Ok, I read all the other "This is stupid" comments and my jaw kept dropping. I actually felt this was an April fools thing or something similar and that we were all missing something somewhere (and please let me know if I am... I REALLY need to know). I HAD to read the article and underlying paper, cause I just couldn't believe the absolute asinine stupidity of the test, let alone that it was being presented as research, or that the test itself was so flawed! So after all that, had to post. Summary for others, adding my voice to the crowd.
---------------- Assumption: Software Developers avoid disk access cause they believe doing it in memory is faster. This is put in context of BI and bigdata.
Testing: Create a program representing a common task that can be tested where one uses memory and the other uses diskspace. Memory Test: 1) Create a string in memory. 2) Add it multiple times into another string 3) Write second string onto Disk 4) Flush writes
Disk Test: 1) Create a string in memory 2) Write it multiple times to Disk 3) Flush writes
Create code in Python and Java.
Conclusion: Memory Test is so much slower than Disk Test! Additionally, the languages used have certain quirks to make it worse. Optimization helped a little but only on Linux. Therefore, programmers should reassess and understand their OS and programming languages before assuming this belief which is not true. ---------------
Assumption & Testing idea... very good. I would have loved to know the unknown scenarios where this assumption should be questioned. Especially in the world of click&drag programming for workflows, ETLs, and report writing.
But from there... its all BS and stupidity. Basically the test tests if replicating the hard drive driver in memory and then using the driver to write to disk is faster than just using the driver to write to disk. Are you bloody serious?!?! That's like testing if 2+2 is greater than 2+0. And that is before we start looking at using Java and Python which do a ton of work in terms of memory management and build all types of stuff around data types. Before the fact that they wrote the Python code WRONG (that's the slow way of doing string or listing concat). So they picked languages that write in memory O(n) extra times for the same data.
This test would have come to the same conclusions in C, C++, or Assembly! But the folks wouldn't have been able to write code to see the micro second time differences.
So lets set the record straight. NO developer out there goes out of their way to just write to a memory file if its simply going to flush to disk. Its not worth the extra lines of code, nor the lost CPU cycles in reading them. Especially since most operating systems do this already at multiple points along the data chain at the very low hardware & driver levels! If we have developers like this, we have a ton of bigger problems in software development than this little thing that will be solved by money.
To test this belief properly, give me a scenario where you reuse the written to disk/memory stuff, transform it, and then write to disk. See which one is slower. If its written properly, you will see that the underlying hardware systems will actually store stuff in cache or memory for you to help you speed it up! If you find proper scenarios where the memory part is slower, please let us know cause that is actually adding to the IT body of knowledge.
God, as this was BigData related, I was hoping at least something along the lines of "In DB data processing and extract vs extract and client side processing". Give me the points along a curve where one is better/worse than the other. THAT would have been interesting.
Most businesses fail to do the first part and screw up the entire equation. Most bankruptcies, going out of business, bubbles, and mismanagement isn't because of failure. Its the lack of recognition of failure and continued operations that end up eating all the resources and erases the reward altogether.
If you don't fail fast, you will fail once, period.
You ever seen a nobody in a clown suit get booed off the stage? Ever seen a bad neighborhood clean up itself and teach their kids not to tag their properties? Both acts of anonymity fixed by a society that addressed the issue.
In your professor's case, he too can stand up and belittle the anonymous person in front of the class by reading the submission out loud. Address it as a community, not as individuals. And if the class agrees, you can bet that anonymous person feels like total crap for being the ass hole and will change his ways... or leave cause he knows he is not welcome in the environment. This is far more constructive than directly belittling or giving bad grades to the one or two idiots who attach their identify to the opinion (actually this is far more dangerous). Cause the one guy who hides the opinion from fear of repercussions and lets it fester, will snap one day and really do take it out on the professor. At that point, grades left the thought process an eon ago.
Anonymity doesn't mean society just takes it and no one stands up against it. We shouldn't cower away from hurt feelings. We should face them head on. Sure, there are lots of cases where the issue isn't worth the time and best be forgotten, but we shouldn't scrap the platform just cause of that.
Anonymity is not the problem. And it doesn't empower assholes. For such people, it allows them to vent their issues and opinions. The alternative is to let them fester and feed on itself till either the usual destruction of the individual or the rare out lash against society through murder or bombing or joining slightly like minded individuals. Individuals who grow in strength with their numbers and common causes and lash out against [from their view point] an oppressive society.
