I read the link you gave, but I only read it once and am not sure I fully understand everything it means.
What I do know is that there are no DeCSS capable DVD players in the default Ubuntu install. I believe this is because because of DMCA. Playing a DVD is fair, non-infringing use. And yet is inconvenient because of the DMCA.
It is clearly bad that visually identical programs behave inconsistently.
However many (most?) languages have this issue. One area this problem occurs in "C" languages is the requirement that a '\' be the last character on a line for continuation of a string. Python improves on this situation by having a better syntax for multiline strings.
Perhaps the solution is on the editor side rather than the languages side.
There should be no hard tabs in program source.
One thing Python's approach does fix is that the indentation the programmer uses to reason about blocks, is the same as what the compiler users. This removes the standard gotcha in C:
if (condition); {
____action();
}
People would stop combining it with godawful macros in an attempt to cobble together a slow and inefficient relational database with no sensible query or reporting tools and use a real RDBM instead.
Real SQL databases have more limited user interfaces than Excel. Highly skilled software developers can make them work if they waste enough time, and make enough compromises.
If you want something quick stick with the spreadsheet.
It is not clear much money will be coming out of the economy.
The plan is to borrow (deficit) and print (low interest rates) money rather than tax it.
This seems to be working well, with inflation staying low, and 30 year bond yields at 3%.
When confidence is low people choose to spend less and save, so even if we chose to tax this would not take that as much money out of the economy as was spent.
2. Shuffle it though an inefficient bureaucracy.
3. Put what remains back into the economy.
4. ???
4. Jobs, income, confidence.
5. Economic recovery.
The whole thing hinges on what people decide to do, so it is not a simple or predictable thing to manage. Even if you can just convince people it will work then it might.
Copy and paste may be better than typing the same thing in by hand.
Copy, paste and modify has lower effort
and may have lower risk than creating the needed abstraction, refactoring the source to use it, and then adding your new usage.
Effort and risk are needed to keep a code base maintainable. Because engineering requires trade-offs is also requires discipline.
Most western countries are not dictatorships, and most do not have a constitutional right to bear arms.
Bush probably thinks we should remove the 4th and 5th Amendments too.
He may, I don't.
There is a big difference between arms, what a foot soldier would normally carry, and ordnance.
There is a big difference between nuclear weapons and guns. My dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arm%5B3%5D) does not make it clear arms means one and not the other and I don't think the constitution does either.
Armed citizens are the way the US is defended against a potentially oppressive government. The founding fathers were quite clear on the issue.
The 2nd Amendment is the only one that protects against the loss of them all. To remove that is dangerous, as historically it is often a precursor to a dictatorship.
The founders were clear. Times have changed. Citizen's with guns are not a way to prevent oppressive government in 2008.
What basis is there for the association you draw between democracy-guns and dictatorship-no guns?
And if you want it to be different in a way that doesn't have a constitutional basis, we have a method for that.
It's called an amendment.
I'll bet you are against Bush's warrantless wiretapping. Hey, relax, this is just a different government. We can ignore the clear intent and text these days.
Experience shows that all groups will abuse their power. We should not relax.
The perfection of the founding fathers is part of a faith in America, so it is hard to move forward.
For example the clear intent and text of the constitution allows citizens the right to bare arms, as in the weapons of war. Nuclear weapons and tanks are not excluded.
The clear intent and text is ignored.
Armed citizens are not part of the way the US is defended. This constitutional right should be removed with an amendment.
Instead groups with competing desires to own guns and reduce gun ownership, compete at the constitutional level with a provision that is outdated.
Providing equality of opportunity is what the government is there for.
I guess you didn't have to learn the Preamble to the Constitution in school. Don't worry, I've found most liberals have no idea about why our country was founded.
What the government was for 200 years ago, is different than what the government is for now.
Instead of a bank making a 30-year mortgage to someone who was a good risk, and keeping the mortgage for the life of it, now institutions could buy and trade baskets of mortgages. They could buy and sell it at any time, and therefore had little incentive to see how well any individual could pay of their personal mortgage.
Does anything this interesting have just one cause? My favourite cause is self-interest, the question is whose self-interest?
Washington Mutual made the 30 years loans, kept many of those loans on their own books, and had every incentive to see how well an individual could pay off their mortgage.
