If students were forever confined to the level of knowledge at or below that of their teachers, the pool of human knowledge would have been completely drained long ago.
> What makes you think that most parents are > qualified to be teachers? In all subjects?
The fact that most parents have finished high school and supposedly have a diploma signifying that they know all the stuff they are supposed to know. If you don't then how can you justify keeping your diploma? If you do, then you should be able to explain it to your kids. If you can't, then you know you don't know it, and should probably refresh your knowledge.
> Suddenly something in one of the tubes starts > fizzling. Suddenly the President comes into view > and hands Billy a big bag of money
I very much doubt that. It is much more likely that suddenly a SWAT team would burst in and surround little Billy, pointing their automatic weapons at his head and screaming obscenities. Then they'd throw him in jail for possessing drug paraphernalia (namely, labware, chemicals, alcohol burner, etc.). If Billy wasn't alone at the time of arrest, conspiracy charges would no doubt follow.
Then he'd be named a terrorist, after some underpaid police chemist runs some unspecific test and finds explosive precursors (do you realize how many chemicals fit in that category? Anything with a benzene ring can be converted into TNT.) in Billy's test tube. Billy's friends would be immediately included as co-conspirators to blow something up while stoned on some homemade drug.
As anybody who has tried to do chemistry anywhere outside strictly controlled and designated places knows, the message from the government is chrystal clear: don't do chemistry. And now they try to blame us for listening and obeying the law? How amusing.
Now if they posted an invitation here on Slashdot, I am sure their room would have been packed. It was such a show!:) All that was missing was an appreciative audience asking randomly generated questions and a bored couple making out in the corner.
Think of it this way, once it happens, there will no longer be any endian issues to deal with! Once the Macs are little endian, the big endian user base will go pretty much to zero, and only in the servers.
> There have been a lot of "regime changes" which did not stem from violent revolution.
Name one. A peaceful regime change is only possible with the consent of the old regime.
> You don't even need to overthrow a government to change the fscking IP law.
Then what do we need to do, wise guy? Write to our congressman? Puh-lease! He'll just chuck it in the trash with all the other "nutcase letters". Write him a fat check? I'm not a millionare. Arrange a public protest? It will get totally ignored, even if you're lucky enough to get some press coverage. And it will definitely be forgotten a few days later. So tell me, what do we need to do?
> There's no system of government or economic power > which hasn't evolved into something else over > time or simply been overthrown.
The key word here is "overthrown". Do you really want to overthrow the government to get rid of software patents? To go against an entire army of well-trained soldiers who will want to kill your sorry ass? Remember, that's what you have to do to change the government. George Washington had to do it. Lenin had to do it. Even George Bush had to do it in Iraq.
> All by the common man.
Nope. The common man has never done anything significant. It was always the uncommon man with a lot of armed supporters that has changed the world.
I wonder if all the complaining generated by stories like this will ever amount to anything. Sure, it might "feel good" to denounce "evil corprorations" for stifling progress with their avalanche of patents, but what can a person do about it anyhow? Most people are not personally affected by the patent problem, or at least do not think they are, so any democratic way of protest will inevitably fail. Congressmen and senators will pay far more attention to those who can contribute to their campaigns than to a few free software weirdos who think (for some unfathomable to them reason) that patents are bad. Free speech is rather pointless if nobody cares, don't you think? Perhaps it might be a good idea to just abandon the entire "Your Rights Online" section, and forgo the flamewars. You can't change the world. Get used to it.
> FINDING OUT about bugs is almost as easy as with any other language.
The trouble is that you'll only find the ones that make something obvious happen. For each one of those there'll be a dozen subtle changes that you will have missed. Would you notice if all the rectangles on the screen were suddenly a pixel wider?
> The difference is that instead of the compiler > throwing up an ID10T error for every > misspelling, the program simply dosen't work correctly.
The point of having the compiler do it is that it is easy to verify that you are using only the variables you intended to use in the first place when you must declare them. Those who say predeclaration is cumbersome are those who want to ignore bugs in their program in order to write it faster. If you complain about idiot errors for every misspelling, you obviously make a lot of misspellings. Since each one of those is necessarily an error, you are simply postponing finding them until the program runs. Given that they will not all necessarily do something obvious, it becomes clear that you are simply allowing bugs to stay in the program. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is not always a good idea. Code should be clean. Period.
