What else would they burn? What else would they burn? If you say biodiesel or ethanol, I'll point out all the environmental problems with creating those.
And I won't care, because the issue was fossil fuels; anyhow, if your imagination was that in 20 years we would have cars powered by energy sources with zero environmental impact of any kind, well, stop doing drugs.
We'll get better, if we try. We won't get perfect.
Well, according to the story from yesterday, I believe, the MPG of hybrids was actually incorrect, and was over-estimating the average MPG by more than 10mpg. Meaning the Prius not only looks pretty ugly, but it gets slightly better mileage than my Honda Civic which isn't hybrid.
Under the revised numbers, the Prius, a midsize car, gets around 40% better economy than a non-hybdrid Civic (46 vs. 33 overall mpg), a compact car; the post-revision numbers for the Prius are close to the pre-revision numbers for Civic Hybrid (which isn't a "full" hybrid: 46 vs. 50 overall mpg.)
I may have been a bit too generous to the Civic, since the 33 mpg is its pre-revision rating, and the revision reduced the ratings of nonhybrids, too (just not as much hybrids). At any rate, your "slightly better" comment is wrong: even with the revised numbers, the Prius gets much better mileage than the Civic, even though the latter is in a smaller class.
I think it was a GM executive who released a public statement that hybrids were bad because it distracted attention from the real future, hydrogen fuelcell vehicles.
Well, it certainly hasn't distracted Toyota from fuel cells.
See, what you may not understand is that the very concept of a command line SCARES the normal win user.
Which is probably why Ubuntu comes with Synaptic (or, in the case of Kubuntu, Adept), which handles all that scary "sudo apt-get install foo" in a nice, comfortable, graphical environment that merely requires you to check mark what you want to install, with nice sorted categories, search functions, etc.
That sounds like a good idea. Too bad a system like that would only work most of the time since there would probably be lots of software on the net that wasn't included, especially new stuff that simply had not been added yet. I can envision the slogan now: Ubuntu, it usually works!
How is this a problem? You can distribute.deb files as easily as, say,.msi files. If you mean "there is lots of software without debian packages built", well, sure. There is lots of software on the net without Windows installers, too.
Exactly, this is going to (if it goes anywhere at all) push gnome use to the detriment of all Linux desktop users.
How? Sure, it may increase the base of Gnome users, which may increase the feedback to and quality of Gnome. OTOH, except insofar as the quality of Gnome improves enough to get people to switch from KDE (or anything else), its not going to make any other existing system less attractive. The only waysthis effects existing Linux desktop users that aren't Gnome users now is (1) it may improve the quality of Gnome enough to get them to switch, and (2) because lots of apps and tools live across different desktop environments, the increased feedback and attention the apps and tools get may spur improvements that are applicable across different environments. Neither of these hurts anyone not currently using Gnome.
With Ubuntu, although the default is GNOME, the end users still have the option of installing the KDE packages and get KDE working. Now what does Dell support do in the event that the end users are using KDE?
Probably, the same thing they do if someone downloads and uses any of the many alternative shells for Windows instead of the standard desktop and then wants support, which I would assume is "punts".
Dell doesn't provide support for every piece of available Windows software (even if it is from Microsoft), why would they provide support for every piece of available Linux software (even if it is in the Ubuntu repositories)?
Yeah, Pascal was a stricter language but IMHO the rules were less confusing than those of C++ and Java.
C and C++, at least, I remember finding more confusing specifically because they were less strict: Pascal strictness did a good job of stopping you from shooting yourself in the head, while C made that easy to do. Modern dynamic languages usually abstract away the most dangerous parts (like memory allocation), which enable them to be relative "free" without putting too big of a gun in your hand. OTOH, you make a good point later about error messages from Python: I'm not sure, though, how much of that is inherent in a dynamic language and how much is just from "novice computer users" not being a big focus of the development of the error messages—perhaps more feedback to the project from people interested in serving that community could improve things in that regard.
It is a shame that Pascal has been largely discarded in (pre-college) classrooms for more "practical" or "modern" languages like C, Java, Python etc.
Eh, Pascal as a language doesn't have a lot to offer, IMO, that isn't provided better in Python, Ruby, etc., if you want accessibility. I will agree that the standard libraries that came with many Pascal implementations have some advantages over the libraries that come with most modern languages in terms of easy graphics and some other things that are useful to learners (though no two were compatible in how they did this.)
I have yet to find development environments that are better to learn with than Pascal or QBasic. They don't have all the baggage that you need for high performance (like you get with C or C++) or strictness that helps keep bug count down in huge projects (like you get with C++ or Java), and have easy access to the routines that people learning want to play with (standard IO, drawing graphics, etc).
