Posts by jwenting

you should NEVER convert from floating point to anything else except for display purposes (or when another output vector requires another format, in which case you probably didn't want to use floating point numbers in the first place).
This to prevent losing precision in conversion, and ending up with compound rounding errors.

Would you be OK with having your bedroom monitored to ensure that you complied with that law? What exactly are your limits of tolerance?

Only intollerant people want to restrict the freedom of others to do as they wish as long as it's not directly affecting their own freedom...

What you failed to mention is that everyone is laughing at that campaign. I doubt anyone will have to be concerned about it becoming law of the land.

And that means you're to support it for the simple reason that you're not planning on having oral sex and therefore have nothing to lose in supporting the plan?
'Cause that is how you should react based on your attitude that you have nothing to hide and therefore it's ok if the government track your whereabouts 24/7 and read all your mail.

I just do not understand why Republican candidates insist on promoting ideas that are pretty much guaranteed to cost them even more votes in coming elections?

There are radical crackpots on both sides of the aisle... It's just that the leftist ones who want to nationalise all industry, confiscate all income, and turn the place into a communist one party state are shielded by the press and you don't hear much from them.
"you have to vote for it so you can know what's in it" comes to mind. Sounds familiar?

We have several useless laws that politicians refuse to remove. Spitting …

never answer "why not" when asked what interests you in the company. It will be perceived as "oh, I'm not really interested in you but the salary and compensation looked nice, so it's better than nothing", which is not the impression you want to give them.

you'll need to know what protocol to use, and then find or write a library implementing that protocol.

good luck, and as said we're not going to do it for you.

AM, Britain's Oyster Card (might be limited to London for now), France has something similar, the Netherlands have a national chipcard system now, you can't even get a week long or longer ticket there anymore without linking the card to your bank account and social security number, plus sending in address information, passport photograph, etc. etc. to the issueing agency.

As to license plate recognition being computationally intensive, it's now so common mobile units are fitted in most any police car, even in camera systems recording every single passing car on the highways at dozens of locations, and those can handle hundreds of cars a minute easily on what's effectively the computational power of a low end laptop PC.

you can post questions, but your "question" indicates you've not done any work of your own to find your own answers.
It's also stereotypical of homework kiddos, not doing any of your own research, not putting in any effort, and dumping their homework piecemeal, poorly reworded to make it seem like it's not copied verbatim from some book.

stop downloading pr0n and pirated stuff, and start using a proper virus scanner.

AD, there are differences between what private parties are allowed to do under the law and what government agencies are allowed to do under the law.
Links between license plate numbers and personal data are NOT open knowledge AFAIK, you could place a camera in your front yard and film every car passing by and you'd be none the wiser about who's in them.
But the gov does have that data, and does link it, so they know who is driving where at what time, so they can track individual people with reasonable accuracy (of course there could be someone else in the car, but mostly at least the registered owner would be in it).

They're now starting to do the same with public transport tickets, at least in several European countries. Government run, public transport systems now work only with personalised smart cards (or if you can get anonymous and/or single tickets those cost more, sufficiently enough more to seriously discourage their use for the regular traveler...).
Combined with tracking cars, the government can now have a pretty accurate picture (within walking distance from the nearest bus stop) where most everyone in the country is, in near real time.
And that doesn't worry you?

ALL "reviews" are tainted. Either the "review" is paid for by the manufacturer, a reseller, or a competitor, or at the very least the sample size is too small (user "ratings", typically only severely disgruntled and/or extremely happy people will bother).

Check spec sheets, look at the things for real, and make your decision.

As there's a specific clause in the US constitution that provides protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and blanket subpoenas provide for ways to execute exactly those (search and seizure of property for no other reason than that someone wants to play peeping tom), yes, we should be worried.

And similar things play out in many other countries.

because your teacher tells you to and you'll fail your homework assignment if you don't.

That's all the reason you need.

Which from my point of view makes C++ right and Java wrong.

and again you're wrong, as in C++ it's not defined to do anything at all, so whatever it does is utterly random, depending on the whiles of whoever wrote that specific piece of the compiler, which might well change between compiler versions.

Murderers, always sneek into a house when it's dark and stormy. They never do that when the sun shines and birds are whistling.

makes perfect tactical sense to want cover of darkness when you're sneaking around :)
And of course it's nicely dramatic as well.

holodeck might be used for military training, in which case you'd want to accept more risk.