I really can't see the problem here. Some idiot told me it prints his password, but he is surely deluded. Nothing could possibly be wrong with MY code!
> You'd have to "download" the state of every cell in the body
Definitely not every cell. You can lose an arm and still be yourself. If you suddenly woke up without both your legs, you would still be the same person. People also get artificial organs, including hearts, and remain themselves. So obviously, only the brain and its contents matter.
It's an interesting question of how your life continuity is perceived. Consider the following thought experiments:
You go to sleep and wake up. You remember the events that happened yesterday or earlier and thus perceive lifeline continuation.
Your brain cells are gradually replaced by a non-living mechanical equivalents that perfectly emulate each neuron's function. You remain conscious the entire time. The lifeline is obviously still preserved.
A computer is embedded in one of the artificial neurons. It selects a neighboring neuron and copies its connections to itself. Then it proceeds to disconnect the neighbor and to emulate it in software. Then the now-useless neuron is removed. The process continues until all your neurons are emulated. Lifeline continues, since you're still conscious the whole time and the brain function is exactly the same as it was before the conversion started.
The computer is stopped for one second and restarted. You perceive a "time skip". Is the lifeline continued? Compare with the "go to sleep" scenario.
The computer is stopped and an exact copy of your brain at that particular moment is backed up to external storage. Then the brain computer is wiped clean and the backup is restored. Then the computer is restarted. The entire process takes one second. Is the lifeline continued? Compare with the previous scenario.
Same as last item except that the computer is briefly restarted for one hour between the backup and the wipe. Do you die? Is the lifeline continued? Consider the fact that you wouldn't know that hour happened unless told about it. Also compare with the "go to sleep" scenario. What if you sleepwalked for an hour? How is this different?
Your brain is stopped, backed up and downloaded into another body. The original brain is wiped clean. Do you die? Is the lifeline continued? Compare with sleeping. What if you were "moved" to another body? Would it be death?
Same as the previous item, but the original body is restarted without a wipe. Both copies think the lifeline continues. When the original body dies, do "you" die? Compare with the "backup-and-restore-after-one-hour" scenario above.
Have you tried running KDE on a low-end machine lately? Or Gnome? And I mean a 100MHz pentium here with 16M of RAM. Modern Linux desktop is certainly not much of a competitor with Windows 95 on that hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
If students were forever confined to the level of knowledge at or below that of their teachers, the pool of human knowledge would have been completely drained long ago.
> What makes you think that most parents are
> qualified to be teachers? In all subjects?
The fact that most parents have finished high school and supposedly have a diploma signifying that they know all the stuff they are supposed to know. If you don't then how can you justify keeping your diploma? If you do, then you should be able to explain it to your kids. If you can't, then you know you don't know it, and should probably refresh your knowledge.
It would be great to have everyone use this feature during the SATs. Speaking the answer out loud is such a great help to some of us...
Anyone remember that music video that came on the Windows 95 CD? I always wondered who they were, and what that cute woman's name was...
> Robinett was partially motivated by the fact that, at
> the time, designers weren't given credit for their games."
And now they are?
Non-commercial things tend to kill themselves instead.
Camera lens sat on a wall
Camera lens had a great fall
And all the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put all the splatters together again
Geeks in Space? No. Virgins in space.
Oh, wait...
Is that why you use that little devil character as your mascot?
So why is it that we never get headlines like "stupid patent rejected" on Slashdot? Do all these "inventions" get the patent granted or what?
> Suddenly something in one of the tubes starts
> fizzling. Suddenly the President comes into view
> and hands Billy a big bag of money
I very much doubt that. It is much more likely that suddenly a SWAT team would burst in and surround little Billy, pointing their automatic weapons at his head and screaming obscenities. Then they'd throw him in jail for possessing drug paraphernalia (namely, labware, chemicals, alcohol burner, etc.). If Billy wasn't alone at the time of arrest, conspiracy charges would no doubt follow.
Then he'd be named a terrorist, after some underpaid police chemist runs some unspecific test and finds explosive precursors (do you realize how many chemicals fit in that category? Anything with a benzene ring can be converted into TNT.) in Billy's test tube. Billy's friends would be immediately included as co-conspirators to blow something up while stoned on some homemade drug.
