I'd argue for a focus on wars because wars are pretty interesting. For me, at least, the only thing that kept me going in history class was looking forward to the next war. Not to dismiss the importance of political and socio-economic forces between (and even causing) the wars, but, at least for me, the inherent conflict of battle was much more interesting than the inter-war periods.
I agree that the US isn't perfect. I'm not at all proud or even supportive of the illegal actions perpetrated by the agencies of the US government. However, as an American, I am free to criticize these actions and these agencies. Can you say the same for the Chinese?
What do you mean? I only ask about e-mails I've sent if the first message goes without acknowledgment (i.e. an e-mail in reply).
Also, another function of the question is to verify that the recipient has actually looked at the message in question. If I'm asking for a verbal reply to a message I've sent via e-mail, I want to first verify that you've read the e-mail before asking for a response.
The issue with your solution is that it completely destroys the reliability of the e-mail system. The reason we use e-mail is because we are certain that the messages we send will arrive in a timely, reliable fashion. If you remove that guarantee, then why would anyone use e-mail?
Re:Ada was designed for multiple CPUs
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 1
The advantage of having support for thread synchronization built into the language is standardization. If you look at C you'll see myriad threading libraries for different OS and processor architectures. Its virtually impossible to be an expert in using all those different modules. Ada, by building such functionality into the language, provides a consistent interface, meaning the programmer only has to learn one threading model that can be portably used across architectures.
Well, its not just people who are uninterested in OTA programming. People who have (analog) cable TV will be unaffected by the switch to digital broadcasting. Therefore, if you have analog cable, and you don't care about getting HD programming, its certainly useful for you to pick up a cheap analog TV rather than shell out more for one with a digital tuner that you won't use.
These days that may seem less the case and I bet you're all waiting to cite examples of particular genres of music and film which contain product placement, but in my opinion and I think the opinion of many of those who both create and appreciate true art (Whether it be film, music, paintings, whatever) those particular examples fail to be art and end up being advertisements in themselves.
So, Andy Warhol's use of the Campbell's soup can isn't art?
Well, even that's not entirely unrealistic. For example, take my college campus. Coke has negotiated an agreement with my school for the vending machines to dispense only Coke products. If you want to get something else, you have to go off campus. It is rankling, but its not a real inconvenience, since the campus is in the middle of a city, and its trivially easy to go off campus (i.e. cross the street) to get your Pepsi fix.
Heck, I'm a buyer and I still hate PayPal. I had a PayPal account linked to my bank account. Recently, that account was hijacked and used to make some fraudulent transactions. I caught the transactions early and notified PayPal. PayPal dithered. It was only after I closed my original bank account and filed a complaint against PayPal with my bank that they offered to refund the money.
That's just the issue. PayPal, at one point, might have been nice. Now, they're just as corrupt as EBay. My PayPal account was hijacked recently. Fortunately, I caught the fraudulent activity quickly and notified PayPal about it. At this point, PayPal dithered and started feeding me lines about how they had to verify that the activity was fraudulent. It was only after I filed a complaint with my bank (my bank account was linked to my PayPal account) to protest the charges did PayPal lock my account and refund the money.
Ah. Guess I was wrong then. It seems that neither the Gates nor Warren Buffet want the Gates Foundation to exist into perpetuity, like the Carnegie or Rockefeller foundations, for example.
Also, it is of dispute as to whether the FCC can even impose line-sharing on cable companies. Cable internet has always been in a grey area, since it is neither phone service nor broadcasting in the traditional sense, and therefore falls in a nice crack between two of the FCC's regulatory responsibilities.
That's just the thing. Star Wars was the first movie to heavily incorporate merchandising. Therefore, its quite possible that the contracts weren't as ironclad as they would be today, simply because neither Lucas nor the designer of the stormtrooper costumes knew what a goldmine they were sitting on.
The way a foundation works is by donating the the interest, not the principal. Therefore, it makes sense that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will only be donating a small portion of its total assets, since the principal will not be touched.
Comcast, in many locations, is not just a de-facto monopoly, they are a de-jure monopoly. Comcast negotiates with municipalities to be the sole cable provider to community. The best situation in many of these cases is a duopoly between Comcast and the local Baby Bell. Often, for many regions, Comcast is the sole broadband provider, since the residents are too far away from the CO for DSL.
