It's also worth pointing out that knowing the ending twist can actually pique some people's interest in the work enough to cause them to watch, read, or otherwise consume the rest of it. Take, for instance, four of my all-time favorite movies: Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, Seven, and 12 Monkeys. In all four cases I hadn't originally heard much of anything about them, and the advertisements didn't particularly appeal to me, but I ended up walking in 20 minutes from the end while someone else was watching them. In each case, I was like, "Holy shit! I have got to see the rest of that."
I now own all four of them and watch them fairly regularly. Knowing the ending still doesn't seem to bother me all that much.
And sometimes, the twist is nice to know ahead of time. In particular, I'm thinking of the twist in Van Helsing
[SPOILER ALERT]
It sucked donkey balls
[/SPOILER ALERT]
You probably just need to straighten your data cables out. The ones are pointy and can't get past kinks in the line easily. The zeroes are able to push through, though. As a result, after a while, only zeroes are left in the system.
I learned it in a Dilbert strip, so it must be true.
This post is regrettably a little late, since I felt the need to figure out how to implement a pull-down menu system based on CSS as a poster mentioned in an earlier thread (it now works beautifully, btw). But I felt the need to comment on this behavior, since it is understandably a little confusing.
If you delete an array key directly with the delete command, eg: `delete myArray[4];` the length property doesn't get updated even though the number of elements in the array does. (WTF?!?!)
This statement is a bit inaccurate, but the behavior that occurs makes sense once you realize that all objects in JavaScript (including arrays and functions) are really associative arrays--they are not conventional arrays like you would find in C and Java. As far as JavaScript is concerned, an array is just 1) an extended object with 2) a special literal syntax, 3) which accepts unsigned integers as member names (though you cannot use the dot syntax to select them) and 4) which has a length property that automatically updates when you do something with the object (as opposed to doing something to the object, which is what the delete operator does), In order to remove an index from an array and have it reflected in the length property you have to use an array method (shift, pop, or splice, depending upon whether you're removing items from the beginning, end, or middle of the array, respectively). In JavaScript, the delete operator is only used to deallocate hash keys from an object and remove links for garbage collection; and since myArray [4] is not really the fourth element of the array, but a property with a name whose value is not a string, it doesn't invoke any special array behaviors, as an array method would. The array's length property is just a hook to allow programmers loop through the construct using a conventional for loop without needing a sizeof operator (which wouldn't work that well, anyhow; since JavaScript arrays are untyped).
In case anyone is still reading this (and actually cares), the following examples might shed some light on how this works:
var myArray = new Array (10);// Create an uninitialized array with an initial length of ten.
myArray [4] = 20;// Assign a value to index 4 (really just a member with a name of '4')
for (var p in myArray) alert (p);// Loop through the object properties and display each one to the user, in sequence.
delete myArray [4];
for (var p in myArray) alert (p);// Loop through a second time
alert (myArray.length);// Display the length of the array (as understood by the interpreter) to the user.
You'll notice in this example that the first loop only displays one property (4), the second loop never displays anything, and the final length is still ten. If you adjust it to the following:
var myArray = new Array (10);// Create an uninitialized array with an initial length of ten.
myArray [4] = 20;// Assign a value to index 4 (really just a member with a name of '4')
for (var p in myArray) alert (p);// Loop through the object properties and display each one to the user, in sequence.
myArray.splice (4, 1);
for (var p in myArray) alert (p);// Loop through a second time
alert (myArray.length);// Display the length of the array (as understood by JavaScript) to the user.
The output is the same, except that this time around, the length actually changes to 9. This is the correct way to use arrays--the delete operator is a little bit too low-level in JavaScript to work the way you're trying to use it. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but the way JavaScript handles arrays can be useful if you're indexing objects on the client side based upon the table ids assigned by your database system of choice (assuming that you use some sort of integer-based record id scheme and none of your screens ever display too many items a
That seems like the most logical explanation. While I understand the need for scientists to play the devil's advocate and search for other possible answers for things like this, I still find it amusing when people make pronouncements that the phenomenon being seen "should be impossible," based purely on the long-term instability of said phenomenon. Just because the odds of us seeing an object in some condition are extremely low doesn't mean that something with that characteristic can't ever be seen, or even that we should expect to never see it (only that we shouldn't expect to see it), especially when there's such a large population of bodies out there to observe.
