Indeed. Also: How worrying is is that there are people here who think that an attack that doesn't involve threatening another person with violent assault offers no advantages over one that does?
"That's a familiar situation to many out-of-work software engineers, whose skills start depreciating almost as soon as they are laid off, given the dynamism of the industry"
I never understood this. I don't deny it's a common view in the industry, but does it make big difference in reality? Someone who was a good programmer a year or two ago, may be a touch rusty, but they very rapidly come up to speed. Programming talent seems to be a much more valuable attribute that knowledge of frameworks, libraries etc.
My employer generally rubs it's hand with glee when it gets a CV from someone who's just returning from a career break. It's often a sign you can get someone good on the cheap, because other companies will be hesitant to take them.
Unlike our competitors, our business runs on Linux, and we rely on Microsoft to cause chaos and cripple those guys. I just don't know how we'll cope without the regular massive defection of their customers to us.
Only if the object's type is explicit at some point in the function call tree at compile time, I suppose.
Without ever giving the object or any method calls explicit types. For example:
let foo x = x#bar
let ok =
object
method bar = ()
end
let notok =
object
method qux = ()
end
let _ = foo ok let _ = foo notok
No types are explicitly given, but the last line fails to compile with a type error.
I can think of dynamic scenaroios where this would not be knowable at compile time.
Indeed, and such scenarios would not be expressible in O'Caml, as it doesn't allow dynamic typing. Many O'Caml proponents would say that's exactly what you want, and that those programs should simple be re-expressed in a "more O'Caml like way", so that they don't need to be dynamic, and all the types can be statically determined.
Personally, I say (wrt to your dynamic scenarios) that just because something doesn't work in every situation, doesn't mean it's useless. C has (void *), for when you need to disable type checking. But just because you need to disable type checking sometimes, doesn't mean that it isn't a huge benefit for the 90% of the time that you do use it
The same with type inference etc in some theoretical Ruby like web-framework: statically excluding type errors from a large proportion of your program would be a huge benefit, even if even you can't catch 100% of the errors.
Of course, Java doesn't require inheritence either. What you have described is exactly what Java interfaces are for.
Ruby's lack of typing does make it incredibly flexible, but it has significant disadvantages to, namely that a whole class of programming errors which should be found at compile time, go totally unnoticed until the program tries to execute that code path and finds that it has an object of the wrong type.
Don't get me wrong, I program Java at work and hate it, and I program Ruby for play and love it. But I still think we can do significantly better.
Languages like O'Caml, manage to get the best of both worlds. For example, you can write a method in O'Caml which takes a object as it's parameter and uses a "compare" method on that object. Elsewhere in your program you try to call this method with an object that doesn't have a compare method. Not only will O'Caml detect this error at compile time, it can do so without forcing the programmer write type declarations everywhere.
Sadly O'Caml isn't the answer either, it doesn't have a remotely decent web application framework. But I think that combining strong typing with type inference is the way to go for rapid prototyping environments.
Rumours have it that scientists are already working on a projected codenamed "Packed Lunch". There are currently few details, but unconfirmed reports suggest that it could revolutionise the lives of people all over the world who need to eat in areas without easy access to cooking equipment.
I qwas working on a project which involved using an XML interface provided by another company. After weeks of struggling with this massively flaky and poorly performing interface, the company in question sent down one of there "best" programmers to "help us out" with the "integration issues" we were experiencing.
Five minutes after this dude arrived, the interface massively flaked out, like it always did. "No worries!" says the guy they sent us, "I think I know what that is and I think I can fix it".
So he opens up the Visual Basic code in Notepad (causing more than one raised eyebrow in our all-Linux all-Java office). A while later he announced that he thought he'd fixed it, and asked if we wanted it put straight on the server or if we wanted to test it first.
Being a fairly cynical lot (past bugfixes from this company tended to make things worse rather than better) we elected to test it first.
"Tell me your IP address and I'll check it out!", I said to him.
"OK", he says *clickety clickey click*, "You ready?"
"Yep", I say.
"OK", he says, "It's 127.0.0.1".
He knew he was out of his depth. I could tell by the way he hesitated that he suspected that he wasn't right. I can only assume he was thinking "Mmm, that's funny. My IP address here is exactly the same as it was when I was in my own office".
