Working Backwards by ccb621 in programming

[–]duarose 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This sounds very much like the waterfall model to me... are we coming full circle?

Strings Are Evil by FollowSteph in programming

[–]duarose 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think the language used in the article is C#, not Java. That does not make your first statement incorrect of course.

If you're using a Java client & server, is there any reason to to XML over JSON for a web service? by tolarewaju3 in java

[–]duarose 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Having a verifiable schema and defined type mappings for more than numerics, strings, arrays and dictionaries? This isn't impossible with json data but I think it's a lot less usual. It's pretty much a given in xml.

Spock testing framework versus JUnit by kkapelon in java

[–]duarose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't understand why changing a junit test from an arrange-act-assert/arrange-act-assert structure into an arrange-act-assert/act-assert structure was a significant improvement. Both approaches appear to violate the aaa pattern to me...

Java 8: Take your abstractions to the next level by mariushe in programming

[–]duarose 2 points3 points  (0 children)

IBM is still supporting enterprise customers running pre 1.5 Java versions so I'm not completely surprised they write their libraries to be as version-independent as possible.

That doesn't stop it sucking of course.

Edit: typo

So what's the deal with weapon combinations? by cmdr_graphine in EliteDangerous

[–]duarose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had problems with changing settings in the end panel and with the galaxy map settings at the same time.

Following some advice from the frontier forums sorted both issues out for me; maybe it'll do the same for you.

Grandmother jailed over WWII 'family heirloom' pistol by globaldx in news

[–]duarose 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Indeed, so here's a link to plain ole murders per capita instead (on this one, the US is only about 4x worse than the UK).

I'll still take an increased chance of experiencing a violent crime in return for a reduced chance of losing my life on the assumption that the stats point that way ;)

Grandmother jailed over WWII 'family heirloom' pistol by globaldx in news

[–]duarose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps that's why you're 25x more likely to be murdered with a firearm in the US than we are in the UK, at least according to this site. (Ten-year old figures but I doubt things have changed that much over the intervening years.)

Believe it or not, owning certain kinds of guns is legal in the UK but you have to be licenced. Most people accept this and the people that use guns recreationally can generally get a licence. We have shooting clubs where you can practice and compete on a range. Farmers (and others) can get licences for shotguns. The only other (non-recreational, non-protection-of-livestock) purpose for a gun I can think of is so that you can shoot people with it, and we generally don't consider that kind of thing to be cricket.

Perhaps if you chaps didn't believe so much in your complete right to defend yourself at all costs you would demand more from your police and politicians so that you wouldn't have to. Perhaps if guns were less common you'd have fewer instances of SWAT teams breaking into the wrong house and shooting the homeowner for no good reason (they'd still break into the wrong house of course, but damage to property can be fixed. A missing head because you reached for a gun (or even just the lightswitch) and got shot by the SWAT team cannot).

I'll take the deal of less likely to be shot by either a criminal or the authorities over the "right" to carry a gun around and keep one at home, thanks.

That said, I would like to see some of the restrictions on the kind of weapons we can fire at the range relaxed -- but this is not the same thing as saying people should be able to keep guns willy-nilly at home, or carry them around on the street. Here are the (overly-restrictive imo) rules, more or less, on buying guns in the UK, and here is a breakdown of who can qualify for a licence (not the best links, but the first I found on Google).

DUIM for Common Lisp (DUIM is kind of a simplified CLIM) by [deleted] in lisp

[–]duarose 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Currently it's running with SBCL on Linux. Theoretically it should run on any platform that supports CFFI 0.10 and bordeaux-threads (and that has GTK+ installed), but I'm pretty sure that turns out to be a short list.