buff-a

I was thinking more along the lines that without the eye, the idea of light being projected in any direction at all has no meaning =) And then we could get started on the concepts of time and ordering.

But since I'm no longer a third year physicist contemplating the nature of existence, I just simulate light statistically. And sometimes that means doing things like "Photon Mapping", which is precisely raytracing, but the kind of raytracing you get when you know how to optimize an algorithm implemented as a computer program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment#Delayed_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mech...

>Ray tracing involves projecting light from the "eye" towards the scene, whereas in real life the light is being projected from the scene towards the eye.

I can't write a decent reply to this without having terrifying flashbacks of late night cramming for third year physics exams. But basically, raytracing's idea that "if it didn't hit your eye, who cares" is somewhat backed up by theory =)

Any good hacker will code around bullshit.

Of course there is evidence: the stock market wasn't invented until 1999. Before 1999, noone dared buy stocks because they were afraid they couldn't sell it later. Its historical fact.

This [1] was a joke.

This [2] was for real.

  [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qi_AAqi0RZM#%21

  [2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/03/how-casual-sexism-put-sqoot-in.php

I think you hit the nail on the head. The number of brogrammer entrepreneurs out there is huge. They are equivalent to Big Jims Baha XTReme Racing Shop that slaps lifted suspension on other people's 2WD Tundras.

But then there are a few start-ups who are designing and building fuel efficient diesel engines, or fully electric cars built from the ground up. These guys will absolutely know thermodynamics etc.

So if someone built "mycollegematehavingsex.com" and got 40,000 sign-ups via launchrock, who fucking cares. If they made twitter-for-squirrels and got 10,000,000 active users before the Great Nut Famine of 2015 killed the company, then there may conversations to be had.

Because its actually:

file.rb:

  require 'stuff'

  class foo
    def something
      alert = UIAlertView._alloc \
        ._initWithTitle _S("Hello"),
        :message, _S("I'm MobiRuby"),
        :delegate, nil,
        :cancelButtonTitle, _S("I know!"),
        :otherButtonTitles, nil
      alert._show
    end
  end

file.h

  #import <stuff>
  @interface foo
    -(void)something:(BOOL)what andthen:(CGRect)thisthing
  @end

  #import <otherstuff>
  #import <yetmorestuff>
  #import "file.h"
  #import <oh shit is this in the right place?.h>
  #import <i think this is ok>
  #define SOME_HACK
  #import <this better come after that define up there.h>

  @implementation foo

  -(void)something:(BOOL)what butthen:(CGRect)thisthing
  {
   alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] 
                initWithTitle:@"Hello"
                message:@"I'm ObjC"
                delegate:nil
                cancelButtonTitle:@"I know!"
                otherButtonTitles:nil];
     [alert show];
  }

1. Don't Repeat Yourself. Computer have more memory than 1986.

2. Don't forget to turn on warnings-as-errors, otherwise that code above will compile and then break because (of course you noticed) the method declaration doesn't actually match the declaration but the compiler doesn't care because its a brutal hack.

>Sounds like a reason not to buy a 2015 Honda.

Ah yes, the "free market" in action. That has worked so well for us in protecting our privacy, as evidenced by the plethora of commercial software with EULAs that respects the user's rights.

Or are you saying Richard Stallman is going to build us a car next?

Here's how it works:

1. Government is constitutionally forbidden from collecting this information.

2. Government observes that private corporations can collect this information.

3. Government grants private corporations immunity from prosecution and civil liability if it collects this information and hands it to the government. Threatens prosecution and civil liability if corporations fails to collect information and "something bad happens".

4. US Supreme Court pretends this is acceptable by ignoring "intent" and "consequences" and then goes on to uphold "intent" and "consequences" in every other case before it.

Honda Civic 2015 EULA:

23.1.23.44 (Page 198 of 301) "Your use of this vehicle grants us your irrevocable and permanent consent to download, transmit, or otherwise obtain the information contained in the onboard data recorder, and to share that data with third parties, including but not limited to law enforcement (without a court order), and marketing companies."

  * A wiki.
  * Google Docs.
  * Assembla.

"suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over."

A lesson for us all.

Like I said, its a book about dogma and cherry-picked studies. The dogma and studies were wrong. So if you want books about broken dogma and studies, read Code Complete.

