Some pieces of programming would become slightly more difficult. For example, 'if(hashmap.get("myvalue") != null)' would not be a valid construct. You'd need to perform a check like this: 'if(hashmap.exists("myvalue")'
Of course, the latter is the "correct" check anyway, so the theory goes that the software will be more robust and reliable.
It seems that you have only sidestepped the question "what should hashmap.get("myvalue") return when it can't find anything?"
That needs to be answered before we can abolish NULL.
Winner take-all-vote distribution is disgusting. If I live in a state that goes 49% for party X, and 51% for party Y, you can't even argue that giving 100% of our states votes to party Y makes the least bit of sense.
The winner-takes-all has to happen at _some_ level. Following your reasoning, it'd be as absurd to elect any one single person the President of US just because he/she leads the other candidate in the popular vote by 2%.
No, no it doesn't. There is absolutely nothing I have pirated that I would have bought if I had not pirated it. There are _many_ things that I have bought as a result of pirating it first. My pirating led to an increase in the amount I have purchased, not a decrease.
This argument is very simple to understand, yet I hear blanket statements like yours absolutely denying it is possible. I'm sorry, you're just wrong, at least in my case. There may be freeloaders out there that do just try and pirate instead of buying, but I am not one of them. I do exist.
That might make yourself feel better, but doesn't prove anything, especially not that GP was wrong. Just because you wouldn't have bought it anyway doesn't mean all other people who pirated wouldn't have bought whatever they pirated anyway.
But if everyone could eat the best foods in the entire world anytime they wanted, aren't they all now richer than the wealthiest kings 1000 years ago?
Very true... up until the point where nobody bothers to develop any new "recipes" any more because they can only ever hope to sell the first item they make.
Nice to see people still miss the point. Whether you care to admit it or not, it's not normal to wank off to pics of underaged people. I personally lost interest in that more or less immediately upon turning 18.
Do you realize that "normal" is a very, very subjective word? There are people in this world who consider it not normal having sex during day time.
(Disclaimer: no, I don't find it normal to wank off to pics of underaged people either, but that's beside the point.)
The argument you're making is that because there isn't direct damage that it isn't causing damage. It's a bad argument, basically it would be OK to view and look at child pr0n as long as you didn't make or produce it. Encouraging it by giving the sites hits or trading other people's images would OK, because of course that person trading the images didn't make them.
What about viewing an online video depicting a man being beheaded or any other act that in and of itself is illegal to commit?
a) Most of them will simply turn over that information to the government, without asking for a court order.
b) The ones that do so are very likely to get magical retroactive immunity if anyone finds out and complains that what they did was illegal.
c) Failing that, the government can wiretap the communications directly, and give retroactive immunity to itself.
Like the OP said, at least in China they tell you what the rules are from the start; they don't pretend that you have rights and then do whatever they want. The rules might be too strict, and even "unfair", but you know what they are.
No, they're not. Believe it or not, americans are not God's chosen people. That's the jews.
The question really was "were they citizens of the PRC?" What makes the difference in this context is not whether you speak Mandarin (or however many more dialects fluently), but whether you are under the complete authority of the Chinese government.
I see. So they lived there for nearly 30 years, spoke the language fluently (two languages, in fact, IIRC), one of them actually worked for the public administration, but they never lived in China...?
You said "several years" in your previous post. My comment was based on that. Now it's suddenly 30?
What? Just 25 years? Then I guess by your own definition you never lived in China.
"My own definition"? When did I ever give a definition that draws the line at 30 years? Again you said "several years" earlier.
And you still haven't explained why you think people wouldn't be able to post on Slashdot from China. I'm particularly curious since Slashdot isn't mentioned anywhere as being blocked in China, and since I've seen several posts here made by people claiming to be in China. Maybe they are also mistaken and they never really lived there? Maybe no one has lived in China except you...?
