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User: jythie

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  1. Re:Gotta ask ! on MenuetOS, an OS Written Entirely In Assembly Language, Inches Towards 1.0 · · Score: 1

    *nod* and often when one is developing such industrial applications, the CPUs themselves are simpler and more predictable in design. This is esp the case when you are working on stuff that actually needs to count cycles for real time behaviors.

  2. Re:Americans seem to think on Hotel Tycoon Seeks Property Rights On the Moon · · Score: 1

    Well, that is pretty ingrained into our culture. Wealth is associated with superiority, often linked to intelligence or morality. It is one of the reasons the small business lobby is such an easy sucker for manipulation.

  3. Re:the whole thing is backwards on Hotel Tycoon Seeks Property Rights On the Moon · · Score: 1

    Ahm, except for no subletting, that is how things work. What you described are essentially property taxes.

  4. Re:reexamining the idea of property on Hotel Tycoon Seeks Property Rights On the Moon · · Score: 1

    Homesteading, however, presupposes a government willing and able to enforce it. All of those 'unowned natural resource' that were appropriated WERE in use by someone else already, their original appropriation was only from the perspective of various governments which were willing to back up their own citizens occupying land. In many ways 'homesteading' was really just 'wealth redistribution' combined with 'imminent domain'., one government taking land away from people in a weaker government and giving it to their own people to develop under the idea that their people made better use of it.

  5. Re:Good Grief on Hotel Tycoon Seeks Property Rights On the Moon · · Score: 1

    I suspect that even though the point that it feels far off has probably delayed reexamining the treaty, another big problem is it represents a rather significant can of worms that governments just do not want to deal with right now, not unless one of them has something significant to gain from it.

  6. Re:If you can defend it .. it's yours on Hotel Tycoon Seeks Property Rights On the Moon · · Score: 2

    Which I am guessing it can not since for the US government to recognize his property on the moon, the US would first have to claim the moon as its territory, which other nations would probably not be happy about. So the US would have to take a significant diplomatic risk which, if the profit for a local company is great enough it likely would, but I do not see a business plan here that would even begin to justify it.

  7. Re:Nobody owns the moon. on Hotel Tycoon Seeks Property Rights On the Moon · · Score: 1

    True, and they were wrong. But it is hard to say if that will be the case here or not. We do not even know if we can build a cost effective habitat that far out.

  8. Re:Gotta ask ! on MenuetOS, an OS Written Entirely In Assembly Language, Inches Towards 1.0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would argue that as CPUs get more complex and programs get larger, we have probably passed the point where even the best humans can optimize better in general cases. Short contained tasks sure, but even with infinite time humans have limits on how much they can keep track of in their heads. As the tasks get bigger and bigger one relies more and more on notes and whiteboards and other tools, at which point one is basically just implementing an optimized compiler from scratch and calling it 'by hand'.

  9. Re:Assembly == SLOW ; JAVA == FAST! on MenuetOS, an OS Written Entirely In Assembly Language, Inches Towards 1.0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, outside a few rather narrow cases, modern CPUs have just gotten too complicated to write efficient assembly for.

  10. Re: yet another programming language on Stephen Wolfram Developing New Programming Language · · Score: 1

    Jargon is a good parallel, though I feel that it is an example of why each domain doesn't need its own language. In the case of jargon, one is still using the same language as people in other domains with the addition of some extra shorthand. I would argue that such shorthand is closest to use of libraries.. still the same language plus domain specific functionality/sugar.

  11. Re: yet another programming language on Stephen Wolfram Developing New Programming Language · · Score: 2

    Python is actually a good example of why adding new languages is not the answer. One of the big reasons that python has been so embraced in scientific computing are the libraries that were built on top of it that are well suited to those types of tasks. The python community did a reasonably good job of grafting domain specific functionality in via libraries that were fairly accessible to people who are not primarily programmers while still having the general purpose language behind it for people who are, allowing programmers and non-programmers to collaborate easily. Which is why I tend to get annoyed with the whole 'lets build a new language for this domain!' thing since all it really does is increase the barrier between fields and produces yet another custom language that needs to be learned and maintained.

  12. Re:Meh... on Stephen Wolfram Developing New Programming Language · · Score: 1

    I think that around the time C matured we had as many actual languages as we needed. But for some reason people keep coming up with new ones with syntax that is different enough to be incompatible with each other but similar enough one wonders why they created a whole new language rather then a library or framework to link an existing language to a new domain.

