It's basically a mathematics-oriented language, and mostly useless for most things outside of that. An interesting intellectual exercise for geeks, useful if you're a mathematician, and that's about it.
Amoung others, Naughty Dog use a customised version of LISP called GAOL(Game Action Oriented Lisp). It was used extensively on Jak 2, one of the most impressive games on the PS2, or indeed any console.
As the link mentions, the "difficulty" of Lisp, has lead to its sidelining all too often. The fact is, it is a very, very powerful language and definitely worth a look given the obstacles modern game programmers are running up against.
"A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself." - Disraeli, on Gladstone, 1878
"More matter, with less art!" - Gertrude. Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, by William Shakespere, 16th century
I wonder if our generation will be the last to enjoy physical privacy. With all the tiny nanotech, internet, webcams, etc coming - will our kids be numb to the fact that some pervert is probably spying on them from a ant-bot, etc.? Even in the shower, hiking, etc?
When this finally happens, i.e., when micro surveillance is so cheap, undetectable and ubiquitous that this occurs, and it's really only a matter of time, perhaps personal privacy, outside the context of private internal thought, will simply cease to be a known concept.
Like most creeping invasions of privacy in recent times, I predict that people will slowly but surely, simply accept that they will be videoed, recorded and logged while they sleep, eat, shower, walk, talk, pick their nose, urinate, defecate, flatulate, fornicate, contemplate, drive, high five and while they browse the net. All recordings will of course be subject to 23rd century "photoshopping" and upload to the internet.
To facilitate this shift people will simply stop being embarrassed about just about anything to do with themselves. Being "caught" naked will cease to be a source of embarrassment as people will be monitored naked all of the time, by multiple sources. In a sense, this has already begun to happen with the latest airport security.
You may consider that this will have an upside in that society will "mature", but the reality is people will become even more paranoid. But not about the fact that people are watching their every move, but about what those people think about their every move. Imagine, every article of your clothing will have be made to the latest trend, as anyone you know, or don't know, can view you at any time and pass judgement. At least, so the marketing droids will have you think.
It will be like High-School, only for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and for the rest of your life. A whole new circle of hell, brought to you by mass, uncaring public complancency. Your only succor is that you will be mercifully dead before such an obscenity comes into being, but you'd better call the cremators now anyway, just to be on the sfae side.
Then a few years later, Microsoft brought us Outlook with automatic attachment opening, making the first part possible,
The watershed for me, will always be the IE images exploits, where a malicious website could run code, simply by your browser attemtping to download a carefully crafted image file.
There I was, for years, telling people; "There's no way you can get a virus by just looking at an picture on the internet". Boy was I wrong.
Bottom line, not matter what you pronounce impossible through software, invariably, somewhere out there, there exists a bug to accomplish just that.
I'll make the switch when they stick to one for more than a year, until then, I'll use Windows and BSD.
Alas, poor wretch. Then misfortune shall be thy lot.
Re:Uh oh, don't tell the President about this!
on
Google's DNA
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If Google succeeds, the terrorists win.
Clearly, all Google searches must be forwarded through AT&T servers, and hence to the NSA. All this will be done at the expense of Google, after all, they're Google's packets, on the NSAs network.
Whether or not the product in question was exciting doesn't make it any more legal to report trade secrets.
Yet because no real equivalent of an Offical Secrets Act exists in the United States, it is legal to disclose any secret dealings of the US Government. It is legal to publish leaks from the White House for example, or the Pentagon Papers.
How strange that the trite dealings of private companies are afforded more clandestine protections that the secret wranglings of the government, or indeed the private affairs of individuals. Celebrities for example, cannot argue prior restraint, or restraint of any kind when glossy magazines publish intimate details of their private lives. Neither can you.
However, a corperation can claim prior restraint on just about anything it likes, as long as it claims copyright, or "trade secret" laws apply. I wonder why I can't register myself as a private company and avail of this seemingly extralegal protection?
There's a word for that system of government: Fascism
We here at AT&T prefer to use the term: "Pervasively Administered Law and Order Regimes, with Ongoing Profitable Public/Private Synergistic Relationships"
By forgiving those who hurt you in the past, you show that you are the greater person.
No. You just send out the message that it's OK to torment people to the point to suicide. There are no consequences. You're victim and you will have a big group hug in 20 years time at the reunion. It made him stronger see.