Since you seem to use "several" in a very loose sense, I have to ask, by "several" did you mean "hundreds" or "thousands"? If you actually meant what most people would when they use the word "several", then have you wondered how come there are so few of those posters, compared to the general population of either China or slashdot?
Just because it's blocked doesn't mean "nobody gets out, ever". Is that too hard to comprehend or even imagine?
And you have never answered my challenge - why don't you put your money (or your life in this case) where your mouth is, renounce your current citizenship, and apply for a PRC one. I don't think it's asking for too much, since you think it's all irrelevant, and it's actually better in some cases in China. Your relatives "lived" there happily. I'm sure you'll thrive, too.
Oh and that goes to your relatives' grandchildren too. If they were so happily living in China, why did they keep their children and grandchildren in the US?
Once this technology is available it will become available to everybody, good guys and bad guys. But it will probably help insurgents and guerilla fighters more than large conventional armies.
Availability != accessibility. I'm sure the governments - the rich ones at that - will be in the first to get their hands on these things. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing in general. Like any other technologies, it really depends on against whom it's used.
I have, and I did. The last thing an internet café wants is to be charged with downloading copyrighted material (or uploading child porn, or being the source of a DoS attack, etc.). Lots of internet cafes ask for ID, to cover their own asses. They won't go out of their way to verify that the ID is real, but they do ask for it. A lot of them also have security cameras, and keep a full log of what you do online, so it wouldn't be too hard to trace a client.
The question is: are they being legally mandated to do so, or are they doing so out of self-protection? I think that makes the difference as far as this discussion is concerned. Just like somebody else pointed out that most of the internet cafes in China actually aren't actually enforcing the law, but that doesn't mean the law isn't there or it's not evil.
Although I've never been to China, a couple of relatives of mine lived there for several years (they speak Mandarin fluently). They came back with all their limbs and were never questioned by men in black (or maybe they erased their memories, OMG!). They actually lived pretty well there (they retired and came back to be with their grandchildren).
So they are Americans? You know, like those who don't have black hair and brown eyes, and always carry their US passports and the US Embassy's phone number in their wallets? Yeah, I would be surprised if they even got a spank in their butt if they are "caught" reading CNN.
I have said this many times on/. to people who have merely "traveled" to China for days, weeks, months, or even "several years". And I'll say it again: no, you have not lived in China. Not as a Chinese you haven't.
How would I know? I was born in China, and lived there for 25 years before coming to the US. My parents and grandparents were all Party members. Trust me, I know.
And why wouldn't I be able to get on Slashdot from China...?
You seem to be under the impression that China is a big concentration camp. It isn't.
It's not a physical one, but certainly a digital and mental one. I mean, just RTFA.
I think that going as far as stating "they aren't that courteous in the US" only shows how ungrateful you are.
Nobody should have to be "grateful" for basic human rights, such as the right to privacy.
To the extent that any government denies these, it is a bad government that deserves criticism.
Oh I absolutely agree. When I said "ungrateful", I didn't mean "we should be grateful for not having our rights denied by the government." I meant "we should be grateful for being able to live in this country."
Disclaimer: just because I am grateful doesn't mean that I'm OK with the bad things the government of _this_ country has been and is doing. I just still believe in the fundamental values of this country, and I think that at least in this country, the worse enemy is not any particular government, but the cynicism that a lot of people seem to hide behind and allow themselves to be paralyzed with.
You mean your ISP accepts false identities...? How do they know where to send the bills?
Sigh, I wasn't talking about ISPs. Have you ever used an internet cafe? Did you _have_ to register with your id before getting online? Are the forums _required_by_law_ in this country to take and verify your true identity before allowing you to register?
I'll take a country no elections over one with rigged elections any day.
Fantastic. Please go ahead and renounce your US citizenship (or whichever country it is), apply to become a citizen of the People's Republic of China, go there and actually live there, and come back tell us you still want to make that bold statement up there.
Oh wait, you probably won't, because you won't even be able to get back on/. from there!