Sure, but that presupposes they can catch you. Removing the temptation and the mechanism is overall a better alternative.
You could apply the same argument to a whole host of other things. Lets take shoplifting for example - you could say that stores should keep all their inventory behind the counter. After all, there are laws against shoplifting, but enforcement of those laws presupposes that the store can catch you. Removing the temptation is a better overall alternative.
So, by your argument, if a thief breaks into my house and steals my credit card, I should be on the hook for all the losses, since my house is not as secure as a bank vault. I think that's unreasonable.
And that brings up the NEXT flaw in the 'bank should be responsible' argument. Moral Hazard. If the bank is taking the fall, what exactly is it that stops people from just stealing their own money?
We already have a term for activities like that. Its called "fraud" (and "money laundering" in some cases). If the bank catches you doing that then they already have the right to press charges and send you to jail.
You have to learn version control systems, the community, what constitutes "easy", you have to learn the scale and meaning of each piece of the project, you have to learn communication and moreso, you have to know enough to actually fix things.
Yeah, but I'd see that as an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. After all, when you get a programming job, you're going to have to learn all that stuff anyway. Being able to say that you've already got experience with version control, knowing what tasks you can do, and knowing how small pieces integrate into a larger whole only increases your attractiveness to potential hirers.
I know the statisticians among you are going to bash me with a cluestick for such a naive question, but I'll ask anyway - if this event is so likely to occur, then why hasn't it happened again?
People have this idea in their heads that things with electricity can break while things without electricity can't.
Its not that things with electricity break while things without electricity don't, its that things with software break while things without software don't. Software, because of its discrete nature, is inherently harder to judge safe. A bridge rated for 10,000 pounds will easily carry 1000, but a piece of software that works with input 10,000 cannot automatically be guaranteed to work with input 1000. Any "drive by wire" system will need software (at least for the motor controllers that transform the steering wheel input into steering motion), and therefore consumers are understandably leery of it.
The other consideration is tactile feedback. A mechanical steering system provides lots of tactile feedback, since you're directly connected to the steering system via a mechanical linkage. Therefore, if there's something wrong you're liable to feel it (i.e. the car pulls to one side, or becomes difficult to steer), allowing you to detect problems before they become catastrophic. Without that mechanical linkage, you're dependent on the software designers to judge how much feedback the system provides. If there's a problem that the designers haven't anticipated, the system will not warn you, and small anomalies will grow to catastrophic proportions simply because the warning signs were filtered out from the driver's perception.
Worse yet, the two problems are interrelated. Increasing the amount of tactile feedback increases the amount of software needed, since you've got two output devices (steering wheel for tactile feedback, and steering mechanism for actual steering) and you need code to modulate output to both of them. This necessarily increases code complexity, making the job of making sure the code is bug-free even more difficult.
Finally, for those who are going to make an analogy with fighter jets' fly-by-wire systems, I must remind you that an aircraft has far more room to maneuver. And, even then, there were problems with the early fly-by-wire systems. The F-14, for example, had some serious issues with the flight control systems becoming confused and adjusting the wings inappropriately, leading to stalling and loss of control. These issues were eventually worked out, but the process took years. This is OK for a highly specialized system where your operators are specially selected and highly trained, but it is definitely not appropriate for any consumer grade system.
That's exactly where the Internet comes in. Sites like MySpace, Pandora, Last.fm, etc. make it easier for smaller, independent artists to get airtime and get listeners. Marketing has become vastly easier now that artists are no longer wholly dependent on the centralized, corporate, radio networks. In other words, the price that artists should pay to marketers should be lower, now that there are vastly more options as far as promotion and marketing are concerned.
Well, I'm on Fedora 7 now, and I haven't had any trouble either. The main issue I've been hearing about is that PulseAudio only allows one application at a time to play audio. This means that you can't have background music playing while you play a game, for example. Its the reported difficulties with PulseAudio that have kept me from upgrading to F8.
Well, there were a wide variety of problems, ranging from occasionally choppy playback to complete loss of sound functionality. I think the most common issue, though, was the fact that PulseAudio would only allow sound to be played from one application at a time. Thus, if you were playing some background music, and wanted to listen to something else, you were out of luck.
