When I see any mention of myspace, do you know what comes to my mind? Metal music bands. Music is huge in myspace! It's about the only thing I've ever seen there, band profiles including songs available for streaming (and sometimes downloading) and other stuff. So until recently I thought it was a website for bands. Seems I was terribly mistaken and it's more like to USA what hi5 is to Europe? Or worse, seeing how badly people speak about it here at/.... But for me it's just a cool site to find bands!
The same Catholic Church that is against condoms, is also against sex outside of a monogamous marital relationship. If everyone is in strict adherence to the laws of the Church, AIDS wouldn't be the issue it is.
So all we can say is:
Thanks Church, for showing once again that you understand how the real world works.
By the way, the thought of being threatened with a gun and then have 3 or 4 more people toting guns around me (even if they're friendly) doesn't make me feel particularly well, even if it's better than the alternative. But I think we should aim for an higher level of peace. Many countries do it so don't tell me it's not possible.
On the other hand, the three or four people that see the whole thing and are usually too scared to interfere could instead pull their guns out and contain the criminals until the police arrive.
And at the same time, it convinces definitely that if criminals want to commit crimes, they have to use guns since most people have them. That's hardly good. I've been robbed in Portugal. How? Threatened with a mere (compared to a gun) butterfly knife. If everyone and their dog had a gun, do you think that would happen? No, I'd be threatened with a gun. By the way, how often does the scenario you presented happen in, say, the USA? Are criminals so stupid to not even try to threaten people who are alone? And even if they are, that doesn't solve anything about the other problems of guns.
That leads, in theory, to lower crime.
A theory confirmed how many times in practice?
What about the fact that if everyone has a gun, they're much more likely to be tempted to use it in any stressful or intense situation? And don't tell me humans are responsible enough because on those contexts they aren't. So don't come talking about "backfires" when the problem is much larger than that.
The Coke can method Get a Coke can, drink the contents, rinse out the can. Carefully cut the lid section off the can. Superglue a small magnet to the inside of the upper lip of the can so that it's flush with the open top of the can. Place the iPod inside and put the lid on the can. If you've cut the can correctly, the magnet should hold the lid tightly shut. Unless your mugger is exceptionally thirsty, they're unlikely to steal your Coke. Anti-mugger rating: 9/10
Oh too bad, I was going to do this but the only drink I drink from cans is beer, not coke...
I didn't say theoretical research was useless. I said that, many times, its intent is to produce research which can (right now or in the future) be applied in practice. Which needn't be always the case.
More specifically, we were discussing if decent programmers should know low level details or not. The "crappy two week programming courses" was just an extreme example of "programmers" who know the least possible about what is really happening behind the scenes. Sadly, I know some people who go out of university with a too fragmented knowledge of computing, and that was what my point was about. But I think you can read the posts on the thread.
No. But I hold the (easily accepted) opinion that a real software engineer knows much more than what you learn in 2 weeks of a crappy programming course.
agree that it's a good idea to know something about the low level details of a computer. However, such low level details become increasingly irrelevant the more abstract the language you use. Once you start using Python or Ruby, then the level of abstraction is so high that I can't see any advantage to knowing the low level details.
But we were talking about the education of engineers, not some damn "Learn Web Programming in 2 weeks" course...
But how can someone claim that computers in computer science are merely a tool, if so much of computer science is about trying to find ways to use computers to do stuff which doesn't even have anything to do with either computers or computer science??
OK, here it is spelled out for people who couldn't think:
Even if computer science appeared before computers, nowadays the largest (and most practically relevant) part of computer science is about trying to find new and better ways of processing data on computers, which more often than not has nothing to do with computer science but with other interesting fields such as maths, engineering, biology etc etc.
Most of computer science isn't an end in itself, but a means to achieve better solutions with computers. Now if Mr. Dijkstra was alive I wonder what he would say if I asked what that has anything to do with the relationship between astronomy and telescopes. Because I really can't see it.
Show me a sorting algorithm that has better than O(N*log(N)) worst case behavior.
Here you have. Of course, it's a number sorting algorithm, but in the context of this discussion it doesn't matter a lot since even just for numbers, radix sort can be outperformed in practice, even though its complexity is better, so the original poster's point is illustrated.
Interface calls are about 4 times slower than normal method calls, and about 2 times slower than virtual method calls.
I wouldn't class mutual exclusion as a low level concept.
But the way it works is. Of course, you don't need to know exactly how it works, but that knowledge might help to understand why a distributed application is not working. My point is - a good craftsman has to know the most possible about his tools. First of all, it helps him/her to work, and second, just the understanding of it helps to evolve the knowledge of his art in general.
