With linux who needs x86? Unless you plan on using Wine (which is nice, but not useful for more people) x86 with all the power comsumption doesn't make sense. Lets see a laptop with an ARM (strong Arm?) processor.
Oh, how much you want to bet that someone will release a no-OS system with hardware that linux does not support? (Either a winmodem or a display without xfree86 suppot)
Accually it is even more fun to treat them well, and hope they remember all the bad things they did to you. Anyone with any conscience at all will kick themselves for all those horid things.
The poster above mentioned buying something (wine I think, but I don't recignise it) that costs more then they make in a night... Well, by that, and then inviste them for a cup full. (Note, the poster above me mentioned drug treatment, don't tempt someone just out of treatment with even legal drugs, but if they are just out of prison they are fair game for this mind game)
This is also a very christian thing to do, and it can't hurt no matter what your religion.
First off, don't get me wrong. I belive that homeschooling should be an option for everyone, and every loving parent should consider it.
Homeschooling generally misses one thing that you learn in high school, because it is not taught in class. (and it is taught poorly) How to deal with people! You need to learn to deal with people, and you can't learn that lession unless you deal with people byond family. You can get around this porblem if you remember it is amajor lession, far more imporant than most of the usless classes you have to take. this lession requires people who disagree with you, people who are not like you. Most of the home schooled kids, while smart otherwise lack this skill. (Not that I'm claiming to be good at it)
High school isn't the only, nor perhaps the best way to learn this social skill. As one of my college professions said "When I first went to the university everyone thought it was a good thing, but they were worried because I might meet a democrat up there in that big city." Of course he did meet a democrat in life, and it didn't kill him. He was a great teacher, one of the few I found in college. His education failed him though, in that people were afraid of democrats, instead of teaching of them as just misguided people. (Note, that this is not intended to be something on politics, I picked democrats because his small town was entirely republican. there are comunities of democrats who have the same narrow view)
I also bring to mind one home schooled girl who isn't stupid, but she gets worked up and distraught over anyone who disagrees with her. She was taught how life, right and wrong, and she never questioned them. She never figgured out why wrong is wrong, and she is the worse for it. Some things she does are IMHO wrong, but she wasn't taught they were wrong, and so she refuses to consider any viewpoint that would suggest they are wrong. (Not that she should belive they are wrong, but she considers any viewpoint she wasn't tought wrong).
Still, homeschooling must be an option. Sometimes it is the only thing that a parent can do when faced with all the bad things in the other systems. I won't disagree with many of the criticisms leveled against schools. Schools do a lot of things wrong.
Mine too. Parents have a right to take comptuers away. In fact at times I think they should more often. (Not just comptuers, TV too. ground more kids. whatever will get the kids attention)
The point though is that the parents said "We don't have the time to deal with you, so we will take the comptuer" (not a direct quote). Rasing kids is hard. I don't have them, and I know that. I can't belive how many parents think they can raise kids correctly and still have whatever life they want. Kids are not a two hours a week thing, they are number one priority for years. (not that parents can't have fun, but they can't neglict their kids)
I've thought about the Colorado situation for a while, and concluded: This is the price we pay for freedom.
WE could prevent this situation. 1984 basicly. Radio transmaitters on everyone (surgicly implanted, non-removable), mandatory random searches, and so on. Yes, we could have prevented that situation, but the simple moves to prevent it that you hear suggested (more gun control as if those kids legally had the guns in the first place), banning video games (even though quake is sick, and anyone who likes it needs help) or so on won't help. Either it is all 1984, or nothing.
Personally I'll take my chances that I and my friends will survive today. We may not, but I prefer taking my chances with death then to know I will live in the other socity.
I was on my high school newspaper, so I know that the national (forget the name) high school newspaper socity takes the idea of administartors killing articals seriously! Get a lawyer now, don't bow to the pressure, remember you have better lawyers (through that orginization) than they do!