How's the PulseAudio decision working out so far? I've run into lots of PulseAudio problems in Fedora (which enabled it by default in Fedora 8), so its a little bit surprising that Ubuntu has decided to enable PulseAudio by default. Personally, I don't think PulseAudio is yet ready for mainstream use, so I'm wondering what the justification for this decision was.
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I'd argue for a focus on wars because wars are pretty interesting. For me, at least, the only thing that kept me going in history class was looking forward to the next war. Not to dismiss the importance of political and socio-economic forces between (and even causing) the wars, but, at least for me, the inherent conflict of battle was much more interesting than the inter-war periods.
I agree that the US isn't perfect. I'm not at all proud or even supportive of the illegal actions perpetrated by the agencies of the US government. However, as an American, I am free to criticize these actions and these agencies. Can you say the same for the Chinese?
What do you mean? I only ask about e-mails I've sent if the first message goes without acknowledgment (i.e. an e-mail in reply).
Also, another function of the question is to verify that the recipient has actually looked at the message in question. If I'm asking for a verbal reply to a message I've sent via e-mail, I want to first verify that you've read the e-mail before asking for a response.
Do you really think that Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib can compare to the mass scale of oppression practiced by the Chinese security services?
The issue with your solution is that it completely destroys the reliability of the e-mail system. The reason we use e-mail is because we are certain that the messages we send will arrive in a timely, reliable fashion. If you remove that guarantee, then why would anyone use e-mail?
The advantage of having support for thread synchronization built into the language is standardization. If you look at C you'll see myriad threading libraries for different OS and processor architectures. Its virtually impossible to be an expert in using all those different modules. Ada, by building such functionality into the language, provides a consistent interface, meaning the programmer only has to learn one threading model that can be portably used across architectures.
Well, its not just people who are uninterested in OTA programming. People who have (analog) cable TV will be unaffected by the switch to digital broadcasting. Therefore, if you have analog cable, and you don't care about getting HD programming, its certainly useful for you to pick up a cheap analog TV rather than shell out more for one with a digital tuner that you won't use.
So, Andy Warhol's use of the Campbell's soup can isn't art?
Well, even that's not entirely unrealistic. For example, take my college campus. Coke has negotiated an agreement with my school for the vending machines to dispense only Coke products. If you want to get something else, you have to go off campus. It is rankling, but its not a real inconvenience, since the campus is in the middle of a city, and its trivially easy to go off campus (i.e. cross the street) to get your Pepsi fix.
Heck, I'm a buyer and I still hate PayPal. I had a PayPal account linked to my bank account. Recently, that account was hijacked and used to make some fraudulent transactions. I caught the transactions early and notified PayPal. PayPal dithered. It was only after I closed my original bank account and filed a complaint against PayPal with my bank that they offered to refund the money.
That's just the issue. PayPal, at one point, might have been nice. Now, they're just as corrupt as EBay. My PayPal account was hijacked recently. Fortunately, I caught the fraudulent activity quickly and notified PayPal about it. At this point, PayPal dithered and started feeding me lines about how they had to verify that the activity was fraudulent. It was only after I filed a complaint with my bank (my bank account was linked to my PayPal account) to protest the charges did PayPal lock my account and refund the money.
Ah. Guess I was wrong then. It seems that neither the Gates nor Warren Buffet want the Gates Foundation to exist into perpetuity, like the Carnegie or Rockefeller foundations, for example.
Also, it is of dispute as to whether the FCC can even impose line-sharing on cable companies. Cable internet has always been in a grey area, since it is neither phone service nor broadcasting in the traditional sense, and therefore falls in a nice crack between two of the FCC's regulatory responsibilities.
That's just the thing. Star Wars was the first movie to heavily incorporate merchandising. Therefore, its quite possible that the contracts weren't as ironclad as they would be today, simply because neither Lucas nor the designer of the stormtrooper costumes knew what a goldmine they were sitting on.
The way a foundation works is by donating the the interest, not the principal. Therefore, it makes sense that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will only be donating a small portion of its total assets, since the principal will not be touched.
Comcast, in many locations, is not just a de-facto monopoly, they are a de-jure monopoly. Comcast negotiates with municipalities to be the sole cable provider to community. The best situation in many of these cases is a duopoly between Comcast and the local Baby Bell. Often, for many regions, Comcast is the sole broadband provider, since the residents are too far away from the CO for DSL.