Slashdot Mirror
You're an idiot. Ideas can't be stolen. And there's nothing wrong in getting ideas from other projects, virtually everyone does it.
Not only. On a regular install, particular files may be chosen to be installed or not.
Good vision might help there.
I guess the explosion was strong enough to be carried by internet's tubes.
Coming from someone born and living in Europe:
/. ... But for me it's just a cool site to find bands!
When I see any mention of myspace, do you know what comes to my mind? Metal music bands. Music is huge in myspace! It's about the only thing I've ever seen there, band profiles including songs available for streaming (and sometimes downloading) and other stuff. So until recently I thought it was a website for bands. Seems I was terribly mistaken and it's more like to USA what hi5 is to Europe? Or worse, seeing how badly people speak about it here at
I feel stupid. What's your point exactly?
So all we can say is:
Thanks Church, for showing once again that you understand how the real world works.
By the way, the thought of being threatened with a gun and then have 3 or 4 more people toting guns around me (even if they're friendly) doesn't make me feel particularly well, even if it's better than the alternative. But I think we should aim for an higher level of peace. Many countries do it so don't tell me it's not possible.
And at the same time, it convinces definitely that if criminals want to commit crimes, they have to use guns since most people have them. That's hardly good. I've been robbed in Portugal. How? Threatened with a mere (compared to a gun) butterfly knife. If everyone and their dog had a gun, do you think that would happen? No, I'd be threatened with a gun. By the way, how often does the scenario you presented happen in, say, the USA? Are criminals so stupid to not even try to threaten people who are alone? And even if they are, that doesn't solve anything about the other problems of guns.
A theory confirmed how many times in practice?
What about the fact that if everyone has a gun, they're much more likely to be tempted to use it in any stressful or intense situation? And don't tell me humans are responsible enough because on those contexts they aren't. So don't come talking about "backfires" when the problem is much larger than that.
I do, when there are no bottles available, but in general I hate cans.
Yeah, let's all fight fire with fire. Everyone knows it works!
Oh too bad, I was going to do this but the only drink I drink from cans is beer, not coke...
(damn publicity)
Just look around you, software is everywhere. Are you stupid or just a troll?
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/715/715867p1.html
I didn't say theoretical research was useless. I said that, many times, its intent is to produce research which can (right now or in the future) be applied in practice. Which needn't be always the case.
More specifically, we were discussing if decent programmers should know low level details or not. The "crappy two week programming courses" was just an extreme example of "programmers" who know the least possible about what is really happening behind the scenes. Sadly, I know some people who go out of university with a too fragmented knowledge of computing, and that was what my point was about. But I think you can read the posts on the thread.
No. But I hold the (easily accepted) opinion that a real software engineer knows much more than what you learn in 2 weeks of a crappy programming course.
Do you understand the difference between hardware and software? Computer science is much more concerned with software than hardware.
Yes, and it's a valid point. But we were discussing whether compilers are better at optimizing code than people or not. And, nowadays, they aren't.
But we were talking about the education of engineers, not some damn "Learn Web Programming in 2 weeks" course...
But how can someone claim that computers in computer science are merely a tool, if so much of computer science is about trying to find ways to use computers to do stuff which doesn't even have anything to do with either computers or computer science??
What you say is true, but computer science nowadays is very different. Most of it is dedicated to find better solutions for data processing in computers. http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=191465&cid= 15741831
OK, here it is spelled out for people who couldn't think:
Even if computer science appeared before computers, nowadays the largest (and most practically relevant) part of computer science is about trying to find new and better ways of processing data on computers, which more often than not has nothing to do with computer science but with other interesting fields such as maths, engineering, biology etc etc.
Most of computer science isn't an end in itself, but a means to achieve better solutions with computers. Now if Mr. Dijkstra was alive I wonder what he would say if I asked what that has anything to do with the relationship between astronomy and telescopes. Because I really can't see it.
Here you have. Of course, it's a number sorting algorithm, but in the context of this discussion it doesn't matter a lot since even just for numbers, radix sort can be outperformed in practice, even though its complexity is better, so the original poster's point is illustrated.
Interface calls are about 4 times slower than normal method calls, and about 2 times slower than virtual method calls.
But the way it works is. Of course, you don't need to know exactly how it works, but that knowledge might help to understand why a distributed application is not working. My point is - a good craftsman has to know the most possible about his tools. First of all, it helps him/her to work, and second, just the understanding of it helps to evolve the knowledge of his art in general.