  13. Re:Well... on Stephen Wolfram Developing New Programming Language · · Score: 1

    I think part of the problem is making new languages is fun and sexy, so people keep doing it rather then building frameworks, libraries, or editors on top of existing ones. So we end up with dozens of half baked languages that do not work together and are missing a great deal of functionality.. with more on the way to try to fix the problem with the same solution that got us into the mess in the first place.

  14. Re:Commodity, Not Money on Bitcoin Hits $400 Ahead of Senate Hearing On Virtual Currency · · Score: 1

    This seems to be less creating new tax sources and more looking into people dodging existing taxes. Not quite the same thing.

  15. Re:Bitcoins. Garbage. on Bitcoin Hits $400 Ahead of Senate Hearing On Virtual Currency · · Score: 1

    They have had competition for a long time, BTC has had a lot of hype assigned to it as far more unique then it actually is. Hype fuels speculation, and speculation fuels overvaluing.

  16. Re:Really? on Bitcoin Hits $400 Ahead of Senate Hearing On Virtual Currency · · Score: 1

    Thing is, right now there are speculators who will actually pay $400 per BTC.

  17. Re:Some brief points on Bitcoin Hits $400 Ahead of Senate Hearing On Virtual Currency · · Score: 1

    Plenty of things can stop it, the most important one being lack of consumer interest. Right now there is a great deal of enthusiasm, but it remains to be seen how much long term usage there will be. BTC's sustained (as opposed to speculative) value comes from the ability to use it for things, which means ability to spend them. Long term niche or passing fad, we don't know yet.

    Either way, I suspect it will not be much of a game changer. It is easier to use then something like gold, but various places have attempted to create gold backed electronic currencies and either blown up or faded away. But will that ease of use result in a sustainable critical mass?

  18. Re:Really? on Bitcoin Hits $400 Ahead of Senate Hearing On Virtual Currency · · Score: 2

    I would really love to see some statistics one way or the other. I suspect you are correct in that BTC is currently being driven by speculation and we are basicly looking at tulips, but I would be curious just how much volume is trading vs payment.

  19. Re:Sue them... on Could Slashdot (Or Other Private Entity) Sue a Spy Agency Like GCHQ Or NSA? · · Score: 2

    Luckily, I suspect the only real outcome would be they laugh at you and then go out for a light lunch. Threatening to sue the NSA is about as likely to frighten them as threatening to drink all the water.

  20. Re:Rather funny. . . . on US Gov't Circulates Watch List of Buyers of Polygraph Training Materials · · Score: 2

    Kinda reminds me of the 'if you are not guilty then you have nothing to hide' logic. Polygraphs are very iffy, the error rate is pretty high, and some people are worried about being caught up in those errors even when they are innocent. It is not much better then the eye contact thing.

  21. Re:Not even then on US Gov't Circulates Watch List of Buyers of Polygraph Training Materials · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If our legal system was primarily driven by law then yes, but there is way too much politics involved here. Judges, the humans who get to decide such things, have a significant conflict of interests but will not recuse themselves, and it is unlikely they will rule against their own community's systematic behavior.

  22. Re:When will they realize on US Gov't Circulates Watch List of Buyers of Polygraph Training Materials · · Score: 1

    Such a realization would put a lot of careers at risk since people all through the law enforcement chain have built their reputation at least in part around polygraphs. It would mean confronting the fact that they used invalid evidence and thus their convictions might be false. It also means people with strong conviction records will have their stats questioned, if not by others then by themselves, and that represent a serious risk to self image (as well as political career).

    In other words, too much investment in being right to admit being wrong.

  23. Re:Corporations dodge tax. on Italy Investigates Apple For Alleged Tax Fraud · · Score: 1

    The flip side is that the Italian government is notoriously corrupt. If it was a story about, say, Germany coming after Apple for tax evasion I would be 'yay Germany!', but in this case I am not sure I would even believe the charges.

  24. Re:Whose networks are those? on Legislation Would Prohibit ISPs From Throttling Online Video Services · · Score: 1

    Private property is hardly a long standing convention, and even if it was, it is only as long standing as governments of one form or another have enforced them. These companies, just like any other group of people, only own what the government says they own, and if the government says it belongs to someone else then it belongs to someone else. Private ownership is a purely artificial construct, an agreement between people.

  25. Re:Then again, who cares? on How Blockbuster Could Have Owned Netflix · · Score: 1

    It can really vary. Sometimes, esp with smaller companies, mergers can be really helpful since instead of having two companies 'partnered' (which is often a nice way of saying 'trying to screw each other') you have one unified goal. It can also really help in terms of authority within cross company projects. With a simple partnership or buisness relationship if you have a complaint about how another team is behaving the best you can do is have 'equal footing' bosses discuss it. Under a merger, there is SOME authority up the chain that can settle things./