PS, if you go to a private school, this doesn't applie. Public schools cannot mess with student papers, courts have held that up many times.
I only allow the banks I use online (IE, they have my money) to use javascript or use cookies. I wish they didn't require javascript though so that I could use lynx which is prefered.
Everyone else, you don't need javascript. (I'll allow java if I'm in netscape which I'm not, only because java is designed for security) I allow a few sites like/. a cookie, but unless you accually do something that needs a cookie you don't get one. (Yes I know cookies are relativly secure)
I have enough trouble with car sickness (I can't even read a map for a minute to find the next turn before I'm in trouble) I'm sure that I'll be locked out.
Can't they get anything right? do the math
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"Hackers" are Dumb
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· Score: 1
$480,000 seems small to me. Perhaps that is because I'm used to the mainframe world where a minute of downtime costs $1,000,000. (each minute ass another million) Since companies had to take servers down, they felt some loss from that.
If you figgure a tech makes $300 a day ($80,000 a year) This is only 8000 sysadmins working for two days. (what a previous poster claims it took his company) This allows each company in the fortune 500 to use 16 sysadmins. Now granted not all fortune 500 companies were affected, but even still this starts to look small when you remember that these are the largest companies. Looks to me like $480,000 won't even cover the salery of the systemadmins who were not taking care of normal buisness in response to this. No Think of what the cost of business is (see above), and it looks like a bad estimate.
Now I will grant that NT was taken down more then mainframes, and NT doesn't run anything mission critical, but even still we can expect there were losses due to this downtime that aren't figgure in.
Come to think of it, this is also the first reasonable proposal for dealing with M$ that I've seen. Others do something, but don't solve any problems. This would solve the problem, and to boot I can accually belive it is reasonable.
I'm still shocked that I agree with RMS, normally I respect him as a programer and keep his views seperate.
Okay, so I don't know every programing language that mankind has ever invented. But anyone who can get a CS degree should be able to pick up any language needed in just a few days. It will take months to learn all the tricks, but in a few days you can be productive, and a in a week nearly as good as the seasoned veterans (with the same expirence as you).
The important part of programing is algorythims, data structures, and the expirence to know when to apply them. The skills from one language translate to anouther easially.
I have on several occosions sat down with the source code in a language I've never seen before and found the bug in it. EXPIRENCE to know where to look, and the simple structure of all languages allows me to do this.
Learning a programing language isn't like learning a foreign language. Once you know a LISP, a Assembly, and a C like language you can learn them all in no time. Learning a new one is like a Londoner going to the southern US. The langauge is different, but it won't take long to converse with someone there.
To answer the question: I use TCL/TK, C/C++ (C compiled with a c++ compiler, and in c++ function calling. I'm interfacing with hardware so c++ isn't of much use), and a private OOA thing (4gl?) that gets compiled to C++. They all work, and all are the same, even though the OOA doesn't support arrays to my annoyance, I can code arround that.
When the company misses targets, and then announces a new logo. When they change a well known name to something unknown. When your missed in a round of layoffs (Anytime there is a layoff take a day to polish your resume, even if nobody in your area was affected)
I don't want to search for football, and come up with football bear, which is obviously not relavant. (yet you do get that now, and probably on top) If however the company buying the ads spends the time to make the first link relavant then I won't object, there is too much cruft to search through as it is.
By relavant I mean that a store wanting to sell me a football helmet should have helmets on the page, but also links where I can get stats on all players, links where I can see headlines and scores. Links to experts for advice. Links to... football related. In other words someone who searches for just football probably isn't getting to the right place on the first hit, if the first ad will link them to the right place, I don't object to it coming up first.
Note that this puts a lot of burdon on the advertiser, to make a site that is probably relavant to the keyword. Football bear may in fact be good, but it isn't what I was searching for. When ads annoy me I will turn them off, when ads are helpful (hey, I gotta buy things, if you support something I do with ads I might buy from you just for that reason.
