It's all smoke and mirrors. Say. What's that in the mirror? Looks like... heh... heh heh... say, what's that in the sink? Oooooo. Huh. Water never sounded like that before. That is SO Awesome. Where's my Pink Floyd CD? I need to get some Fritos, too. Yah, talk to you later.
You cannot trust an entity to keep your data online for (what appears to be) free interminably. In the US, the web is not a public resource (tax supported, then free downstream for all.) It is a commercial resource, where presence requires upstream expenditure.
That means someone, or someone(s), somewhere, has to support the model with actual money. When the reasons to support that model go away -- and there are many ways that can happen -- so will the data.
You want your data to remain available? Keep a copy of it yourself and make it available. This, if nothing else, gives you control over whether it it available, or not. You can, of course, put it up somewhere like Coursera or GitHub or YouTube or Wikipedia or one of these so-called "cloud" services if you are so inclined, but rest assured, these large entities are burning through money at a fairly good clip, and that means all data (and service) you offer in such a way depends on that for-money model at one level or another.
The thing is, it's their for-money model, not yours. So your control is almost always nil. When you, on the other hand, set up a cheap little website to offer your "stuff", then the expenditure is yours, and so is the control. That's the basis for a good relationship between you, and the people you want to be able to access your data.
You have a network connection. If you have unlimited data (and if not, why not?) ask your ISP for a static IP, set up an easy to use LAMP stack, and have at it. If you do have limited data... first, try to change ISPs, because really... that's terrible. If that doesn't work, there are all manner of services out there where you can set up shop on the cheap, and if they go away, you can just move.
And... if you're not motivated enough to do that... well, there you go. Nowhere, that is.
Well, what I want to know is if I can buy some of this bad debt at a discount. You know. Because, uh, financial responsibility is something nudeful^wneedful in society. And, uh, because, maybe I can be like Jon Oliver, you know, and like, um, "forgive" the debts. Just because I'm a nice guy, y'see.
karit, key presses aren't at issue here. Nor, more generally, are programs starting because "user input." That's not what either Konfabulator or Dashboard represent. They are entire ecosystems under which other small applications run, keypresses or no, either on the desktop or in an offset environment.
My question to the American "patriots" is what happens when the ideal America you are patriotic about, is not the America you live in?
You might ask which ideal of America while you're at it.
The ideal of an America governed by a constitution that actually means what it meant when it was written, to be amended as needed? The ideal of an America where the constitution means only what it is convenient for it to mean today (the "living document" approach) where amendment is unworthy of the energy it would take and instead, the Supreme Court graciously redefines it on a moment-to-moment basis? The ideal of an America where everyone is (somehow, don't ask me how... genetics isn't that far along yet) is "created equal"? The ideal of a Christian America? The ideal of an America where personal liberty and informed, consensual choice form the basis for civilized behavior and law? The ideal of an America where "law and order" do, and should, reign supreme in a cascade from legislator to enforcement to retribution? The ideal of an America where immigrants are unwanted interlopers? The ideal of an America where immigrants are the foundation of highly desired diversity in thinking, action and resources? The ideal of an America where only its position in a global context mean anything good? The idea of an America where everyone is either rich, or a "temporarily disenfranchised millionaire"? Etc., etc., etc. I really could go on for a while.:)
This is part (and only part) of our problem. Depending on just whose Kool-aid one decides to consume, pretty much everyone thinks they believe in "the" ideal of America, with very few even giving lip service to the fact that there are many such ideals. It makes for chaotic and spectacularly obtuse public discourse, and the only surprise I experience in that is that anyone with two wet brain cells to run together might be surprised by this end result.
As for patriotism... a large number of people who I have discussed the matter with seem to be coming from a definite jingoist point of view, as opposed to a patriotic point of view. Most of them clearly think jingoism is patriotism. I find it appalling, personally, but it's just another "ideal of America" that has sunk it's roots in like an aggressive fungal infection.
Then there is the fact that the rich and powerful almost entirely control our government. Without getting into an argument about when that became actual fact, I can confidently assert that as of now, it is well entrenched and no way to undo it has made itself obvious to the segment of the population that has actually noticed what has happened.
