Yog-Yogguth's Friends

Trump's superior management style

Posted by khallow on Saturday November 12 2016, @11:25AM (#2136)
10 Comments

Trump has achieved the politically optimal level of expectations - the lowest possible while still getting elected. So now, if he only kills five million Jews instead of six, he's beating expectations. If we survive the global nuclear war that he instigates in the near future, he's beating expectations. And if the Earth doesn't have 400 C surface temperatures in four years, everyone will be saying "Hey, he's not as bad as I thought he'd be."

You have to admire a person who knows just how many 3am tweets that they need to spew in order to barely get elected president of this great country.

Moderation Today

Posted by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 09 2016, @04:19PM (#2134)
18 Comments

So, I've been sitting here watching the Spam moderations page and the mod-bombs page post-election thinking someone's gonna get butthurt and abuse moderation. It has yet to happen. Kudos to everyone for managing to restrain themselves. You guys make me fucking proud, so I'll leave you with this little bit of humor on an otherwise tense day:

Britain: Brexit is the most shocking thing a country will do this year.

America: Hold my beer...

Canada's immigration Web site is crashing.

Posted by butthurt on Wednesday November 09 2016, @03:08PM (#2133)
6 Comments

Canada's main immigration web site, www.cic.gc.ca, has been crashing, according to The Globe and Mail and USA Today. The latter published an article called "How to move to Canada" after the problems began to manifest themselves. When I tried to connect, I received the message:

Server Error
500 - Internal server error.
There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

For crying out loud

Posted by jdavidb on Wednesday November 09 2016, @12:57PM (#2132)
6 Comments

Can we agree now that maybe subjecting 4-8 years of your future to the results of a popularity contest is a stupid idea?

Don't blame me; I voted to leave the office vacant. If you voted, you have no right to complain. You agreed to live by the results. Why is everybody so upset? I thought this was the greatest system ever!

Strange people in ballot booths handing out swords is no basis for a system of government.

Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts - textfile

Posted by number6 on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:59PM (#2131)
2 Comments

Some BBC Election Stories

Posted by takyon on Tuesday November 08 2016, @05:04PM (#2130)
18 Comments

US election: Trump and the rise of the alt-right

US election: Black Republicans seek converts in Trump's 'war zone'

In pictures: Clinton and Trump through the years

US election: The German comparing Trump's campaign to Hitler's

Bailed out banks still getting bailed out!!!

Posted by Gaaark on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:13AM (#2129)
0 Comments

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/07/taxpayers-are-still-bailing-out-wall-street-eight-years-later/

Banks still getting paid to bail out homeownders are not bailing out some homeowners?!?!?!

Velly intelesting!

Use this as a post if you want.

Randstad Monster.com Spam

Posted by GungnirSniper on Saturday November 05 2016, @06:44AM (#2126)
1 Comment

Randstad's 400 million dollar purchase of Monster.com really has made awful into bloody awful.

RE: Fantastic Opportunities at Uno Pizzeria and Grill!
From: "Uno Pizzeria Careers"
Hi Gungnir!
I reached out to you about a potential job opportunity, but haven't heard back yet. Perhaps you're not interested, but I understand how inboxes get flooded these days, so I figured I'd try and contact you one more time before I close out your candidacy.
Just to re-cap, my name is Dan Brown and I work for monster.com. We are currently partnered with Uno’s Pizzeria and Grill to find a variety of different positions, part time OR full time in their LocalCity/LocalTown locations. I pulled your resume from our website and was wondering if you wanted to have a conversation about a potential job opportunity!
They are looking for the following positions:
- Experienced Server (1+ year). - Experienced Bartender (1+ Year). - Host, Cook, Dishwasher or Prep/Salad no experience required!
Let me know when you get a chance to have a quick chat!
Regards,
Daniel Brown [[monster.com]]
Letter Value: 6xHex-7xHex

How can I take your bullshit recruiting firm or Monster.com with anything less than complete disregard when:
You're faking the RE: in the subject line.
You're trying to get my attention with for jobs outside of my field that require zero experience.
You're using a fake "Daniel Brown" to sign the email.

