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It is actually a little harder than this, since JAVA is statically compiled. You can't have a class referenced in code if it's not available in the JVM, even if that code branch is never executed. So this will not work: if (ANDROID_2_1) { BluetoothManager.doSomething(); } There are a few good tutorials for handling this, while avoiding reflection. They take advantage of JAVA's lazy loading of static classes. The official Android blog has a post here: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/04/backward-compatibility-for-android.html and here is a great, detailed tutorial: http://devtcg.blogspot.com/2009/12/gracefully-supporting-multiple-android.html With that said, sdk 2.1 isn't terribly different than sdk 1.6, really. You can write most apps using 1.6, and should for now. Code modifications go through a lengthy deprecation period before being considered for removal. Should Google really feature-freeze a platform because a single phone got released?

Our local media is full of news regarding Gov't Tax office, it has been hacked by just incrementing id's in URL (without any authorization), so total of 7 million declarations have been downloaded. Attacker is publishing downloaded data on Goverment owned institutions, revealing income of most-paid employees. http://latviantelecoms.blogspot.com/2010/02/cyberactivists-obtain-latvian-state.html

Nope, 85%. Also, this might be the debate she was talking about. I tend to agree with CapitalistImperialistPig: dendrochronology seems kind of spooky. Research involving living matter just strikes me as softer and somehow ickier than "pure" physics like boreholes, ice cores, instrumental records, etc. For instance, the divergence after 1960 makes me uncomfortable, but mainly because I don't know much about it. I also don't know how many cores are "enough" for reliable temperature reconstruction (even aside from all the other considerations), and the thought of taking enough time to try to understand that question makes me shiver. I'm comfortable relegating tree ring data to the status of "supporting evidence" which happens to correlate well (before 1960) with other proxies.

And they are just covering their arse. From spy-at-harrington-high

update 2/22/2010 5:30pm

In a strange twist, the makers of LANRev have come out with a statement saying that school network techs should never have used their software to engage in theft recovery:
"We discourage any customer from taking theft recovery into their own hands," said Stephen Midgley, the company's head of marketing, in an interview Monday. "That's best left in the hands of professionals."

I've watched the 50 minute screencast repeatedly, where Perbix describes his use of this feature outside of school grounds repeatedly during a conversation with Absolute Software employees. They were enthusiastic... now they're throwing LMSD under the bus? I believe this can best be described as intense PR spin. It also completely confirms what I've asserted here, that LANRev was the implant of choice for this school.

The 50 minute screencast is of an admin at the school Mike Perbix pontificating on the virtues of his spyware, avaliable at the blog.

I intend to dedicate every waking moment to starting and maintaining http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com-sucks.blogspot.com/

One of the network technicians for Lower Marion School District, Mike Perbix, described a method to remotely Enable and Disable the built in iSight. He concludes this description of how to remotely use webcams with the single word, "ENJOY!".

What, exactly, was he "ENJOY!"ing about the ability to remotely operate webcams?

Also, if Ruby's your bag - Heroku is kind of like App Engine, for Rubyists.

Along those lines, you know what else is like Google App Engine for Rubyists? Google App Engine (using JRuby.)

Okay. Crow being eaten as we speak.

It was the IT guy(s), all on their own, so it seems.

http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html

Hang em High boys! Friggin bastard(s) And why do all the geeks that make news have to be fat dweebs?

Somebody from the IT department sold the school board on this. And the school board claims that only two people in the IT department had access to activate the security software.

And apparently this guy is the one who did so, at the very least he's a very, very avid fan of the software, and finds many of the really creepy features appealing. You can find a link to the guy's actual blog from that article too.

The real question that remains unanswered is why officials were viewing through the web cams in the first place - what gave them 'probable cause' to believe that such steps were necessary. Remember, the software was installed to enable them to take a picture of the current user if they believed the laptop was stolen. At no point have they even hinted that they thought the laptop in question was stolen.

I think the answer is a combination of a network admin with a BOFH complex and really, really invasive spyware masquerading as security software. This article is very informative, especially this section of a longer video with the network admin from the school system talking about the software. One thing I noticed in there was his saying that the software could be set to take webcam shots anytime it was booted up and wasn't on a the school network, then upload the photos to the school's server. There you go, instant webcam spying anytime the students take the laptops home, approved or not.

It's also interesting to note that the theory some people had that the student took webcam shots of himself and that's what the school was using is impossible. The webcam could be not be activated, used or deactivated by the students. Trying to Jailbreak the laptop to allow you to do things like disable the webcam was an offense punishable by expulsion. Oh, and just for good measure, students weren't allowed to use their own computers at school.