Have to agree on Code Complete. The first edition was a load of waterfall bollocks and I couldn't believe anyone wrote code like that. It actively put me off a "proper" programming career. The second edition, apparently, reduced that shite, but by that point I wondered "if the author is just reproducing dogma, why bother?"

Sounds like someone said, "Make me a language that is hard to reverse engineer using IDA Pro".

But of course, to be allowed textual format for asset metadata, you have to buy the pro version. Or did they change that in 3.5?

A self-employed person can deduct health expenses against gross income. You are correct in that COBRA cannot be deducted in this way. But it can still be taken as an itemized deduction. I'm not a tax accountant, but my tax accountant is. Another gotcha: if you're taking the 60% markdown on COBRA from Obama, then no, you're not allowed to write it off at all, but I wouldn't be complaining about that.

If you lose your job you may have to pay a lot more (COBRA) for a limited time

No, you'll pay the same as you were paying. Its just that before, you thought you were being paid $100,000 when in fact you were being paid $120,000, and out of that came your health insurance and the other (more-than-) half of your social security and income taxes.

>PS. For that matter, Xcode 4 is not radical enough too. We are still typing a lot of boring cruft ... But it's a huge difference with Xcode 3 and other IDEs out there.

I can only conclude that you have absolutely no concrete experience of the state of other tools and languages. Eclipse, IntelliJ and Visual Studio with Resharper are lightyears ahead of XCode 4 when it comes to assisted programming.

Here's the clue: all of these tools expose the code DOM to tool writers. Even if Intellij didn't have over 100 different ways to refactor code, I could write my own. Fuck, I wrote a Resharper plugin that loaded javascript file to manipulate the dom and pass it to StringTemplate [1] The javascript file then decides based on what is at the cursor which templates to display when the user hits Alt-Enter. Think for a minute about what has to happen under the hood for that to happen. Then think what else is possible. Then realize that its not there in XCode 4.

[1] http://www.stringtemplate.org/

Most programmers fall into one of two categories: console editor (e.g. vim) or IDE. The IDE camp includes Visual Studio, Eclipse, IntelliJ, SlickEdit, NetBeans, MonoDevelop, etc.

These IDEs have an almost identical design language. I am at home in any of them and picking up new ones is pretty straightforward.

XCode 4 on the other hand has a completely different design language, and one that is limited in what it can do, but verbose in achieving it.

Limited, for example, because while I have a 17" MBP and a 23" monitor, I can't have the Project Navigator open at the same time as the Error Navigator. I can't view code and disassembly. I can't have code side-by-side in a split view.

Verbose, for example, because when editing a Scheme, it opens a custom, modal dialog, and if I press "Manage Schemes..." it rolls up and then rolls down another custom, modal dialog. If I then hit "+" it opens another modal dialog on top of my modal dialog. I thought we got rid of this kind of shit with VB6.

I've built a complicated IDE or two, and every time there was a custom, modal dialog, it was because we were rushed for time. Good non-modal design requires thought and effort. Flexible UI requires thought and effort. A simple, powerful design language requires thought and effort.

I would put money on XCode 4 not so much being "designed" as "rushed". Or perhaps "designed with lofty goals" - and one of those being "not like any other IDE, so that programmers learning on XCode will be completely thrown by any other tool".

Gosh, I know. That's awful. Its much better that hg allows people to type hg mv, rather than forcing lazy people to modify the .bashrc file so that they can type "ga" instead of "git add".

I mean, I know "hg mv" is actually longer than "ga", but by golly, expecting unix shell users to know about the alias system built into the operating system is just the kind of elitism we can expect from linus.

"Every time you throw in something that seems to work, find out why it works."

This. Especially for bugs. If I don't know why its fixed, I haven't fixed the cause - I've fixed a symptom.

Half of the duty "solicitors" are cops. You don't have to actually be a solicitor in the UK. You just have to pass a test. So retired cops take the test and earn themselves beer money (on top of their pension) to work with their mates.

"You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but I must warn you that if you fail to mention any fact which you rely on in your defence in court, your failure to take this opportunity to mention it may be treated in court as supporting any relevant evidence against you"

F.U.D. made law. Well done England.