They should never be forgiven. The best thing that can happen is for them to realise what they did and be consumed by regret for the rest of their lives, just like their victims. That's not being bitter; that's being just.
As a 22 year old who admittedly does not know very much about the history of our government...can any older Slashdotters explain what it was like when there were even worse government abuses than this, and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?
Not that I'm exactly qualified to answer your question, but googling "Watergate" would be a good place to start. Alas the post-Watergate era seems to be fading away in recent times.
And still, if you look at Fedora Core 5 as a desktop OS which is what its trying to be it's incomplete, buggy, is missing lots of default multimedia packages, the appplication are still way too fragmented.
Fedora is not trying to be a desktop OS. If it was, flash, java and mp3 would ship out of the box.
Fedora is trying to be... something. I'll have to say that it makes a great distro for a home server. And it's got a pretty wide range of software for the intrepid.
My opinion is that Fedora is a workstation distro.
You're talking about Abiogenesis here rather than evolution aren't you. Unlike evolution, abiogenesis is one of the those areas of science which we have little evidence supporting any of the hypotheses. All current indications are that this happened just the once, several billion years ago making this one of the most difficult theories to deal with.
The only difficulty here is out inability to produce an extremely unlikely event under laboratory conditions.
Abiogenesis is not impossible. It is simply an extremely unlikely event. So why did it happen? Simple. Exponentiation.
Let P= probability of abiogenesis occuring in a suitable region over a period of one second. This is a very small number. However, what is the likelihood of it not occuring at all in a multitude of regions and over a long period of time?
Let N= number of locations. Let T=Numbers of seconds in period. Probability of abiogenesis not occurring in one region in one second is 1-P. This is a number which is very close to 1, but is less than one.
Therefore, probability of abiogenesis not occurring in N regions over a period of T seconds is given by: (1-P)^NT
1-P is a number which may be very, very close to one. But if N*T is large enough, the probability of abiogenesis not occuring will eventually drop to zero. Simple example: Let P=10^-10. Despite the extreme unlikelhood of P occuring, for N*T=10^12, (1-P)^NT ~ 3.72*10^44.
In other words, given only one location; after ~31,709 years, the probability of abiogenesis having occured at some point is a virtual certainty. The expected time interval for actual abiogenesis is I belive of the order of 1 billion years. There's considerable "margin for error" here.
In other words, I think the only thing stoping us from vacationing on the moon is the fact that too many people think that if governments had a safe place to escape the effects of nukes, they would be used more then they have been.
Actually, nuking a bas on the moon is probably an even easier task than nuking a target on the other side of the earth. The results would also make for a prettier light show.
Not for civil suits. The test there is preponderance of the evidence.
But the evidence itself must be obtained lawfully.
YES!!!! NICE ONE TACO!!!
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 1
I like it:)
Seconded! Oh so seconded!!
Looks like they've finally taken everyone's advice and have gone trolling(good kind) in the Journals for some juicy stories. And lets face it, this story is what Slashdot is really all about. Pine Vs Gmail. Genius.
There is some danm good eatin' in the Journal section, and hopefully now a valuable resource won't be going to waste. I'm guessing some of the best stories will be coming out of the Journal's section, especially for "deep geek" stuff.
Encore! Encore!
Re:Nothing beats yahoo and mutt
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 1
I'll stick with pop3, thank you. I'd prefer to have my messages on my hard drive, where I and I alone am control of what is archived or deleted, and I and I alone am able to access these archives.
IMAP does this. Offline reading of messages is supported.
Slashdot Mirror
Otherwise, how will we ever know what our armed representatives abroad are doing in our names?
But shouldn't soliders have the right to strip prisioners naked and photgraph their anuses, without fear of government surveillance?
It's basically a mathematics-oriented language, and mostly useless for most things outside of that. An interesting intellectual exercise for geeks, useful if you're a mathematician, and that's about it.
Amoung others, Naughty Dog use a customised version of LISP called GAOL(Game Action Oriented Lisp). It was used extensively on Jak 2, one of the most impressive games on the PS2, or indeed any console.
As the link mentions, the "difficulty" of Lisp, has lead to its sidelining all too often. The fact is, it is a very, very powerful language and definitely worth a look given the obstacles modern game programmers are running up against.