I not only suspect chaos, I expect it. And what do you know, everywhere I look -- there it is.:/
The reasons to avoid rolling your own for any common software genre are well known
Yes. However, the reasons to do it yourself are also well known. Further, security is becoming more and more of a problem, and frankly, has become the largest reason in the room to consider a custom CMS by a huge margin. Wordpress etc. brings features, but it also brings risk, and very large amounts of it, which in itself will cost a goodly amount of time and effort, almost all of it unpleasant. You have to disable the various back-door mechanisms, keep up with security updates (and then again, disable the back-door mechanisms), vet each and every plug-in line by line (waiting for others to discover vulnerabilities and addressing them some time after they are published on the web is an invitation to disaster), and you can still end up writing your own functionality because of the low-quality and/or high-vulnerability natures of various plug-ins.
There's a very wide range of skills among those we so casually call "programmers." There are plenty at the higher end who can add whatever, whenever, and turn it into a revenue-generating process rather than an irritation. Not to mention a certain degree of job security.
because it takes you a couple of weeks to implement a new feature
Here's a red flag. How many features take "a couple of weeks to implement" for a competent programmer working with a decently designed system? We're talking about a CMS, not launch code for the space shuttle. I'd expect a half a day for the vast majority of more complicated features, particularly if your initial architecture is half reasonable.
You want easy? Wordpress is about as easy as it gets. Just keep in mind, it's not just easy for you. It's easy for everyone. Including hackers.
On the other hand, you want hacking security, job security, control, precise targeting of needs, choice of implementation language(s), and the opportunity to design instead of swap black boxes around? Then a custom CMS is not an unreasonable path to consider in many cases.
1200 baud? When I can't find enough wood for a signal fire, I just strip the insulation from the ends of the telegraph wires and tap them together using Samuel Morse's wholly sufficient code.
You kids and your "modern ways." Buncha pampered whiners.
A cashless society is almost impossible to enforce. This is because trade and barter of actual goods bypasses all forms of currency. In order to actually regulate those kinds of transactions, 100% surveillance and corresponding follow-up are required. Even as bad as government intrusion on freedom and liberty is today, we're not even a fraction of the way down that hill.
Hell, every time I go to the doctor they ask for my height. That doesn't change very much. But they ask it every single freaking time.
It shouldn't. But it can. Particularly in the case of spinal pathologies.
Of course, asking you isn't exactly diagnostic, as you're just going to regurgitate the number you've been spitting out for years. What they need to do is measure your height. That way they'd actually learn something.
I want to defend the medical profession for the good they do. But sometimes, they do make it so very, very difficult.
Most apps are trash -- free to buy, but crippled and requiring more work to actually make work, tied into network cloud / validation, etc.
If you want me to put it on my phone or tablet, here's what you need to do:
1) write something useful 2) charge me reasonably -- I'll pay up to $10 without flinching if it's actually useful. More if it's fabulous 3) no nickle and diming. None. I buy it, it works. I'm not doing "in-app purchases" and that's bloody final 4) no network ties for continued operation or validation or any such shit. I paid you, it should work, period 5) no ads. No Ads. NO ADS. NO FUCKING ADS. 6) Make sure you make both Android and iOS versions for games or chat or other device-to-device applications. 7) interoperable - if it's a game, for instance, make SURE the iOS and Android versions interoperate. 8) did I mention no ads? Because, FFS, no ads, please. 9) If you think you need the "cloud", you should probably rethink that. Hard. Because the cloud sucks. If your app uses it, your app sucks. A) Is it too much to ask that your shite actually WORKS? (I know a lot of this is Apple and Google's fault.)
More on #6: Carcassonne is a poster child for this. The Android version doesn't talk to the iOS version. So you want to play a game with someone, but you aren't using the same OS... can't do that. This happened, BTW, because the original game authors sold some part of the rights to a completely different company. Now they both have a crippled product. It's just data, you idiots.
More on #A: I bought Fieldrunners for the iPad. Really like it, great game, grandkids like it too; so I bought it for my Galaxy S6. Money up front, yay. Right? No. Crashes on startup. Every. Fucking. Time. So this year, when I moved to the Galaxy S7, I thought, I'll try it again. Crashes on startup. Every. Fucking. Time.
