Yeah, you won't lose files, but you'll lose data. It's been noted elsewhere in this article's comments in more technical jargon, but it is a known flaw in ReiserFS that blocks of data can be written to flat out wrong areas. As an example, I had an outage while I was working with my config files and running an apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade. Reiser then managed to write the middle of a debian package file to whatever config file I was working with.
Had me confused to hell until I saw a newsgroup discussion that mentioned the exact problem I was having. Does Hans Reiser know about this problem? Oh, yeah. He does. Is he concerned about it? No, he's not. In his own words he's not. And ReiserFS fails silently; you'll never know until you find it.
When I setup ReiserFS on my machine, I was aware of similar complaints, but I dismissed them as fear of trying something unproven. And I was happy with ReiserFS for quite awhile, because I never saw anything wrong (unlike ext2/3). But I really can't support a FS that has these kinds of data integrity issues if the team has that kind of attitude towards them.
1,2) Exceptions could solve a lot of your problems here. Most of the goto idioms that I've personally used have exception-based analogues; for example, breaking out of an enclosing loop can be handled by sticking the loop you want to break out of in a try block and throwing an exception when you want to break out. Offhand, however, I don't think that proper gotos exist in python.
With regard to tail recursion, however - does python not optimize tail calls? I haven't looked, but I would be a bit surprised if it didn't handle most simple cases.
3) Variable passing seems to work like java - everything is pass by reference except fundamental data types, and strings are handled oddly.
4) You get closures to work with lambdas by using default values for parameters, and you get around the fact that lambdas are only capable of evaluating a single expression by making that expression a function call. For example, a little function that returns a callback function with the desired parameters could doing something like: def make_callback(index,identifier):
return lambda i=index, id=identifier: select_item(i,id)
More complex closures with modifiable local state can be accomplished by using the same techniques with defs, using default parameter values to pass in objects containing state information. Simple case: def make_counter(start):
localdata = { "count" : start }
def counter(data = localdata):
data["count"] -= 1
return data["count"]
return counter
Cleaner-looking code can be accomplished by putting together a little object that takes in the desired names and values in kwargs and puts them into its __dict__.
Python's designers apparently do not want lambda spaghetti.
5) Nope, there isn't.
I think that Python really hits an ever-so-slightly different niche from Perl, personally. Perl is quick and dirty, and since it has aspects of any programming paradigm you can think of, pretty much anyone can code the way they're used to, no matter what paradigm they come from. Python can also do quick and dirty, but you have to get used to doing it the python way... which can be trying at times. However, due to the rabid simplicity and orthogonality of the python language design, I'd say that it scales much better than I would expect Perl to scale. If you've written something in python and come back to it later to expand it, I doubt you'd find any big surprises.
So as an added benefit, Python fits in better in the context of a tool to use in larger projects. For glue code to hold together other parts of a project which can't be done in a scripting language, Perl can't hold a candle to Python due to code maintenance issues.
If you're doing smaller scripts, work alone, and write Perl in a maintainable way (very doable, but almost never seen), however, there's really no compelling reason to change languages.
It's a shame that Python's limited to the scripting languages domain, however - lots of the design decisions would seem to be an excellent kernel of a more powerful and elegant general-purpose language.
4: Touchscreens. One of Apple's Prime Directives is to make the worlds most intuitive and ergonomic electronics. They could do so by ditching the keyboard and mouse, make the screen touch sensitive and make the OS more voice sensitive. That would probably make their whole product line slightly less expensive and much more fun and easy to use.
The primary problem with depending so heavily on touchscreens is the "gorilla arm" phenomenon. Basically, if you interact mostly by waving your arm at the screen, your arm tends to get fatigued. For short-term interactions with a computer this isn't so bad, but for long term interaction it becomes a serious liability.
And, of course, combined with your suggestion of hanging the display on the wall, this is a pretty bad idea. From where I'm sitting, my wall is about 4 feet away. Not terribly convenient.
I don't know. How much *does* it cost them for you to download a song?
Say an average pop single is 3 minutes long. So that's about 3Mb an MP3. If you charge $1.50 a song, then that's $.50/Mb downloaded. So for each MB/sec of connection you have, you get 60min.*24hr.*30days*$.50= $21600 of revenue.
