; none of which are likely to have serious consequences to the government or its actors.
What you can do with videos of government action is quite limited, both by the difficulty in bringing actors shielded by multiple levels of bureaucracy to bay, and by the government's ability to muzzle you, punish you, and otherwise intimidate and repress. Your life could be ruined in just a few minutes. Is your imagination telling you that "they" won't know where "the video" comes from? Look at your phone. You know it tells anyone who has the power to ask exactly where you are, right? You do know that? Think on that for a bit and how it might affect video. Think about what it means if you're recording "them", but everyone else, including "them", are recording you. Think they can't pick out who took what imaging data simply from the angle of the dangle? Think again.
The privacy some citizens seem so willing to give up for some measure of security (or the illusion thereof) used to allow you to restart your life; keep tragedy personal; rein in the pervasiveness of mistakes; undertake risks without compromising everything, allow innocent bystanders to avoid being entangled in dangerous situations, and much more. The government has willingly taken all these things from us to one degree or another. At the same time, modern "social" media has trained up an entire generation (perhaps more than one) to piss away their privacy on the sidewalks of Facebook and Twitter; it seems to me that the majority of these folks aren't very clear on what privacy used to be -- that's why they don't value it.
But to actively consider trading what little privacy one has left for a mostly illusory power to watch the government back... Be careful what you wish for. You're likely to get it.
So they did; thank you for that, much appreciated. Always loved his early work, really twisted my tail when I read of the original denial, stuck in my craw, as it were. Well, see, I'm wrong a bit already. lol.
Sadly, it'll just move the corruption to a manufactured pretext mode: "I saw him swerve", etc. It'll no more stop this than NY cops pulling over black people preferentially has stopped despite loads of negative publicity, etc. It'll no more stop than the USG will let Cat Stevens back into the country. The whole damned shooting match is corrupt. I suspect it will serve as a lesson for Governor Brewer to treat Obama with more respect. But yeah, the decision went the right way. So did Heller -- but for many of the wrong reasons, and under an opinion that was batshit crazy. It can happen.
This was such an edge case that it will have almost no impact on anyone, anywhere. Which in my admittedly cynical view, probably serves to explain how it went this way.
Yeah, that's a win, no doubt. If you count having to chase totally obvious government malfeasance all the way to SCOTUS a win, sigh. I know I couldn't afford to do it. But -- hopefully -- it'll make future cases expire on contact. Assuming there aren't other circumstances, like, the federal government actually caring about the case and claiming no one can see the reasons because they're state secrets and other such highly fragrant fertilizer.
Well, here's to you and your optimism. I'd buy you a beer if I could. I'd just as soon be completely, utterly wrong.
Yeah. Except this David doesn't even have a sling. It's going to go to SCOTUS, they'll side with the save-the-children, oh-no-terrorists, and it's-for-your-own-good crackpottery that dominates the mindset of our legislature and our judiciary.
Interstate = intrastate, ex post facto = go ahead and add punishment (just call it something else), probable cause = "well, we thought it was a reasonable search", borders = 100mi from the.... borders.
Come on, we know exactly how this is going to go.
Although I have to say, three fucking big cheers for trying, little people.
Who are you talking about now? Norway? Sweden? Vulcan?
Of course not. What I can do, however, is point out that people who write in C++ don't write those things; they use the language's own constructs, and so they don't know what's going on -- only that it is.
Because then I know what it does and so can both modify it at the most basic level if need be, it's generally (much) lighter weight as it doesn't drag in all manner of other stuff, there's no "mystery code" or sudden jumps of megabytes in size and/or unexplained slowdowns. I write high performance code -- live signal processing, etc. Full control lets me shave here and fatten there, all very much under my direct control.
You wrote it. It's right there. When you make an object or a class, there's no "mystery meat." In HLL OO, ask yourself: How did your parameters get parsed or set to their defaults? When? Does it always happen, or does it happen only when it needs to? Can you even tell? What's on the stack? In what order? In what format? How is memory cleanup handled? Do you know? In C, you know. I like knowing, I like being able to change things any way I want (relates to your question) and I also like being able to set things up any way I want.