One reason I stopped buying apps for iOS is the stream of broken apps Apple leaves behind by constantly breaking the damned operating system. Probably a third of the apps I have on my iPad no longer work because iOS got API cancer. Again. And again. All kinds of stuff is broken. For instance, Plants vs. Zombies just crashes when I start it. Used to work fine. I hardly use my iPad any more because of apps that don't work.
Another reason I stopped buying apps for iOS is the disappearance of apps from the store: Apple requires devs to pay a fee just to keep an app in the store, and at the same time, prevents sideloading. Reminds me of the mafia's business model. Repulsive. Makes me actually not LIKE to buy apps. My S6 lets me install apps from anywhere. Which means devs can maintain apps and keep them available without having their blood sucked constantly, regardless of sales level. Much better.
Finally, sometimes I simply can't find anything. For instance, for my Galaxy S6 and now S7, I can't find an app to give me audio control; all I want is a decent EQ system, 10 bands or more, with some decent range. I have looked for this multiple times in the Play store and Amazon's app store and all I can find is the very worst kind of junkware, from being infested with ads to crashing to working then stopping. It seems that no one actually wants my money. Seems a shame, as I'd actually like to give it to someone.
Bottom line for me is that it seems that in the rush to monetize the living shit out of everything, producing quality applications for a straightforward exchange of value is no longer what I typically find. The blame goes in many directions. But part of the solution is pretty easy. Stop writing shit apps, and you can have my money. I don't know how you can get Apple to behave, that seems like a lost cause to me (and we own a crapload of Apple hardware here, so that is in no way a smug observation), but under Android, the door is wide open to my wallet. I would LOVE to buy your app if you would just write a good one that does something useful or fun. I could buy a hundred apps today without impacting my budget in any way. And I'd LIKE to. For me, fo
Also, it isn't that c is a footgun; it's that c is a railgun, so you definitely shouldn't point it at your foot.
If you're the kind of programmer that aims at your foot, then use a language that keeps its "muzzle" pointed away from you until you go through the equivalent of a weapons safety course for the big guns. Otherwise.... yup, no feet.:)
All program languages allow nonsensical constructs. 0 + 0 won't generate an error in any language I am aware of (not to say none of them, just thirty or so.) Doing something twice, like a=0; a=0; won't generate an error, etc. It's not up to the language to catch you when you're stupid (at least, it shouldn't be... every attempt at that I have run into has turned into some kind of annoyance) it's up to you to not do stupid things.
c's automatic type conversions are generally useful when they are used with a knowledge of what is going on. When you want something else to happen, you can use explicit casts. When even that won't do it, there are always unions - you can do damn near anything you can imagine with a union. And if *that* won't do it, then just start copying raw memory around.:)
The point being, what you want to do should be available for you to do, and not constrained by the idea that someone with low skills might get in there and do something that is in some sense functionally wrong or unexpected -- because if it is unexpected, then that's a reflection on a lack of understanding the language. Not on the language (unless, of course, it's a bug in the compiler / interpreter / parser, etc.)
Barring a full-fledged singularity where robots become better than humans at everything, humans will always end up moving into whatever fields robots are worse at.
The thing is, there's nothing we (scientists, engineers and technologists in the field) can imagine at this point that would stand in the way.
The only useful discussion about UBI is one where the path to, and the actuality of, zero employment is considered.
It's early to be throwing basic income out there right now, but I don't know that's it's too early. The problem right now is that a lot of people are unaware of the magnitude of the change that will be on us fairly soon, and so they are thinking in terms of "jobs = self-respect" and "jobs = survival" and "jobs = upward mobility."
While all of that is true at least to some extent now, none of it is likely to be of any significant importance once LDNLS and sparsely-stacked-LDNLS, the two facets of non-conscious AI, are joined by conscious AI.
Why? Because while we are biologically limited in intelligence and presently don't have any significant way to change that, there's no barrier expected or anticipated with regard to expansion and increase of artificial intelligence.