Really, you gotta ask the question, should these people be allowed to use computers, let alone hack code?
"OK", I began in my most patient voice, "That's a kind of special IP address..."
All that being said, the UN has proven time and time again to be utterly corrupt and without leadership.
As opposed to the US, which has proven time and time again to be utterly corrupt and WITH leadership.
I know who I fear more.
Seriously, the main difference seems to be that there is outrage at UN corruption, whereas US corruption is virtually expected. Compare recent incident with Kofi Anan's son with the stuff that people like Rumsfeld have done quite openly.
"have to" means "must", whereas the second "have" mean possess. "have to have" could be paraphrased as "must possess".
In the other phrases you give, the repeated word has an identical meaning. Even so, I don't see what is wrong with them. "I need a license to get a license.", is a well formed and meaningful (if slightly ambiguous) English sentence. I could even see situations in which it could be used - in the UK at least, you need a Provisional Driving License to get a Driving License, and a Driving License to get a Public Service Vehicle License.
It isn't a particularly pretty choice of words, but maybe you'd care to explain exactly what gramatical rule you think this is breaking?
Who exactly is suggesting that Kyoto will solve the problem of climate change?
Kyoto is just the first step. We now need to bring in the US, developing countries, and continue to bring down emissions.
Kyoto is not the solution, but it is a framework we can start to build upon. We have a mechanism to control emmisions within the countries signed up to the protocol.
Without Kyoto we have nothing - what do the detracters propose as a replacement? The only suggestions the Bush administration has been able to come up with are either voluntary (=meaningless), or linked to economic growth in a way that will inevitably lead to increased greenhouse emissions.
Of course, effective action will be impossible while oil companies control the Whitehouse.
At it's core XML is nothing. It's so generic, so basic, so flexible, whatever you want to call it, that it's completely pointless
Mmm, have you actually ever heard of schema? I assume not, as I can't understand why you'd make such a silly comment otherwise.
If you have heard to them, perhaps you'd care to explain why XML restricted by a schema is still "too flexible", considering you can restrict the language down to pretty much whatever you want.
one has to wonder whether airing such a controvercial movie on the eve of an election helps or hurts the political process by influencing the vote with last-minute emotions rather than thoroughly contemplation
Yeah, because I bet that Bush wouldn't even dream of trying to influence the elections with last minute emotions. It's not like his entire campaign is based on promoting an unjustified fear of terrorism in the American public.
You may have the "right to remain silent", but sadly this doesn't mean you won't be imprisonned for using it. It is even explicitly mentioned when you are arrested:
"You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you fail to mention something that you later rely on in court"
To give an example, you are painting your house. You step outside for a moment, where a vandal had just grafitied a wall. The police turn up and arrest you for criminal damage.
You can use your "right to silence" to refuse to explain the paint on your clothes when the police question you. However, if you later rely on this explanation when defending yourself in court, the jury can make "inferences" from the fact that you initially refused to answer the question. In other words, your explanation could be discounted because you used your right to silence.
Before the changes made by the Criminal Justice Act 1994, this would not have been possible. The jury would not have been alowed to consider the fact that you initially refused to answer.
Obviously the above example is overly simplistic, in that there would be other ways to verify whether you had been painting your house, but it demonstrates the principle.
The right to silence isn't gone but it has been reduced.
The US is also spending large amounts of money on space exploration and arms, despite the fact that many American's live in poverty, without access to decent healthcare.
The US has such a skewed distribution of wealth that it could quite easily bring it's poorest up to a decent standard of living, with relatively little cost to the rest of the population.
Who, exactly is touting this as good? If you believe in man made climate change, 30% less damaging than coal just isn't good enough. We need to be moving away from fossil fuels, not finding marginally less damaging ways to burn them.
And if you don't believe in mad made climate change, why bother? It's going to be less efficient, and therefore will create even more nasty emissions other than CO2, which isn't the only pollutant released by coal burning.
(No, I haven't RTFA, as it requires registration.)