'm guessing you mean the change to the existing regulations regarding pistols? However, what you don't appear to have grasped is that firearms in general are 'banned' here anyway.

However, what you don't appear to have grasped is that firearms in general are 'banned' here anyway.

which is exactly what he meant. Since the blanket ban on firearms, murder rates have skyrocketed, including gun murder rates.

In the Netherlands, where guns are outlawed as well (except for police and other criminals), there are at least 1-2 gun murders per DAY, that's more than in a comparable sized US population where people are allowed to protect themselves.
And that doesn't include the far higher rate of violent crime using other implements. Knives, screwdrivers, tyre irons, people get very inventive when it comes to ways to maim and kill.

When guns are outlawed, only police and other criminals will have guns. And soon enough they'll call for outlawing other things.
UK a few years ago tried to outlaw kitchen knives because they are being used for violent crime by people that can't get guns.
Netherlands wanted to outlaw tyre irons for the same reason.
Luckily, cooler heads prevailed when MPs realised that that's common household implements they themselves have a use for.

technically, "four times over the legal limit" makes no sense as a measure of any single offense.
It only makes sense in the context of the number of times the offense happened.

What was probably meant was either "four times the legal limit" or "four times higher than the legal limit".

But with writers coming from the same population pool who think that "1337 k3w1" is correct English, what'd you expect?

the most annoying things about TV shows are actors.

"coding competitions" are the worst places to find good programmers. They're places to find kids who can churn out heavily obfuscated gimmicks quickly, which is not what you want to see in a professional environment.

iow webservices transfer data as raw bytes :)

I have sympathy for the student whose teacher doesn't know fundamentals of the language like this...

I'd just buy a system from a schoolkid who had to build it as his homework assignment, no need to create something like that from scratch unless you have a big hotel chain with unique requirements, and then you'd best hire a team of experienced programmers.

Sometimes I do, usually I don't have to because some other kid has already done it for me in the mistaken impression he was handing an actual solution.

cheap spam attempt.

As to "does an app increase business": maybe, depending on your intended clientelle and whether those have other means of finding your company.
As to "does my app increase business to a degree larger than the cost of creating and maintaining it": probably not.

It succeeds, but you're using the result incorrectly.

what should you do? You should not use 30 year old (yes, you read it right there) compilers.

And don't use the idea of copy constructors, that's C++ thinking.
Java has the Cloneable interface and its system to created deep copies of things.

if you're handy with a soldering iron you can create an electronic circuit that performs the same functionality as any IC, it'll just be quite a bit larger.
Of course you also need to know how to design the circuit.

one requires a brain, the other requires a brain aneurism.

and what does this have to do with Java?

since when does Java not require a compiler or is exclusively for web programming...
Or are you confusing Java with JavaScript, something I'd not expect of you.

Having a cloud based store for your code could be handy if you often work remote using a variety of computers. But I'd be seriously worried about code integrity and security, the chance of it leaking out of your company is way too high.

it's far more likely he's simply clicking a wrong link, like he did when he asked questions about how to play facebook games in a game DEVELOPMENT forum.

as I thought, you're trying to steal data. Without permission from the site operators what you're trying to do is not allowed.
Talk to them, get permission, and they'll likely sell you the data and the means to access it AT A PRICE.

and why fine code anyway? It's never going to pay...

I seriously doubt programs that automatically play the system are in accordance with the terms of use of any online gaming system...

nothing urgent about it, and if it were it'd be too late now anyway.

and the problem is?

Just submit the form to a servlet, and you're doing exactly that.

Of course if you're under the impression you can run Java classes on the client in a JSP you're gravely mistaken.

or learn something new rather than mindlessly rehashing the few tricks you already know...

We've gone through the same thing, and that's indeed the way to go. VERY carefully handle the endorsing, and TEST, TEST, and test some more.

and learn English...

still waiting for that random project idea generator...
If just some kid were to make one, we'd never have to answer the thousands of questions like this we get every semester again.

uh, no. You're wrong on all counts there...

ORIGINALLY the javax packages were eXtensions (or some people say eXperimental) to the language which were distributed separately.
Rather than cause all the code that was already using them to break when they were integrated into the core distribution, the package names were kept.