You mean through a GC library, or are you just talking about heaps, new and delete as opposed to malloc and free and so on? Sure, I've got some experience there, and it's ok at the most basic level, although I would *never* use a garbage collector without a gun to my head. That's a great way to chop random execution holes in what was a smoothly running program. I have my own memory management system that I built over years of creating heavyweight applications -- image and signal processing, paint, ai, some other stuff. There are some techniques in there that make for extremely fast memory allocate/deallocate with zero fragmentation, a development-level leak detection system and over/underrun tripwires, and so far, it's worked really well for me, far better than just random use of malloc and crew.
I have lots of things like that -- really powerful and fast (and tight!) general list management, string management, threading, etc. Been writing C for one heck of a long time. Been bitten by standard libraries, other people's code, compiler bugs, suffered through inline ASM, you name it, I've seen it. If what I saw made itself known to me as a problem, I tried really hard to fix it. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and I've got (for instance) an Aperture clone that is about a megabyte of core code, creates its own UI dynamically, does quite a bit more than Aperture does, and in a CPU-only system (not counting GPUs, in other words), outperforms Aperture by leaps and bounds, the more cores, the better. My SDR software (actually written on top of C++, but basically not using anything from it except for UI) has more concurrent signal processing operations than anything else I'm aware of that's on the market right now, and it'll run in a fairly minimum system although again, the more cores, the better. These advantages can be attributed to good code, code I understand, and an ultra tight library of good stuff like blistering memory management that supplies a lot of what's needed without compromise.
You know, there are a zillion coders out there, and a zillion coding styles. Speaking as a martial
In your dreams, son. :)
Other People's Code. Viola: enforced things for no reason other than someone is anal.
You can get that same warm feeling by writing good code in C, assuming only you have the skill to do it. Furthermore, when it is useful and appropriate to step outside the paradigms that C++ would force on you, but you can choose to use in C, you can. You'll understand why you did it, what you saved or cost yourself by doing it, and it won't be buried underneath some ridiculous, time-and-space wasting get/set layer, etc.
Not saying C++ is bad. Far from it. But I am saying that C is fully capable of supporting strong, highly correct programming, and that if C++ restrictions (or those of any other language) are the source of your feeling of having "done it" correctly... it's very likely there's more basic programming landscape for you to explore.
C code doesn't have to be procedural. You can implement classes and objects and what's more, you can actually understand how they work when you do. You can create just about anything you want (not everything, but very near.) You'll know what you are writing. You won't be including incredibly overweight code that bloats your app and slows it down. You can manage memory intelligently, you can construct very maintainable code, and you can be quite concise about it.
What you're running into, I suspect, is programmers that aren't experts in either C or OO. They know how to use the bits of OO that C++ "cans" for them, but if you told them to build such things... C++, like any HLL, has its place holding the hands of mediocre programmers, and also in empowering truly excellent programmers. But C is enormously capable and from my personal experience, it's hugely more maintainable, less verbose, and more to the point than C++ simply by virtue of the fact that the language space is much smaller -- only as large as it actually needs to be, with very few exceptions. A true object can be built in C without any of the cruft or "mommy" limits; it can be highly efficient in terms of both memory used and execution time. It won't end up being megabytes just to get a basic UI going.
The amount of "stuff" a programmer needs to know about a language gets in the way of the amount of "stuff" that same programmer needs to know about programming techniques in general and the specific task(s) at hand.
Every once in a while, I have to write in C++. I'm pretty good at it -- experts in C tend to have a good basis to add C++ concepts on top of. I even enjoy it. But contrary to your experience, I have found that most C++ code I have to deal with from others is very bad from the POV of maintainability, bugs (and they get a lot more obscure) and in being much more verbose (just a typical C++ header file makes that point rather well, without even getting into code.)
The worst thing I run into is the assumption on the part of OS documents that you will be writing in C++; pretty soon, you have to capitulate and get the C++ written, just so you can interface with the bloody system. All of a sudden, you're pulling in huge chunks of code you never heard of and have no interest in, and you have a form of the classic many-megabyte "hello whirled" program. Ugh.
Fill the room with breasts. Attached to beautiful coeds. You won't hear a thing.
Big white building in Washington. It's got a sign identifying it as "U.S. Capital." I think "Capital" might be the technical term for "cross."
No need to thank me.
PS -- you'll need several computers.