Greenpeace are absolutely NOT the same people that release mink. Greenpeace are primarily a environmental organisation. They occasionally lean towards some "animal rights" type campaigns (dolphins, whales, seals) but they certainly don't go round irresponsibly releasing non-native animals.
Greenpeace may cause some good, but I think they are terribly misguided at other things.
Well, considering you don't seem to have a clue what Greenpeace do, I don't think your in any position to claim that they are "misguided".
1. Allocated 2. Maybe swapped out to disk 3. Zeroed 4. Deallocated
If 2 happens, zeroing the string in memory before it is deallocated will not effect the copy in the swap file. The string will still be on disk and perfectly readable.
If 2 doesn't happen, the string isn't in the swap file, it can't be retrieved at a later date,.so what is the point of zeroing it?
Back in the day, Apple did a series of time/motion studies regarding mousng vs. command keys and command lines. They showed that (for the tasks they studied, of course) in IIRC all casees, the GUI was faster,
Yeah, of course they did. They were selling computers with GUI, in competition with computers command lines.
Isn't it remarkable that research by Microsoft shows Linux is more expernsive that Windows, research from Apple shows that GUIs are faster, and research from ExxonMobil shows that buring fossil fuels doesn't cause global warming?
I expect at least part of the answer is that neural networks are trivial to understand and implement compared to support vector machines.
You might be able to build SVM implementations relatively easily on a real computer using off the shelf libraries etc., I doubt many of these would run on a WiFi card.
Neural nets have also been around for quite a while, so they have gained acceptance. Although SVMs have been known to the machine learning community for quite a while now, they have only just started being noticed by the wider world quite recently.
it's not to keep you from copying/sharing, rather to guarantee quality and authenticity.
Yeah right. Music sounds so much better when you have a digital certificate proving it really is by your favourite band, and not some cheap immitation.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Also: How worrying is is that there are people here who think that an attack that doesn't involve threatening another person with violent assault offers no advantages over one that does?
"That's a familiar situation to many out-of-work software engineers, whose skills start depreciating almost as soon as they are laid off, given the dynamism of the industry"
I never understood this. I don't deny it's a common view in the industry, but does it make big difference in reality? Someone who was a good programmer a year or two ago, may be a touch rusty, but they very rapidly come up to speed. Programming talent seems to be a much more valuable attribute that knowledge of frameworks, libraries etc.
My employer generally rubs it's hand with glee when it gets a CV from someone who's just returning from a career break. It's often a sign you can get someone good on the cheap, because other companies will be hesitant to take them.
Unlike our competitors, our business runs on Linux, and we rely on Microsoft to cause chaos and cripple those guys. I just don't know how we'll cope without the regular massive defection of their customers to us.
Only if the object's type is explicit at some point in the function call tree at compile time, I suppose.
Without ever giving the object or any method calls explicit types. For example:
let foo x = x#bar
let ok =
object
method bar = ()
end
let notok =
object
method qux = ()
end
let _ = foo ok
let _ = foo notok
No types are explicitly given, but the last line fails to compile with a type error.
I can think of dynamic scenaroios where this would not be knowable at compile time.
Indeed, and such scenarios would not be expressible in O'Caml, as it doesn't allow dynamic typing. Many O'Caml proponents would say that's exactly what you want, and that those programs should simple be re-expressed in a "more O'Caml like way", so that they don't need to be dynamic, and all the types can be statically determined.
Personally, I say (wrt to your dynamic scenarios) that just because something doesn't work in every situation, doesn't mean it's useless. C has (void *), for when you need to disable type checking. But just because you need to disable type checking sometimes, doesn't mean that it isn't a huge benefit for the 90% of the time that you do use it
The same with type inference etc in some theoretical Ruby like web-framework: statically excluding type errors from a large proportion of your program would be a huge benefit, even if even you can't catch 100% of the errors.
Of course, Java doesn't require inheritence either. What you have described is exactly what Java interfaces are for.
Ruby's lack of typing does make it incredibly flexible, but it has significant disadvantages to, namely that a whole class of programming errors which should be found at compile time, go totally unnoticed until the program tries to execute that code path and finds that it has an object of the wrong type.
Don't get me wrong, I program Java at work and hate it, and I program Ruby for play and love it. But I still think we can do significantly better.