Well that is what storageTek paid for their new logo. At least we went a step in the right direction, a meanless logo, but all we had before was the name...
Most of us here look at the price tag for that, think for a moment, and reliase that instead of spending money on a logo last year they could have lowered estimates by 10 million, given us a bonus, and still be money ahead.
If I was a stock trader I'd be short on sgi right now. My expirence is that when a company changes their logo stock moves south. (for those who don't know, short on stock means you borrow stock from a owner, and sell it. You have to buy it back before the owner wants to do anything with it, but that is rarely a problem)
GET THIS STRAIGHT PEOPLE: WEB DESIGN IS NOT PROGRAMING!
I wonder if I should emphasize that a little more... Web design is a mix of art and tarditional design. (come to think of it, art is redundant, tarditional design is based on art)
I find no surprize that an interior designer made the transition to web design, since those fields have a lot more in common then web design and computer science. Designers (interior and otherwise) are trained to recignise the humon facotrs that make things both useable and nice, comptuer science people are trained in making a computer work. Web design is not a programing task. Not that interior design will give you everything you need to know about web design, but the underlying theorys are the same even if they are applied much differently, while the underliying theory of programing is not the same.
For your typical PC he is right. PCs do not have the memory bandwidth, or any of the other things that make that statement untrue for the big machines like Sun or Sgi makes.
Linkers are only required to maintain 6 charicters for external references. Just because nearly all modern linkers maintain more does not mean they all do, nor that your code will not be called to run on an old hp (which is the only machine I'm aware of that accually only maintained 6 charicters) I'm always careful that my external references are 6 charicters. Note that this does not mean they are six charicters long, only that the first six charicters are always significant enough.
Maybe this should be in the jargon artical that follows this one...
Pardon me memory, but I seem to recall that at the trail they claimed that many lines fo source code we lost for good. It is not really possibal for them to open source something they don't have source for is it?
People always make the assumption that metrics are better, but in fact the other systesm do have advantages. For one, fractions work out very nicely in most non-metric systems, in particualr the third. Try taking 1/3rd a meter, it can't be done with any accuracy, but both the foot and yard can be divided into thirds readily.
And although moving the decimal to convert units is easy, in practice enough errors are made that it isn't done. (People forget the rarely used decimeter is between the centimeter, or they move one to far between the centimeter and milimeter. Stupid mistakes, really. (don't read this too closely, it slightly contradicts the top statement.
I'm not saying that metric is a bad system. Indeed having a universial system around the world has advantages. The advantages we were taught in school (decimal system) are not nearly as great as promissed.
Well, yes M$ has the money, but the US has this provision for a fair an speedy trial. If UF talks to the judge they can force the trial to comence within a few weeks. Given the his buisness is shut down (UF does have ads, don't know if it makes money) ANy lengthy delay in the trial would have to be approved by both parties.
Don't overlook UF's ability to counter sue. UF has basicly no money, so they have nothing major to lose. Since this trial is not cut and dried for anyone against them (satire is generally considered protected), UF can sue for disruption of buisness, with a greater chance to win.
I wonder if I can sue. After all I've lose a part of my day, and that is causing pain and suffering.
Well, I don't need blueprints, but the law won't let me start buidling without one, and they tend to get a bit mad if the final result doen'st look anything like the blueprint
I can understand (don't agree with, but understand) that they want me to build something safe, but they also want it to fit into their idea of right. Remind me to move to North dakota when I get rich...
Obviously you have never written a real program spanning several million lines of code with subroutines written by someone other then you.
Combine the above with a data structure malloced in a library not written by you (possibal in OS/2, though it isn't malloc) that needs to be freeed in a latter subroutine. Maybe we should toss threads in too, so you may have a differnt thread looking at your memory after your subroutine is done, and your subroutine has to return a pointer to memory malloced. Suddenly you don't know who is done with that memory you just started with first. Can't call free() too soon lest you prevent access by someone else who needs it, but you have to call it. GC solves this problem, and if it was fast enough would be more universial.