Do NOT under any circumstance go with Siteground. They offer a very competitive package on first glance but they are a HUGE scam. I started a website with them for an introductory price and decided to upgrade my package a little bit. When I got the confirmation email they had charged my account almost $300 when I had actually approved only about $9!!! When I called them I was given the runaround and told that I had signed up for the $300 package and the money was non-refundable. I argued that I definitely didn't. They then agreed to refund all but a $20 account upgrade fee even though I was canceling the upgrade only minutes later. 2 weeks went by and I didn't receive the refund. Another round of calls and emails with lots of promises for the refund. It still didn't happen. I then filed a frauf claim with my bank who refunded the money. I contacted Siteground and told them that Bank of America would be contacting them. I got an email stating that they shut my website down due to "Terms of Service" violations! Not 1 person I then talked to would give me a straight answer as to exactly what TOS violations I had committed on my website. DoFollow Blog

It turns out that one of the the network administrators at the school district has a fairly large online presence, and has posted quite a bit relating to this program on his blog over the years. Some folks have started looking over the blogs and the software being used, and it is pretty interesting.

You misunderstand, xkcdsucks is for those of us who loved xkcd when it was still good.

http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/2008/10/frequently-asked-irritating-self.html

Regardless, XKCD Explained is much better and more insightful heckling of the comic.

Don't worry, there's a blog for you too: http://xkcdsuckssucks.blogspot.com/

There is an already an answer to your concerns here

For me, xkcdsucks is funny enough often enough to justify the energy spent in clicking on the link to it. Which is not the highest of praise.

I much prefer http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/ Not everyone is a fan.

Kennedy has posted his side of the story here: http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/when-microsoft-attacks-again.html "Apologize? For what? Using a pen name when dealing with an overzealous reporter? Because that't the extend of the "deception" that everyone is so excited about. The company itself exists, has real clients and is profitable. Nothing they can say will change that or other facts, like: * We have nearly 24,000 users at xpnet.com. * We collect and analyze over 230 million system metrics records and over 13 billion process metrics records every week. * We publish our findings and make all of our resources freely available to the IT industry. People want to skewer me because they don't agree with my point of view. Microsoft wants to skewer me because I hurt sales. IDG wants to skewer me to cover their asses - because, as I pointed out to ZDNet/CNet, they knew about the Craig Barth ruse all along. And they did nothing. If anyone needs to apologize, it's IDG - but not for the reasons they've stated. It was their hunger for page views that ultimately drove them to turn a blind eye. Me? I just used a pseudonym in a few email exchanges and during a a couple of phone calls. The rest is all BS and posturing, and they (IDG & ZDNet) know it. RCK"

Believe me, you can be sued for telling the truth. I've been sued for telling the truth. Read the first few entries of http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/ for the whole miserable story.

The only thing the truth does for you is help you win if you have good lawyers, the money to pay them, and an unbiased judge.

I was lucky in that I had all three so it only cost me a year's salary. My co-defendant wasn't so lucky.

BTW, they're still digging the hole deeper if you check-back to their blog:

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/editorial-what-took-you-so-long.html

In the latest installment, they're quoting somebody known only as "SirBruce" who backs up their story. Of course, they don't link to SirBruce's actual article, they only quote from it a bit... I'm sure whoever he is, he's not just some 12-year-old in his parents' attic.

He's also actively debating all-comers, it looks like. He plays off the Ars debunker's computer as being "misconfigured" somehow.

Nobody has yet brought up in that blog post that he's a liar as well as being completely technically inept, so please be my guest if you like.

Now you must unlearn it.

Specifically, you're going to need to learn how to use verbs again.

Try php. It's got a great function library and you can build webpages quickly and easily.

I'm seeing that a bunch of repliers to this opine that Gatto is a candidate for a tinfoil hat. However, I want to push the idea back upstream from the time that you first give up your kid to the state institution. It's too late by then.

What is REALLY needed to make acceptance of this sort of surveillance is to get them when they're preschoolers.

You need to put a television show on aimed at preschoolers. Make it have a fuzzy stuffed bear who helps kids with things they don't know how to do themselves. Make it a "special assignment" for this bear to help the kids.

The kids are told to do X or Y (make their bed, change the lining in their rabbit cage) by themselves with no parent guidance. That's key number 1.

So how does this external agent, this "stuffed bear" change agent, know how to visit the children to help them? How else? A flying ladybug, that conceals a camera in it. The camera flies in the neighborhood, sees the conundrum of the child, deploys the camera and takes some footage. It then flies to a line-of-sight position, and sends the signal to an orbiting satellite, from where it's beamed to the special agent bear's headquarters. His employer then takes him off of whatever he's doing to go help the child with what they want to accomplish. After all, "it's all part of the plan" (we'll make that a tagline of the show, too.)

Farfetched? I don't think so, unfortunately.

They could do even better than that, they could take relative position information you described and then hash it. Hashes are one way, no one can recover the respresentation once it is hashed.

even with a "secure" hash, if the recorded data has low entropy, you can still guess it in an offline dictionary attack. If you believe otherwise, please post your /etc/shadow for us, thanks!