OK what have we got here? Overworked developer. Inadequate tools. Unreasonable deadlines. Exponentially increasing content. Parallelisation problems. Increased competition. Increased Expectation. Aaaannnd... C++....hmmmmm.
OK. Looks like a classic case of square peg in round hole syndrome. Take two courses in Lisp and read up on a fractal generation algorithims.
And for Christ's sake kid, lay off the coffee.
This problem isn't new.
"A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself."
- Disraeli, on Gladstone, 1878
"More matter, with less art!"
- Gertrude. Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, by William Shakespere, 16th century
Keep it stable and keep them the new stuff coming.
Your aim is sabotage sir!
I wonder if our generation will be the last to enjoy physical privacy. With all the tiny nanotech, internet, webcams, etc coming - will our kids be numb to the fact that some pervert is probably spying on them from a ant-bot, etc.? Even in the shower, hiking, etc?
When this finally happens, i.e., when micro surveillance is so cheap, undetectable and ubiquitous that this occurs, and it's really only a matter of time, perhaps personal privacy, outside the context of private internal thought, will simply cease to be a known concept.
Like most creeping invasions of privacy in recent times, I predict that people will slowly but surely, simply accept that they will be videoed, recorded and logged while they sleep, eat, shower, walk, talk, pick their nose, urinate, defecate, flatulate, fornicate, contemplate, drive, high five and while they browse the net. All recordings will of course be subject to 23rd century "photoshopping" and upload to the internet.
To facilitate this shift people will simply stop being embarrassed about just about anything to do with themselves. Being "caught" naked will cease to be a source of embarrassment as people will be monitored naked all of the time, by multiple sources. In a sense, this has already begun to happen with the latest airport security.
You may consider that this will have an upside in that society will "mature", but the reality is people will become even more paranoid. But not about the fact that people are watching their every move, but about what those people think about their every move. Imagine, every article of your clothing will have be made to the latest trend, as anyone you know, or don't know, can view you at any time and pass judgement. At least, so the marketing droids will have you think.
It will be like High-School, only for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and for the rest of your life. A whole new circle of hell, brought to you by mass, uncaring public complancency. Your only succor is that you will be mercifully dead before such an obscenity comes into being, but you'd better call the cremators now anyway, just to be on the sfae side.
Then a few years later, Microsoft brought us Outlook with automatic attachment opening, making the first part possible,
The watershed for me, will always be the IE images exploits, where a malicious website could run code, simply by your browser attemtping to download a carefully crafted image file.
There I was, for years, telling people; "There's no way you can get a virus by just looking at an picture on the internet". Boy was I wrong.
Bottom line, not matter what you pronounce impossible through software, invariably, somewhere out there, there exists a bug to accomplish just that.
I'll make the switch when they stick to one for more than a year, until then, I'll use Windows and BSD.
Alas, poor wretch. Then misfortune shall be thy lot.
If Google succeeds, the terrorists win.
Clearly, all Google searches must be forwarded through AT&T servers, and hence to the NSA. All this will be done at the expense of Google, after all, they're Google's packets, on the NSAs network.
Whether or not the product in question was exciting doesn't make it any more legal to report trade secrets.
Yet because no real equivalent of an Offical Secrets Act exists in the United States, it is legal to disclose any secret dealings of the US Government. It is legal to publish leaks from the White House for example, or the Pentagon Papers.
How strange that the trite dealings of private companies are afforded more clandestine protections that the secret wranglings of the government, or indeed the private affairs of individuals. Celebrities for example, cannot argue prior restraint, or restraint of any kind when glossy magazines publish intimate details of their private lives. Neither can you.
However, a corperation can claim prior restraint on just about anything it likes, as long as it claims copyright, or "trade secret" laws apply. I wonder why I can't register myself as a private company and avail of this seemingly extralegal protection?
Okay, here goes. This is for three monitors and two full-time towers.
Bill!? Is that you?
Cypher:If Linus had told us the truth, we would've told him to shove that free OS hobby right up his ass!
There's a word for that system of government: Fascism
We here at AT&T prefer to use the term: "Pervasively Administered Law and Order Regimes, with Ongoing Profitable Public/Private Synergistic Relationships"
In the end, remember: spam is beatable.
Ahhhh! The optimism of youth!