Can more memory be added to an AI? Sure. More capacity for newly established neural networks? Sure. More senses? Sure. Etc.
There's every reason to think this is the path, and that the guidance of the path itself will be largely or completely taken out of our hands by conscious AIs once they reach, and then exceed, our general level of intelligence. Once that happens, AI capacity will rise in a self-improving curve until it either reaches some fundamental limit we have yet to anticipate, or it runs out of resources. There are no solid reasons at all to think this is not the path.
o Throw as many charges as possible at the victim o If actually guilty, main charge sticks, plea bargain others off o If not guilty, main charge dropped if you plea bargain to lesser thing o or, go to court, be tried by (annoyed) judge, guilty of lesser thing and max penalty unless apply $$$ o or, go to court, be tried by (REALLY annoyed) judge + and jury, take chance with Gaussian landings on your Kardashian-fed empaneled, ignorant of their rights and powers
Speaking as someone who's been through the process several times from several different angles, and spent well over six figures on lawyers, I can say with authority that this is how it actually works.
The justice system is at best a parody of itself. It is almost entirely constitutionally bereft, hugely prone to sway by money, back-loaded by the plea bargain mechanisms, cops toeing the "blue line", prosecutors whose only goal is "winning", regardless of how well a case was brought, race, income, religion, dress and schooling considerations, astonishingly powerful old-boy networks, almost entirely ineffective public defenders, all driven by a huge corpus of absurd laws with even more absurd punishments.
If you believe even for a moment that any of this is inaccurate, you will be hugely disadvantaged when you find yourself caught in the gears of the legal system.
Law enforcement don't make decisions about guilt or innocence.
Ideally, no. In point of fact, sad to say, they do it all the time. And most of the time, the courts go along without significant demur.
Did you sleep through Civics 101?
No. I have a deep legal background as well. But knowing all three of how it's supposed to work, how they say it works, and how it actually works tends to color what I say. Here, we're talking about how it's supposed to work, and how they say it works, both of which fail to correlate well with how it actually works.
RGB lenses, then? With recombination, either at the sensor or in post-processing with multiple sensors?
We've had monochromatic sensors before and used them to make quite high quality color images.
Most Bayer sensors are monochromatic with filters; for a true RGB sensor, meaning, a cell that responds to all three spectral peaks, Foveon has a three-level cell that responds to different spectra at one focal location (uses depth in the cell IIRC.) But separate photosites have been pretty much the goto tech for quite some time now. My Canon 6D uses it; it takes very good images, talking about the sensor only. Chromatic abberation in Canon lenses is terrible though, for my use, which is astrophotography.
Identifying marks and law enforcement formally sorting you by your political and religious ideologies for making decisions about your guilt, innocence, suspect nature, surveillance, search, and seizure, however, isn't really old school at all. Not so publicly, anyway.
I find the whole thing very interesting. Apparently, the legal system can get away with considerably more than I thought it could.
That's what major version numbers are for: to announce Major Breakage (or possibly even General Breakage) and his mighty army of doom.
I use major version numbers to indicate major additions of features and bugfixes. I use minor version numbers to announce one or two features that may or may not be significant, and bugfixes.
You know what I use to announce major breakage? Nothing. Because I don't break my applications. If I provided it to you and said it would do X under some OS, then my goal thereafter always incorporates making sure it does X under that very OS.
So clearly, there's more than one way to employ version numbers.:)
One thing about features: If you want to add something that does (some previously available thing) in a new way, the idea that the old way has to be taken out or disabled isn't actually a requirement. The old way already worked. Just don't break it. Add the new thing, and allow the users to use it if they like.
For instance, print in Python. print "foo" could have remained, and fprint("foo") could have been added. Viola, new functionality, language not broken. Or, up top in the Python script, something like # -*- USENEWPRINT -*- could have been the means, or # -*- USEALLNEW -*- or etc. (though I think it's pretty clear that print + fprint is the best strategy.) It's not like we're short on memory these days.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all smoke and mirrors. Say. What's that in the mirror? Looks like... heh... heh heh... say, what's that in the sink? Oooooo. Huh. Water never sounded like that before. That is SO Awesome. Where's my Pink Floyd CD? I need to get some Fritos, too. Yah, talk to you later.