The creater of C++ has listed allowing himself to be convinced that GC was too slow as his greatest regret.
Now for simple cases you are right, but the simple cases are rarely got wrong (for long) but when the memory needs to hang around for a long time the case is no longer simple.
ip voting won't work for/. users who use a real multi user operating system that has multipul users. Most of us are the former, I know I'm not the only one in the latter catagory.
You overvalue education
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Space Hotel
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· Score: 1
Stop for a moment and think: How many people really need the education they have? I knew assembly language at 10, and was writing in Basic at 7. Big deal, so were a lot of kids may age, most of who are and were better programers.
Now I'll grant that a 6th grade education is useful, since you do need the three R (reading writting and arrithmatic) but many jobs don't require more then that. A carpender doesn't, nor does a word processor, nor the janater, cook, truck driver, actor, managers, and more. Now some of them require some education outside of tarditional school, but if you have been to 6th grade you can apply yourself and learn whatever you want.
I would of course like doctors to have a significant amount of education.
DO NOT read the above to mean that I'm against higher education. I ahve my 4 year college degree, and encourage everyone to get one. But Most people do not need the degree!
The reason ships paint a flag on their side is by paying taxes to a country the country agrees to provide defense of some sort. Now a days there isn't much of a piracy (in the old sense, not music/software) but it was once a problem, and you could claim a little protection with a flag. Note that this isn't always a good deal, but it is the way most ship owners do things. If your self supporting in international waters you could conciviably get by without paying taxes.
If you don't claim aligance to other countrys trials are easy. "After investigation we find you guilty of steeling a wallet. Tonight we will open the airlock on you." (If you really try this system of justace you better have everything in line, since you will have to convince the world that the ciminal is really guilty and deserves such harsh punishment) Cruse ships have been known to dump passangers on a small desert island when they don't obey the rules.
Slashdot Mirror
With linux who needs x86? Unless you plan on using Wine (which is nice, but not useful for more people) x86 with all the power comsumption doesn't make sense. Lets see a laptop with an ARM (strong Arm?) processor.
Oh, how much you want to bet that someone will release a no-OS system with hardware that linux does not support? (Either a winmodem or a display without xfree86 suppot)
Accually it is even more fun to treat them well, and hope they remember all the bad things they did to you. Anyone with any conscience at all will kick themselves for all those horid things.
The poster above mentioned buying something (wine I think, but I don't recignise it) that costs more then they make in a night... Well, by that, and then inviste them for a cup full. (Note, the poster above me mentioned drug treatment, don't tempt someone just out of treatment with even legal drugs, but if they are just out of prison they are fair game for this mind game)
This is also a very christian thing to do, and it can't hurt no matter what your religion.
First off, don't get me wrong. I belive that homeschooling should be an option for everyone, and every loving parent should consider it.
Homeschooling generally misses one thing that you learn in high school, because it is not taught in class. (and it is taught poorly) How to deal with people! You need to learn to deal with people, and you can't learn that lession unless you deal with people byond family. You can get around this porblem if you remember it is amajor lession, far more imporant than most of the usless classes you have to take. this lession requires people who disagree with you, people who are not like you. Most of the home schooled kids, while smart otherwise lack this skill. (Not that I'm claiming to be good at it)
High school isn't the only, nor perhaps the best way to learn this social skill. As one of my college professions said "When I first went to the university everyone thought it was a good thing, but they were worried because I might meet a democrat up there in that big city." Of course he did meet a democrat in life, and it didn't kill him. He was a great teacher, one of the few I found in college. His education failed him though, in that people were afraid of democrats, instead of teaching of them as just misguided people. (Note, that this is not intended to be something on politics, I picked democrats because his small town was entirely republican. there are comunities of democrats who have the same narrow view)
I also bring to mind one home schooled girl who isn't stupid, but she gets worked up and distraught over anyone who disagrees with her. She was taught how life, right and wrong, and she never questioned them. She never figgured out why wrong is wrong, and she is the worse for it. Some things she does are IMHO wrong, but she wasn't taught they were wrong, and so she refuses to consider any viewpoint that would suggest they are wrong. (Not that she should belive they are wrong, but she considers any viewpoint she wasn't tought wrong).