Languages like O'Caml, manage to get the best of both worlds. For example, you can write a method in O'Caml which takes a object as it's parameter and uses a "compare" method on that object. Elsewhere in your program you try to call this method with an object that doesn't have a compare method. Not only will O'Caml detect this error at compile time, it can do so without forcing the programmer write type declarations everywhere.
Sadly O'Caml isn't the answer either, it doesn't have a remotely decent web application framework. But I think that combining strong typing with type inference is the way to go for rapid prototyping environments.
I can cure headaches using mathematics. First, I count out the correct number of pain killer tablets...
Rumours have it that scientists are already working on a projected codenamed "Packed Lunch". There are currently few details, but unconfirmed reports suggest that it could revolutionise the lives of people all over the world who need to eat in areas without easy access to cooking equipment.
I qwas working on a project which involved using an XML interface provided by another company. After weeks of struggling with this massively flaky and poorly performing interface, the company in question sent down one of there "best" programmers to "help us out" with the "integration issues" we were experiencing.
Five minutes after this dude arrived, the interface massively flaked out, like it always did. "No worries!" says the guy they sent us, "I think I know what that is and I think I can fix it".
So he opens up the Visual Basic code in Notepad (causing more than one raised eyebrow in our all-Linux all-Java office). A while later he announced that he thought he'd fixed it, and asked if we wanted it put straight on the server or if we wanted to test it first.
Being a fairly cynical lot (past bugfixes from this company tended to make things worse rather than better) we elected to test it first.
"Tell me your IP address and I'll check it out!", I said to him.
"OK", he says *clickety clickey click*, "You ready?"
"Yep", I say.
"OK", he says, "It's 127.0.0.1".
He knew he was out of his depth. I could tell by the way he hesitated that he suspected that he wasn't right. I can only assume he was thinking "Mmm, that's funny. My IP address here is exactly the same as it was when I was in my own office".
Really, you gotta ask the question, should these people be allowed to use computers, let alone hack code?
"OK", I began in my most patient voice, "That's a kind of special IP address..."
All that being said, the UN has proven time and time again to be utterly corrupt and without leadership.
As opposed to the US, which has proven time and time again to be utterly corrupt and WITH leadership.
I know who I fear more.
Seriously, the main difference seems to be that there is outrage at UN corruption, whereas US corruption is virtually expected. Compare recent incident with Kofi Anan's son with the stuff that people like Rumsfeld have done quite openly.
You are wrong.
"have to" means "must", whereas the second "have" mean possess. "have to have" could be paraphrased as "must possess".
In the other phrases you give, the repeated word has an identical meaning. Even so, I don't see what is wrong with them. "I need a license to get a license.", is a well formed and meaningful (if slightly ambiguous) English sentence. I could even see situations in which it could be used - in the UK at least, you need a Provisional Driving License to get a Driving License, and a Driving License to get a Public Service Vehicle License.
It isn't a particularly pretty choice of words, but maybe you'd care to explain exactly what gramatical rule you think this is breaking?
Who exactly is suggesting that Kyoto will solve the problem of climate change?
Kyoto is just the first step. We now need to bring in the US, developing countries, and continue to bring down emissions.
Kyoto is not the solution, but it is a framework we can start to build upon. We have a mechanism to control emmisions within the countries signed up to the protocol.
Without Kyoto we have nothing - what do the detracters propose as a replacement? The only suggestions the Bush administration has been able to come up with are either voluntary (=meaningless), or linked to economic growth in a way that will inevitably lead to increased greenhouse emissions.
Of course, effective action will be impossible while oil companies control the Whitehouse.
North Korea and US should really be best friends. They have so much in common.
At it's core XML is nothing. It's so generic, so basic, so flexible, whatever you want to call it, that it's completely pointless
Mmm, have you actually ever heard of schema? I assume not, as I can't understand why you'd make such a silly comment otherwise.
If you have heard to them, perhaps you'd care to explain why XML restricted by a schema is still "too flexible", considering you can restrict the language down to pretty much whatever you want.
The difference being, if Microsoft says it, it's company policy. If Linus says it, it's just one person.