Also, what are you saying? That thanks to Tor, you're OK with warrantless wiretaps now? Because you have the knowledge to cover your tracks, it's OK! I remember reading on/. that Tor is not exactly fool proof, maybe things are better now, I don't use it.
Did you miss the part right before that, you know, where I said "I am upset with the warrantless eavesdropping issue"? Never mind, let me just spell it out for you - no, I am still not OK with the issue.
My comment was meant as a sarcastic swipe at hypocritical politicians decrying the snooping on FOREIGNERS in a host country (especially when that host country is China, WTF did they expect??). Meanwhile in the U.S. they're snooping on their own fucking citizens without so much as having to show any proof of wrong doing or letting you know about it. But apparently it's not such a big deal because you know you can rent your own fucking server and use Tor.
In this context this is utterly hypocritical for Sen. Brownback to be taking a swipe at a country with China's record (I continue to be in shock and awe that anyone expected different in the first place) when things have been moving down a parallel (perhaps not IDENTICAL) path.
I never disagreed with your statement that it is hypocritical on Brownback's part. The problem I had with your post, if I didn't make it clear enough in my response, was the "they are not so courteous in the US" part.
Yeah I was thinking something similar. On the upside, at least in China you KNOW when the government is watching. They aren't that courteous in the U.S..
I'm sorry, I tried a number of times to write a polite reply, but it still came down to this - WHAT THE FUCK!
Did you guys notice that TFA was talking about the hotels for foreigners? For an average Chinese, the government does not just monitor you, it simply BLOCKS you from seeing what it doesn't want you to see.
Did you guys know that in China everybody has to disclose their real life identity before they get online? Did you guys know that there have been people in China going to jail just for posting on the Internet to question government policies?
Now try and show me how much worse - or less courteous - it is in the US.
I mean, I'm upset with the warrantless eavesdropping issue as much as the next guy. I have gone so far as to rent my own dedicated server and ran all my traffic through thor. But on the other hand, I think that going as far as stating "they aren't that courteous in the US" only shows how ungrateful you are.
Apparently you don't believe in using the proper meaning for words. I just explained how such a case can not be broken.
No, you have only established how the web site's _implementation_ was not broken, but not its design. A design that excludes lots of potential visitors when it _doesn't_have_to_ is clearly a broken design. Now I don't know about you, by my book, a piece of software with a broken design is broken.
The statement you were calling bull was a bit overly harsh to me, too. However I don't agree with the rest of your reasoning.
The SSD manufacturers are moving their products into a market dominated by an established technology, namely hard disks, and it's up to them to make their products perform well enough to displace that established technology.
Yes, but it doesn't not give _Vista_ an excuse not to support them well, because Vista's job is not to deal with whatever new technologies being thrown at the established one in the market, but to deal with whatever new technologies its users throw at _it_.
Running well on SSDs wasn't a design goal of Vista, and AFAICS there is a limit to what Microsoft can do about this in the short term.
Well, if it wasn't, it _should_have_been_. For Microsoft not to have planned first-class SSD support in Vista would be like For a major auto manufacturer not to have planned gas-economical vehicles even before this price crunch started.
Everyone someone makes jokes about China and jails, I feel this urge to point out that the USA actually has a higher percentage of its population in jail than any other country in the world, including China.
Oh, ok, for a moment there I thought this was the "highest percentage of population in jail when they didn't do anything wrong other than speaking up against the government" contest. Apparently I was wrong.
Also, very likely no other country has such a race-biased jail population.
Of course, assuming the race-biased population is caused predominantly by race-biased convictions. But I'm sorry, I forgot again we were only here to count heads.
I sincerely hope you bought your/. account from ebay, otherwise that was the dumbest comment I have ever seen from a 3-digitter.
If Bob's dog mauls Jim to death, and Jim (somehow managed to) complain, it is not logical for Bob to respond by saying that Jim's dog is "doing exactly the same thing" by pissing on his shoes.
