Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Submission + - C++ Standards Contributor Expelled For 'The Undefined Behavior Question' 23

suntzu3000 writes: Andrew Tomazos, a long-time contributor to the ISO C++ standards committee, recently published a technical paper titled The Undefined Behavior Question . The paper explores the semantics of undefined behavior in C++ and examines this topic in the context of related research. However, controversy arose regarding the paper's title.

Some critics pointed out similarities between the title and Karl Marx's 1844 essay On The Jewish Question , as well as the historical implications of the Jewish Question, a term associated with debates and events leading up to World War II. This led to accusations that the title was "historically insensitive."

In response to requests to change the title, Mr. Tomazos declined, stating that "We cannot allow such an important word as 'question' to become a form of hate speech." He argued that the term was used in its plain, technical sense and had no connection to the historical context cited by critics.

Following this decision, Mr. Tomazos was expelled from the Standard C++ Foundation, and his membership in the ISO WG21 C++ Standards Committee was revoked.

Submission + - SPAM: Chinese Satellite Grappled Another And Pulled It Out Of Orbit

schwit1 writes: “A Chinese satellite was observed grabbing another satellite and pulling it out of its normal geosynchronous orbit and into a “super-graveyard drift orbit.” The maneuver raises questions about the potential applications of these types of satellites designed to maneuver close to other satellites for inspection or manipulation and adds to growing concerns about China’s space program overall.”
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Why do people feel the need to tear down (Score 1) 152

For something to be a major milestone towards opening up new opportunities, there is a need for various influential people and powerful people to say that it's not possible. If a large group of influential and powerful people already agree that something will probably work, then it's probably just an incremental improvement, and one of those influential people would have already made it happen, or be working on it.

Breakthroughs are usually first seen as fallacies and follies. If they are not initially seen that way, it's probably not a breakthrough.

I'm not saying that all fallacies and follies are breakthroughs, but it's a necessary phase for it to be considered that way. All breakthroughs were first broadly considered to be fallacies and follies at one time.

People can't fly, they aren't meant to, flying is for the birds. Starting a car company in the 20th century, and having it make electric cars is doomed from the start. A rocket company startup is doomed when it's trying to make rockets that come back and land vertically, and will never lift payloads cheaper and more reliably than the incumbents. All those things had been broadly considered proven to be bad ideas that will fail. People tend to have short memories and have forgotten how negatively those ideas were perceived originally.

Yet, they happened and changed everything.

Comment Re:You don't understand (Score 1) 205

Take off your rose colored glasses for minute. First of all, no-reply emails are a means to notify a customer of something. They are one-way.

I am writing to "notify" you that any business using with this attitude is run by shitty people and deserves to fail. You don't get to dictate what I'm "meant" to do!

Please direct all responses to no-reply@gofuckyourself.com

Comment Re:And one other thing... (Score 1) 205

Sometimes when I have a choice of companies to buy a product from, Ill send an email or fill out the web form asking the same question to multiple companies.

And that's the other asinine thing about bullshit web forms: they force you to send the message to one recipient at a time. As a slightly different example, say I want to write my Congressmen about something. Instead of just writing an email and putting three names in the To: field, now I have to answer a slightly disjoint set of (potentially) invasive questions three times over. It's not that it's hard or even that time-consuming; it's that it's galling because I shouldn't have to jump through hoops like that.

Comment Re:You're nobody. (Score 1) 205

Think about it - if you were running a very large company, would you rather: a) have a catch-all email that runs the gamut of issues, feedback, etc. b) have a way to submit categorized feedback via web forms?

If I were running a very large company, I would want everyone to be forced to just give me their money instead of having to go through the trouble of actually selling something to them in return.

But I wouldn't be entitled to that -- just like how companies are not entitled to be able to dictate communications terms to their customers, either!

Comment Re:When will Tesla lose the name "Autopilot"? (Score 4, Insightful) 126

People using this feature freak me out when I'm riding my motorcycle into San Francisco. The normal behavior of phone-users is to brake, speed up, slow down, bounce off of the lane markers (Driving by Braille) and generally endanger those of us on two wheels.

Tesla drivers? There they are, tapping away on the fucking phone with their eyes down and the car is gliding along, centered in the lane and steady, station-keeping a safe distance form the car in front of it.

Please, more like this.

As far as people blaming cars for their own stupidity, I'll trust the engineers at Tesla, thanks. Our Audi 5000 didn't take off by itself and neither do Teslas.

Slashdot Top Deals

HOST SYSTEM NOT RESPONDING, PROBABLY DOWN. DO YOU WANT TO WAIT? (Y/N)

Working...