It seems to me that, given what we know, Occam's Razor would suggest that the planet is in the midst of a death spiral. Having put that forth as a tentative hypotheses, further research could then be done to see if there are any unknowns that could account for this in other ways, without publicly announcing unlikely hypotheses, like the star's tidal energy being 1/1000th of the expected value. We understand orbital death spirals, and we've seen them before--and yet that perfectly reasonable hypothesis is given apparently equal weight to another one that would substantially alter our understanding of orbital dynamics if true, but which is posited simply because someone found an object with a rather unusual and short-lived property in a huge sea of extremely diverse objects, many of which also have unusual and short-lived properties.
I understand the notion that when observing the cosmos, we should never assume ourselves to be in a special place or time, but sometimes, with regard to certain observations, that's exactly when and where we are...
IANATP (Television Producer), so I don't really _know_, and I'm just making an educated guess, but it probably depends on how long a given show has been in production and how successful it's been...
My guess would be that sitcoms are cheaper early on in the run (unless they already have celebrities in the cast to start with), but they tend to draw better ratings. This tends to cause the actors to start demanding progressively more ridiculous salaries just to stay onboard...
Sci-fi shows probably cost more early on, due to the increased cost of special effects. But since the cast of those shows never reach the kind of celebrity status of the cast of, say, Friends or Seinfeld (The X-Files being an obvious exception), they don't end up making the same kind of money in the end. So increases in cast salaries tend to be more conservative...
I'd say that it's probably almost always cheaper in the long run to produce a sci-fi show, but the ad revenue generated from sci-fi shows tends to be substantially less, too, so it kind of cancels out in a way...
I could be wrong, though (it's happened a couple times before)...
I find it pretty pathetic that people would put so much effort into fighting for something so trivial. It's a TV SHOW!
While I agree that there are definitely more valuable things to fight for, it should be noted that the airwaves over which the networks broadcast are public property. In other words, it belongs to you and me and the rest of the American people.
Thus, I would argue that since the networks broadcast at the pleasure of the people, there should be a certain obligation on the part of the networks to provide a wide range of programming with an eye toward providing at least one or two shows in their lineups that attempt to appeal to any given significant demographic. The efforts of fans of these shows to make their opinions heard are, in reality, an attempt to make the suits in charge of programming realize that the sci-fi-watching demographic is not as insignificant as the Nielsen system (which tends to skew viewership data in favor of pure lowest common denominator garbage) would otherwise imply.
Now, while I feel that Enterprise was nothing more than a stale re-hash of Star Trek's previous incarnations, I have personally, over the past few years, had the displeasure of seeing most of my favorite shows cancelled to be replaced by "reality"-based crap along the lines of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire Midget with Ass Herpes." There has been no real attempt on the part of the networks to appeal to my interests. What us sci-fi fans are fighting for is nothing less than the right to be able to see the kind of TV that we enjoy on the publicly-owned airwaves. And, however trivial that may seem to some, the fact is that network television has gradually become more homogenized, with a rash of brain-dead "me-too" reality shows and nighttime soaps (which draw better ratings from the retards who set the ratings). How is this in the public's interest?
When we fight for these shows, we realize that we'll probably not be successful (I realized that when I participated in the attempts to save Firefly), but it is a matter of principle, and I believe it is non-trivial. It may turn out that the lousy ratings are actually the result of the show having no fan base whatsoever, but nobody will ever know one way or the other if nobody tries (it's like voting for third parties in elections). If everyone who likes a show (regardless of genre) makes their voices heard when it gets cancelled (hopefully in a respectful fashion--this can't be stressed enough), we might be able to get the network execs to realize that they should not be marginalizing "niche" shows, that a wider variety of programming is a good thing, and that maybe--just maybe--some research should be done to investigate how the Nielsen system could be modified to more accurately reflect the actual viewing habits of the American public. This would unarguably be a very good thing...
What would you rather tell your grandkids?
I fought hard and got Spaceshit3000 extended for another 3 seasons.
or...
I joined the fight and helped to bring about the end of software patents (just an example).
Like I said before, you're right on this count, but by no means is activism with regards to your favorite television show exclusive to other, more important forms of citizen/consumer activism. Simply making your voice heard about any given topic is hardly a full-time job. Obviously, if the only thing Bob the Couch Potato has ever gotten "up in arms" about is a TV show, then shame on him, but I think that art and entertainment are definitely valuable and worth fighting for, too...