Anonymity actually empowers society to see the underlying issues within when they are small and addressable (Slashdot Beta anyone). The alternative is to go about our lives as if everything is perfect cause everything has conformed to be just like everyone else. Eventually the hidden issues get too large to be ignored or addressed and we end up paying for it. At the same time we learn very little cause we erased all the signs and are unable to prevent them in the future.
We shouldn't throw away anonymity just cause the messages we see ruin our picture of a perfect society or hurt our feelings. We should address the problems rather than shoot the messenger.
Picture, for example, an accident at Indian Point that would increase NYC residents' rate of cancer over the next 10 years by two to three orders of magnitude
You don't need to picture it, nor do you need an accident. Just go live near an active coal power plant.
Nice source, but believe it or not, it doesn't actually address anything that I asked. Everything on that site tells all the benefits that stores and banks obtain in terms of reduced fraud, but tell nothing to compare it against the losses faced by consumers or percent against total sales. Granted, stores & banks saving money would eventually end up saving consumers a portion of it, but without including additional burden on consumers and hit to sales its an invalid leap of logic.
Example, if fraud made up 3% of all transactions, I doubt going from 3% to 1% is worth it if total transactions drop by 10%. Or if consumers are left to foot the bill in even 0.1% more cases.
Citation (thou not as good as yours): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... "...incidence of credit card fraud is limited to about 0.1% of all card transactions..."
To go further, credit cards themselves are a very big dead weight in terms of actual dollars. They add 3-4% in cost (fees, rewards, etc) to everything. Imagine the massive costs when multiplied across all transactions. BUT, businesses world over accept credit cards cause they make up for the 3-4% dead weight via an increase in volume that increases sales and profits. The current fraud in the US in comparison is basically a rounding error.
As the other poster said, I usually swipe well before the cashier finishes scanning or swipe at some point during a lull in my own scanning (ie: weighing of bananas). Usually don't even need to sign and in some locations, my receipt gets emailed to me. The only negative about credit cards is that I am tracked. The transparency afforded to me is also given to the store and card carrier. But I think the security and convenience is well worth it.
Yes, cash would be faster if I knew exactly how much it would be and had that out while waiting in line (which is rare with self-check outs). But that's wait time I can spend thinking about other things... like what am I having for dinner.
If you think that's an issue this discussion is over and really no point in having it. Python defines a coding standard so that all read, write, and understand the same. If you think that is a weakness, well I hope I don't ever need to review your version of what ever language you choose.
In large dev teams, your actual coders and testers better be cogs in a machine. Coding is a commodity service. If they aren't, you are risking too much on too few people. The value is in design and execution. Purely writing out a solution is no longer a unique skill set.
The instances of "bad code" in Python is minuscule compared to other languages. With Perl and Javascript being on the other end of the spectrum. Saying "Python too has bad code so its the same" is misleading. Python programs not only learn a language, they also learn one standard of coding in becoming proficient in the language. With C/Java/C++/Perl/Pascal/COBOL/Ruby, folks learn & develop various standards of coding on their own and at different companies.
Each reviewer now has to learn that new standard to figure out what the coder is doing. I have said "it's a BS design restriction" for one project written in one language multiple times. Cause each developer due to their various backgrounds choose a different design for their coding.
Right... and I have seen this same code written in the following versions:
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) code here
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) code here }
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) {
code here
} }
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
for(int x=0;ywidth;++x)
{
code here
} }
You ask C devs how they would write it, and you will see they spread out across the above. Of course this is an overly simple example.
Python folks will mostly gravitate to reactor451's version. Are there other versions? Yes, especially when you add in iterators and generators, but for even those, developers will gravitate to ONE version of it totally dependent on if they use that feature in their coding.
#Python 3.0+ for y in range(height):
for x in range(width):
code here.
And if this is too far in indentation, then the Pythonic way says that your code is already too complicated and this section of the code should really be delegated away in its own method.
OK, you can consider Python as a heavily standardized version of indentation. Python's entire objective is the human reader. It doesn't leave you and 10 other developers from "tweaking the indentation from time to time to make [their own] point toward the human reader". What people don't understand is that one's interpretation of what they write could be different from others. What one finds easier to understand, others find harder.
There have been countless times that I have read really good Java and C code and could start picking out which individual developers developed where. Do you know how much start up time is wasted in learning Dev1, Dev2's... DevXs' version of the C language? And if you touch C++... each dev has "minor versions" as they learn new ways of doing the same thing. And these code reviews are done in highly standardized environments with docs and comments. Still each developer gets their own unique version of a standardized language. And don't get me started on Perl or Ruby. There are no such things, there are just a ton of individual essays that the Perl and Ruby interpreters understand and execute.