By forgiving those who hurt you in the past, you show that you are the greater person.
No. You just send out the message that it's OK to torment people to the point to suicide. There are no consequences. You're victim and you will have a big group hug in 20 years time at the reunion. It made him stronger see.
They should never be forgiven. The best thing that can happen is for them to realise what they did and be consumed by regret for the rest of their lives, just like their victims. That's not being bitter; that's being just.
As a 22 year old who admittedly does not know very much about the history of our government...can any older Slashdotters explain what it was like when there were even worse government abuses than this, and what the catalyst was that finally got the people to act?
Not that I'm exactly qualified to answer your question, but googling "Watergate" would be a good place to start. Alas the post-Watergate era seems to be fading away in recent times.
100% of that 90% are/have been convinced they need it.
Well, what's their alternative? SQL Server? You can only get by on that for so long.
The usual transition goes like this; Access->SQL Server->(Something Better)
List out the current list of products that qualify as "Something Better" than SQL Server.
And still, if you look at Fedora Core 5 as a desktop OS which is what its trying to be it's incomplete, buggy, is missing lots of default multimedia packages, the appplication are still way too fragmented.
Fedora is not trying to be a desktop OS. If it was, flash, java and mp3 would ship out of the box.
Fedora is trying to be... something. I'll have to say that it makes a great distro for a home server. And it's got a pretty wide range of software for the intrepid.
My opinion is that Fedora is a workstation distro.
I'm going to try that right now!
Despite the extreme unlikelhood of P occuring, for N*T=10^12, (1-P)^NT ~ 3.72*10^44.
Whoops! That should have read:
Despite the extreme unlikelhood of P occuring, for N*T=10^12, (1-P)^NT ~ 3.72*10^-44.
(1-P)^NT is an extremely small number.
You're talking about Abiogenesis here rather than evolution aren't you. Unlike evolution, abiogenesis is one of the those areas of science which we have little evidence supporting any of the hypotheses. All current indications are that this happened just the once, several billion years ago making this one of the most difficult theories to deal with.
The only difficulty here is out inability to produce an extremely unlikely event under laboratory conditions.
Abiogenesis is not impossible. It is simply an extremely unlikely event. So why did it happen? Simple. Exponentiation.
Let P= probability of abiogenesis occuring in a suitable region over a period of one second. This is a very small number. However, what is the likelihood of it not occuring at all in a multitude of regions and over a long period of time?
Let N= number of locations. Let T=Numbers of seconds in period. Probability of abiogenesis not occurring in one region in one second is 1-P. This is a number which is very close to 1, but is less than one.
Therefore, probability of abiogenesis not occurring in N regions over a period of T seconds is given by: (1-P)^NT
1-P is a number which may be very, very close to one. But if N*T is large enough, the probability of abiogenesis not occuring will eventually drop to zero. Simple example: Let P=10^-10. Despite the extreme unlikelhood of P occuring, for N*T=10^12, (1-P)^NT ~ 3.72*10^44.
In other words, given only one location; after ~31,709 years, the probability of abiogenesis having occured at some point is a virtual certainty. The expected time interval for actual abiogenesis is I belive of the order of 1 billion years. There's considerable "margin for error" here.
In other words, I think the only thing stoping us from vacationing on the moon is the fact that too many people think that if governments had a safe place to escape the effects of nukes, they would be used more then they have been.
Actually, nuking a bas on the moon is probably an even easier task than nuking a target on the other side of the earth. The results would also make for a prettier light show.
Not for civil suits. The test there is preponderance of the evidence.
But the evidence itself must be obtained lawfully.
I like it :)
Seconded! Oh so seconded!!
Looks like they've finally taken everyone's advice and have gone trolling(good kind) in the Journals for some juicy stories. And lets face it, this story is what Slashdot is really all about. Pine Vs Gmail. Genius.
There is some danm good eatin' in the Journal section, and hopefully now a valuable resource won't be going to waste. I'm guessing some of the best stories will be coming out of the Journal's section, especially for "deep geek" stuff.
Encore! Encore!
I'll stick with pop3, thank you. I'd prefer to have my messages on my hard drive, where I and I alone am control of what is archived or deleted, and I and I alone am able to access these archives.
IMAP does this. Offline reading of messages is supported.
The advantages of POP3 are.... debateable.