Pascal is a stricter language than C++ (or C), and, IIRC, even a bit more strict than Java; it was the archetypical "bondage and discipline" language. Pascal inherently doesn't have easy access to "drawing graphics", but (as with BASIC) many versions were tightly tied to a specific platform and came with libraries that provided quick access to it. That is something many modern languages lack. (Easy access to "standard" IO, even in a fairly general sense, is not, however, something Python, Ruby, etc., lack.)
The MIT Teacher Education Program is doing something along the same lines with a version of Logo: StarLogo TNG; they've also released educational material centered around the older (2D, no "graphical programming") version of StarLogo which is now an open source project.
So in a second-person shooter, you're the one being shot at? Wow. All that time I thought I sucked at FPS, but I was in fact playing SPS...
:)
Not quite, unless you are still controlling the shooter while viewing from the perspective of the target.
A second-person camera would be the "view from target" camera views that seem to have been pretty common on combat flight-simulator (tank, etc.) games (I suppose they likely still are, but the detail combat flight sims seem a lot less popular than they used to be.)
But, yeah, usually a game wouldn't be oriented around a second-person view, only first or third as the main view. Second-person view as the main view would be quite odd.
Are there courses designed to make neurosurgery less intimidating to kids or genetic research less complicated or elite forces soldering less dangerous or stressful?
No and yes, respectively. Actually, the military spends lots and lots of money to make soldiering, of every kind, less dangerous.
So what?
It always concerns me when I see a bunch of geeks trying to stick programming down the throats of kids rather than focus on teaching them the real skills they need at that age.
Stripped of the things like memorizing complex syntax rules, etc.—which is exactly what things like this try to minimize—programming is a mechanism for teaching generalized problem-solving and analytical skills, as well as a tool to provide applied lessons in other fields. It is not an alternative to teaching "real skills they need at that age", but a means of doing so.
Drag and drop seems nice, but it is a significant abstraction from real programming.
It doesn't have to be all that distant from raw code. Another MIT project (StarLogo TNG) uses drag and drop that has a pretty much 1:1 relationship to raw code, but is presumably less intimidating and certainly less dependent on typing and memorizing syntax rules, since the blocks both visually indicate syntax and won't link-up in improper ways. Scratch seems similar, though this is the first time I've looked at it and I haven't played around with it.
Really, I don't see how "drag and drop" is inherently any further from "real programming" than using a modern IDE with automatic code completion, automatic closing of blocks, code generation, GUI builders, etc., is.
I think it'd also be safe to say that if you were playing a game with a party or squad of some sort and the camera were being held by someone in the party that isn't under your direct control that this would be 2nd person.
I think its still third person: 1st is the actor, 2nd the recipient of the action, 3rd is anybody else.
Can someone explain why copyrights and patents should expire? I'm being serious.
Because the Constitution, which is the only thing that gives the government the power to grant them in the first place, specifies that they must.
In a broader sense, because like all property laws, IP laws are a limitation on freedom that exists to promote a public good, not merely private good, and the public good that IP seeks to serve is best acheived by providing an incentive through a time-limited monopoly, and then returning the IP to the public domain, so that more people can use it freely. This creates an incentive to continuous innovation.
(Other property laws are often not time-limited, but that is because other property is different than IP in its nature, and the public and private costs and benefits associated with keeping it exclusive are different. Though I've seen reasonable arguments that estates in land should not be permanent, either.)
Linux doesn't exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today.
So, apparently, "Free Software" only exists if the people making it are unemployed?
Does this even begin to make sense?
Oh, wait, its from the "head of Microsoft's Linux Labs". Microsoft sayibng "Free Software is dead and Linux doesn't exist" isn't news, though I guess the fact that they've changed how they are saying it might be.
Having failed with the "Free Software is unreliable stuff put out by hippie slackers ideologues that have no idea how to make software usable in the real world" line, Microsoft is apparently now trying out a new line of FUD which doesn't even superficially make sense. "Big companies are involved in open source and people are getting paid, so, whatever the licensing terms say, its somehow not really free"?
Had Ford not identified the risk that a bolt posed to the fuel tank and documented it they probably wouldn't have lost so big in court.
Yes, had there not been evidence that they knew that there was a problem, knew how significant it was and how easy to fix, and chose not to do so, things would have gone better for them in court.
Not sure how that is part of a "problem", either with the popular perception's relation to the facts (since its part of the popular perception and central to the reason its held up as an example of corporate cynicism) or with the justice system and outcome.