You cannot trust an entity to keep your data online for (what appears to be) free interminably. In the US, the web is not a public resource (tax supported, then free downstream for all.) It is a commercial resource, where presence requires upstream expenditure.
That means someone, or someone(s), somewhere, has to support the model with actual money. When the reasons to support that model go away -- and there are many ways that can happen -- so will the data.
You want your data to remain available? Keep a copy of it yourself and make it available. This, if nothing else, gives you control over whether it it available, or not. You can, of course, put it up somewhere like Coursera or GitHub or YouTube or Wikipedia or one of these so-called "cloud" services if you are so inclined, but rest assured, these large entities are burning through money at a fairly good clip, and that means all data (and service) you offer in such a way depends on that for-money model at one level or another.
The thing is, it's their for-money model, not yours. So your control is almost always nil. When you, on the other hand, set up a cheap little website to offer your "stuff", then the expenditure is yours, and so is the control. That's the basis for a good relationship between you, and the people you want to be able to access your data.
You have a network connection. If you have unlimited data (and if not, why not?) ask your ISP for a static IP, set up an easy to use LAMP stack, and have at it. If you do have limited data... first, try to change ISPs, because really... that's terrible. If that doesn't work, there are all manner of services out there where you can set up shop on the cheap, and if they go away, you can just move.
And... if you're not motivated enough to do that... well, there you go. Nowhere, that is.
Well, what I want to know is if I can buy some of this bad debt at a discount. You know. Because, uh, financial responsibility is something nudeful^wneedful in society. And, uh, because, maybe I can be like Jon Oliver, you know, and like, um, "forgive" the debts. Just because I'm a nice guy, y'see.
karit, key presses aren't at issue here. Nor, more generally, are programs starting because "user input." That's not what either Konfabulator or Dashboard represent. They are entire ecosystems under which other small applications run, keypresses or no, either on the desktop or in an offset environment.
It's not a canard. It's a bloody fact.
You might ask which ideal of America while you're at it.
The ideal of an America governed by a constitution that actually means what it meant when it was written, to be amended as needed? The ideal of an America where the constitution means only what it is convenient for it to mean today (the "living document" approach) where amendment is unworthy of the energy it would take and instead, the Supreme Court graciously redefines it on a moment-to-moment basis? The ideal of an America where everyone is (somehow, don't ask me how... genetics isn't that far along yet) is "created equal"? The ideal of a Christian America? The ideal of an America where personal liberty and informed, consensual choice form the basis for civilized behavior and law? The ideal of an America where "law and order" do, and should, reign supreme in a cascade from legislator to enforcement to retribution? The ideal of an America where immigrants are unwanted interlopers? The ideal of an America where immigrants are the foundation of highly desired diversity in thinking, action and resources? The ideal of an America where only its position in a global context mean anything good? The idea of an America where everyone is either rich, or a "temporarily disenfranchised millionaire"? Etc., etc., etc. I really could go on for a while. :)
This is part (and only part) of our problem. Depending on just whose Kool-aid one decides to consume, pretty much everyone thinks they believe in "the" ideal of America, with very few even giving lip service to the fact that there are many such ideals. It makes for chaotic and spectacularly obtuse public discourse, and the only surprise I experience in that is that anyone with two wet brain cells to run together might be surprised by this end result.
As for patriotism... a large number of people who I have discussed the matter with seem to be coming from a definite jingoist point of view, as opposed to a patriotic point of view. Most of them clearly think jingoism is patriotism. I find it appalling, personally, but it's just another "ideal of America" that has sunk it's roots in like an aggressive fungal infection.
Then there is the fact that the rich and powerful almost entirely control our government. Without getting into an argument about when that became actual fact, I can confidently assert that as of now, it is well entrenched and no way to undo it has made itself obvious to the segment of the population that has actually noticed what has happened.
I not only suspect chaos, I expect it. And what do you know, everywhere I look -- there it is. :/
You mad, bro?
I guess it's time to remind the technical community of Apple's behavior with regard to Konfabulator / Yahoo Widgets again.