You could apply the same argument to a whole host of other things. Lets take shoplifting for example - you could say that stores should keep all their inventory behind the counter. After all, there are laws against shoplifting, but enforcement of those laws presupposes that the store can catch you. Removing the temptation is a better overall alternative.
So, by your argument, if a thief breaks into my house and steals my credit card, I should be on the hook for all the losses, since my house is not as secure as a bank vault. I think that's unreasonable.
And that brings up the NEXT flaw in the 'bank should be responsible' argument. Moral Hazard. If the bank is taking the fall, what exactly is it that stops people from just stealing their own money?We already have a term for activities like that. Its called "fraud" (and "money laundering" in some cases). If the bank catches you doing that then they already have the right to press charges and send you to jail.
Yeah, but I'd see that as an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. After all, when you get a programming job, you're going to have to learn all that stuff anyway. Being able to say that you've already got experience with version control, knowing what tasks you can do, and knowing how small pieces integrate into a larger whole only increases your attractiveness to potential hirers.
I know the statisticians among you are going to bash me with a cluestick for such a naive question, but I'll ask anyway - if this event is so likely to occur, then why hasn't it happened again?
Its not that things with electricity break while things without electricity don't, its that things with software break while things without software don't. Software, because of its discrete nature, is inherently harder to judge safe. A bridge rated for 10,000 pounds will easily carry 1000, but a piece of software that works with input 10,000 cannot automatically be guaranteed to work with input 1000. Any "drive by wire" system will need software (at least for the motor controllers that transform the steering wheel input into steering motion), and therefore consumers are understandably leery of it.
The other consideration is tactile feedback. A mechanical steering system provides lots of tactile feedback, since you're directly connected to the steering system via a mechanical linkage. Therefore, if there's something wrong you're liable to feel it (i.e. the car pulls to one side, or becomes difficult to steer), allowing you to detect problems before they become catastrophic. Without that mechanical linkage, you're dependent on the software designers to judge how much feedback the system provides. If there's a problem that the designers haven't anticipated, the system will not warn you, and small anomalies will grow to catastrophic proportions simply because the warning signs were filtered out from the driver's perception.
Worse yet, the two problems are interrelated. Increasing the amount of tactile feedback increases the amount of software needed, since you've got two output devices (steering wheel for tactile feedback, and steering mechanism for actual steering) and you need code to modulate output to both of them. This necessarily increases code complexity, making the job of making sure the code is bug-free even more difficult.
Finally, for those who are going to make an analogy with fighter jets' fly-by-wire systems, I must remind you that an aircraft has far more room to maneuver. And, even then, there were problems with the early fly-by-wire systems. The F-14, for example, had some serious issues with the flight control systems becoming confused and adjusting the wings inappropriately, leading to stalling and loss of control. These issues were eventually worked out, but the process took years. This is OK for a highly specialized system where your operators are specially selected and highly trained, but it is definitely not appropriate for any consumer grade system.
That's exactly where the Internet comes in. Sites like MySpace, Pandora, Last.fm, etc. make it easier for smaller, independent artists to get airtime and get listeners. Marketing has become vastly easier now that artists are no longer wholly dependent on the centralized, corporate, radio networks. In other words, the price that artists should pay to marketers should be lower, now that there are vastly more options as far as promotion and marketing are concerned.
Well, I'm on Fedora 7 now, and I haven't had any trouble either. The main issue I've been hearing about is that PulseAudio only allows one application at a time to play audio. This means that you can't have background music playing while you play a game, for example. Its the reported difficulties with PulseAudio that have kept me from upgrading to F8.
Well, there were a wide variety of problems, ranging from occasionally choppy playback to complete loss of sound functionality. I think the most common issue, though, was the fact that PulseAudio would only allow sound to be played from one application at a time. Thus, if you were playing some background music, and wanted to listen to something else, you were out of luck.
How's the PulseAudio decision working out so far? I've run into lots of PulseAudio problems in Fedora (which enabled it by default in Fedora 8), so its a little bit surprising that Ubuntu has decided to enable PulseAudio by default. Personally, I don't think PulseAudio is yet ready for mainstream use, so I'm wondering what the justification for this decision was.