Programming Languages: Genealogy and Beginner's Guide (1985)

Posted by number6 on Tuesday November 01 2016, @02:48PM (#2124)
0 Comments

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ********************************************** Programming Languages: Genealogy and Beginner's Guide by Les Bell (1985) ********************************************** No matter how much you pound on the keyboard and curse the inventor of microprocessors, there is only one way to get a computer to do what you want, and that's to program it. You give it its directions and turn it loose, and hopefully you will be pleased with the result. The trouble is that, advertising to the contrary notwithstanding, microcomputers are not smart enough to understand simple English, even of the kind used to communicate with under-tens: "Tie your coat up or you'll freeze", or "Don't do that or I'll thump you". Being a bit deficient in the brains department, computers force us to make some accommodations in their favour, so we must communicate with them in their particular languages, in much the same way as one does not throw the jargon of quantum mechanics into a conversation with a five-year-old. Computer languages are generally organised to be a sub-set of conventional English (although I once encountered an IBM 5100 which spoke BASIC with a French accent), so there are no new words to be learnt and the coding is not too mind-boggling. Although English is a general-purpose language, most computer languages are designed to solve specific classes of problems. For example, COBOL is designed specifically for commercial accounting applications, while LISP is primarily a list processing language with strong ties to artificial intelligence applications. ====== THE GENEALOGY OF LANGUAGES Take a look at the languages family tree (Figure below), and you'll get some idea of the development of computer languages and how later developments derive from the earlier ones. At the root of the tree is assembly language, or assembler, which is a symbolic representation of the instructions actually executed by the computer CPU. There are, therefore, as many assembly languages as there are CPU designs. The languages family tree shows how today's high-level languages "grew" out of Assembler, which is just a symbolic representation of the instructions actually executed by the computer's CPU. Since Assembler is somewhat tedious to write, many attempts have been made, working from different requirements, to create languages based on English yet structured efficiently for the computer. ============================================================================================== (LOGO) | | (C) (Smalltalk) (Prolog) | \ | | \--------\ | | \ | (B) (Clascal) (Modula II) (Ada) (Data base langs) (PL/I Subset G) (PL/M) (LISP) \ \ | / | \ | / / \-----\ \---\ | /----/ | \----\ | /--------/ / \ \ | / | \ | / /------------------------/ \ \ | / | \ | / / (FORTH) (BCPL) (Pascal) (ALGOL 68) (PL/I) (APL) (BASIC) (PILOT) \ | / / | \ \ / / \---\ | /----/ / | \ \ / / \ | / /-------------/ | \---\ \ / /-----/ \ | / / | \ \ / / (ALGOL 60) (COBOL) (FORTRAN) | | (AUTOCODER) | | (Assembler) - Figure: Languages family tree - ============================================================================================== Each line of assembly language is translated into one machine instruction. It follows from this that writing assembly language is a tedious and unproductive chore, since even the simplest tasks may require several hundred lines of Assembler. During the [1950s], programmers at IBM realised this and set about designing a better way of writing computer programs. Since operations like addition were always performed the same way, they thought it would be possible to get the machine itself to translate a line like X = X + 1 into the appropriate assembly language code. Indeed, it was possible, and the result was Autocoder, which was thought of at the time less as a Language than as a way of pre-coding instructions. Autocoder is now of historical interest; its main contribution was in supplying technology and experience to FORTRAN, which is generally regarded as the first real computer language. FORTRAN (which stands for FORmula TRANslator) was developed at IBM by John Backus. At the time, computers were mainly used for number-crunching in scientific calculations or for very large commercial accounting tasks, and FORTRAN was designed to meet the needs of the scientific and engineering community. FORTRAN still survives today; it's probably more popular than ever. Of course, it has been overhauled a few times since 1960, and the well-written programs coded in the latest FORTRAN-77 bear only passing resemblance to their earliest counterparts. At the same time, the US Department of Defence was increasingly using computers for tasks like payroll accounting and quartermaster's inventories, and the specialists at DOD were concerned that every computer they bought came with its own language. As programmers went from project to project and machine to machine, they had to learn new languages. The search was on to design a new language. The result was COBOL (Commercial and Business Oriented Language), which has become the standard for business data processing. The key designer behind it was Grace Murray Hopper, who as Commodore Hopper is the US Navy's most senior woman officer and its oldest serving officer, despite trying to retire several times. COBOL is a wordy language, but even novice programmers picking up a COBOL program can read it and quickly understand it, because of its self-explanatory nature. For example, where FORTRAN would say O = G - T COBOL would have SUBTRACT TAX FROM GROSS-PAY GIVING NETT-PAY which is less cryptic. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Europeans were also hard at work, and a committee of leading academics and representatives of leading computer manufacturers like Elliot and Ferranti was meeting to design a new language. This language was intended to be used for the expression of any algorithm -- that is, any set of steps which lead to the solution of a problem. Its genesis was therefore more mathematical than pragmatic, as witnessed by the fact that the language has no input/output statements, while most real-world programs actually spend most of their time doing input/output. The language was Algol (ALGOrithmic Language) and while it became popular in Europe, it never really caught on in the US. That's not to say that US programmers did not see its advantages; within a few years they were happily incorporating its structured programming techniques into new languages of their own. By 1961, it became obvious that programmers were having to learn one language for commercial programming, another for scientific programming and yet another for general work like writing compilers. There had to be some way of writing a language which would incorporate the best features of all languages, allowing programmers to use just that language for all projects they worked on. IBM, together with the two IBM user groups, SHARE/GUIDE, set out to tackle this problem, and came up with the answer: PL-I (Programming Language/One). With features borrowed from FORTRAN, COBOL and Algol, plus more than a few of its own, PL/I proved to be too big a language for any mortal to possibly remember. Nonetheless, it is still popular inside IBM, and stripped-down versions are catching on with minicomputer and microcomputer companies. Another language emerged from IBM in the mid-Sixties, which captured a specialised following. APL (A Programming Language) was designed by Ken Iverson for time-shared number-crunching tasks, particularly those involving manipulation of arrays and lists of data. Rather than using English words, APL has its own character set, which makes it look rather intimidating, and its unusual syntax can be mind-boggling to those raised on more conventional languages. It makes firm converts, though. Also developed in the mid-Sixties, and designed for timeshared use, was another language which has swept the world -- well, the microcomputer part of it, at least. BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was invented by Kemeny and Kurtz at Dartmouth College, for the use of engineering and other students who needed an introduction to programming for the solution of small problems which did not justify mastering the complexities of FORTRAN FORMAT statements. BASIC inherits a lot of its design from FORTRAN, without some of that language's complexities -- at its simplest level it is really just FORTRAN with the addition of line numbers. Over the years, however, BASIC has gradually been extended and given more power, with the addition of new statements, new functions and features such as graphics. There is, in fact, some merit to the argument that BASIC has gone the way of PL/I and the later Algol 68: it is too big for anyone to remember all of it, certainly in casual use. In the late Sixties, the Algol Committee met again to update Algol. Wishing to correct for the over-simplistic (nonetheless powerful) nature of the earlier version, this time they threw in not only I/O statements but everything else they could think of, rather like PL/I. The result was Algol 68, a massive language with special statements for every circumstance. While Algol 68 never really caught on, it is of vital importance to the micro community in one sense: one member of the Algol Committee consistently argued against the construction of a huge language, and in favour of a small but well-structured and consistent language that could be used to reproduce the special features of Algol 68. Incensed at the elephantine creation of the committee, this member determined to prove his point by writing his [own] language. The man was Niklaus Wirth, the language was Pascal. Firmly based in Algol, with only a few carefully-chosen features of its own, Pascal has proved to be a remarkably expressive language, suffering only from deficiencies in the I/O and system manipulation areas, most of them inherited from Algol. Pascal added a number of important concepts to the computer linguist's arsenal, but the most important of these was the idea that the compiler should catch as many errors as possible before the program is actually run. The result of this philosophy is a language that many find overrestricting: Marvin Minsky of MIT refers to Pascal as "a voluntarily worn strait-jacket". While Pascal has now fallen out of favour, it has made a contribution to a number of other