Java was a terrible resource pig when I last used it extensively, over a decade ago. Has that changed? Took lots of memory, and yes, it was slow.

Ok, seems that has not changed much.

As for that optimization benefit you extol, what's stopping the C++ compiler from querying the machine and making optimizations based on platform? Isn't that the whole point of a source code Linux distro like Gentoo?

Yeah, this story smells like Slashvertising. If, as claimed in another recent Slashvertisement for Java, it is such a simple language to understand, an easy language to program, one that lets programmers "get things done", why do employers strongly prefer programmers who have 5 or 10 or more years of experience in Java? It's a curly brace OOP language with tons and tons of its own libraries. It doesn't play nice with libraries written in other languages, it mostly ignores them. A lot of resources have been poured into enabling Java to inhabit a world of its own, and it seems now with hindsight that was not the best direction to go. One of the biggest improvements over C++ was the propaganda that unlike C++, Java doesn't use pointers. That's a misrepresentation. What they really mean is that Java ditched the ugly C pointer syntax. That, and this object code that is supposed to run on any platform, making Java super portable, especially designed for browsers, were the main selling points of Java. But that was 15 plus years ago. What has Java done lately? Stagnated while other languages press ahead with advances?

Also, that is not a "youth club". It looks like a regular hackerspace.

Measure. It.

I spent a very, very long week with developers and network architects arguing about the subtle disrepencies of their layouts and software and how their software works. And eventually, I took actual measurements and showed that for far less money, using the simplest tools provided the faster solution at a tiny fraction of the complexity and cost when you _actually measured things_.

This has been a consistent lesson throughout my career. People theorize and postulate endlessly with complex analysys and essentially fraudulent testcases, and don't examine it in the real world.

Just. Measure. It.

I don't carry a torch for Rand Paul, but I am grateful for his act of resistance.

You ask what effect is achieved by his resisting. I will reply, unromantically, almost none.

We could argue about public education (did he really reach anyone new who doesn't already know the Patriot Act is evil?) and about self-aggrandizement (was he merely campaigning?).

To my way of thinking, we are living in a time when our votes count for little, our representatives do little for us, and against this condition of a democratic people isolated from control of the state, a sickening reversal of control is instead true: the security state is ascendant and it is our freedom that is waning.

If my apprehension of our position vis-a-vis the state is correct, this means that most protest will be reduced to a minor symbolic key. Its value, then, is in what it symbolizes, and I would say a filibuster on this point of authoritarian government power symbolizes a refusal to surrender casually. A refusal to be cheapened to the point of not caring; a defiance.

Quantifying such things is easy. What is the net benefit? Again, almost zero. But not entirely. A spark is kindled, or if you prefer, a flicker is kept going in a small and dull flame, with the hope that later we may fan it into something bolder and more valuable.

The value of this filibuster is sustaining hope.

Philae did not have to apply significant force to the comet itself, especially applying consistent force as the comet itself melts, and to consistently apply force to the same side of the comet. Even if a solar sail is applied purely as a solar powered brake, the tumbling of a comet or asteroid will require that the attachment points be able to _spin_, and not to tangle the shrouds of the solar sail on the tumbling object itself. If the spin of the object has an axis on the side away from the Sun, it should be possible to attach there.

There are profound issues of how to attach robustly and avoid fracturing a comet, leaving a potentially deadly remainder still on target for Earth, if it is a porous, frozen object. I'd anticipate significatnt sublimation and thawing on even the backside if the solar sail does not reflect _away_ from the object. But the idea provides far more available thrust and control than draping coverings directly on a tumbling asteroid or comet.

This guy would be -any- yearbook adviser's dream to have. Look at his photos...they're incredible. He gets in close to his subject, captures the action vividly, and makes very good use of lighting. And for a sophomore? Simply amazing.

This district is handling the situation all wrong. Regardless of whether or not they can or cannot make a claim to the ownership of the photos, they should be lifting this young man up for the talent he has and putting him on a pedestal. Enter him into national photography competitions. Get national recognition for his work, and put the trophies in your trophy case. And make him proud of his talent. He deserves it.

Suing him? Simply ridiculous.

I decided to log in for this one.

OP asked a question. You obviously do not know the answer because you just made a stupid, insulting reply. Perhaps if you don't know the answer, don't reply. I don't know the answer either, but would be interested in knowing the answer as well and would have asked the question had the AC not already asked. But instead of an answer you just shit all over it and are apparently offended that it got asked. Get over yourself and realize that some people aren't afraid to ask questions when they are ignorant... you might want to try it.