As anybody who has tried to do chemistry anywhere outside strictly controlled and designated places knows, the message from the government is chrystal clear: don't do chemistry. And now they try to blame us for listening and obeying the law? How amusing.
Now if they posted an invitation here on Slashdot, I am sure their room would have been packed. It was such a show! :) All that was missing was an appreciative audience asking randomly generated questions and a bored couple making out in the corner.
More than thirty five years of cryptic commands!
Only on UNIX would you have commands like:
unw - update national weather
inw - initiate nuclear war
Think of it this way, once it happens, there will no longer be any endian issues to deal with! Once the Macs are little endian, the big endian user base will go pretty much to zero, and only in the servers.
> There have been a lot of "regime changes" which did not stem from violent revolution.
Name one. A peaceful regime change is only possible with the consent of the old regime.
> You don't even need to overthrow a government to change the fscking IP law.
Then what do we need to do, wise guy? Write to our congressman? Puh-lease! He'll just chuck it in the trash with all the other "nutcase letters". Write him a fat check? I'm not a millionare. Arrange a public protest? It will get totally ignored, even if you're lucky enough to get some press coverage. And it will definitely be forgotten a few days later. So tell me, what do we need to do?
> There's no system of government or economic power
> which hasn't evolved into something else over
> time or simply been overthrown.
The key word here is "overthrown". Do you really want to overthrow the government to get rid of software patents? To go against an entire army of well-trained soldiers who will want to kill your sorry ass? Remember, that's what you have to do to change the government. George Washington had to do it. Lenin had to do it. Even George Bush had to do it in Iraq.
> All by the common man.
Nope. The common man has never done anything significant. It was always the uncommon man with a lot of armed supporters that has changed the world.
I wonder if all the complaining generated by stories like this will ever amount to anything. Sure, it might "feel good" to denounce "evil corprorations" for stifling progress with their avalanche of patents, but what can a person do about it anyhow? Most people are not personally affected by the patent problem, or at least do not think they are, so any democratic way of protest will inevitably fail. Congressmen and senators will pay far more attention to those who can contribute to their campaigns than to a few free software weirdos who think (for some unfathomable to them reason) that patents are bad. Free speech is rather pointless if nobody cares, don't you think? Perhaps it might be a good idea to just abandon the entire "Your Rights Online" section, and forgo the flamewars. You can't change the world. Get used to it.
> FINDING OUT about bugs is almost as easy as with any other language.
The trouble is that you'll only find the ones that make something obvious happen. For each one of those there'll be a dozen subtle changes that you will have missed. Would you notice if all the rectangles on the screen were suddenly a pixel wider?
> The difference is that instead of the compiler
> throwing up an ID10T error for every
> misspelling, the program simply dosen't work correctly.
The point of having the compiler do it is that it is easy to verify that you are using only the variables you intended to use in the first place when you must declare them. Those who say predeclaration is cumbersome are those who want to ignore bugs in their program in order to write it faster. If you complain about idiot errors for every misspelling, you obviously make a lot of misspellings. Since each one of those is necessarily an error, you are simply postponing finding them until the program runs. Given that they will not all necessarily do something obvious, it becomes clear that you are simply allowing bugs to stay in the program. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is not always a good idea. Code should be clean. Period.
> here are languages where you can introduce a
> variable without deciding its type.
If you don't know what the variable is for, don't introduce it. Wait until you know. Maybe you won't need it at all.
> You'd have to "download" the state of every cell in the body
Definitely not every cell. You can lose an arm and still be yourself. If you suddenly woke up without both your legs, you would still be the same person. People also get artificial organs, including hearts, and remain themselves. So obviously, only the brain and its contents matter.
You mean something like this?
Have you tried running KDE on a low-end machine lately? Or Gnome? And I mean a 100MHz pentium here with 16M of RAM. Modern Linux desktop is certainly not much of a competitor with Windows 95 on that hardware.
> 'The hottest company right now --
> the one nobody thinks can do any wrong --
> may just be a one-hit wonder.'
You know, Microsoft just happens to be a two-hit wonder, making profits on Windows, Office and nothing else.