Slashdot Mirror
It's also worth pointing out that knowing the ending twist can actually pique some people's interest in the work enough to cause them to watch, read, or otherwise consume the rest of it. Take, for instance, four of my all-time favorite movies: Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, Seven, and 12 Monkeys. In all four cases I hadn't originally heard much of anything about them, and the advertisements didn't particularly appeal to me, but I ended up walking in 20 minutes from the end while someone else was watching them. In each case, I was like, "Holy shit! I have got to see the rest of that."
I now own all four of them and watch them fairly regularly. Knowing the ending still doesn't seem to bother me all that much.
And sometimes, the twist is nice to know ahead of time. In particular, I'm thinking of the twist in Van Helsing
[SPOILER ALERT]
It sucked donkey balls
[/SPOILER ALERT]
Who woulda' guessed that?
You probably just need to straighten your data cables out. The ones are pointy and can't get past kinks in the line easily. The zeroes are able to push through, though. As a result, after a while, only zeroes are left in the system.
I learned it in a Dilbert strip, so it must be true.
If you delete an array key directly with the delete command, eg: `delete myArray[4];` the length property doesn't get updated even though the number of elements in the array does. (WTF?!?!)
This statement is a bit inaccurate, but the behavior that occurs makes sense once you realize that all objects in JavaScript (including arrays and functions) are really associative arrays--they are not conventional arrays like you would find in C and Java. As far as JavaScript is concerned, an array is just 1) an extended object with 2) a special literal syntax, 3) which accepts unsigned integers as member names (though you cannot use the dot syntax to select them) and 4) which has a length property that automatically updates when you do something with the object (as opposed to doing something to the object, which is what the delete operator does), In order to remove an index from an array and have it reflected in the length property you have to use an array method (shift, pop, or splice, depending upon whether you're removing items from the beginning, end, or middle of the array, respectively). In JavaScript, the delete operator is only used to deallocate hash keys from an object and remove links for garbage collection; and since myArray [4] is not really the fourth element of the array, but a property with a name whose value is not a string, it doesn't invoke any special array behaviors, as an array method would. The array's length property is just a hook to allow programmers loop through the construct using a conventional for loop without needing a sizeof operator (which wouldn't work that well, anyhow; since JavaScript arrays are untyped). In case anyone is still reading this (and actually cares), the following examples might shed some light on how this works: var myArray = new Array (10); // Create an uninitialized array with an initial length of ten.
myArray [4] = 20; // Assign a value to index 4 (really just a member with a name of '4')
for (var p in myArray) alert (p); // Loop through the object properties and display each one to the user, in sequence.
delete myArray [4];
for (var p in myArray) alert (p); // Loop through a second time
alert (myArray.length); // Display the length of the array (as understood by the interpreter) to the user.
You'll notice in this example that the first loop only displays one property (4), the second loop never displays anything, and the final length is still ten. If you adjust it to the following:
var myArray = new Array (10); // Create an uninitialized array with an initial length of ten.
myArray [4] = 20; // Assign a value to index 4 (really just a member with a name of '4')
for (var p in myArray) alert (p); // Loop through the object properties and display each one to the user, in sequence.
myArray.splice (4, 1);
for (var p in myArray) alert (p); // Loop through a second time
alert (myArray.length); // Display the length of the array (as understood by JavaScript) to the user.
The output is the same, except that this time around, the length actually changes to 9. This is the correct way to use arrays--the delete operator is a little bit too low-level in JavaScript to work the way you're trying to use it. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but the way JavaScript handles arrays can be useful if you're indexing objects on the client side based upon the table ids assigned by your database system of choice (assuming that you use some sort of integer-based record id scheme and none of your screens ever display too many items a
That seems like the most logical explanation. While I understand the need for scientists to play the devil's advocate and search for other possible answers for things like this, I still find it amusing when people make pronouncements that the phenomenon being seen "should be impossible," based purely on the long-term instability of said phenomenon. Just because the odds of us seeing an object in some condition are extremely low doesn't mean that something with that characteristic can't ever be seen, or even that we should expect to never see it (only that we shouldn't expect to see it), especially when there's such a large population of bodies out there to observe.
