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11 years ago
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on: Panel: Systems Programming in 2014 and Beyond [video]
Basically, it's Bjarne Stroustrup reciting the history of C++, mentioning the principles on which the language stood both back then and now, and also the (technical and social) problems that occurred both back then and now.
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11 years ago
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on: How Different Cultures Understand Time
1. It is indeed disrespectful to consciously "taking up other people’s time" (the Chinese way) without their consent.
2. The real world works asynchronously. Either if you are a jerk having no regard for other people's time, or you are a very punctual person getting out of your way to be on time for others (by coming earlier), there is wasted time to be expected. One can prepare for that and act like a functioning piece in a loosely coupled system, or to just blame others.
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11 years ago
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on: How Different Cultures Understand Time
"It starts out as fun, a game in pre-school, but then..."
For some of us (like me a few other subjects that I remember) the conforming game was never fun. To force someone to wake up and then to sync to an activity program, and then to sleep some programmed hours, and so on... it was necessary maybe, but I never recall it to be felt as "fun".
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12 years ago
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on: Beyond Gravity: the complex quest to take out our orbital trash
Actually, nowadays a system of ground stations and high altitudes atmospheric floating balloons can be made to serve the very same purpose. The ground stations would serve for triangulation of balloon's position and those at their turn could serve the rest of the service-consumer base. As a bonus, the balloons would be obviously more manageable compared to satellites, the cost of taking them into operation would be of course much lower (no more atmospheric pollution), and be disposed cleanly without causing the problem discussed in the article.
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12 years ago
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on: Python 3 can revive Python
To have Python 2 and 3, and then CPython and PyPy and all kind of other similar flavors of the same thing is not really in line with `there should be only one obvious way to do it' don't you think? Do we see something that needs to be fixed in there?
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12 years ago
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on: The Trade of the Century: When George Soros Broke the British Pound
The British Government had DMs, that's what they sold trying to keep their currency at fixed rate. You say they should have kept Deutschmarks to sell them later for what? For depreciated sterling pounds? It doesn't make sense, the only thing that a government has plenty of is its own currency. Governments are "rich" in their own printed stamps, the challenge is to keep those stamps valuable. That's what the British Government was trying to do.
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12 years ago
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on: The Trade of the Century: When George Soros Broke the British Pound
"The treasuries are denominated in dollars: If China decided to dump all the treasuries on the market at once (driving US interest rates through the roof, and the price of the T's down), the US gov't would just buy it's debt back for pennies on the dollar."
Buy with what? With more printed dollars? When someone so large as China starts dumping cheap U.S. bonds (dollars) on the wild pulling down currency's value, it won't be the only acting player. Nobody wishes to loose value by holding to a rapidly depreciating currency, so expect a shopping spree all over the world. It all comes down to faith. Small players can't trigger such big events, but China could. It won't matter that U.S. debt problem gets solved if its currency looses monopoly.
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12 years ago
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on: Xeer
As I see it, the western legal system which relies on written analytical laws appears indeed as an "alternative", but western judges do for example make use of judicial precedents too. This system is based on a set of principles that have just a lesser use in western legal system.
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12 years ago
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on: Xeer
Aside from the law of nature, I remarked the use of precedents as a co-basis for juridical mediation. Although this is something used all over the world outside Somalia (on a secondary role and usually only in an informal manner), its interesting to know it to work somewhere in real-life as a primary law principle.
contulluipeste
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12 years ago
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on: Inside the Soviet Army (1982)
That ideology was just a tool to prop up a system of occupation. What really happened behind all that was an ongoing russification all over the Soviet Union, effects of which make themselves visible in an outstanding manner today in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Latvia, and other countries. Yeah, it was pretty that red color from outside, but living under it was a nightmare (unless you were reaaally stupid, in which case the system took care of you).
contulluipeste
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12 years ago
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on: Inside the Soviet Army (1982)
Giving it all up was just the "equalizing" part. Being incriminated, prosecuted and sentenced for having employed in some way other people's work was the real face of the system.
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12 years ago
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on: If Switzerland is attacked, it is literally rigged to blow up.
The idea of Ukraine independent of Russia is new. It's pretty safe to say that the entire infrastructure in that country was built under Moscow's supervision. It was inconceivable to even think about a plan of defense against an invasion from Russia.
contulluipeste
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12 years ago
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on: Sharp Develop – Open Source Alternative to Visual Studio
At least for C++ native development, a development tool comparison with Visual Studio is just misplaced. Alex Ionescu, a ReactOS NT kernel developer, in one question at a Montreal conference last year was asked about the operating system's attained level of compatibility for applications in general and about Visual Studio in particular. His answer was that Visual Studio will be the last piece, as it so intricately fused into the OS internals. It would be insane to pretend to be able to compete (in every aspect) against something like Visual Studio which can use undocumented resources not available to anyone but to Microsoft's own toy!
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12 years ago
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on: European Parliament passes net neutrality law
It never stops to amaze me - what does have Europe that other places don't?
...anyway, I'm just glad and thankful to be born in Europe!
contulluipeste
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12 years ago
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on: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
"Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer"
That's a disappointing choice! Why not something more like LEON or OpenRISC?
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12 years ago
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on: ReactOS Community Edition
Windows 98 is not NT.
contulluipeste
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12 years ago
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on: How Animals See the World
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12 years ago
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on: How Animals See the World
But it was informing enough for others (like me) less informed than you. Actually I knew about faster perception of time on insects and probably many other sparse details, but this article does its share to provide information in an accessible an attractive way. Give it credit for that (along with your criticism).
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12 years ago
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on: How Animals See the World
I'm surprised to find out that human vision is among the sharpest. I didn't knew humans outperform over other animals with something else other than brain and long-distance running.
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12 years ago
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on: How Animals See the World
Interesting. Reading about tetrachromatic birds and infrared-vision snakes couldn't help but wonder if there is an animal out there with ability to (naturally) sense the whole spectrum. Mantis Shrimp has however, a bee-like compound eye and I guess it suffers from the same resolution-penalty.