With Python, there is still a lot of uniqueness among developers, but you really need to look for it at the higher levels. Like method & class relationships, program execution flows, or logic design. But at the low level of reading & understanding code from a team of developers, it is dead easy. There are slight variations, but not enough to need to learn that style of coding to help in the future. That is the benefit of Python, its a global coding standard that's built into the language itself. Something that development companies spend far too much money [re]implementing every year for their dev teams.
Now, I am not saying this is best or the way it should be done. Its just one standard where none really exist.
US founding fathers were terrorists. Native Americans were terrorists. Japanese were terrorists. US government in Iraq. So were Northern free slaves. All were basically beyond negotiations per the opposition. To be a terrorist doesn't mean you are inhuman. That is a separate and different step. To think so is oversimplifying the situation and giving yourself a handicap in the fight (like the Brits did:) ). First recognize that they too have goals, are determined, and smart. That will help you fight them better.
ISIS couldn't have gotten as much territory nor stayed in power for so long if there wasn't a significant part of such territory that supports them. People don't need to actively support you; they can just ignore you cause you are no worse than the last guy who "ran" the place. People like Osama can't hide under the noses of the Pakistani military forces without local support (I am not implying the military itself was hiding him). Because without support, some random person will report you to your enemy.
Same with operations and coordinations. You need the environment that you operate in to provide some level of voluntary cooperation and not mess with your plans. Without it, you wonder why your trucks need 2x the gas than normal. You wonder why your soldiers eat 2x the food. You wonder why you need to pay 2x the money to get something.
Sure, you can steal and plunder, but it is short lived. You can't get corn after the first month if the foreign vendor doesn't ship to your region anymore. You can take over an oil refinery but you better have buyers. Else that is a big red target for your enemies to take out. But, if you left it in the owners' hands and bought it from them, they might even give you a deal!
But once you do something inhuman (and sadly more important: people know about it), the whole game changes. You may want to buy something, but your vendors shrink, and the cost goes up. You may want to sell something, but your buyers don't want to be linked to you or you need to sell at a lower price. The locals will fear you, but also be harder to control and cause more trouble. Just from people seeing you as the "enemy" sets up a huge inefficiency in your operations.
In the US, shopping is very non-social. We go, we select, we pay, we take. 90% of our shopping. In foreign places like these, there is a lot of social interaction. A lot of news gets passed around. Prices are negotiated, local events are discussed, etc. In a cooperative/neutral environment, you learn what is happening in that region. In a support environment, you are provided local intelligence to act upon. In an antagonistic environment, you keep falling into traps and your enemies are provided intel on your operations.
Basically if there weren't a lot of people who didn't put ISIS in the "don't care" and "what's the difference" camps (and clearly some put them in the "friend" camp), they would have disbanded a long time ago. Beheading/executions/shootings of soldiers or even foreigners doesn't upset people much (Foreigners=blame the victim or foreign gov. People think it only takes $100k to save that person, why didn't the $100 trillion dollar gov. do that?). That happens everyday, he shoots him, he shoots back, dinner time. "Humans" do that all the time.
But this video changes ISIS' image significantly cause the screaming horror of it. People who were neutral (a lot) and supportive (few) will step back. Enemies will up their game and consider action plans they would never use against a "civilized" enemy.
Normally, I don't agree with much of what the Fox News [Drama] channel does. But in the US, we are too overly protective of the populace in hiding the reality that they live in. We should allow people to see the absolute brutality of these things, IF they choose to. I don't think it should be aired on TV (nor repeated 50 times over the week) but putting it online for opt in was the right call.
This is assuming that we respect the wishes of the family of the pilot and they were ok with this posting. And I would think otherwise if this was propaganda for ISIS. In this case, I do not think it is. This was either real stupidity on someone's part and I hope he got caned/stoned to death for it. Or some conspiracy to put ISIS in horrible light (the video tape & releasing it; not the murder).
Cause this video probably does more PR harm to ISIS than all the bombs and soldiers will ever do. Up to this point, most people considered ISIS to be human. They were someone that could be negotiated with. They may have some "cause" or "ideal" that could be understood and addressed. Like Cuba, Hamas, or North Korea. People would support them on this opinion or choose not to fight or choose the level of brutality to reply with.