languages. Wirth himself has dropped Pascal and developed a further language called Modula II, which extends his concepts. In the early Seventies, researchers at Bell Laboratories developed a couple of languages which have now come to a position of great influence. Based on the BCPL language developed at Cambridge University, B was a small language which could be used at a low level as a replacement for assembly language. Its successor, C, is a general-purpose language with the potential to replace FORTRAN and Pascal. Just as Pascal was a reaction against another language, so is C. PL/I was used to write a large operating system called MULTICS, but at Bell Labs work was under way on a stripped-down operating system called UNIX. C was developed in the same spirit, as a stripped-down language that could be used in the implementation of the operating system, its compilers and utilities. The leanness of both UNIX and C reflect the small group of developers: Thompson, Kernighan and Ritchie. Algol 68 is important in another way: as a precursor of a new language called Ada. Ada, Countess Lovelace (Byron's daughter) was an associate of Charles Babbage, inventor of the analytical engine, and is generally credited with writing the first computer program, in the 1830s. She is celebrated in the name of the US Department of Defence's new language. Ada follows in the footsteps of Algol 68 and PL/I as a large language, but it has a rather more modern style and a number of new twists of its own, particularly in the areas of modular programming and inter-process communication (multiple programs communicating with each other). Two other outgrowths of PL/I are important in the microprocessor world: PL/I Subset G and PL/M. PL/M was in fact the first high-level language to run on a micro-processor; it was developed by Dr Gary Kildall for Intel Corp. While it is a cut-down derivative of PL/I, specifically designed for microprocessor applications such as traffic light controllers, it is sufficiently powerful to allow construction of software tools such as the CP/M operating system, and the CBASIC compiler which was used to write some of the first commercial software for micros. Without PL/M, micros might never have got off the ground. PL/I Subset G is the minicomputer subset (ANSI X3J1) of the mainframe PL/I. A lot of dead wood has been cleared away, and what is left is a language remarkably like Pascal, but with none of the silly restrictions and with enough special facilities for real-world programming — like formatted I/O for commercial programming and double-precision hyperbolic functions for the scientists. Also shown as derived from PL/I is a general box of database languages. This perhaps is not a direct derivation, but more of a philosophical contribution. Most special-purpose database languages require COBOL-like (hence PL/l-like) report formatting and string handling, coupled with modern control structures derived from Algol, via PL/I. Examples range from IBM's DL/I to dBase II. ====== ORPHANS? While these languages have a well-defined place in the family tree, there are a number of other machine tongues which have no obvious ancestry. FORTH, for example, was developed by astronomer Dr Charles Moore for use in radio-telescope research. It bears little relation to earlier languages in either its internal operation or its external appearance. A FORTH system starts with a dictionary of approximately 140 elementary words, and the user proceeds to define new words in terms of the old ones. At the top level, words are entire programs. Like APL, FORTH can be mind-boggling to the initiate, but breeds converts stronger than any other religions. Smalltalk has been developed over many years at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (XPARC), as part of the long-term Dynabook project. In Smalltalk, objects are collections of apparently concurrently executing subroutines, and are controlled by sending messages to them; for example BOX GROW 5 sends a message to BOX, instructing it to run its internal subroutine GROW (called a method) with the parameter 5. The likely effect of this is that a box on the screen will grow in size by five units. Related to Smalltalk is Logo, which was developed at MIT by Seymour Papert. Logo is best known for its turtle graphics, which use an imaginary turtle on the screen to draw shapes. PILOT is another language developed for educational applications, by Dr John Starkweather. It is a simple language primarily intended for drill and testing. LISP (LISt Processing language) is an unusual language which views all data as lists of items. It is very simple, yet very powerful, and has attracted attention in the artificial intelligence community because LISP programs are simply lists of items and can therefore modify themselves. LISP is also known as Lots of Insane Stupid Parentheses because of its extensive use of brackets. PROLOG is a logic manipulation language which is distantly related to LISP. It can maintain a database of data items and rules relating them, and can then answer questions about its database. Currently PROLOG programmers are in great demand in Japan, where it is a cornerstone of the Fifth Generation artificial intelligence project. PROLOG (PROgramming in LOGic) is