The generation which has had the good life and currently has money (the 50+ years old, I'm 52) has been collectively piling up private and state debt (to be repaid by the younger) and arranged to avoid what should be its burden: the education of the young. Yet we are the children of the 60s, times of dreams of brotherhood, universal love, and selflessness. One really has to wonder what went wrong.
PHK actually hints at 2 things: that strings should have been length+array, and that the compiler should know about it.
The first assertion is subject to discussion and has its serious issues (strings would have become foreign to other C arrays, what integer size etc.).
The second point is I think more clear-cut. As it is, the C compiler knows mostly nothing about strings, which means that it's easy to design a different strings library and use it instead of strcpy() et al (cf. c++ strings). The only constraint is that you have to present a zero terminated string to system and foreign libraries interfaces.
Embedding the string structure in the compiler would have ossified the choice, making C a much less adaptable language, in contrast with its other features, and a fault of style.
This is quite wrong. You are forgetting that Ethernet at the time was a shared medium: all workstations on a network segment shared the same coaxial cable, and network saturation was often an issue. This began to change with filtering bridges in the 90s and became a non issue with twisted-pair on switching hub star architectures much later.
It is my humble opinion that naming classes "function" is not very helpful... And it's great that javascript has an eval statement, but Lisp (1958?) may claim some prior art here...
Javascript is a crappy language, up there with PHP. They happened to be at the right place at the right time, which allowed them to gain an extremely wide usage that their intrisic qualities would certainly not warrant.
They are hopeless and should be dropped from the trust lists in browsers. Watching them go out of business will be a useful remainder to the remaining ones that they should work a little not just take the money.
Few train stations have sufficient, or reasonably priced, parking space. Really, there are *many* people whose only option to go to work is to take their car. Full disclosure: I've been living 2km in Paris for the last 52 years (I sort of know the place) and I work at home (no bias...).
The socialist mayor of Paris is elected by Parisians only and has to please a quite radical ecologist faction to stay in power. This anti-big-car measure has little to do with pollution (doing like London would be much better), but it will satisfy the ecolos, mostly please the Parisians, many of whom have no cars, and only ennoy people who live in the suburbs and have to come to Paris to work. The latter don't vote for Paris elections, so this is not a problem for the mayor.
In economic areas naturally suited for monopoly building (having big barriers to the entry of new players), government regulation is the only thing that protects you from dealing with a single extorsionist.
The duty of corporations is not to serve the public but their shareholders. This is not evil by itself, but it needs to be balanced by an opposing power.
For telecommunications, power or water distribution,etc. regulation is an absolute must. But it should be the right kind, the one that encourages competition, not the one that actually protects the monopoly, like the ones we had a few decades ago protecting ATT or France Telecom.
In a democracy, you hopefuly push for better regulation by casting a vote. When this is not enough you have to organize. There are excellent posts in this discussion which explain how this happens in more detail.
Executives for healthy companies that move a bit too many activities abroad for no good reason should be forced to stand behind their acts and move their ass where they put our money and jobs.
> As it is, they're the same as the makers of DomainOS, probably one of the best UNIXs out there that died a > horrible death because its developers were excellent at coding, and terrible at marketing.
You must be joking, I was unfortunate enough to have to supervise the port of a file system from SunOS/VFS to whatever was supposed to be equivalent on DomainOS, and this was not the "best Unix out there", actually it was not really Unix (at the user level), and the OS was full of maybe brilliant ideas (we'll never know), the implementation of which was so awful that OS and company died a rightful death.
You should consider seeing someone about your phobia, and I don't mean a shrink. There are simple therapies which are quite effective. My daughter was liberated from an insect+spider phobia which was becoming a major issue after just a few sessions with a therapist (cant remember the name of the technique he used, something oddly based on eye movements I think, but whatever, you may have to try several before it works)
Which is why most civilized countries have inheritance taxes so that the accumulation is eroded (quite strongly, ie 40% in France), and after a few generations the descendants start up like average people (except if the the intervening accumulated enough to offset the tax, which typically and quite unjustly happens with really big, professionaly managed, fortunes).
Given that I address "americans" it would seem reasonable to deduct that I am from another continent, and I'll give you a point for this (does this make me even more "arrogant"?)