Now, with this video, ISIS will be viewed as cruel animals. There maybe civilized, normal ISIS men and women trying to define a stable environment (however we may disagree). But even they will be branded as animals. And the human response to rabid animals is that they need to be put down. Negotiations will be treated differently, offensive measures will change, and your support groups will be disgusted with you.
I would say this single video probably has destroyed the brand called ISIS. They may regroup under a different moniker but that's like starting from ground zero.
I was thinking along the lines of it being in place of Saturn. And looking at the artist's rendering, it is huge. Star light (in remote locations) is actually enough to make your way around at night. Moon light is almost like streetlights.
If this thing was in place of Saturn, and tilted like Uranus. Saturn is huge, at 200x that, that is a pretty big object that is relatively close. I suspect it would be the brightest thing at night and probably visible during the day too.
Thou you are right, being that close, the light is the least of our worry, possibly being a brown dwarf and all.
So how do automated recurring payments work? How do you get your money back for fraud and prevent the vendor(s) from further charging your compromised card?
Looking at the artist's rendering from the other posts. That is huge and would be so cool! If the axis was pointing at us, would the reflected sunlight cause massive temperature changes here? Would we all get a tan every 20 years as we pass through this "laser beam"?
Almost same here. I been in the US all my life and I never got into the hype of this game. I get Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, and Hockey. Even Tennis. I love playing the first and last of those too. But Football and Cricket. Understand the rules, but don't get anywhere close to the craze.
It just seems the game is more sportsmanship, chess, and performance than an actual "game". There are a ridiculous number of stats and back stories that explain each actor. This provides enough material to talk about the play to be and the plays done many times more than to actually play it. And each actor is just one piece on a board to be controlled by either the coach or captain. Both of whom roll the dice on the piece's limited expression of free will and luck. The whole game is designed to be viewed at the viewers' pace. There are stop points for bathroom breaks, getting beer, commenting, and of course the amazing commercials. The guys constantly stopping and starting the game clock have the busiest and most difficult job. And the commercials, these are the true players. There is so much competition to one up the prior and current years' participants. Football kind of feels like professional wrestling but with exponentially more moving parts and far less scripting. But basically both exist for the viewers sake more than anything else.
What I always find amazing year after year in this game is the technology. I don't think there are many spy agencies, let alone games that have this level of advanced tech. They got drawing plays on your screen before the weatherman got green screens. They got automated wire cameras before traffic cams. They can pull more history on any player in seconds than the NSA can on the most watched targets.
It's not enough to have me sit there for 4 hrs to watch a 1 hr game thou. But I will Google it for the highlights. Need something to talk about in the office for a week. Of course I will do a marathon on the ads in Hulu or Youtube.
I think you mean 450,000 sq km for Sweden. About the size of California, but w/ 1/4 the population. And that's far less density than our megaregions like the Great Lakes, NorthEast (DC-Boston), Texas Triangle, and mid-south Florida. Except for patches, none of these regions have comparable internet. What's the telco's excuse again?
You are not far off. I bet the primary reason they are doing this is because if they don't, regulations will force them to and those regulations will go too far in removing any flexibilities they would want. Not to mention it will cost them more. By kind of meeting 30% of the way there, they take the wind out of the sales of the opposition. Proper self-regulation is always preferred, but you do lose a lot of ground in the debate.
I think the number of "commercial firms" actually doing proper QA and code review is minuscule. Its almost a margin of error in the stats. Sure, all the paper work is there with the sigs etc. But I have never seen the actual process ever being properly done by qualified folks with any of the big IT consulting firms. Heck, my small 25k-50k projects don't even get it right... where I am the PM.
Because the budgets, time constraints, & resources are never setup to do this correctly. With crunch time, code review is the first thing to go out the window, and QA the second (again, the paperwork is all there and signed but it means nothing).
You show me a project that did proper code review & QA and I will show you a project that was done on time, in budget, and within scope. I understand the fallacies on both sides, but I believe the many eyes to be more effective than commercial code review & QA.
I think reuse is far more secure than multiple options. In the long run. Reuse will find more bugs and make it more aware. Reuse will have a much larger impact, but that just ups the priority to get it fixed. Multiple options will only decrease the impact but will open up for duplicate bugs, finding less of them, more entropy for fragmentation, and less priority & longer time for getting them fixed. Multiple options will be less secure... you just won't think it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I read all the other "This is stupid" comments and my jaw kept dropping. I actually felt this was an April fools thing or something similar and that we were all missing something somewhere (and please let me know if I am... I REALLY need to know). I HAD to read the article and underlying paper, cause I just couldn't believe the absolute asinine stupidity of the test, let alone that it was being presented as research, or that the test itself was so flawed! So after all that, had to post. Summary for others, adding my voice to the crowd.