Have a great idea, beware Apple.
Of course, then they'll screw it up royally, just as they have with Aperture, Logic Pro, Final Cut, Dashboard, and most notably, Finder itself.
Not that such helps anyone's trampled business model any.
Apple's tech approach: "embrace and fuck up"
Yes. However, the reasons to do it yourself are also well known. Further, security is becoming more and more of a problem, and frankly, has become the largest reason in the room to consider a custom CMS by a huge margin. Wordpress etc. brings features, but it also brings risk, and very large amounts of it, which in itself will cost a goodly amount of time and effort, almost all of it unpleasant. You have to disable the various back-door mechanisms, keep up with security updates (and then again, disable the back-door mechanisms), vet each and every plug-in line by line (waiting for others to discover vulnerabilities and addressing them some time after they are published on the web is an invitation to disaster), and you can still end up writing your own functionality because of the low-quality and/or high-vulnerability natures of various plug-ins.
There's a very wide range of skills among those we so casually call "programmers." There are plenty at the higher end who can add whatever, whenever, and turn it into a revenue-generating process rather than an irritation. Not to mention a certain degree of job security.
Here's a red flag. How many features take "a couple of weeks to implement" for a competent programmer working with a decently designed system? We're talking about a CMS, not launch code for the space shuttle. I'd expect a half a day for the vast majority of more complicated features, particularly if your initial architecture is half reasonable.
You want easy? Wordpress is about as easy as it gets. Just keep in mind, it's not just easy for you. It's easy for everyone. Including hackers.
On the other hand, you want hacking security, job security, control, precise targeting of needs, choice of implementation language(s), and the opportunity to design instead of swap black boxes around? Then a custom CMS is not an unreasonable path to consider in many cases.
1200 baud? When I can't find enough wood for a signal fire, I just strip the insulation from the ends of the telegraph wires and tap them together using Samuel Morse's wholly sufficient code.
You kids and your "modern ways." Buncha pampered whiners.
I own thousands of CDs. Because DRM is obviously poision. Likewise books. Real objects with inherent merit. No one is taking them. So there's that.
A cashless society is almost impossible to enforce. This is because trade and barter of actual goods bypasses all forms of currency. In order to actually regulate those kinds of transactions, 100% surveillance and corresponding follow-up are required. Even as bad as government intrusion on freedom and liberty is today, we're not even a fraction of the way down that hill.
It shouldn't. But it can. Particularly in the case of spinal pathologies.
Of course, asking you isn't exactly diagnostic, as you're just going to regurgitate the number you've been spitting out for years. What they need to do is measure your height. That way they'd actually learn something.
I want to defend the medical profession for the good they do. But sometimes, they do make it so very, very difficult.
Most apps are trash -- free to buy, but crippled and requiring more work to actually make work, tied into network cloud / validation, etc.
If you want me to put it on my phone or tablet, here's what you need to do:
1) write something useful
2) charge me reasonably -- I'll pay up to $10 without flinching if it's actually useful. More if it's fabulous
3) no nickle and diming. None. I buy it, it works. I'm not doing "in-app purchases" and that's bloody final
4) no network ties for continued operation or validation or any such shit. I paid you, it should work, period
5) no ads. No Ads. NO ADS. NO FUCKING ADS.
6) Make sure you make both Android and iOS versions for games or chat or other device-to-device applications.
7) interoperable - if it's a game, for instance, make SURE the iOS and Android versions interoperate.
8) did I mention no ads? Because, FFS, no ads, please.
9) If you think you need the "cloud", you should probably rethink that. Hard. Because the cloud sucks. If your app uses it, your app sucks.
A) Is it too much to ask that your shite actually WORKS? (I know a lot of this is Apple and Google's fault.)
More on #6: Carcassonne is a poster child for this. The Android version doesn't talk to the iOS version. So you want to play a game with someone, but you aren't using the same OS... can't do that. This happened, BTW, because the original game authors sold some part of the rights to a completely different company. Now they both have a crippled product. It's just data, you idiots.