based on first-order predicate logic. The program starts with a statement which is to be proved, and continues with propositions which will be used to assert the truth or falsehood of the goal statement. It looks very strange to newcomers, but I guess we'd all better get used to it. ====== WHERE TO USE WHICH LANGUAGE With so many languages to choose from, how do you decide in which circumstances to use each? The answer is not simple, and beyond a certain level it becomes a matter of personal taste. For general messing about, trying out ideas and knocking together 'quick and dirty' programs the best language is generally BASIC. The major reason for this is that it is so prevalent: every small micro offers BASIC as standard. A micro programmer who does not know BASIC is not much use, really. You can do just about everything you are ever likely to need in BASIC, with the assistance of some assembly language patches for some things like getting at special I/O ports and the like. There are only two problems: there is a diminishing rate of return in using BASIC for large programs, and the resulting program is generally slow. The second problem can be fixed, to some extent, by using a compiler on the finished program. But the first is more fundamental and is related to the lack of support for good structured programming practices within the language. Some versions, such as CBASIC Compiler and Waterloo BASIC, provide support for local variables, named subroutines and the like, but this poses the question: are such languages still BASIC or are they something new and different? Well-written CBASIC code, for example, looks more like Pascal than BASIC. If we use cars as an analogy for languages, then BASIC is the family sedan. It's inexpensive, there are lots of models in the range, and the most popular models have all kinds of (previously optional) extras fitted as standard. Ah yes, Pascal. I only ever wrote one major package in Pascal, and would never use it again if I could avoid it. Pascal is okay for academia, where all the people who will use a program are computer literate, familiar with the operating system, and so on. But in the real world, programs get used by office juniors, managing directors and other people who are completely fazed by error messages and who are liable to type the most improbable input string imaginable. Real-world programs, therefore, have to have extensive input validation, and this turns out to be quite difficult in Pascal, as it is tediously unco-operative in type conversions. The Pascal programmer has thus to resort to all kinds of devious practices to get Pascal to work for him, which defeats the purpose of using the language in the first place. If you have to use sleight of hand so that the compiler can't understand what you're doing, there's a fair chance you can't understand it yourself. The right place for Pascal, then, is where you have to write programs of moderate sophistication which you will only ever use yourself, and where you are sure that a straight solution will do. I know this is cruel and a bit over the top, but the best analogy I can find for Pascal is a trainer bicycle. You can't go far with it, you can't go fast with it, you can't carry much with it, it's not to everybody's taste, but at least you can't fall over while riding it. FORTRAN lives on in the scientific world; first of all because most engineers and scientists cut their teeth on it, so it is widely known. Second, it is one of the first languages every mainframe and mini manufacturer provides on their machines, so programs originally written on larger computers can be transported to micros and vice versa. The fact that it is well-standardised assists this. A third factor is the vast amount of FORTRAN software which has been published or placed in the public domain for all kinds of purposes. The sheer inertia of the FORTRAN movement ensures it will be around for a long time, and a FORTRAN compiler is a must for every micro in a scientific or engineering lab. However, that's not to say FORTRAN is always the best tool for the job. Pascal can be appropriate here for simple jobs, or PL/I (with its superb double-precision arithmetic and hyperbolic functions) for the more complex ones. C is also an appropriate tool on occasions. However, those who own FORTRAN compilers should bear in mind that Real Programmers use FORTRAN. FORTRAN is a bit like a Volkswagen Beetle; the design hasn't changed much over the years, and people wouldn't like it so much if it had. It's a very rational and appropriate design, with few concessions to style or fashion. COBOL finds its metier in the commercial world where programs have long lives and may be worked on by as many as ten programmers during that time. Consequently, the requirement is not for flash, tricky code, but for code that your average commercial programmer can pick up, understand and modify or fix. While the previous generation of COBOL compilers acquired a reputation for being as slow as a wet weekend, the latest releases are much improved, making COBOL a viable alternative for the commercial micro user or software house. COBOL is like a half-ton truck: it serves the needs of commerce with little style. It can carry quite heavy loads, but will never