----------------
Assumption: Software Developers avoid disk access cause they believe doing it in memory is faster. This is put in context of BI and bigdata.
Testing: Create a program representing a common task that can be tested where one uses memory and the other uses diskspace.
Memory Test:
1) Create a string in memory.
2) Add it multiple times into another string
3) Write second string onto Disk
4) Flush writes
Disk Test:
1) Create a string in memory
2) Write it multiple times to Disk
3) Flush writes
Create code in Python and Java.
Conclusion: Memory Test is so much slower than Disk Test! Additionally, the languages used have certain quirks to make it worse. Optimization helped a little but only on Linux. Therefore, programmers should reassess and understand their OS and programming languages before assuming this belief which is not true.
---------------
Assumption & Testing idea... very good. I would have loved to know the unknown scenarios where this assumption should be questioned. Especially in the world of click&drag programming for workflows, ETLs, and report writing.
But from there... its all BS and stupidity. Basically the test tests if replicating the hard drive driver in memory and then using the driver to write to disk is faster than just using the driver to write to disk. Are you bloody serious?!?! That's like testing if 2+2 is greater than 2+0. And that is before we start looking at using Java and Python which do a ton of work in terms of memory management and build all types of stuff around data types. Before the fact that they wrote the Python code WRONG (that's the slow way of doing string or listing concat). So they picked languages that write in memory O(n) extra times for the same data.
This test would have come to the same conclusions in C, C++, or Assembly! But the folks wouldn't have been able to write code to see the micro second time differences.
So lets set the record straight. NO developer out there goes out of their way to just write to a memory file if its simply going to flush to disk. Its not worth the extra lines of code, nor the lost CPU cycles in reading them. Especially since most operating systems do this already at multiple points along the data chain at the very low hardware & driver levels! If we have developers like this, we have a ton of bigger problems in software development than this little thing that will be solved by money.
To test this belief properly, give me a scenario where you reuse the written to disk/memory stuff, transform it, and then write to disk. See which one is slower. If its written properly, you will see that the underlying hardware systems will actually store stuff in cache or memory for you to help you speed it up! If you find proper scenarios where the memory part is slower, please let us know cause that is actually adding to the IT body of knowledge.
God, as this was BigData related, I was hoping at least something along the lines of "In DB data processing and extract vs extract and client side processing". Give me the points along a curve where one is better/worse than the other. THAT would have been interesting.
Excellent post. Posting to highlight a point.
"fail FAST, fail often"
Most businesses fail to do the first part and screw up the entire equation. Most bankruptcies, going out of business, bubbles, and mismanagement isn't because of failure. Its the lack of recognition of failure and continued operations that end up eating all the resources and erases the reward altogether.
If you don't fail fast, you will fail once, period.
You ever seen a nobody in a clown suit get booed off the stage? Ever seen a bad neighborhood clean up itself and teach their kids not to tag their properties? Both acts of anonymity fixed by a society that addressed the issue.
In your professor's case, he too can stand up and belittle the anonymous person in front of the class by reading the submission out loud. Address it as a community, not as individuals. And if the class agrees, you can bet that anonymous person feels like total crap for being the ass hole and will change his ways ... or leave cause he knows he is not welcome in the environment. This is far more constructive than directly belittling or giving bad grades to the one or two idiots who attach their identify to the opinion (actually this is far more dangerous). Cause the one guy who hides the opinion from fear of repercussions and lets it fester, will snap one day and really do take it out on the professor. At that point, grades left the thought process an eon ago.
Anonymity doesn't mean society just takes it and no one stands up against it. We shouldn't cower away from hurt feelings. We should face them head on. Sure, there are lots of cases where the issue isn't worth the time and best be forgotten, but we shouldn't scrap the platform just cause of that.
Anonymity is not the problem. And it doesn't empower assholes. For such people, it allows them to vent their issues and opinions. The alternative is to let them fester and feed on itself till either the usual destruction of the individual or the rare out lash against society through murder or bombing or joining slightly like minded individuals. Individuals who grow in strength with their numbers and common causes and lash out against [from their view point] an oppressive society.