However in an environment of rising real estate prices managers got better bonuses selling bad loans, than caring about risk. Now Washington Mutual is gone.
Perhaps when companies don't care about the welfare of employees, employees stop caring about the welfare of the company.
Or perhaps finance companies did some kind of financial equivalent to software metrics, which managers then optimised for:
Are we saying:
Worked, in the sense that the obstacles were insufficient to prevent useful devices from being released.
Rather than:
Failed, in the sense that the costs to society in terms of business risk, legal effort etc. exceeded the benefits to society in terms of additional incentives.
I think you show us just how a bad patents are by the low and (and incorrect) bar you are apparently setting for 'worked'.
The parallel programming being discussed mostly solves the same problems as serial programs, only faster.
So if you have code that runs fast enough as a serial program, you are better off solving a different problem than exploring parallel programming.
And if you have a program that is running to slowly then you need to work out why. Most often your program is not CPU bound, and moving to the type of parallel program being discussed won't help.
And if you have a program this is too slow and CPU bound there are a number of optimizations you can choose, most of which are more localized and simpler than moving to parallel programming.
And if all else fails, then maybe you should look at parallel programming for your problem. If you do, frequently the problem you are solving is not the general one, and a simple solution exists that is much less complex than the more general parallel programming being discussed.
So maybe older and better developers are looking at more promising solutions, to more important problems, rather than focusing on one type of optimization being pushed by unimaginative hardware vendors.
Of course Erlang looks like a fun, so I check it out, but I don't think it is the most important development around.
First you should learn that Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is not the only Visual Basic.
Second you should learn that there is a lot to learn about programming that is not related to the language you are using.
Third I don't know your goals so I can't recommend what to do in your case. But I learn best when there is something to motivate me. So if there is some programming task that is useful to you then work on that in whatever language is appropriate to that task and your long term goals.
One issue is the use of modifier keys for entering different characters. Another issue is modes. Modes cause every action to be preceded with a check for the current mode, and since few things are guaranteed to always happen, mode errors.
How many people are asked when entering a password "Did you lean on the shift on the keyboard the entire time you entered that password"? Yet many times people are asked if they have the caps lock key on.
The use of caps lock as a temporary modifier to get a special character entered makes its persistence and modal nature a bigger problem than it's normal use or non use.
3. Microsoft ships a C++ compiler that targets.NET. I have never use this in a any way shape or form, but if I had a large Windows C++ code base I was looking to make easier to maintain I think it's an interesting idea.
I am dropping my cell phone as soon as WiFi blankets my city, San Francisco.
I prefer IM to text messaging, and I want video as well as audio on my calls.
ArtSrc
Instead, he thinks you should use his particular license (the GPL) for everything.
Stallman says:
The GNU GPL is written primarily for software, but it can be used for any kind of work. However, its requirements are inconvenient for works that one might want to print and publish in a book, so I don't recommend using it for manuals, or for novels
Based on the article you are incorrect. RMS thinks his license is worse for some purposes:
"The GNU GPL is written primarily for software, but it can be used for any kind of work. However, its requirements are inconvenient for works that one might want to print and publish in a book, so I don't recommend using it for manuals, or for novels"
There have frequently been issues for inexperienced IT graduates. The best solution to this problem is to learn what you can and lie about your experience.
I am an Aussie IT worker in San Francisco.
I expect to go back sometime and from discussions with companies in Sydney salaries are up from where they were when I left.
Posters keep talking theoreticaly about how they believe things should work.
The *real* spec is "works with my drive", not the SCSI "spec".
Be honest with yourself, would you believe you were compatable if you used inspection/testing to validate compliance with a spec, or would you do testing with other implementations.
The point Linus makes is that things have to work.
If there are timing issues not mentioned in the spec that real drives require, then it won't work to point at the spec and ask all manufacturers to withdraw their drives.
Which is more important, working in the way you interpret the spec, or working with other real implementations?
If POSIX does not require something but real applications need it, Linux must provide it. If POSIX requires something but no sane application uses it, Linux can get by without it.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the link you gave, but I only read it once and am not sure I fully understand everything it means. What I do know is that there are no DeCSS capable DVD players in the default Ubuntu install. I believe this is because because of DMCA. Playing a DVD is fair, non-infringing use. And yet is inconvenient because of the DMCA.