Slashdot Mirror
Some pieces of programming would become slightly more difficult. For example, 'if(hashmap.get("myvalue") != null)' would not be a valid construct. You'd need to perform a check like this: 'if(hashmap.exists("myvalue")'
Of course, the latter is the "correct" check anyway, so the theory goes that the software will be more robust and reliable.
It seems that you have only sidestepped the question "what should hashmap.get("myvalue") return when it can't find anything?"
That needs to be answered before we can abolish NULL.
Winner take-all-vote distribution is disgusting. If I live in a state that goes 49% for party X, and 51% for party Y, you can't even argue that giving 100% of our states votes to party Y makes the least bit of sense.
The winner-takes-all has to happen at _some_ level. Following your reasoning, it'd be as absurd to elect any one single person the President of US just because he/she leads the other candidate in the popular vote by 2%.
No, no it doesn't. There is absolutely nothing I have pirated that I would have bought if I had not pirated it. There are _many_ things that I have bought as a result of pirating it first. My pirating led to an increase in the amount I have purchased, not a decrease.
This argument is very simple to understand, yet I hear blanket statements like yours absolutely denying it is possible. I'm sorry, you're just wrong, at least in my case. There may be freeloaders out there that do just try and pirate instead of buying, but I am not one of them. I do exist.
That might make yourself feel better, but doesn't prove anything, especially not that GP was wrong. Just because you wouldn't have bought it anyway doesn't mean all other people who pirated wouldn't have bought whatever they pirated anyway.
But if everyone could eat the best foods in the entire world anytime they wanted, aren't they all now richer than the wealthiest kings 1000 years ago?
Very true... up until the point where nobody bothers to develop any new "recipes" any more because they can only ever hope to sell the first item they make.
Pirating is more like buying from a different grocery store, or growing the food in your garden.
So... what's buying the software from a different vendor, or writing the software on your own computer like?
Nice to see people still miss the point. Whether you care to admit it or not, it's not normal to wank off to pics of underaged people. I personally lost interest in that more or less immediately upon turning 18.
Do you realize that "normal" is a very, very subjective word? There are people in this world who consider it not normal having sex during day time.
(Disclaimer: no, I don't find it normal to wank off to pics of underaged people either, but that's beside the point.)
The argument you're making is that because there isn't direct damage that it isn't causing damage. It's a bad argument, basically it would be OK to view and look at child pr0n as long as you didn't make or produce it. Encouraging it by giving the sites hits or trading other people's images would OK, because of course that person trading the images didn't make them.
What about viewing an online video depicting a man being beheaded or any other act that in and of itself is illegal to commit?
I'm not really sure what about that isn't clear.
What isn't clear is where does it end.
And apparently the "Post Anonymously" checkbox doesn't work....
Did you try "Posthumously"?
hmm... if I did my (bad) math right, it takes _only_ 267 years until Linux covers 100% of the market. Desktop Linux ... here we come...
I knew it! I knew this was going to be the Millennium of Desktop Linux!
H211 s0 9o|\|\|a pvvn bgC3 M@n...
It's irrelevant considering that:
a) Most of them will simply turn over that information to the government, without asking for a court order.
b) The ones that do so are very likely to get magical retroactive immunity if anyone finds out and complains that what they did was illegal.
c) Failing that, the government can wiretap the communications directly, and give retroactive immunity to itself.
Like the OP said, at least in China they tell you what the rules are from the start; they don't pretend that you have rights and then do whatever they want. The rules might be too strict, and even "unfair", but you know what they are.
No, they're not. Believe it or not, americans are not God's chosen people. That's the jews.
The question really was "were they citizens of the PRC?" What makes the difference in this context is not whether you speak Mandarin (or however many more dialects fluently), but whether you are under the complete authority of the Chinese government.
I see. So they lived there for nearly 30 years, spoke the language fluently (two languages, in fact, IIRC), one of them actually worked for the public administration, but they never lived in China...?