More on #A: I bought Fieldrunners for the iPad. Really like it, great game, grandkids like it too; so I bought it for my Galaxy S6. Money up front, yay. Right? No. Crashes on startup. Every. Fucking. Time. So this year, when I moved to the Galaxy S7, I thought, I'll try it again. Crashes on startup. Every. Fucking. Time.
One reason I stopped buying apps for iOS is the stream of broken apps Apple leaves behind by constantly breaking the damned operating system. Probably a third of the apps I have on my iPad no longer work because iOS got API cancer. Again. And again. All kinds of stuff is broken. For instance, Plants vs. Zombies just crashes when I start it. Used to work fine. I hardly use my iPad any more because of apps that don't work.
Another reason I stopped buying apps for iOS is the disappearance of apps from the store: Apple requires devs to pay a fee just to keep an app in the store, and at the same time, prevents sideloading. Reminds me of the mafia's business model. Repulsive. Makes me actually not LIKE to buy apps. My S6 lets me install apps from anywhere. Which means devs can maintain apps and keep them available without having their blood sucked constantly, regardless of sales level. Much better.
Finally, sometimes I simply can't find anything. For instance, for my Galaxy S6 and now S7, I can't find an app to give me audio control; all I want is a decent EQ system, 10 bands or more, with some decent range. I have looked for this multiple times in the Play store and Amazon's app store and all I can find is the very worst kind of junkware, from being infested with ads to crashing to working then stopping. It seems that no one actually wants my money. Seems a shame, as I'd actually like to give it to someone.
Bottom line for me is that it seems that in the rush to monetize the living shit out of everything, producing quality applications for a straightforward exchange of value is no longer what I typically find. The blame goes in many directions. But part of the solution is pretty easy. Stop writing shit apps, and you can have my money. I don't know how you can get Apple to behave, that seems like a lost cause to me (and we own a crapload of Apple hardware here, so that is in no way a smug observation), but under Android, the door is wide open to my wallet. I would LOVE to buy your app if you would just write a good one that does something useful or fun. I could buy a hundred apps today without impacting my budget in any way. And I'd LIKE to. For me, fo
A limited hangout is what happens when your fly is only partially unzipped.
Also, it isn't that c is a footgun; it's that c is a railgun, so you definitely shouldn't point it at your foot.
If you're the kind of programmer that aims at your foot, then use a language that keeps its "muzzle" pointed away from you until you go through the equivalent of a weapons safety course for the big guns. Otherwise.... yup, no feet. :)
All program languages allow nonsensical constructs. 0 + 0 won't generate an error in any language I am aware of (not to say none of them, just thirty or so.) Doing something twice, like a=0; a=0; won't generate an error, etc. It's not up to the language to catch you when you're stupid (at least, it shouldn't be... every attempt at that I have run into has turned into some kind of annoyance) it's up to you to not do stupid things.
c's automatic type conversions are generally useful when they are used with a knowledge of what is going on. When you want something else to happen, you can use explicit casts. When even that won't do it, there are always unions - you can do damn near anything you can imagine with a union. And if *that* won't do it, then just start copying raw memory around. :)
The point being, what you want to do should be available for you to do, and not constrained by the idea that someone with low skills might get in there and do something that is in some sense functionally wrong or unexpected -- because if it is unexpected, then that's a reflection on a lack of understanding the language. Not on the language (unless, of course, it's a bug in the compiler / interpreter / parser, etc.)
The thing is, there's nothing we (scientists, engineers and technologists in the field) can imagine at this point that would stand in the way.
The only useful discussion about UBI is one where the path to, and the actuality of, zero employment is considered.
It's early to be throwing basic income out there right now, but I don't know that's it's too early. The problem right now is that a lot of people are unaware of the magnitude of the change that will be on us fairly soon, and so they are thinking in terms of "jobs = self-respect" and "jobs = survival" and "jobs = upward mobility."
While all of that is true at least to some extent now, none of it is likely to be of any significant importance once LDNLS and sparsely-stacked-LDNLS, the two facets of non-conscious AI, are joined by conscious AI.
Why? Because while we are biologically limited in intelligence and presently don't have any significant way to change that, there's no barrier expected or anticipated with regard to expansion and increase of artificial intelligence.