Damned efficient...
(all apologies if this bored anyone, i just didn't want to take it for granted...)
Everybody seems to think that Dungeons and Dragons is just a game, but if you think about it for a moment, it's almost prophetic. Just forget all that "magic" jazz, but keep in the *idea* that we have magical, little understood powers as computer gurus. Then, take it that all those corporations are *dungeons*.
Then it all pops into place. We're not people who go to work and earn money every day - we're magical computer warriors who get up every morning to go raid the corporate dungeon for money with our magical skills!
And Bill Gates is a big dragon, and the Justice Dept. has a huge magical sword of legislation used to mightily cleave evil kingdoms in twain.
Yeah, you heard it kids, it's the latest way to earn fame and fortune - stand up for your rights!
You heard it right! Not only is backing up your beliefs in the constitution the right thing to do, but it's also a lucrative opportunity to make a little cash on the side, too.
...
I understand your point, sir, but I think that there are much, much more important things to think about. If the staff of Slashdot has to have a meeting and a presentation on the profitability of standing up to Microsoft, maybe Slashdot isn't the right place to fight the good fight.
I hate to be the one to say this... but sir, you're missing the point.
The song isn't about Canada, it's about the tendency of American culture to blame things for its problems. Anybody who actually saw the movie would probably agree with me on this. While, of course, the movie takes a few potshots at Canada, it takes just as many potshots at America (ex: we have the weapons, but we have the stupid celebrities, too - Canada probably comes out on top on that one, I think:) ) that's not what it's about. Canada's just an easy target, and the point of the song is that Canada hasn't even done anything wrong, and doesn't even have anything to do with it.
I would venture to say that taking offense at that song is the most American thing you've done today. Because the simple fact is that, although Canada does get poked fun at a bit here in the States, my personal experience has actually been that the real perception of Canada is that it's a nice place to live and work and play, and is, if not better than the States, certainly about as nice.
Maybe we're jealous, I don't know, but suffice to say, you shouldn't take our little jokes like this too seriously, or you're in serious danger of becoming truly American in your mindset. And don't we both know what a pity that would be.
Quick question, but where does the price of a CD come from?
I know the media is pretty cheap (anybody who has a CD burner knows that it's not the cost of the media... and that's commercial, even), but some of that $18.99 has to be justified somewhere down the line. Maybe I'm not cynical enough, but perhaps they aren't just pulling that price out of...
I'm sure this is slightly off topic, but it's a little bit relevant, too, so hear me out.
I'm pretty sure everybody remembers when the shift in web page design came. A few years back, just about every site on the internet was white on black. Or white on a starry background (there's some geek influence for you:). But somewhere between then and now, the general consensus changed and web sites shifted to black on white, like print.
Now, I'm not denying that white background web sites can be mighty pretty. But is this really the best decision? On print media, white was the obvious choice, because it's easier to make the ink dark and write on a light surface then to make the ink light and write on a dark surface. Black ink was probably also easier to make - of course, this is just an assumption, but i'd bet that it is.
And since paper is all white now, white on black doesn't make much sense, because the black ink bleeds into the white text, making it that much harder to read.
Now, on a CRT, it's the exact opposite from paper. You have to color in the white and leave the black blank. Which means not only that you have a washout of the black, but you have the monitor giving off more radiation into our precious little eyeballs. I'd be willing to bet that this makes it harder to read.
So why has the print sensibility been forced onto the monitor? It could be that we're more accustomed to it, so it's a bit more pleasing to the eyes. And since all the early sites were white on black, black on white looked much more "respectable" for the first web sites that wished to be taken seriously. However, I think that it *does* make internet content that much more of a pain to read. As I speak, even the black on gray text box I'm writing in is a lot more pleasant to read than the page surrounding it, because the rest just burns into my eyes.
Anyways, I read all of that somewhere before, so it's not like it's original, but I thought it was relevant. Anybody know where I read it?:)
Excellent argument! Addresses the question quite well.
But it's an excellent example of the geek mentality at work. We're far too focused on finding a solution and showing it to people because the solution is beautiful to us, it's success and an example of how we've solved the problem.
Unfortunatley, elegance in engineering never impressed a voter. There's got to be an emotional aspect. Somebody mentioned that lies can be twisted and still be a lie, while that's not so for the truth... well, the truth is in the presentation.