You said "several years" in your previous post. My comment was based on that. Now it's suddenly 30?
What? Just 25 years? Then I guess by your own definition you never lived in China.
"My own definition"? When did I ever give a definition that draws the line at 30 years? Again you said "several years" earlier.
And you still haven't explained why you think people wouldn't be able to post on Slashdot from China. I'm particularly curious since Slashdot isn't mentioned anywhere as being blocked in China, and since I've seen several posts here made by people claiming to be in China. Maybe they are also mistaken and they never really lived there? Maybe no one has lived in China except you...?
Since you seem to use "several" in a very loose sense, I have to ask, by "several" did you mean "hundreds" or "thousands"? If you actually meant what most people would when they use the word "several", then have you wondered how come there are so few of those posters, compared to the general population of either China or slashdot?
Just because it's blocked doesn't mean "nobody gets out, ever". Is that too hard to comprehend or even imagine?
And you have never answered my challenge - why don't you put your money (or your life in this case) where your mouth is, renounce your current citizenship, and apply for a PRC one. I don't think it's asking for too much, since you think it's all irrelevant, and it's actually better in some cases in China. Your relatives "lived" there happily. I'm sure you'll thrive, too.
Oh and that goes to your relatives' grandchildren too. If they were so happily living in China, why did they keep their children and grandchildren in the US?
Once this technology is available it will become available to everybody, good guys and bad guys. But it will probably help insurgents and guerilla fighters more than large conventional armies.
Availability != accessibility. I'm sure the governments - the rich ones at that - will be in the first to get their hands on these things. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing in general. Like any other technologies, it really depends on against whom it's used.
I have, and I did. The last thing an internet café wants is to be charged with downloading copyrighted material (or uploading child porn, or being the source of a DoS attack, etc.). Lots of internet cafes ask for ID, to cover their own asses. They won't go out of their way to verify that the ID is real, but they do ask for it. A lot of them also have security cameras, and keep a full log of what you do online, so it wouldn't be too hard to trace a client.
The question is: are they being legally mandated to do so, or are they doing so out of self-protection? I think that makes the difference as far as this discussion is concerned. Just like somebody else pointed out that most of the internet cafes in China actually aren't actually enforcing the law, but that doesn't mean the law isn't there or it's not evil.
Although I've never been to China, a couple of relatives of mine lived there for several years (they speak Mandarin fluently). They came back with all their limbs and were never questioned by men in black (or maybe they erased their memories, OMG!). They actually lived pretty well there (they retired and came back to be with their grandchildren).
So they are Americans? You know, like those who don't have black hair and brown eyes, and always carry their US passports and the US Embassy's phone number in their wallets? Yeah, I would be surprised if they even got a spank in their butt if they are "caught" reading CNN.
I have said this many times on /. to people who have merely "traveled" to China for days, weeks, months, or even "several years". And I'll say it again: no, you have not lived in China. Not as a Chinese you haven't.
How would I know? I was born in China, and lived there for 25 years before coming to the US. My parents and grandparents were all Party members. Trust me, I know.
And why wouldn't I be able to get on Slashdot from China...?
You seem to be under the impression that China is a big concentration camp. It isn't.
It's not a physical one, but certainly a digital and mental one. I mean, just RTFA.
California isn't sovereign. See US History 1861 - 1865 for a refresher.
True, but the state government of CA still enjoys sovereign immunity.
And "88" variables are just wonderful for decomplicating hairy IF statements.
Yeah, I know. I always like my if statements clean shaved.
Nobody should have to be "grateful" for basic human rights, such as the right to privacy.
To the extent that any government denies these, it is a bad government that deserves criticism.
Oh I absolutely agree. When I said "ungrateful", I didn't mean "we should be grateful for not having our rights denied by the government." I meant "we should be grateful for being able to live in this country."