It's a lesson in careful design of your public interfaces, what not to do when designing a naming system :)

Made me smile. Describing wild animals as nasty and ill-tempered is quite funny. As funny as calling them cuddly or noble.

they're what would be termed nasty and ill tempered if they were humans... Quick to bite, snarl, etc..
Of course they do so for in part different reasons :)

But definitely not cuddly, in fact if you were to try to cuddle a wild badger you'd get nasty infected scratches and bites as a result ;)

remember your board can have 3 values for each field, not 2. X, O, and blank.
Best make that an enum, something like

public enum FieldState {
  STATE_X('x'),
  STATE_O('o'),
  STATE_BLANK(' ');

  private value;
  private FieldState(char val) {
    value = val;
  }

  public char getValue() {
    return value;
  }
}

badgers aren't strictly predators, they're omnivores and scavenge.
And of course there's people feeding them because "they're cute and endangered" or "it's not humane to let them starve" (when in reality they're rather nasty and ill tempered), thus enabling a population that's higher than the area would normally allow.

another way to control the spread of rabies that's used in many countries is to just shoot the critters (or often to poison them, using bait laced with poison rather than vaccines, as it's much cheaper).

Can be done with TB as well of course, but there's a serious risk of the program leading to wider spread of the disease as it allows the disease to now spread to scavengers who can contract it from eating infected cadavers (of course depending on the poison they might also die from that same poison, wouldn't be the first time a campaign of poisoning one species has led to serious casualties in others).

the JRE does not even contain a compiler...
It is rather contained itself within the JDK which also contains a compiler.

AS to the "problem", try learning a bit of Java. Start with a basic tutorial and work your way up from there.

and of course, one should never rely on finalize() being called at all, so in production code its very existence if often a clear sign of design flaws or at least a serious red flag as to the correctness of the code.
As the execution of finalize() is not guaranteed on any instance, any code in there is by definition unreliable...

at least in Canada, you would not be required to decrypt files either for cloud or locally hosted files unless a search warrant was first produced.

AFAIK the same is true in the US. E.g. for telephone records, to get the duration and sender/recipient data the government needs no search warrant, to get a wiretap installed and listen in on a conversation they (for now, the Holder injustice department is trying to change that) do need one.

Y2K was definately part of the equation. This also had to do with a booming IT industry. There were a lot of startups as well as companies investing in IT during this time.

yes, and the massive increase in companies offering certification programs was in part a response to that, an effort to weed out the incompetent who were pulled into IT during the Y2K programs in order to provide hands on keyboards to quickly churn out relatively simple code (fixing Y2K related things in a Cobol or PL/1 codebase could often be done by careful copy-paste replacement of code fragments, anyone who could remember how to do that was hired almost and on leaving those projects would have 1-2 years of "programming experience" on their resume while actually knowing nothing).

Certification has come under a lot of scrutiny in Canada lately. There is a recent flap over temporary workers coming in from India and displacing Canadians from existing jobs. There was a loophole whereby foreign workers could be brought in as temps (on projects). The loophole allowed them to obtain immigration status (bypassing the normal immigration queue) and also allowed the local companies to pay them 15% less than they would have to pay a Canadian worker. In some cases, employees were being asked to train the people who would replace them. The Royal Bank was the most high-profile company to be outed.

That's how the US H1b system has worked for a long time …

One of the problems with bTB vaccination is that the EU and/or many countries to which the EU exports cows and/or beef may not allow it as vaccination makes detection of the pathogen in the animal or product impossible (the tests cannot distinguish).
It is the same problem with Foot and Mouth, bird flu, etc. etc. Hence culling of infected herds (and potentially infected wildlife that can have contact with those herds) is the only way open to farmers and local authorities alike.

As a person who relies on meat for his survival (a carb rich diet which is any diet without meat makes me very sick very quickly) I need those lifestock farmers healthy and producing the cheap, bountiful, and tasty products they provide.
But even were I not I would not blindly run after anyone claiming they're out to destroy wildlife just because they're rich greedy whatevers, in no small part because I grew up in a small farming community and know most farmers are neither rich, nor greedy, and are much involved in preservation efforts on a local level. They live close to the land, rely on it for their income, and hate to see that land destroyed.
They may make mistakes, sometimes mistakes found to be costly over generations (like overfertilisation of fields up until the 1980s that caused massive soil acidification over time), but not for lack of caring.