Back to $2.70/gal... And do you think that will hold for the next year or past?
Not at all, the annual price peaks are, as I recall, getting both higher and broader, and the valleys narrower and also higher. The idea that break-even can be calculated reasonably based on a fixed, current cost is, I'd agree, pretty silly.
Until, that is, law enforcement, the judiciary and governments around the world start to take the spam problem as seriously as they do the drugs one.
Yeah, when government starts confiscating people's homes under "civil forfeiture" laws because a computer used in a botnet was located in the house, that'll solve the problem.
And I can't stand it when people talk as if getting tax credits reduces costs.
It reduces the cost to the purchaser.
It transfers costs to someone else.
Yes, so does burning gasoline, since it imposes substantial costs on people outside of the transaction. If you don't include the externalized costs of the gasoline when analyzing what saves money (and you shouldn't, if you are considering what saves the purchaser money), why would you include the costs of the tax credits to others?
But at the front of the article, they specify this at $2.70/gal gasoline. Prices right now are well above that, and it seems to me that $2.70/gal is closer to a low figure for the past year than any sort of average.
I think $2.70 is about the national average for the past year, though regional and local variations are extremely significant, and commuters around any of the big cities (i.e., the main market for the Prius) are paying much higher prices (and doing much more city driving, so likely to have shorter payback time even at the same gas price.)
BTW, the Prius just doesn't have the necessary headroom for tall people.
Since when? The early ones were probably the only midsize car I've found tolerable even in the back seat (I'm 6'4"), haven't been in the newer ones but they look like they don't seem smaller.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus saying it, unlike the average Slashdotter saying it, is, in and of itself, news.
Under the revised numbers, the Prius, a midsize car, gets around 40% better economy than a non-hybdrid Civic (46 vs. 33 overall mpg), a compact car; the post-revision numbers for the Prius are close to the pre-revision numbers for Civic Hybrid (which isn't a "full" hybrid: 46 vs. 50 overall mpg.)
I may have been a bit too generous to the Civic, since the 33 mpg is its pre-revision rating, and the revision reduced the ratings of nonhybrids, too (just not as much hybrids). At any rate, your "slightly better" comment is wrong: even with the revised numbers, the Prius gets much better mileage than the Civic, even though the latter is in a smaller class.
Well, it certainly hasn't distracted Toyota from fuel cells.
Yes, Toyota may have noticed that.
Why not? Its not like there is something magic about "truck" that makes a hybrid drivetrain less useful, and Toyota already makes hybrid SUVs.
Just because its a hybrid doesn't mean the combustion engine is burning fossil fuels.
Which is probably why Ubuntu comes with Synaptic (or, in the case of Kubuntu, Adept), which handles all that scary "sudo apt-get install foo" in a nice, comfortable, graphical environment that merely requires you to check mark what you want to install, with nice sorted categories, search functions, etc.
How is this a problem? You can distribute
How? Sure, it may increase the base of Gnome users, which may increase the feedback to and quality of Gnome. OTOH, except insofar as the quality of Gnome improves enough to get people to switch from KDE (or anything else), its not going to make any other existing system less attractive. The only waysthis effects existing Linux desktop users that aren't Gnome users now is (1) it may improve the quality of Gnome enough to get them to switch, and (2) because lots of apps and tools live across different desktop environments, the increased feedback and attention the apps and tools get may spur improvements that are applicable across different environments. Neither of these hurts anyone not currently using Gnome.
Probably, the same thing they do if someone downloads and uses any of the many alternative shells for Windows instead of the standard desktop and then wants support, which I would assume is "punts".
Dell doesn't provide support for every piece of available Windows software (even if it is from Microsoft), why would they provide support for every piece of available Linux software (even if it is in the Ubuntu repositories)?
C and C++, at least, I remember finding more confusing specifically because they were less strict: Pascal strictness did a good job of stopping you from shooting yourself in the head, while C made that easy to do. Modern dynamic languages usually abstract away the most dangerous parts (like memory allocation), which enable them to be relative "free" without putting too big of a gun in your hand. OTOH, you make a good point later about error messages from Python: I'm not sure, though, how much of that is inherent in a dynamic language and how much is just from "novice computer users" not being a big focus of the development of the error messages—perhaps more feedback to the project from people interested in serving that community could improve things in that regard.
Eh, Pascal as a language doesn't have a lot to offer, IMO, that isn't provided better in Python, Ruby, etc., if you want accessibility. I will agree that the standard libraries that came with many Pascal implementations have some advantages over the libraries that come with most modern languages in terms of easy graphics and some other things that are useful to learners (though no two were compatible in how they did this.)