Disclaimer: just because I am grateful doesn't mean that I'm OK with the bad things the government of _this_ country has been and is doing. I just still believe in the fundamental values of this country, and I think that at least in this country, the worse enemy is not any particular government, but the cynicism that a lot of people seem to hide behind and allow themselves to be paralyzed with.
You mean your ISP accepts false identities...? How do they know where to send the bills?
Sigh, I wasn't talking about ISPs. Have you ever used an internet cafe? Did you _have_ to register with your id before getting online? Are the forums _required_by_law_ in this country to take and verify your true identity before allowing you to register?
I'll take a country no elections over one with rigged elections any day.
Fantastic. Please go ahead and renounce your US citizenship (or whichever country it is), apply to become a citizen of the People's Republic of China, go there and actually live there, and come back tell us you still want to make that bold statement up there. Oh wait, you probably won't, because you won't even be able to get back on /. from there!
Also, what are you saying? That thanks to Tor, you're OK with warrantless wiretaps now? Because you have the knowledge to cover your tracks, it's OK! I remember reading on /. that Tor is not exactly fool proof, maybe things are better now, I don't use it.
Did you miss the part right before that, you know, where I said "I am upset with the warrantless eavesdropping issue"? Never mind, let me just spell it out for you - no, I am still not OK with the issue.
My comment was meant as a sarcastic swipe at hypocritical politicians decrying the snooping on FOREIGNERS in a host country (especially when that host country is China, WTF did they expect??). Meanwhile in the U.S. they're snooping on their own fucking citizens without so much as having to show any proof of wrong doing or letting you know about it. But apparently it's not such a big deal because you know you can rent your own fucking server and use Tor.
In this context this is utterly hypocritical for Sen. Brownback to be taking a swipe at a country with China's record (I continue to be in shock and awe that anyone expected different in the first place) when things have been moving down a parallel (perhaps not IDENTICAL) path.
I never disagreed with your statement that it is hypocritical on Brownback's part. The problem I had with your post, if I didn't make it clear enough in my response, was the "they are not so courteous in the US" part.
Yeah I was thinking something similar. On the upside, at least in China you KNOW when the government is watching. They aren't that courteous in the U.S..
I'm sorry, I tried a number of times to write a polite reply, but it still came down to this - WHAT THE FUCK!
Did you guys notice that TFA was talking about the hotels for foreigners? For an average Chinese, the government does not just monitor you, it simply BLOCKS you from seeing what it doesn't want you to see.
Did you guys know that in China everybody has to disclose their real life identity before they get online? Did you guys know that there have been people in China going to jail just for posting on the Internet to question government policies?
Now try and show me how much worse - or less courteous - it is in the US.
I mean, I'm upset with the warrantless eavesdropping issue as much as the next guy. I have gone so far as to rent my own dedicated server and ran all my traffic through thor. But on the other hand, I think that going as far as stating "they aren't that courteous in the US" only shows how ungrateful you are.
Apparently you don't believe in using the proper meaning for words. I just explained how such a case can not be broken.
No, you have only established how the web site's _implementation_ was not broken, but not its design. A design that excludes lots of potential visitors when it _doesn't_have_to_ is clearly a broken design. Now I don't know about you, by my book, a piece of software with a broken design is broken.
Yes, but it doesn't not give _Vista_ an excuse not to support them well, because Vista's job is not to deal with whatever new technologies being thrown at the established one in the market, but to deal with whatever new technologies its users throw at _it_.
Well, if it wasn't, it _should_have_been_. For Microsoft not to have planned first-class SSD support in Vista would be like For a major auto manufacturer not to have planned gas-economical vehicles even before this price crunch started.
Surely that's what you meant?
Surely you meant "tall penguin"?
But it would likely be perceived a better finished product.
I sincerely hope you bought your
If Bob's dog mauls Jim to death, and Jim (somehow managed to) complain, it is not logical for Bob to respond by saying that Jim's dog is "doing exactly the same thing" by pissing on his shoes.