Still, homeschooling must be an option. Sometimes it is the only thing that a parent can do when faced with all the bad things in the other systems. I won't disagree with many of the criticisms leveled against schools. Schools do a lot of things wrong.
Mine too. Parents have a right to take comptuers away. In fact at times I think they should more often. (Not just comptuers, TV too. ground more kids. whatever will get the kids attention)
The point though is that the parents said "We don't have the time to deal with you, so we will take the comptuer" (not a direct quote). Rasing kids is hard. I don't have them, and I know that. I can't belive how many parents think they can raise kids correctly and still have whatever life they want. Kids are not a two hours a week thing, they are number one priority for years. (not that parents can't have fun, but they can't neglict their kids)
I've thought about the Colorado situation for a while, and concluded: This is the price we pay for freedom.
WE could prevent this situation. 1984 basicly. Radio transmaitters on everyone (surgicly implanted, non-removable), mandatory random searches, and so on. Yes, we could have prevented that situation, but the simple moves to prevent it that you hear suggested (more gun control as if those kids legally had the guns in the first place), banning video games (even though quake is sick, and anyone who likes it needs help) or so on won't help. Either it is all 1984, or nothing.
Personally I'll take my chances that I and my friends will survive today. We may not, but I prefer taking my chances with death then to know I will live in the other socity.
I was on my high school newspaper, so I know that the national (forget the name) high school newspaper socity takes the idea of administartors killing articals seriously! Get a lawyer now, don't bow to the pressure, remember you have better lawyers (through that orginization) than they do!
PS, if you go to a private school, this doesn't applie. Public schools cannot mess with student papers, courts have held that up many times.
I only allow the banks I use online (IE, they have my money) to use javascript or use cookies. I wish they didn't require javascript though so that I could use lynx which is prefered.
Everyone else, you don't need javascript. (I'll allow java if I'm in netscape which I'm not, only because java is designed for security) I allow a few sites like /. a cookie, but unless you accually do something that needs a cookie you don't get one. (Yes I know cookies are relativly secure)
I have enough trouble with car sickness (I can't even read a map for a minute to find the next turn before I'm in trouble) I'm sure that I'll be locked out.
$480,000 seems small to me. Perhaps that is because I'm used to the mainframe world where a minute of downtime costs $1,000,000. (each minute ass another million) Since companies had to take servers down, they felt some loss from that.
If you figgure a tech makes $300 a day ($80,000 a year) This is only 8000 sysadmins working for two days. (what a previous poster claims it took his company) This allows each company in the fortune 500 to use 16 sysadmins. Now granted not all fortune 500 companies were affected, but even still this starts to look small when you remember that these are the largest companies. Looks to me like $480,000 won't even cover the salery of the systemadmins who were not taking care of normal buisness in response to this. No Think of what the cost of business is (see above), and it looks like a bad estimate.
Now I will grant that NT was taken down more then mainframes, and NT doesn't run anything mission critical, but even still we can expect there were losses due to this downtime that aren't figgure in.
Come to think of it, this is also the first reasonable proposal for dealing with M$ that I've seen. Others do something, but don't solve any problems. This would solve the problem, and to boot I can accually belive it is reasonable.
I'm still shocked that I agree with RMS, normally I respect him as a programer and keep his views seperate.