Just because Linus doesn't look at Solaris, doesn't mean that no ideas would be transferred from Solaris to Linux.
You are forgetting as many do that Linux != Linus.
one has to wonder whether airing such a controvercial movie on the eve of an election helps or hurts the political process by influencing the vote with last-minute emotions rather than thoroughly contemplation
Yeah, because I bet that Bush wouldn't even dream of trying to influence the elections with last minute emotions. It's not like his entire campaign is based on promoting an unjustified fear of terrorism in the American public.
You may have the "right to remain silent", but sadly this doesn't mean you won't be imprisonned for using it. It is even explicitly mentioned when you are arrested:
"You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you fail to mention something that you later rely on in court"
To give an example, you are painting your house. You step outside for a moment, where a vandal had just grafitied a wall. The police turn up and arrest you for criminal damage.
You can use your "right to silence" to refuse to explain the paint on your clothes when the police question you. However, if you later rely on this explanation when defending yourself in court, the jury can make "inferences" from the fact that you initially refused to answer the question. In other words, your explanation could be discounted because you used your right to silence.
Before the changes made by the Criminal Justice Act 1994, this would not have been possible. The jury would not have been alowed to consider the fact that you initially refused to answer.
Obviously the above example is overly simplistic, in that there would be other ways to verify whether you had been painting your house, but it demonstrates the principle.
The right to silence isn't gone but it has been reduced.
The US is also spending large amounts of money on space exploration and arms, despite the fact that many American's live in poverty, without access to decent healthcare.
The US has such a skewed distribution of wealth that it could quite easily bring it's poorest up to a decent standard of living, with relatively little cost to the rest of the population.
Who, exactly is touting this as good? If you believe in man made climate change, 30% less damaging than coal just isn't good enough. We need to be moving away from fossil fuels, not finding marginally less damaging ways to burn them.
And if you don't believe in mad made climate change, why bother? It's going to be less efficient, and therefore will create even more nasty emissions other than CO2, which isn't the only pollutant released by coal burning.
(No, I haven't RTFA, as it requires registration.)
Greenpeace are absolutely NOT the same people that release mink. Greenpeace are primarily a environmental organisation. They occasionally lean towards some "animal rights" type campaigns (dolphins, whales, seals) but they certainly don't go round irresponsibly releasing non-native animals.
Greenpeace may cause some good, but I think they are terribly misguided at other things.
Well, considering you don't seem to have a clue what Greenpeace do, I don't think your in any position to claim that they are "misguided".
How does this help in any way?
Example lifespan of a string:
1. Allocated
2. Maybe swapped out to disk
3. Zeroed
4. Deallocated
If 2 happens, zeroing the string in memory before it is deallocated will not effect the copy in the swap file. The string will still be on disk and perfectly readable.
If 2 doesn't happen, the string isn't in the swap file, it can't be retrieved at a later date,.so what is the point of zeroing it?
...being taken in by confusing double-talk and deception...
I believe the word you are searching for is "marketing".
Back in the day, Apple did a series of time/motion studies regarding mousng vs. command keys and command lines. They showed that (for the tasks they studied, of course) in IIRC all casees, the GUI was faster,
Yeah, of course they did. They were selling computers with GUI, in competition with computers command lines.
Isn't it remarkable that research by Microsoft shows Linux is more expernsive that Windows, research from Apple shows that GUIs are faster, and research from ExxonMobil shows that buring fossil fuels doesn't cause global warming?
I expect at least part of the answer is that neural networks are trivial to understand and implement compared to support vector machines.
You might be able to build SVM implementations relatively easily on a real computer using off the shelf libraries etc., I doubt many of these would run on a WiFi card.
Neural nets have also been around for quite a while, so they have gained acceptance. Although SVMs have been known to the machine learning community for quite a while now, they have only just started being noticed by the wider world quite recently.
I mean come on, itty bitty invisible creatures that get inside you and make you ill. Sounds pretty damn unlikely to me.
Hands up who's actually seen one of these germs.
Thought not.
it's not to keep you from copying/sharing, rather to guarantee quality and authenticity.
Yeah right. Music sounds so much better when you have a digital certificate proving it really is by your favourite band, and not some cheap immitation.