Most objects in the article are designed to kill or harm human beings, I still think quite reasonable to find them repulsive. We're not looking at hunting rifles here. There is even this nice knife which guarantees an easier decapitation thanks to hi-tech serrations...
About the exporting question, the exact relevance to the present argument is a bit beyond my reach. My country also exports edible snails and frog legs which I personnally find quite repulsive too.
Stopping here before my nationality becomes too transparent.
Quite interesting arguments which just happen to fly in the face of every statistic comparing murder and crime rates between the US and gun-forbidding countries of similar level of evolution (ie: european). Talk is enjoyable but facts don't listen.
What is it with you americans that you're so fascinated with this stuff? For a member of a normal civilian society in peace, these things are just bad and repulsive.
Gaining major health benefits from eating organic food would mean that 'normal' food is unsafe, which is hopefully not the case, nothing unexpected here.
The main advantage of organic food is that its production causes less damage to the environment and this is obviously very important.
The personal benefits myth was useful for promoting organic food adoption (out of egoist motives), so it's probably counter-productive for the greater good to debunk it.
Even if c# is marginally better than java or python or (insert favorite opponent here), this seems a really weak reason to insert a huge piece of Microsoft property into the heart of Free Software. I can't understand why Mono has happened and why this contamination is going on.
This is ridiculous idolatry. It's not like there is something we *don't* know about these events, there is nothing to discover there, and hence nothing to protect, as opposed to an archeological site.
That was the nice point with physically write-once media (non-erasable optical disks, cd, dvd) while their size was still consistant with magnetic disk sizes: you could have a safe online copy of backups.
Slashdot Mirror
The generation which has had the good life and currently has money (the 50+ years old, I'm 52) has been collectively piling up private and state debt (to be repaid by the younger) and arranged to avoid what should be its burden: the education of the young. Yet we are the children of the 60s, times of dreams of brotherhood, universal love, and selflessness. One really has to wonder what went wrong.
PHK actually hints at 2 things: that strings should have been length+array, and that the compiler should know about it.
The first assertion is subject to discussion and has its serious issues (strings would have become foreign to other C arrays, what integer size etc.).
The second point is I think more clear-cut. As it is, the C compiler knows mostly nothing about strings, which means that it's easy to design a different strings library and use it instead of strcpy() et al (cf. c++ strings). The only constraint is that you have to present a zero terminated string to system and foreign libraries interfaces.
Embedding the string structure in the compiler would have ossified the choice, making C a much less adaptable language, in contrast with its other features, and a fault of style.
This is quite wrong. You are forgetting that Ethernet at the time was a shared medium: all workstations on a network segment shared the same coaxial cable, and network saturation was often an issue. This began to change with filtering bridges in the 90s and became a non issue with twisted-pair on switching hub star architectures much later.
We're talking about a case where supplier storage is compromised here (if I got the sony case right). So this is not about trying to log in but about breaking the hash. See:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/06/05/2028256/Cheap-GPUs-Rendering-Strong-Passwords-Useless
Long passwords are still useful if the supplier behaves responsibly (ssl connection + salted hash storage only).
It is my humble opinion that naming classes "function" is not very helpful... And it's great that javascript has an eval statement, but Lisp (1958?) may claim some prior art here...
Javascript is a crappy language, up there with PHP. They happened to be at the right place at the right time, which allowed them to gain an extremely wide usage that their intrisic qualities would certainly not warrant.
Precious archival data stored in a single location on a machine that they don't control. It's not the ISP employee who should be fired...
They are hopeless and should be dropped from the trust lists in browsers. Watching them go out of business will be a useful remainder to the remaining ones that they should work a little not just take the money.
Few train stations have sufficient, or reasonably priced, parking space. Really, there are *many* people whose only option to go to work is to take their car. Full disclosure: I've been living 2km in Paris for the last 52 years (I sort of know the place) and I work at home (no bias...).
The socialist mayor of Paris is elected by Parisians only and has to please a quite radical ecologist faction to stay in power. This anti-big-car measure has little to do with pollution (doing like London would be much better), but it will satisfy the ecolos, mostly please the Parisians, many of whom have no cars, and only ennoy people who live in the suburbs and have to come to Paris to work. The latter don't vote for Paris elections, so this is not a problem for the mayor.