Pascal is a stricter language than C++ (or C), and, IIRC, even a bit more strict than Java; it was the archetypical "bondage and discipline" language. Pascal inherently doesn't have easy access to "drawing graphics", but (as with BASIC) many versions were tightly tied to a specific platform and came with libraries that provided quick access to it. That is something many modern languages lack. (Easy access to "standard" IO, even in a fairly general sense, is not, however, something Python, Ruby, etc., lack.)
Not quite, unless you are still controlling the shooter while viewing from the perspective of the target.
A second-person camera would be the "view from target" camera views that seem to have been pretty common on combat flight-simulator (tank, etc.) games (I suppose they likely still are, but the detail combat flight sims seem a lot less popular than they used to be.)
But, yeah, usually a game wouldn't be oriented around a second-person view, only first or third as the main view. Second-person view as the main view would be quite odd.
No and yes, respectively. Actually, the military spends lots and lots of money to make soldiering, of every kind, less dangerous.
So what?
Stripped of the things like memorizing complex syntax rules, etc.—which is exactly what things like this try to minimize—programming is a mechanism for teaching generalized problem-solving and analytical skills, as well as a tool to provide applied lessons in other fields. It is not an alternative to teaching "real skills they need at that age", but a means of doing so.
It doesn't have to be all that distant from raw code. Another MIT project (StarLogo TNG) uses drag and drop that has a pretty much 1:1 relationship to raw code, but is presumably less intimidating and certainly less dependent on typing and memorizing syntax rules, since the blocks both visually indicate syntax and won't link-up in improper ways. Scratch seems similar, though this is the first time I've looked at it and I haven't played around with it.
Really, I don't see how "drag and drop" is inherently any further from "real programming" than using a modern IDE with automatic code completion, automatic closing of blocks, code generation, GUI builders, etc., is.
I think its still third person: 1st is the actor, 2nd the recipient of the action, 3rd is anybody else.
Because the Constitution, which is the only thing that gives the government the power to grant them in the first place, specifies that they must.
In a broader sense, because like all property laws, IP laws are a limitation on freedom that exists to promote a public good, not merely private good, and the public good that IP seeks to serve is best acheived by providing an incentive through a time-limited monopoly, and then returning the IP to the public domain, so that more people can use it freely. This creates an incentive to continuous innovation.
(Other property laws are often not time-limited, but that is because other property is different than IP in its nature, and the public and private costs and benefits associated with keeping it exclusive are different. Though I've seen reasonable arguments that estates in land should not be permanent, either.)
So, apparently, "Free Software" only exists if the people making it are unemployed?
Does this even begin to make sense?
Oh, wait, its from the "head of Microsoft's Linux Labs". Microsoft sayibng "Free Software is dead and Linux doesn't exist" isn't news, though I guess the fact that they've changed how they are saying it might be.
Having failed with the "Free Software is unreliable stuff put out by hippie slackers ideologues that have no idea how to make software usable in the real world" line, Microsoft is apparently now trying out a new line of FUD which doesn't even superficially make sense. "Big companies are involved in open source and people are getting paid, so, whatever the licensing terms say, its somehow not really free"?
Yes, had there not been evidence that they knew that there was a problem, knew how significant it was and how easy to fix, and chose not to do so, things would have gone better for them in court.
Not sure how that is part of a "problem", either with the popular perception's relation to the facts (since its part of the popular perception and central to the reason its held up as an example of corporate cynicism) or with the justice system and outcome.
Not at all, the annual price peaks are, as I recall, getting both higher and broader, and the valleys narrower and also higher. The idea that break-even can be calculated reasonably based on a fixed, current cost is, I'd agree, pretty silly.
Yeah, when government starts confiscating people's homes under "civil forfeiture" laws because a computer used in a botnet was located in the house, that'll solve the problem.
Just like it solved the drug problem.
It reduces the cost to the purchaser.
Yes, so does burning gasoline, since it imposes substantial costs on people outside of the transaction. If you don't include the externalized costs of the gasoline when analyzing what saves money (and you shouldn't, if you are considering what saves the purchaser money), why would you include the costs of the tax credits to others?
I think $2.70 is about the national average for the past year, though regional and local variations are extremely significant, and commuters around any of the big cities (i.e., the main market for the Prius) are paying much higher prices (and doing much more city driving, so likely to have shorter payback time even at the same gas price.)
Since when? The early ones were probably the only midsize car I've found tolerable even in the back seat (I'm 6'4"), haven't been in the newer ones but they look like they don't seem smaller.