Okay, so I don't know every programing language that mankind has ever invented. But anyone who can get a CS degree should be able to pick up any language needed in just a few days. It will take months to learn all the tricks, but in a few days you can be productive, and a in a week nearly as good as the seasoned veterans (with the same expirence as you).
The important part of programing is algorythims, data structures, and the expirence to know when to apply them. The skills from one language translate to anouther easially.
I have on several occosions sat down with the source code in a language I've never seen before and found the bug in it. EXPIRENCE to know where to look, and the simple structure of all languages allows me to do this.
Learning a programing language isn't like learning a foreign language. Once you know a LISP, a Assembly, and a C like language you can learn them all in no time. Learning a new one is like a Londoner going to the southern US. The langauge is different, but it won't take long to converse with someone there.
To answer the question: I use TCL/TK, C/C++ (C compiled with a c++ compiler, and in c++ function calling. I'm interfacing with hardware so c++ isn't of much use), and a private OOA thing (4gl?) that gets compiled to C++. They all work, and all are the same, even though the OOA doesn't support arrays to my annoyance, I can code arround that.
When the company misses targets, and then announces a new logo.
When they change a well known name to something unknown.
When your missed in a round of layoffs (Anytime there is a layoff take a day to polish your resume, even if nobody in your area was affected)
I don't want to search for football, and come up with football bear, which is obviously not relavant. (yet you do get that now, and probably on top) If however the company buying the ads spends the time to make the first link relavant then I won't object, there is too much cruft to search through as it is.
By relavant I mean that a store wanting to sell me a football helmet should have helmets on the page, but also links where I can get stats on all players, links where I can see headlines and scores. Links to experts for advice. Links to ... football related. In other words someone who searches for just football probably isn't getting to the right place on the first hit, if the first ad will link them to the right place, I don't object to it coming up first.
Note that this puts a lot of burdon on the advertiser, to make a site that is probably relavant to the keyword. Football bear may in fact be good, but it isn't what I was searching for. When ads annoy me I will turn them off, when ads are helpful (hey, I gotta buy things, if you support something I do with ads I might buy from you just for that reason.
Well that is what storageTek paid for their new logo. At least we went a step in the right direction, a meanless logo, but all we had before was the name...
Most of us here look at the price tag for that, think for a moment, and reliase that instead of spending money on a logo last year they could have lowered estimates by 10 million, given us a bonus, and still be money ahead.
If I was a stock trader I'd be short on sgi right now. My expirence is that when a company changes their logo stock moves south. (for those who don't know, short on stock means you borrow stock from a owner, and sell it. You have to buy it back before the owner wants to do anything with it, but that is rarely a problem)
GET THIS STRAIGHT PEOPLE: WEB DESIGN IS NOT PROGRAMING!
I wonder if I should emphasize that a little more... Web design is a mix of art and tarditional design. (come to think of it, art is redundant, tarditional design is based on art)
I find no surprize that an interior designer made the transition to web design, since those fields have a lot more in common then web design and computer science. Designers (interior and otherwise) are trained to recignise the humon facotrs that make things both useable and nice, comptuer science people are trained in making a computer work. Web design is not a programing task. Not that interior design will give you everything you need to know about web design, but the underlying theorys are the same even if they are applied much differently, while the underliying theory of programing is not the same.
For your typical PC he is right. PCs do not have the memory bandwidth, or any of the other things that make that statement untrue for the big machines like Sun or Sgi makes.
Linkers are only required to maintain 6 charicters for external references. Just because nearly all modern linkers maintain more does not mean they all do, nor that your code will not be called to run on an old hp (which is the only machine I'm aware of that accually only maintained 6 charicters) I'm always careful that my external references are 6 charicters. Note that this does not mean they are six charicters long, only that the first six charicters are always significant enough.
Maybe this should be in the jargon artical that follows this one...
Pardon me memory, but I seem to recall that at the trail they claimed that many lines fo source code we lost for good. It is not really possibal for them to open source something they don't have source for is it?