Fortunately England still requires a Jury, and Jury's still acquit people despite the police and prosecution spouting outright lies from the moment a person is arrested. If you naively believe that the police do not do so, see if anyone in your circle of friends is a defense lawyer/solicitor who has represented people at police stations and have a candid conversation with them.

If you get arrested in the UK (or anywhere) shut up and say only "I invoke my right to silence. Get me my lawyer."

A friend sends me a link to a 60 Minutes segment she feels it's important I watch. I'm on an iPad -- not that it matters ... There is no alternative -- no way to click through to the video or text that I was after

Somewhere like this: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398478n ?

...

<div id="flashvideocontent">

So, no there is no way to click through to the video you were after because you are on an iPad, and iPad's do not have Adobe Flash. That means if you want to see the link that your friend sent, then you are going to have to download an app. Blame Apple and Adobe, not the website.

Love it. I can't stand IB.

Reliability is an issue for me, but in my workstation I need speed more than I need five 9's. So I have a Vertex 2 and a 750Gb HDD in the DVD space using an OptiBay [1]. Time Machine backs up the SSD to the HDD with room to spare. I have a bunch of "old" disks that I can drop in and start using immediately (the HDD in the bay is the original boot drive in fact). And all my code is in remote repos if I lose the whole thing. I find I'm regularly (every 9 months or so) upgrading my disk, and in fact the Vertex 2 is probably the longest I've gone without upgrading.

[1] http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

I apologize for calling you an unethical shill.

This AnandTech?

"Back in October SandForce announced that it had discovered a firmware issue that resulted in unexpected BSODs on SF-2281 drives on certain platforms. Why it took SandForce several months to discover the bug that its customers had been reporting for a while is a separate issue entirely. SandForce quickly pushed out the firmware to OCZ and other partners. Our own internal testing revealed that the updated firmware seemed to have cured the infamous BSOD."

Yay!

"As luck would have it, our own Brian Klug happened to come across an unexpected crash with his 240GB non-Intel SF-2281 based SSD two weeks ago when he migrated it to another machine. The crash was an F4 BSOD, similar in nature to the infamous BSOD issue from last year."

Oh. This was written 2/6/12.

...

"Whatever Intel has done with the 520's firmware seems to have fixed problems that still remain in the general SF-2281 firmware."

...

"While it's nearly impossible to prove most of this, the fact that we're still able to reproduce a BSOD on the latest publicly available SF-2281 firmware but not on the SF-2281 based Intel SSD 520 does say a lot about what you're paying for with this drive."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/intel-ssd-520-review-cher...

17.1: Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user’s prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used

3.3.9 You and Your Applications may not collect user or device data without prior user consent, and then only to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application, or to serve advertising. You may not use analytics software in Your Application to collect and send device data to a third party.

So. These apps will be removed from the app store immediately, yes?

It is my understanding that a person's address book can be a trade secret, and is protected by law.

OCZ Vertex 3's have been pounded for reliability problems[4], so much so that they've just started a special deal on Newegg [2]. And coincidentally, I'm sure, a jolly story about "a machine's view of time" replete with olde-worlde charm, shows up on the front page of a major tech site, and oh, by the way, let me end by saying "I use OCZ Vertex 3's"...

Tom's Hardware suggests that Crucial's m4 series are faster than OCZ Vertex 3's, and don't come with a horrendous approval rating. A 256Gb m4 is $319 on newegg [1].

Intel's new 520 SSDs appear to have given them a proper SSD instead of the floppy-disc-like performance of the 510.[3] Though its $499 for 240gb. [5]

All drives have failures, and while it sucks to be the one that gets the dodgy drive, there will always be someone who can post "it didn't work for me". However, the OCZ Vertex have an unusually high number of "It didn't work for me" reviews. Is it a stitch-up? It'd be easy for "a motivated third party" to buy 27 drives off newegg and post negative reviews. It'd also be in OCZ's interest to fan the flames of doubt on the SF2281 as they are releasing new SSDs based on their own, newly-purchased, Indilinx controllers. But taking off the tin-foil hat, it does look like Vertex 3's have problems.

[1] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...

[2] http://promotions.newegg.com/OCZ/022912/index.html?cm_sp=Cat...

[3] http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-520-sandforce-review-bench...

[4] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-227-707&#...

[5] http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167...