The problem is that in the various areas affected the consumer's guild has been so much less effective than the producer's guild.
You clearly have no understanding of what the Authors' Guild is. It's merely an organization to represent it's member authors.
People also represent themselves. This is true of politicians, bank executives and the head of the authors guild.
It is clearly bad that visually identical programs behave inconsistently.
However many (most?) languages have this issue. One area this problem occurs in "C" languages is the requirement that a '\' be the last character on a line for continuation of a string. Python improves on this situation by having a better syntax for multiline strings.
Perhaps the solution is on the editor side rather than the languages side.
There should be no hard tabs in program source.
One thing Python's approach does fix is that the indentation the programmer uses to reason about blocks, is the same as what the compiler users. This removes the standard gotcha in C:
if (condition); {
____action();
}
On another thread that I can't find someone linked this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Gigabyte-M912-Notebook-UMPC-8-9-Touch-screen-Rotatable_W0QQitemZ190277185241QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLaptops_Nov05?hash=item190277185241&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72:1234|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50
People would stop combining it with godawful macros in an attempt to cobble together a slow and inefficient relational database with no sensible query or reporting tools and use a real RDBM instead.
I think you don't mean "real RDBM": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_model You mean an SQL database.
Real SQL databases have more limited user interfaces than Excel. Highly skilled software developers can make them work if they waste enough time, and make enough compromises.
If you want something quick stick with the spreadsheet.
1. Take a bunch of money out of the economy.
It is not clear much money will be coming out of the economy.
The plan is to borrow (deficit) and print (low interest rates) money rather than tax it.
This seems to be working well, with inflation staying low, and 30 year bond yields at 3%.
When confidence is low people choose to spend less and save, so even if we chose to tax this would not take that as much money out of the economy as was spent.
2. Shuffle it though an inefficient bureaucracy .
3. Put what remains back into the economy.
4. ???
4. Jobs, income, confidence.
5. Economic recovery.
The whole thing hinges on what people decide to do, so it is not a simple or predictable thing to manage. Even if you can just convince people it will work then it might.
Copy and paste may be better than typing the same thing in by hand.
Copy, paste and modify has lower effort and may have lower risk than creating the needed abstraction, refactoring the source to use it, and then adding your new usage.
Effort and risk are needed to keep a code base maintainable. Because engineering requires trade-offs is also requires discipline.
He may, I don't.
There is a big difference between arms, what a foot soldier would normally carry, and ordnance.
There is a big difference between nuclear weapons and guns. My dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arm%5B3%5D) does not make it clear arms means one and not the other and I don't think the constitution does either.
The founders were clear. Times have changed. Citizen's with guns are not a way to prevent oppressive government in 2008.
What basis is there for the association you draw between democracy-guns and dictatorship-no guns?
And if you want it to be different in a way that doesn't have a constitutional basis, we have a method for that.
It's called an amendment.
I'll bet you are against Bush's warrantless wiretapping. Hey, relax, this is just a different government. We can ignore the clear intent and text these days.
Experience shows that all groups will abuse their power. We should not relax.
The perfection of the founding fathers is part of a faith in America, so it is hard to move forward.
For example the clear intent and text of the constitution allows citizens the right to bare arms, as in the weapons of war. Nuclear weapons and tanks are not excluded.
The clear intent and text is ignored.
Armed citizens are not part of the way the US is defended. This constitutional right should be removed with an amendment.
Instead groups with competing desires to own guns and reduce gun ownership, compete at the constitutional level with a provision that is outdated.
Does not mean equality.
I guess you didn't have to learn the Preamble to the Constitution in school. Don't worry, I've found most liberals have no idea about why our country was founded.
What the government was for 200 years ago, is different than what the government is for now.
Instead of a bank making a 30-year mortgage to someone who was a good risk, and keeping the mortgage for the life of it, now institutions could buy and trade baskets of mortgages. They could buy and sell it at any time, and therefore had little incentive to see how well any individual could pay of their personal mortgage.
Does anything this interesting have just one cause? My favourite cause is self-interest, the question is whose self-interest?
As Greenspan said:
those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect, shareholders equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief. http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081024163819.pdf
Washington Mutual made the 30 years loans, kept many of those loans on their own books, and had every incentive to see how well an individual could pay off their mortgage.