Anonymity actually empowers society to see the underlying issues within when they are small and addressable (Slashdot Beta anyone). The alternative is to go about our lives as if everything is perfect cause everything has conformed to be just like everyone else. Eventually the hidden issues get too large to be ignored or addressed and we end up paying for it. At the same time we learn very little cause we erased all the signs and are unable to prevent them in the future.
We shouldn't throw away anonymity just cause the messages we see ruin our picture of a perfect society or hurt our feelings. We should address the problems rather than shoot the messenger.
Picture, for example, an accident at Indian Point that would increase NYC residents' rate of cancer over the next 10 years by two to three orders of magnitude
You don't need to picture it, nor do you need an accident. Just go live near an active coal power plant.
Nice source, but believe it or not, it doesn't actually address anything that I asked. Everything on that site tells all the benefits that stores and banks obtain in terms of reduced fraud, but tell nothing to compare it against the losses faced by consumers or percent against total sales. Granted, stores & banks saving money would eventually end up saving consumers a portion of it, but without including additional burden on consumers and hit to sales its an invalid leap of logic.
Example, if fraud made up 3% of all transactions, I doubt going from 3% to 1% is worth it if total transactions drop by 10%. Or if consumers are left to foot the bill in even 0.1% more cases.
Citation (thou not as good as yours): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
"...incidence of credit card fraud is limited to about 0.1% of all card transactions..."
To go further, credit cards themselves are a very big dead weight in terms of actual dollars. They add 3-4% in cost (fees, rewards, etc) to everything. Imagine the massive costs when multiplied across all transactions. BUT, businesses world over accept credit cards cause they make up for the 3-4% dead weight via an increase in volume that increases sales and profits. The current fraud in the US in comparison is basically a rounding error.
As the other poster said, I usually swipe well before the cashier finishes scanning or swipe at some point during a lull in my own scanning (ie: weighing of bananas). Usually don't even need to sign and in some locations, my receipt gets emailed to me. The only negative about credit cards is that I am tracked. The transparency afforded to me is also given to the store and card carrier. But I think the security and convenience is well worth it.
Yes, cash would be faster if I knew exactly how much it would be and had that out while waiting in line (which is rare with self-check outs). But that's wait time I can spend thinking about other things... like what am I having for dinner.
Citation needed. What's the fraud vs total sales? And what are the losses faced by the actual consumers in each situation.
If you think that's an issue this discussion is over and really no point in having it. Python defines a coding standard so that all read, write, and understand the same. If you think that is a weakness, well I hope I don't ever need to review your version of what ever language you choose.
In large dev teams, your actual coders and testers better be cogs in a machine. Coding is a commodity service. If they aren't, you are risking too much on too few people. The value is in design and execution. Purely writing out a solution is no longer a unique skill set.
The instances of "bad code" in Python is minuscule compared to other languages. With Perl and Javascript being on the other end of the spectrum. Saying "Python too has bad code so its the same" is misleading. Python programs not only learn a language, they also learn one standard of coding in becoming proficient in the language. With C/Java/C++/Perl/Pascal/COBOL/Ruby, folks learn & develop various standards of coding on their own and at different companies.
Each reviewer now has to learn that new standard to figure out what the coder is doing. I have said "it's a BS design restriction" for one project written in one language multiple times. Cause each developer due to their various backgrounds choose a different design for their coding.
Right... and I have seen this same code written in the following versions:
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) code here
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) code here
}
for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) {
code here
}
}
for (int y=0;yheight;++y)
{
for(int x=0;ywidth;++x)
{
code here
}
}
You ask C devs how they would write it, and you will see they spread out across the above. Of course this is an overly simple example.
Python folks will mostly gravitate to reactor451's version. Are there other versions? Yes, especially when you add in iterators and generators, but for even those, developers will gravitate to ONE version of it totally dependent on if they use that feature in their coding.
#Python 3.0+
for y in range(height):
for x in range(width):
code here.
And if this is too far in indentation, then the Pythonic way says that your code is already too complicated and this section of the code should really be delegated away in its own method.
OK, you can consider Python as a heavily standardized version of indentation. Python's entire objective is the human reader. It doesn't leave you and 10 other developers from "tweaking the indentation from time to time to make [their own] point toward the human reader". What people don't understand is that one's interpretation of what they write could be different from others. What one finds easier to understand, others find harder.
There have been countless times that I have read really good Java and C code and could start picking out which individual developers developed where. Do you know how much start up time is wasted in learning Dev1, Dev2's... DevXs' version of the C language? And if you touch C++... each dev has "minor versions" as they learn new ways of doing the same thing. And these code reviews are done in highly standardized environments with docs and comments. Still each developer gets their own unique version of a standardized language. And don't get me started on Perl or Ruby. There are no such things, there are just a ton of individual essays that the Perl and Ruby interpreters understand and execute.