Somebody present this stuff with FIRE! This is *great* - the AFA being blocked by their own software and switching software? Somebody needs to take this and shove the AFA's hypocrisy right back in their face! Somebody fight for truth, justice, and the American way! Somebody bring the Founding Fathers into the debate, separation of church and religion! There's very little passion about this movement, IMO, and that's a shame.
Somebody take the moral high ground and raise hell. We need somebody with serious public speaking skills on our side if we want success at the community level.
I may not be the first to notice this, but I think is *certainly* bears noting that recently there have been many 200+ message news articles, and among these I have not seen a single post moderated to score 4 or 5. Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe the posts have been remarkably devoid of content as of late... (this is entirely possible.:), but I think that this is unusual enough to bear noting.
I'd just like to say that Steve McNair, IMO, is pretty amazing, and the Titans pulled off several plays by sheer force of will (second touchdown, and where McNair broke this one tackle that looked impossible). Hats off to both teams, it was a *great* game that kept me on edge to the end...
I am not an expert, so I can't answer most of the questions, but I think I can enlighten this one:
I don't understand the purpose of DVD encryption since I can already copy some DVDs straight to disk with DeCSS and even then, I can just copy a disc to VHS tape from my TV-out. Am I missing something?
Well, DeCSS removes the encryption, obviously, so on the copying to disk that's pretty straightforward. As for copying to VHS from the TV-out, from what I understand there is some method by which the output is distorted unless the output goes straight to a television. This means that not only can you not copy it to VHS, but people are having problems converting to RF output, also.
Yeah, it happened before, definitely. But because the source was closed, it did slow the cheaters down. Cheating happened, but it was *relatively* rare, and you rarely had games ruined by it. Administrators could also fight most of the cheating with various commands that the majority of cheaters hadn't wisened up to.
However, what open sourcing did was make it extremely easy. More complex cheats are easily enabled, just open up the source. So you have plenty more cheaters.
Also, if Quake was a real-world commerce application, with real-world motivation to break into it, Carmack would've just taken a 250ms hit and made it that much more secure - or whatever it takes. Security wasn't #1 priority here, speed of graphics and connection was.
And as for the essay... this statement: "Avoiding them [design errors] is, in fact, a good reason for software consumers to demand open source for anything more mission-critical than a Quake game."
If the community really does want to mainstream Linux (which I doubt, the minute you do you'll most all complain about it, and you damned well know it because you already are), a Quake game is pretty mission-critical.:) But not only that, but you belittle the importance of the game. The fact is that you just admitted that open source won't work here, and the impression you give is that that doesn't matter because it's just a game. How can a large company justify placing their hands in Linux and open source when Carmack can't trust a simple computer game with open source? Although the two uses are obviously completely different and irrelevent to each other, the gut association is that open source isn't good enough even for a game.
But anyways. Just to qualify what I say so I don't get intellectually butchered, I realize that Linux!=Open source. However, Linux is the flagship of open source and the two are tightly linked whether you like it or not.
There is no "proprietary source code"... only non-disclosed-source-code. No bad, just ungood.
Disclosed source-code, however, sounds so ugly. Open is such a pretty, pleasing pair of syllables, so fitting to name a company with....
No disrespect intended, of course, I just personally think that the negative spin implied by "non-disclosed-source-code" is pretty nice. Of course, using disclosed source code to refer to open source would even that playing field nicely, i suppose.
Privately funded privacy infringement?
on
Profiling A Nation
·
· Score: 1
Man, that's terrifying. I'm glad I don't live in australia. Certainly sounds like a rotten place to be.
Of course, we'll won't need to be so concerned with Australia's privacy problems should Echelon prove to be real.
Obviously, you're the programming guru of id. But there's more to a game than programming... mainly, the design of game mechanics, the art of playability. What role do you play in the design of the game itself, and what (if any) philosophy do you hold as to what makes a game fun?
The issue with Google caching pages is rather odd, I think... I mean, *why* does Google cache pages like this? It can't provide more than a marginal benefit over *not* caching pages, and must cost a good bit of money if it's used with any frequency. So I doubt it's doing Google much good.