It seems to me that, given what we know, Occam's Razor would suggest that the planet is in the midst of a death spiral. Having put that forth as a tentative hypotheses, further research could then be done to see if there are any unknowns that could account for this in other ways, without publicly announcing unlikely hypotheses, like the star's tidal energy being 1/1000th of the expected value. We understand orbital death spirals, and we've seen them before--and yet that perfectly reasonable hypothesis is given apparently equal weight to another one that would substantially alter our understanding of orbital dynamics if true, but which is posited simply because someone found an object with a rather unusual and short-lived property in a huge sea of extremely diverse objects, many of which also have unusual and short-lived properties.
I understand the notion that when observing the cosmos, we should never assume ourselves to be in a special place or time, but sometimes, with regard to certain observations, that's exactly when and where we are...
IANATP (Television Producer), so I don't really _know_, and I'm just making an educated guess, but it probably depends on how long a given show has been in production and how successful it's been...
My guess would be that sitcoms are cheaper early on in the run (unless they already have celebrities in the cast to start with), but they tend to draw better ratings. This tends to cause the actors to start demanding progressively more ridiculous salaries just to stay onboard...
Sci-fi shows probably cost more early on, due to the increased cost of special effects. But since the cast of those shows never reach the kind of celebrity status of the cast of, say, Friends or Seinfeld (The X-Files being an obvious exception), they don't end up making the same kind of money in the end. So increases in cast salaries tend to be more conservative...
I'd say that it's probably almost always cheaper in the long run to produce a sci-fi show, but the ad revenue generated from sci-fi shows tends to be substantially less, too, so it kind of cancels out in a way...
I could be wrong, though (it's happened a couple times before)...
I find it pretty pathetic that people would put so much effort into fighting for something so trivial. It's a TV SHOW!
While I agree that there are definitely more valuable things to fight for, it should be noted that the airwaves over which the networks broadcast are public property. In other words, it belongs to you and me and the rest of the American people.
Thus, I would argue that since the networks broadcast at the pleasure of the people, there should be a certain obligation on the part of the networks to provide a wide range of programming with an eye toward providing at least one or two shows in their lineups that attempt to appeal to any given significant demographic. The efforts of fans of these shows to make their opinions heard are, in reality, an attempt to make the suits in charge of programming realize that the sci-fi-watching demographic is not as insignificant as the Nielsen system (which tends to skew viewership data in favor of pure lowest common denominator garbage) would otherwise imply.
Now, while I feel that Enterprise was nothing more than a stale re-hash of Star Trek's previous incarnations, I have personally, over the past few years, had the displeasure of seeing most of my favorite shows cancelled to be replaced by "reality"-based crap along the lines of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire Midget with Ass Herpes." There has been no real attempt on the part of the networks to appeal to my interests. What us sci-fi fans are fighting for is nothing less than the right to be able to see the kind of TV that we enjoy on the publicly-owned airwaves. And, however trivial that may seem to some, the fact is that network television has gradually become more homogenized, with a rash of brain-dead "me-too" reality shows and nighttime soaps (which draw better ratings from the retards who set the ratings). How is this in the public's interest?
When we fight for these shows, we realize that we'll probably not be successful (I realized that when I participated in the attempts to save Firefly), but it is a matter of principle, and I believe it is non-trivial. It may turn out that the lousy ratings are actually the result of the show having no fan base whatsoever, but nobody will ever know one way or the other if nobody tries (it's like voting for third parties in elections). If everyone who likes a show (regardless of genre) makes their voices heard when it gets cancelled (hopefully in a respectful fashion--this can't be stressed enough), we might be able to get the network execs to realize that they should not be marginalizing "niche" shows, that a wider variety of programming is a good thing, and that maybe--just maybe--some research should be done to investigate how the Nielsen system could be modified to more accurately reflect the actual viewing habits of the American public. This would unarguably be a very good thing...
What would you rather tell your grandkids? I fought hard and got Spaceshit3000 extended for another 3 seasons.
or...
I joined the fight and helped to bring about the end of software patents (just an example).
Like I said before, you're right on this count, but by no means is activism with regards to your favorite television show exclusive to other, more important forms of citizen/consumer activism. Simply making your voice heard about any given topic is hardly a full-time job. Obviously, if the only thing Bob the Couch Potato has ever gotten "up in arms" about is a TV show, then shame on him, but I think that art and entertainment are definitely valuable and worth fighting for, too...
Anyhow, that's my two cents...
Just FYI, typing "microsoft .net" (quotes aren't necessary) on Google will yield only .Net framework and passport-related information.