In economic areas naturally suited for monopoly building (having big barriers to the entry of new players), government regulation is the only thing that protects you from dealing with a single extorsionist.
The duty of corporations is not to serve the public but their shareholders. This is not evil by itself, but it needs to be balanced by an opposing power.
For telecommunications, power or water distribution,etc. regulation is an absolute must. But it should be the right kind, the one that encourages competition, not the one that actually protects the monopoly, like the ones we had a few decades ago protecting ATT or France Telecom.
In a democracy, you hopefuly push for better regulation by casting a vote. When this is not enough you have to organize. There are excellent posts in this discussion which explain how this happens in more detail.
This madness has got to stop.
Executives for healthy companies that move a bit too many activities abroad for no good reason should be forced to stand behind their acts and move their ass where they put our money and jobs.
Yeah. Just joking.
The temperatures may stay nice up there but it will still be night 24 hours a day during the winter.
IMHO this is not really compensed by long summer days, and these places will not be good replacements for the Riviera.
Let's rather try to keep the world temperature steady while we still get a chance !
> "calculus has not changed much in the last 6 years, but my textbook has gone through 3 revisions in that time!"
I think it's quite safe to say that it hasn't changed much in the last 60 years either...
> As it is, they're the same as the makers of DomainOS, probably one of the best UNIXs out there that died a > horrible death because its developers were excellent at coding, and terrible at marketing.
You must be joking, I was unfortunate enough to have to supervise the port of a file system from SunOS/VFS to whatever was supposed to be equivalent on DomainOS, and this was not the "best Unix out there", actually it was not really Unix (at the user level), and the OS was full of maybe brilliant ideas (we'll never know), the implementation of which was so awful that OS and company died a rightful death.
You should consider seeing someone about your phobia, and I don't mean a shrink. There are simple therapies which are quite effective. My daughter was liberated from an insect+spider phobia which was becoming a major issue after just a few sessions with a therapist (cant remember the name of the technique he used, something oddly based on eye movements I think, but whatever, you may have to try several before it works)
Which is why most civilized countries have inheritance taxes so that the accumulation is eroded (quite strongly, ie 40% in France), and after a few generations the descendants start up like average people (except if the the intervening accumulated enough to offset the tax, which typically and quite unjustly happens with really big, professionaly managed, fortunes).
Given that I address "americans" it would seem reasonable to deduct that I am from another continent, and I'll give you a point for this (does this make me even more "arrogant"?)
Most objects in the article are designed to kill or harm human beings, I still think quite reasonable to find them repulsive. We're not looking at hunting rifles here. There is even this nice knife which guarantees an easier decapitation thanks to hi-tech serrations...
About the exporting question, the exact relevance to the present argument is a bit beyond my reach. My country also exports edible snails and frog legs which I personnally find quite repulsive too.
Stopping here before my nationality becomes too transparent.
Quite interesting arguments which just happen to fly in the face of every statistic comparing murder and crime rates between the US and gun-forbidding countries of similar level of evolution (ie: european). Talk is enjoyable but facts don't listen.
What is it with you americans that you're so fascinated with this stuff? For a member of a normal civilian society in peace, these things are just bad and repulsive.
With all the nut jobs out there, who wants to have their private street address listed in a public database ?
Gaining major health benefits from eating organic food would mean that 'normal' food is unsafe, which is hopefully not the case, nothing unexpected here.
The main advantage of organic food is that its production causes less damage to the environment and this is obviously very important.
The personal benefits myth was useful for promoting organic food adoption (out of egoist motives), so it's probably counter-productive for the greater good to debunk it.
Even if c# is marginally better than java or python or (insert favorite opponent here), this seems a really weak reason to insert a huge piece of Microsoft property into the heart of Free Software. I can't understand why Mono has happened and why this contamination is going on.
This is ridiculous idolatry. It's not like there is something we *don't* know about these events, there is nothing to discover there, and hence nothing to protect, as opposed to an archeological site.
That was the nice point with physically write-once media (non-erasable optical disks, cd, dvd) while their size was still consistant with magnetic disk sizes: you could have a safe online copy of backups.