And of course, it isn't doing commercial sites any big favor. I'm sure they love to have user statistics, and Google will blind them to a lot of hits if the engine ever goes mainstream in a big way. Caching pages *may* also have some effect on ad revenue, which would be a more serious issue, but I'm probably wrong on that.
Sure, Google is all fine and dandy for caching pages when it's casual web community sites that probably could care less who visits them. But sites that actually have to pay for themselves will be hurt by it, and it doesn't seem to be much in Google's interests to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, you won't lose files, but you'll lose data. It's been noted elsewhere in this article's comments in more technical jargon, but it is a known flaw in ReiserFS that blocks of data can be written to flat out wrong areas. As an example, I had an outage while I was working with my config files and running an apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade. Reiser then managed to write the middle of a debian package file to whatever config file I was working with.
Had me confused to hell until I saw a newsgroup discussion that mentioned the exact problem I was having. Does Hans Reiser know about this problem? Oh, yeah. He does. Is he concerned about it? No, he's not. In his own words he's not. And ReiserFS fails silently; you'll never know until you find it.
When I setup ReiserFS on my machine, I was aware of similar complaints, but I dismissed them as fear of trying something unproven. And I was happy with ReiserFS for quite awhile, because I never saw anything wrong (unlike ext2/3). But I really can't support a FS that has these kinds of data integrity issues if the team has that kind of attitude towards them.
1,2) Exceptions could solve a lot of your problems here. Most of the goto idioms that I've personally used have exception-based analogues; for example, breaking out of an enclosing loop can be handled by sticking the loop you want to break out of in a try block and throwing an exception when you want to break out. Offhand, however, I don't think that proper gotos exist in python.
With regard to tail recursion, however - does python not optimize tail calls? I haven't looked, but I would be a bit surprised if it didn't handle most simple cases.
3) Variable passing seems to work like java - everything is pass by reference except fundamental data types, and strings are handled oddly.
4) You get closures to work with lambdas by using default values for parameters, and you get around the fact that lambdas are only capable of evaluating a single expression by making that expression a function call. For example, a little function that returns a callback function with the desired parameters could doing something like:
def make_callback(index,identifier):
return lambda i=index, id=identifier: select_item(i,id)
More complex closures with modifiable local state can be accomplished by using the same techniques with defs, using default parameter values to pass in objects containing state information. Simple case:
def make_counter(start):
localdata = { "count" : start }
def counter(data = localdata):
data["count"] -= 1
return data["count"]
return counter
Cleaner-looking code can be accomplished by putting together a little object that takes in the desired names and values in kwargs and puts them into its __dict__.
Python's designers apparently do not want lambda spaghetti.
5) Nope, there isn't.
I think that Python really hits an ever-so-slightly different niche from Perl, personally. Perl is quick and dirty, and since it has aspects of any programming paradigm you can think of, pretty much anyone can code the way they're used to, no matter what paradigm they come from. Python can also do quick and dirty, but you have to get used to doing it the python way... which can be trying at times. However, due to the rabid simplicity and orthogonality of the python language design, I'd say that it scales much better than I would expect Perl to scale. If you've written something in python and come back to it later to expand it, I doubt you'd find any big surprises.
So as an added benefit, Python fits in better in the context of a tool to use in larger projects. For glue code to hold together other parts of a project which can't be done in a scripting language, Perl can't hold a candle to Python due to code maintenance issues.
If you're doing smaller scripts, work alone, and write Perl in a maintainable way (very doable, but almost never seen), however, there's really no compelling reason to change languages.
It's a shame that Python's limited to the scripting languages domain, however - lots of the design decisions would seem to be an excellent kernel of a more powerful and elegant general-purpose language.
The primary problem with depending so heavily on touchscreens is the "gorilla arm" phenomenon. Basically, if you interact mostly by waving your arm at the screen, your arm tends to get fatigued. For short-term interactions with a computer this isn't so bad, but for long term interaction it becomes a serious liability.
And, of course, combined with your suggestion of hanging the display on the wall, this is a pretty bad idea. From where I'm sitting, my wall is about 4 feet away. Not terribly convenient.
Say an average pop single is 3 minutes long. So that's about 3Mb an MP3. If you charge $1.50 a song, then that's $.50/Mb downloaded. So for each MB/sec of connection you have, you get 60min.*24hr.*30days*$.50= $21600 of revenue.