However in an environment of rising real estate prices managers got better bonuses selling bad loans, than caring about risk. Now Washington Mutual is gone.
Perhaps when companies don't care about the welfare of employees, employees stop caring about the welfare of the company.
Or perhaps finance companies did some kind of financial equivalent to software metrics, which managers then optimised for:
http://www.agilejournal.com/content/view/107/76/
You seem to be defining "patents worked" as: "didn't seem to get in the way".
I thinked "patents worked" should be defined as: "led to an overall better outcome than a system without patents".
I think the low bar you set for "patents worked" shows where we are at here.
Are we saying:
Worked, in the sense that the obstacles were insufficient to prevent useful devices from being released.
Rather than:
Failed, in the sense that the costs to society in terms of business risk, legal effort etc. exceeded the benefits to society in terms of additional incentives.
I think you show us just how a bad patents are by the low and (and incorrect) bar you are apparently setting for 'worked'.
The parallel programming being discussed mostly solves the same problems as serial programs, only faster. So if you have code that runs fast enough as a serial program, you are better off solving a different problem than exploring parallel programming. And if you have a program that is running to slowly then you need to work out why. Most often your program is not CPU bound, and moving to the type of parallel program being discussed won't help. And if you have a program this is too slow and CPU bound there are a number of optimizations you can choose, most of which are more localized and simpler than moving to parallel programming. And if all else fails, then maybe you should look at parallel programming for your problem. If you do, frequently the problem you are solving is not the general one, and a simple solution exists that is much less complex than the more general parallel programming being discussed. So maybe older and better developers are looking at more promising solutions, to more important problems, rather than focusing on one type of optimization being pushed by unimaginative hardware vendors. Of course Erlang looks like a fun, so I check it out, but I don't think it is the most important development around.
First you should learn that Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is not the only Visual Basic. Second you should learn that there is a lot to learn about programming that is not related to the language you are using. Third I don't know your goals so I can't recommend what to do in your case. But I learn best when there is something to motivate me. So if there is some programming task that is useful to you then work on that in whatever language is appropriate to that task and your long term goals.
One issue is the use of modifier keys for entering different characters. Another issue is modes. Modes cause every action to be preceded with a check for the current mode, and since few things are guaranteed to always happen, mode errors. How many people are asked when entering a password "Did you lean on the shift on the keyboard the entire time you entered that password"? Yet many times people are asked if they have the caps lock key on. The use of caps lock as a temporary modifier to get a special character entered makes its persistence and modal nature a bigger problem than it's normal use or non use.
3. Microsoft ships a C++ compiler that targets .NET. I have never use this in a any way shape or form, but if I had a large Windows C++ code base I was looking to make easier to maintain I think it's an interesting idea.
How about a link to the generic brand MP3 player? I have heard the shuffle is quite good from an audio persective. Brendan
I am dropping my cell phone as soon as WiFi blankets my city, San Francisco. I prefer IM to text messaging, and I want video as well as audio on my calls. ArtSrc
"The GNU GPL is written primarily for software, but it can be used for any kind of work. However, its requirements are inconvenient for works that one might want to print and publish in a book, so I don't recommend using it for manuals, or for novels"
Emphasis mine.
There have frequently been issues for inexperienced IT graduates. The best solution to this problem is to learn what you can and lie about your experience. I am an Aussie IT worker in San Francisco. I expect to go back sometime and from discussions with companies in Sydney salaries are up from where they were when I left.
Reagan was opposed to Communist tyranny.
He supported tyranny and torture in other places, such as latin america.
'Conservatism' is about supporting the donors to the Republican party.
American 'Liberalism' is about supporting the donors to the Democratic party.
Posters keep talking theoreticaly about how they believe things should work.
The *real* spec is "works with my drive", not the SCSI "spec".
Be honest with yourself, would you believe you were compatable if you used inspection/testing to validate compliance with a spec, or would you do testing with other implementations.
The point Linus makes is that things have to work.
If there are timing issues not mentioned in the spec that real drives require, then it won't work to point at the spec and ask all manufacturers to withdraw their drives.
Which is more important, working in the way you interpret the spec, or working with other real implementations?
If POSIX does not require something but real applications need it, Linux must provide it. If POSIX requires something but no sane application uses it, Linux can get by without it.