With Python, there is still a lot of uniqueness among developers, but you really need to look for it at the higher levels. Like method & class relationships, program execution flows, or logic design. But at the low level of reading & understanding code from a team of developers, it is dead easy. There are slight variations, but not enough to need to learn that style of coding to help in the future. That is the benefit of Python, its a global coding standard that's built into the language itself. Something that development companies spend far too much money [re]implementing every year for their dev teams.
Now, I am not saying this is best or the way it should be done. Its just one standard where none really exist.
Become a president.
OS. You keep using that term, I do not think you know what it means. They are called "distros" for a reason.....
US founding fathers were terrorists. Native Americans were terrorists. Japanese were terrorists. US government in Iraq. So were Northern free slaves. All were basically beyond negotiations per the opposition. To be a terrorist doesn't mean you are inhuman. That is a separate and different step. To think so is oversimplifying the situation and giving yourself a handicap in the fight (like the Brits did :) ). First recognize that they too have goals, are determined, and smart. That will help you fight them better.
ISIS couldn't have gotten as much territory nor stayed in power for so long if there wasn't a significant part of such territory that supports them. People don't need to actively support you; they can just ignore you cause you are no worse than the last guy who "ran" the place. People like Osama can't hide under the noses of the Pakistani military forces without local support (I am not implying the military itself was hiding him). Because without support, some random person will report you to your enemy.
Same with operations and coordinations. You need the environment that you operate in to provide some level of voluntary cooperation and not mess with your plans. Without it, you wonder why your trucks need 2x the gas than normal. You wonder why your soldiers eat 2x the food. You wonder why you need to pay 2x the money to get something.
Sure, you can steal and plunder, but it is short lived. You can't get corn after the first month if the foreign vendor doesn't ship to your region anymore. You can take over an oil refinery but you better have buyers. Else that is a big red target for your enemies to take out. But, if you left it in the owners' hands and bought it from them, they might even give you a deal!
But once you do something inhuman (and sadly more important: people know about it), the whole game changes. You may want to buy something, but your vendors shrink, and the cost goes up. You may want to sell something, but your buyers don't want to be linked to you or you need to sell at a lower price. The locals will fear you, but also be harder to control and cause more trouble. Just from people seeing you as the "enemy" sets up a huge inefficiency in your operations.
In the US, shopping is very non-social. We go, we select, we pay, we take. 90% of our shopping. In foreign places like these, there is a lot of social interaction. A lot of news gets passed around. Prices are negotiated, local events are discussed, etc. In a cooperative/neutral environment, you learn what is happening in that region. In a support environment, you are provided local intelligence to act upon. In an antagonistic environment, you keep falling into traps and your enemies are provided intel on your operations.
Basically if there weren't a lot of people who didn't put ISIS in the "don't care" and "what's the difference" camps (and clearly some put them in the "friend" camp), they would have disbanded a long time ago. Beheading/executions/shootings of soldiers or even foreigners doesn't upset people much (Foreigners=blame the victim or foreign gov. People think it only takes $100k to save that person, why didn't the $100 trillion dollar gov. do that?). That happens everyday, he shoots him, he shoots back, dinner time. "Humans" do that all the time.
But this video changes ISIS' image significantly cause the screaming horror of it. People who were neutral (a lot) and supportive (few) will step back. Enemies will up their game and consider action plans they would never use against a "civilized" enemy.
Normally, I don't agree with much of what the Fox News [Drama] channel does. But in the US, we are too overly protective of the populace in hiding the reality that they live in. We should allow people to see the absolute brutality of these things, IF they choose to. I don't think it should be aired on TV (nor repeated 50 times over the week) but putting it online for opt in was the right call.
This is assuming that we respect the wishes of the family of the pilot and they were ok with this posting. And I would think otherwise if this was propaganda for ISIS. In this case, I do not think it is. This was either real stupidity on someone's part and I hope he got caned/stoned to death for it. Or some conspiracy to put ISIS in horrible light (the video tape & releasing it; not the murder).
Cause this video probably does more PR harm to ISIS than all the bombs and soldiers will ever do. Up to this point, most people considered ISIS to be human. They were someone that could be negotiated with. They may have some "cause" or "ideal" that could be understood and addressed. Like Cuba, Hamas, or North Korea. People would support them on this opinion or choose not to fight or choose the level of brutality to reply with.