Damned efficient...
(all apologies if this bored anyone, i just didn't want to take it for granted...)
Everybody seems to think that Dungeons and Dragons is just a game, but if you think about it for a moment, it's almost prophetic. Just forget all that "magic" jazz, but keep in the *idea* that we have magical, little understood powers as computer gurus. Then, take it that all those corporations are *dungeons*.
Then it all pops into place. We're not people who go to work and earn money every day - we're magical computer warriors who get up every morning to go raid the corporate dungeon for money with our magical skills!
And Bill Gates is a big dragon, and the Justice Dept. has a huge magical sword of legislation used to mightily cleave evil kingdoms in twain.
I don't think that I'm the only one saying that there is a damn entertaining novel in this somewhere.
You heard it right! Not only is backing up your beliefs in the constitution the right thing to do, but it's also a lucrative opportunity to make a little cash on the side, too.
I understand your point, sir, but I think that there are much, much more important things to think about. If the staff of Slashdot has to have a meeting and a presentation on the profitability of standing up to Microsoft, maybe Slashdot isn't the right place to fight the good fight.
Which is altogether ironic in itself.
Anyways, I'll go hide my head now. Of course, it *is* funny that I already got moderated up as insightful...:)
The song isn't about Canada, it's about the tendency of American culture to blame things for its problems. Anybody who actually saw the movie would probably agree with me on this. While, of course, the movie takes a few potshots at Canada, it takes just as many potshots at America (ex: we have the weapons, but we have the stupid celebrities, too - Canada probably comes out on top on that one, I think :) ) that's not what it's about. Canada's just an easy target, and the point of the song is that Canada hasn't even done anything wrong, and doesn't even have anything to do with it.
I would venture to say that taking offense at that song is the most American thing you've done today. Because the simple fact is that, although Canada does get poked fun at a bit here in the States, my personal experience has actually been that the real perception of Canada is that it's a nice place to live and work and play, and is, if not better than the States, certainly about as nice.
Maybe we're jealous, I don't know, but suffice to say, you shouldn't take our little jokes like this too seriously, or you're in serious danger of becoming truly American in your mindset. And don't we both know what a pity that would be.
I thought it was pretty damned funny. :)
Maybe it's just me, i dunno...
I know the media is pretty cheap (anybody who has a CD burner knows that it's not the cost of the media... and that's commercial, even), but some of that $18.99 has to be justified somewhere down the line. Maybe I'm not cynical enough, but perhaps they aren't just pulling that price out of...
Out of thin air. :)
I'm pretty sure everybody remembers when the shift in web page design came. A few years back, just about every site on the internet was white on black. Or white on a starry background (there's some geek influence for you :). But somewhere between then and now, the general consensus changed and web sites shifted to black on white, like print.
Now, I'm not denying that white background web sites can be mighty pretty. But is this really the best decision? On print media, white was the obvious choice, because it's easier to make the ink dark and write on a light surface then to make the ink light and write on a dark surface. Black ink was probably also easier to make - of course, this is just an assumption, but i'd bet that it is.
And since paper is all white now, white on black doesn't make much sense, because the black ink bleeds into the white text, making it that much harder to read.
Now, on a CRT, it's the exact opposite from paper. You have to color in the white and leave the black blank. Which means not only that you have a washout of the black, but you have the monitor giving off more radiation into our precious little eyeballs. I'd be willing to bet that this makes it harder to read.
So why has the print sensibility been forced onto the monitor? It could be that we're more accustomed to it, so it's a bit more pleasing to the eyes. And since all the early sites were white on black, black on white looked much more "respectable" for the first web sites that wished to be taken seriously. However, I think that it *does* make internet content that much more of a pain to read. As I speak, even the black on gray text box I'm writing in is a lot more pleasant to read than the page surrounding it, because the rest just burns into my eyes.
Anyways, I read all of that somewhere before, so it's not like it's original, but I thought it was relevant. Anybody know where I read it? :)
But it's an excellent example of the geek mentality at work. We're far too focused on finding a solution and showing it to people because the solution is beautiful to us, it's success and an example of how we've solved the problem.