turn heads as it passes. PL/I -- ah, now here's a language for Real Programmers. I turned to PL/I after my nasty experience with Pascal and have never regretted it. Block structures and structured programming statements like Pascal's, combined with sophisticated file handling and I/O, and the ability to do binary arithmetic for scientific applications and decimal arithmetic for dollars and cents, mean this is a language one can stick with. While the rest of the world follows fashions like Pascal and C, we PL/I programmers will be quietly getting on with the job. If you're a COBOL programmer who wants to have some good structured programming support and less verbose code, PL/I may be for you. If you're a FORTRAN programmer who wants higher precision arithmetic, better string handling and structured programming support, PL/I is it. If you're a Pascal programmer who feels the need for the occasional goto -- used with discretion, of course -- as well as sensible file handling, check out PL/I. If you're a C programmer, nothing I say is going to change your mind anyway; but PL/I has pointers, structures, unions, functions, storage classes and all the other things that make C such fun. PL/I therefore emerges as a good all-round language with particular strengths for commercial software and scientific applications, though utilities compiled in it tend to be a bit large. It's a little like these new family vans with seats that fold, turn and twist: you can use it as a sedan, as a minibus, as a delivery van or as a camper. Bear in mind that, unlike those vans, it has a V12 under the bonnet. C is a sports car in comparison. It's small, zippy and manoeuvrable, very light in weight, and when it crashes you're a gonner (due to the lack of run-time debugging facilities, you see). C is best used to write systems utilities such as archivers, macro processors, editors, compilers and the like. It can be used to write commercial or scientific programs, though its arithmetic and file handling let it down in the former area. If you build on its lower-level functions to construct nice string-handling and I/O functions, what you wind up with is very like PL/I, which would have made a more appropriate starting point. The best feature of C is its portability. C programs can generally be moved from system to system with a minimum of effort, and this means that software authors can be assured of achieving the maximum return for their effort. PROLOG is quite different from most languages. At the moment it's still barely out of the research labs, and most users are in universities. I dare say PROLOG could be put to commercial use, particularly in bibliographic databases, small 'expert' systems and the like. In the car metaphor, PROLOG is rather like those experimental designs manufacturers roll out every now and again, informing us that in ten years time we'll all be driving cars like these, with four-wheel steering and the like. Ada is an armoured personnel carrier. It's designed to be reliable, carry all kinds of loads, be fast, and it has a radio built in so it can communicate with other carriers. Ada directly supports a number of recent structured programming concepts. For example, the idea of separate compilation of modules has been around for a long time; many Pascal, C and PL/I compilers offer this facility. But Ada is the only language to date to support the separate compilation of modules (Ada calls them packages), as part of the language. An Ada package comprises two parts -- a specification part and an implementation part. Each is a unit (this will sound familiar to UCSD Pascal users) and can be separately compiled. Parts of a package specification can be made invisible, so users of a package can only deal with the logical interface of the package; other details are hidden. Ada directly supports multi-tasking -- that is, the ability to run several different program streams at the same time. A lot of thought has gone into the language's design, to ensure that Ada programs are less expensive to maintain, and are more reliable, than those in older languages. Ada is about the only thing that could tempt me away from PL/I ... /---------------------------------------\ | Copyright (C) Les Bell | | source: "Your Computer, January 1985" | \---------------------------------------/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oculus VR vs ZeniMax

Posted by takyon on Monday October 31 2016, @10:55PM (#2122)
0 Comments

Oculus VR made "factually inaccurate" statements in ZeniMax lawsuit, forensic analyst says

A recently-granted motion in the lawsuit between ZeniMax Media and Oculus VR suggests that the case could be about to get very interesting, and not in a way that's good for Oculus. The motion to "permit disclosure of any 'demonstrably inaccurate' representations made to court," as reported by Polygon, indicates that an independent expert investigating the case found sworn statements that are "factually incorrect," and that "critical log files" on one of John Carmack's hard drives were deleted prior to its collection as evidence.

I'm too lazy to give this one the research needed to produce a coherent submission, since I haven't been following the case.

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