I'm afraid "log jam" typically means getting a penis stuck during anal sex. Feces do not "compact" from anal sex: unless you've already got other problems. they're not that solid, and intestinal walls are somewhat elastic. They _squish_.

>What was the solution in the 80s that you are referring to?

Ethernet.

Either it has wifi or an "RJ45" jack on the back or it's crap.

--
BMO

...it's not furry.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

--
BMO

Yeah, I thought "Internet in jeopardy" was over the top. It's some serious hindsight to complain that decisions made 20 years ago are screwing up software today. There are so many decisions from the early days we're stuck with now, why are these so special? Because it's security?

The PC has tons of cruft, such as the hard drive partitioning scheme, boot code, the layers and layers of hardware discovery, and memory organization. The platform has been updated repeatedly, with many hard limits raised repeatedly. Hard drive partitions were limited to 10M, then 16M, 33M, 134M, 528M, 2G, 3.2G, 4G, and more, and the source of these limitations were things maximum allowed sector counts, MS-DOS limits, BIOS limits. One of the trickier ones was a 8G limit on the location of the kernel. The boot partition could be larger, so long as the kernel ended up in the first 8G, as the boot code in the BIOS could not seek deeper into the hard drive than that.

For another stellar example of shortsighted programming, there was the Y2K problem. Many programs made in the 90s failed that test. One program I fixed went from 1999 to 1910. What did they do to make it roll over to 1910? I would have thought 1900 the obvious erroneous year to compute. What they did was convert (current year - 1900) to a string, then take the first two characters, and stick a "19" in front of them. So, 2000-1900 = 100, and the first 2 characters are "10". I didn't have the source code, but I was able to modify the binary to do mod 100 instead, then found the "19" and change that to a "20". It'll break again in 2100, rolling over to 2000, but I very much doubt that software will still be in use then.

You would think so, and you'd be right. Except that politicians beg (or rather: insist) to differ. Same here in NL, downloading was made illegal but the taxes remained in place. Over here they even renamed it to the "home copy levy". There's a levy on all storage media (hard disks, blank DVDs), which is for "compensating authors and artists for copies made of music and movies from legal sources for private use". And since downloading stuff from the internet is now illegal, this means that this fee is levied solely on CDs and DVDs that you already own. Fuckers.

We're doing poorly even by European standards:
* €1.70 / l (about $7.20 / gallon)
* About €800 - €1200 in road tax per year (regardless of milage, and this is per vehicle; we own several. There are some special exemptions for old-timers though)
* VAT (21%) + a special car "CO2" tax on purchase of new cars. For some cars, the VAT + CO2 tax exceeds the factory price of the car.


We may be a small and densely populated country, but as one clever blogger remarked: "We do not have too many cars in this country, but too many people who hate them". That's also reflected in the fact that our roads, though generally in good condition, take ages to build. Between planning a road and the ground being broken, there's zoning, environmental impact studies, protests, court cases, etc. One case: a very short extension on one highway that will provide tremendous relief in congestion and pollition around a major city, is oonly now being built after planners decided to go ahead... over 40 *years* ago.

I think we should be able to trust our government with such data under a few conditions:
1) There should be a reasonable balance between the privacy intrusion and the benefits derived thereof
2) Data security and access restrictions to that data should be in line with the sensitivity of that data
3) The data should in principle only be used in ways for which it was collected, with a few limited and explicitly stipulated exceptions (such as law enforcement having access to subsets of the data with a court order). And always: not compelled by law to share means *forbidden* to share, no data may ever be volunteered.
4) Data retention should not be longer than needed for the purpose for which the data was collected.
5) There must be appropriate oversight to enforce these rules, with trustworthy audits and real consequences for those responsible in case of transgressions.

In many cases I do not in principle have issues with the goverment obtaining certain private data about me. However, in almost all cases, the reasonable conditions listed above are not met. In most cases, *none* of them are met.

In any case, you ought to be happy that your government at least set some limits on how and when this data can be used. When my country's government proposed a similar road pricing scheme, privacy was not addressed at all, on the contrary. No limits, any government agency would be allowed to use the data, and retention was pretty much forever. Politicians were already floating some alternative uses for the data: the police could use it to track suspicious movement, and the tax office could use it to catch fraudsters (such as catching people making private use of a company car and not declaring the milage, the way they recently did by requesting and receiving data from pay-by-smartphone parking providers). If our government sees no issue in buying data that was stolen from Swiss banks in order to catch undeclared offshore savings, they will certainly not stop short of abusing data they already own.

What if this pile of crap is the *only* surviving archive after 200 years?