Unfortunatley, elegance in engineering never impressed a voter. There's got to be an emotional aspect. Somebody mentioned that lies can be twisted and still be a lie, while that's not so for the truth... well, the truth is in the presentation.
Somebody present this stuff with FIRE! This is *great* - the AFA being blocked by their own software and switching software? Somebody needs to take this and shove the AFA's hypocrisy right back in their face! Somebody fight for truth, justice, and the American way! Somebody bring the Founding Fathers into the debate, separation of church and religion! There's very little passion about this movement, IMO, and that's a shame.
Somebody take the moral high ground and raise hell. We need somebody with serious public speaking skills on our side if we want success at the community level.
I may not be the first to notice this, but I think is *certainly* bears noting that recently there have been many 200+ message news articles, and among these I have not seen a single post moderated to score 4 or 5. Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe the posts have been remarkably devoid of content as of late... (this is entirely possible. :), but I think that this is unusual enough to bear noting.
Well, from the 3rd quarter to the end. :)
I don't understand the purpose of DVD encryption since I can already copy some DVDs straight to disk with DeCSS and even then, I can just copy a disc to VHS tape from my TV-out. Am I missing something?
Well, DeCSS removes the encryption, obviously, so on the copying to disk that's pretty straightforward. As for copying to VHS from the TV-out, from what I understand there is some method by which the output is distorted unless the output goes straight to a television. This means that not only can you not copy it to VHS, but people are having problems converting to RF output, also.
However, what open sourcing did was make it extremely easy. More complex cheats are easily enabled, just open up the source. So you have plenty more cheaters.
Also, if Quake was a real-world commerce application, with real-world motivation to break into it, Carmack would've just taken a 250ms hit and made it that much more secure - or whatever it takes. Security wasn't #1 priority here, speed of graphics and connection was.
And as for the essay... this statement: "Avoiding them [design errors] is, in fact, a good reason for software consumers to demand open source for anything more mission-critical than a Quake game."
If the community really does want to mainstream Linux (which I doubt, the minute you do you'll most all complain about it, and you damned well know it because you already are), a Quake game is pretty mission-critical. :) But not only that, but you belittle the importance of the game. The fact is that you just admitted that open source won't work here, and the impression you give is that that doesn't matter because it's just a game. How can a large company justify placing their hands in Linux and open source when Carmack can't trust a simple computer game with open source? Although the two uses are obviously completely different and irrelevent to each other, the gut association is that open source isn't good enough even for a game.
But anyways. Just to qualify what I say so I don't get intellectually butchered, I realize that Linux!=Open source. However, Linux is the flagship of open source and the two are tightly linked whether you like it or not.
Linguistic games, I love it. :)
There is no "proprietary source code"... only non-disclosed-source-code. No bad, just ungood.
Disclosed source-code, however, sounds so ugly. Open is such a pretty, pleasing pair of syllables, so fitting to name a company with....
No disrespect intended, of course, I just personally think that the negative spin implied by "non-disclosed-source-code" is pretty nice. Of course, using disclosed source code to refer to open source would even that playing field nicely, i suppose.
Of course, we'll won't need to be so concerned with Australia's privacy problems should Echelon prove to be real.
And of course, it isn't doing commercial sites any big favor. I'm sure they love to have user statistics, and Google will blind them to a lot of hits if the engine ever goes mainstream in a big way. Caching pages *may* also have some effect on ad revenue, which would be a more serious issue, but I'm probably wrong on that.
Sure, Google is all fine and dandy for caching pages when it's casual web community sites that probably could care less who visits them. But sites that actually have to pay for themselves will be hurt by it, and it doesn't seem to be much in Google's interests to do that.
Extensive e-commerce support
Streaming support
Unlimited storage space
Excellent rates on bandwidth
And the clincher...
Entry into the Australian Pornédex, the premier source for access to pornography of all types!
Hey, if they're the premier porn gateway in Australia, they can determine who gets in! Isn't that blessedly easier?
Involving the forced installation of Netscape on all new subscribers' systems.
? Maybe I'm out of date on this, but I thought that browser dominance was also part of MS's agenda.
Let's hear that again. In bold.
If I'm not oppressed.
I'm not going to rebel.
Get off it. Affirmative action isn't going to put you homeless on the streets.
Sorry to be so blunt...