Can more memory be added to an AI? Sure. More capacity for newly established neural networks? Sure. More senses? Sure. Etc.
There's every reason to think this is the path, and that the guidance of the path itself will be largely or completely taken out of our hands by conscious AIs once they reach, and then exceed, our general level of intelligence. Once that happens, AI capacity will rise in a self-improving curve until it either reaches some fundamental limit we have yet to anticipate, or it runs out of resources. There are no solid reasons at all to think this is not the path.
"and we have a really, really lame explanation for our underlying laziness and/or incompetence"
"also, fuck you, developers."
Who needs proof when the process is:
o Throw as many charges as possible at the victim
o If actually guilty, main charge sticks, plea bargain others off
o If not guilty, main charge dropped if you plea bargain to lesser thing
o or, go to court, be tried by (annoyed) judge, guilty of lesser thing and max penalty unless apply $$$
o or, go to court, be tried by (REALLY annoyed) judge + and jury, take chance with Gaussian landings on your Kardashian-fed empaneled, ignorant of their rights and powers
Speaking as someone who's been through the process several times from several different angles, and spent well over six figures on lawyers, I can say with authority that this is how it actually works.
The justice system is at best a parody of itself. It is almost entirely constitutionally bereft, hugely prone to sway by money, back-loaded by the plea bargain mechanisms, cops toeing the "blue line", prosecutors whose only goal is "winning", regardless of how well a case was brought, race, income, religion, dress and schooling considerations, astonishingly powerful old-boy networks, almost entirely ineffective public defenders, all driven by a huge corpus of absurd laws with even more absurd punishments.
If you believe even for a moment that any of this is inaccurate, you will be hugely disadvantaged when you find yourself caught in the gears of the legal system.
Ideally, no. In point of fact, sad to say, they do it all the time. And most of the time, the courts go along without significant demur.
No. I have a deep legal background as well. But knowing all three of how it's supposed to work, how they say it works, and how it actually works tends to color what I say. Here, we're talking about how it's supposed to work, and how they say it works, both of which fail to correlate well with how it actually works.
RGB lenses, then? With recombination, either at the sensor or in post-processing with multiple sensors?
We've had monochromatic sensors before and used them to make quite high quality color images.
Most Bayer sensors are monochromatic with filters; for a true RGB sensor, meaning, a cell that responds to all three spectral peaks, Foveon has a three-level cell that responds to different spectra at one focal location (uses depth in the cell IIRC.) But separate photosites have been pretty much the goto tech for quite some time now. My Canon 6D uses it; it takes very good images, talking about the sensor only. Chromatic abberation in Canon lenses is terrible though, for my use, which is astrophotography.
Light gathering. Definitely a good reason.
Identifying marks and law enforcement formally sorting you by your political and religious ideologies for making decisions about your guilt, innocence, suspect nature, surveillance, search, and seizure, however, isn't really old school at all. Not so publicly, anyway.
I find the whole thing very interesting. Apparently, the legal system can get away with considerably more than I thought it could.
Live and learn, I suppose.
So, how about those Kardashians?
Nonsense.
I use major version numbers to indicate major additions of features and bugfixes. I use minor version numbers to announce one or two features that may or may not be significant, and bugfixes.
You know what I use to announce major breakage? Nothing. Because I don't break my applications. If I provided it to you and said it would do X under some OS, then my goal thereafter always incorporates making sure it does X under that very OS.
So clearly, there's more than one way to employ version numbers. :)
One thing about features: If you want to add something that does (some previously available thing) in a new way, the idea that the old way has to be taken out or disabled isn't actually a requirement. The old way already worked. Just don't break it. Add the new thing, and allow the users to use it if they like.
For instance, print in Python. print "foo" could have remained, and fprint("foo") could have been added. Viola, new functionality, language not broken. Or, up top in the Python script, something like # -*- USENEWPRINT -*- could have been the means, or # -*- USEALLNEW -*- or etc. (though I think it's pretty clear that print + fprint is the best strategy.) It's not like we're short on memory these days.
( fprint , of course, is just a placeholder name.)