Now, with this video, ISIS will be viewed as cruel animals. There maybe civilized, normal ISIS men and women trying to define a stable environment (however we may disagree). But even they will be branded as animals. And the human response to rabid animals is that they need to be put down. Negotiations will be treated differently, offensive measures will change, and your support groups will be disgusted with you.
I would say this single video probably has destroyed the brand called ISIS. They may regroup under a different moniker but that's like starting from ground zero.
I was thinking along the lines of it being in place of Saturn. And looking at the artist's rendering, it is huge. Star light (in remote locations) is actually enough to make your way around at night. Moon light is almost like streetlights.
If this thing was in place of Saturn, and tilted like Uranus. Saturn is huge, at 200x that, that is a pretty big object that is relatively close. I suspect it would be the brightest thing at night and probably visible during the day too.
Thou you are right, being that close, the light is the least of our worry, possibly being a brown dwarf and all.
So how do automated recurring payments work? How do you get your money back for fraud and prevent the vendor(s) from further charging your compromised card?
Looking at the artist's rendering from the other posts. That is huge and would be so cool! If the axis was pointing at us, would the reflected sunlight cause massive temperature changes here? Would we all get a tan every 20 years as we pass through this "laser beam"?
Almost same here. I been in the US all my life and I never got into the hype of this game. I get Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, and Hockey. Even Tennis. I love playing the first and last of those too. But Football and Cricket. Understand the rules, but don't get anywhere close to the craze.
It just seems the game is more sportsmanship, chess, and performance than an actual "game". There are a ridiculous number of stats and back stories that explain each actor. This provides enough material to talk about the play to be and the plays done many times more than to actually play it. And each actor is just one piece on a board to be controlled by either the coach or captain. Both of whom roll the dice on the piece's limited expression of free will and luck. The whole game is designed to be viewed at the viewers' pace. There are stop points for bathroom breaks, getting beer, commenting, and of course the amazing commercials. The guys constantly stopping and starting the game clock have the busiest and most difficult job. And the commercials, these are the true players. There is so much competition to one up the prior and current years' participants. Football kind of feels like professional wrestling but with exponentially more moving parts and far less scripting. But basically both exist for the viewers sake more than anything else.
What I always find amazing year after year in this game is the technology. I don't think there are many spy agencies, let alone games that have this level of advanced tech. They got drawing plays on your screen before the weatherman got green screens. They got automated wire cameras before traffic cams. They can pull more history on any player in seconds than the NSA can on the most watched targets.
It's not enough to have me sit there for 4 hrs to watch a 1 hr game thou. But I will Google it for the highlights. Need something to talk about in the office for a week. Of course I will do a marathon on the ads in Hulu or Youtube.
I think you mean 450,000 sq km for Sweden. About the size of California, but w/ 1/4 the population. And that's far less density than our megaregions like the Great Lakes, NorthEast (DC-Boston), Texas Triangle, and mid-south Florida. Except for patches, none of these regions have comparable internet. What's the telco's excuse again?
You are not far off. I bet the primary reason they are doing this is because if they don't, regulations will force them to and those regulations will go too far in removing any flexibilities they would want. Not to mention it will cost them more. By kind of meeting 30% of the way there, they take the wind out of the sales of the opposition. Proper self-regulation is always preferred, but you do lose a lot of ground in the debate.
I think the number of "commercial firms" actually doing proper QA and code review is minuscule. Its almost a margin of error in the stats. Sure, all the paper work is there with the sigs etc. But I have never seen the actual process ever being properly done by qualified folks with any of the big IT consulting firms. Heck, my small 25k-50k projects don't even get it right... where I am the PM.
Because the budgets, time constraints, & resources are never setup to do this correctly. With crunch time, code review is the first thing to go out the window, and QA the second (again, the paperwork is all there and signed but it means nothing).
You show me a project that did proper code review & QA and I will show you a project that was done on time, in budget, and within scope. I understand the fallacies on both sides, but I believe the many eyes to be more effective than commercial code review & QA.
I think reuse is far more secure than multiple options. In the long run. Reuse will find more bugs and make it more aware. Reuse will have a much larger impact, but that just ups the priority to get it fixed. Multiple options will only decrease the impact but will open up for duplicate bugs, finding less of them, more entropy for fragmentation, and less priority & longer time for getting them fixed. Multiple options will be less secure... you just won't think it is.