People always make the assumption that metrics are better, but in fact the other systesm do have advantages. For one, fractions work out very nicely in most non-metric systems, in particualr the third. Try taking 1/3rd a meter, it can't be done with any accuracy, but both the foot and yard can be divided into thirds readily.
And although moving the decimal to convert units is easy, in practice enough errors are made that it isn't done. (People forget the rarely used decimeter is between the centimeter, or they move one to far between the centimeter and milimeter. Stupid mistakes, really. (don't read this too closely, it slightly contradicts the top statement.
I'm not saying that metric is a bad system. Indeed having a universial system around the world has advantages. The advantages we were taught in school (decimal system) are not nearly as great as promissed.
Well, yes M$ has the money, but the US has this provision for a fair an speedy trial. If UF talks to the judge they can force the trial to comence within a few weeks. Given the his buisness is shut down (UF does have ads, don't know if it makes money) ANy lengthy delay in the trial would have to be approved by both parties.
Don't overlook UF's ability to counter sue. UF has basicly no money, so they have nothing major to lose. Since this trial is not cut and dried for anyone against them (satire is generally considered protected), UF can sue for disruption of buisness, with a greater chance to win.
I wonder if I can sue. After all I've lose a part of my day, and that is causing pain and suffering.
Well, I don't need blueprints, but the law won't let me start buidling without one, and they tend to get a bit mad if the final result doen'st look anything like the blueprint
I can understand (don't agree with, but understand) that they want me to build something safe, but they also want it to fit into their idea of right. Remind me to move to North dakota when I get rich...
Obviously you have never written a real program spanning several million lines of code with subroutines written by someone other then you.
Combine the above with a data structure malloced in a library not written by you (possibal in OS/2, though it isn't malloc) that needs to be freeed in a latter subroutine. Maybe we should toss threads in too, so you may have a differnt thread looking at your memory after your subroutine is done, and your subroutine has to return a pointer to memory malloced. Suddenly you don't know who is done with that memory you just started with first. Can't call free() too soon lest you prevent access by someone else who needs it, but you have to call it. GC solves this problem, and if it was fast enough would be more universial.
The creater of C++ has listed allowing himself to be convinced that GC was too slow as his greatest regret.
Now for simple cases you are right, but the simple cases are rarely got wrong (for long) but when the memory needs to hang around for a long time the case is no longer simple.
ip voting won't work for /. users who use a real multi user operating system that has multipul users. Most of us are the former, I know I'm not the only one in the latter catagory.
Stop for a moment and think: How many people really need the education they have? I knew assembly language at 10, and was writing in Basic at 7. Big deal, so were a lot of kids may age, most of who are and were better programers.
Now I'll grant that a 6th grade education is useful, since you do need the three R (reading writting and arrithmatic) but many jobs don't require more then that. A carpender doesn't, nor does a word processor, nor the janater, cook, truck driver, actor, managers, and more. Now some of them require some education outside of tarditional school, but if you have been to 6th grade you can apply yourself and learn whatever you want.
I would of course like doctors to have a significant amount of education.
DO NOT read the above to mean that I'm against higher education. I ahve my 4 year college degree, and encourage everyone to get one. But Most people do not need the degree!
The reason ships paint a flag on their side is by paying taxes to a country the country agrees to provide defense of some sort. Now a days there isn't much of a piracy (in the old sense, not music/software) but it was once a problem, and you could claim a little protection with a flag. Note that this isn't always a good deal, but it is the way most ship owners do things. If your self supporting in international waters you could conciviably get by without paying taxes.
If you don't claim aligance to other countrys trials are easy. "After investigation we find you guilty of steeling a wallet. Tonight we will open the airlock on you." (If you really try this system of justace you better have everything in line, since you will have to convince the world that the ciminal is really guilty and deserves such harsh punishment) Cruse ships have been known to dump passangers on a small desert island when they don't obey the rules.