But seriously, it's besides the point whether they store hashes or high-res pictures of your fingers. Whoever gets their hand on the database can still identify the prints you leave everywhere. High-res pictures just make it easier for them to impersonate you to other fingerprint scanners.

THIS!
http://gnomestyle.blogspot.com/2007/05/make-ubuntu-look-like-vista.html

Not to steal their thunder (and this mpg result is old news), but according to their own blog, Universite Laval got 2757 mpg in that race. And Mater Dei High School hold the record with 2,843.4 mpg.

Speaking for myself, I prefer Fedora Linux. I find the look and feel is set up to be pretty close to Windows, enough so that sometimes people who look over my shoulder and see me using it assume I'm running Windows. If your family is moving from Windows, this might be a good choice.

Actually, my wife really likes Fedora, and she's a definite non-geek. It's easy enough for her to use, which (for her) is mostly email, web, text processor, and a few other minor apps.

I used to run Linux at work for several years, and ran Fedora. It's got the tools that replicate the functionality of Windows. (Unfortunately, I've been asked to move to Windows, at least for work. Ironically, I find Windows very confusing to use - Linux just seems so much easier to use.)

Gee, you have some free time to respond point-to-point to my quote-to-quote answers! :p

Ok, the field is Computational Neuroscience and most toolkits you will find for simulations are in C++ and Python.

By any means, C++ and Java are object-oriented languages even if they are not the best or most pristine OO languages out there. (I read your post about Java not OO below). C is ok, but I don't like it because it doesn't support at all OO. Maybe Objective-C if you want to learn proprietary Apple languages.

Anywho, I think C++ is a powerful language that you can do almost anything with it: from writing device drivers and embedded programs to high-level software developing using GUIs (with Qt) or HTML/CSS/JavaScript (with Wt), among other libraries and frameworks. In fact, I don't have to choose between Power and Support because C++ has them both. :)

It is true that it is a difficult language to learn (and even more to master!) but most of its concepts and perks have found one way or another to other languages it has influenced after C++ was invented. And there are many: even Google's last-year Go! I will not try to convince you anymore, you are entitled to have your opinion about C. For me C is the "grandpa" of it all, but I wouldn't want to use it for a new project rich with GUIs and Internet stuff. C should be praised for its syntax.

This thread is about self-taught programmers and their gaps. Well, by learning C++ (with Stroustrup's book at least) your programming gaps will be minimized to the few mainstream paradigms C++ is not covering directly and, of course, all those theoretical notions (maths, algorithms, etc) a CS course offers.

C++ is a great intellectual investment to any software developer, amateur or professional s/he is. From there, anything else is downhill.

As Steve Yegge puts it: GO UGLY EARLY!

Is the WiFi Link 5300 Intel based? A recent blog entry from Connectify indicates that there may be issues with those drivers - at least for Windows. Mind you, if Intel has outstanding issue in the Windows drivers, it's possible that it's a problem in Linux version as well.

This is anything but an unrelated "business opportunity".
Google owns huge datacenters. Google has been known to purchase gobs of dark fibre, at this point I imagine they might very well have sufficient connectivity between their datacenters to sustain operations. Throw in their own little grid (a bunch of thorium reactors, perhaps?) and, given enough thorium, they become self-sufficient. Throw in some wireless connectivity with base stations (remember the 700 MHz spectrum auction? Remember Google's bid?) linked to their fibre network and powered through their grid and you get a self-sustaining ad distribution network that'll reach the whole U.S. without needing any partners.

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Will "don't be evil" cancel that?

> What is your angle?

Hard to tell, Ray. But if he's Thaetetus, does that make you Socrates? :]

Seriously, though, there are about a zillion Dan Roses out there. Mostly he appears to spend his time making random legal comments on Slashdot among a handful of others. Seems like he *might* be at UNC School of Law. The email has an extra dot, but I think Gmail ignores those. If that's true, he's part of the Lambda Law Students Association (a legal association for homosexuals), which doesn't really explain his interest in the RIAA & copyrights. That said, Google is giving some very strange results, so who knows?

That said, this exchange was pretty ugly for Tenenbaum. I assume it's what he's talking about. Of course, I see nothing in there admitting specifically to violating the distribution right. And I don't have a court transcript, either, which I trust more than random internet reports about the case.

I say that because there are other things out there like this story which claims that "Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson has conceded in a letter to the US Department of Justice that his client, accused peer-to-peer infringer Joel Tenenbaum, "downloaded music for [his] own enjoyment."" which points to this letter on your website. The problem is that I've read the letter three times and I can't find that "quote" in it anywhere, unless they got it by cutting out the phrase "is alleged to have," which would make their quote the same kind of dishonesty that led to $312,000 in sanctions recently.

Come on. You think that every single time that one user downloads a song from another user on a P2P network means a sale was lost? At best, these users either have no intention of buying music, or they don't believe the music is worth what they're being asked to pay. Sidestepping the issue of whether or not their actions are morally or legally correct for a moment, these users STILL have no intention of ever buying music. These lawsuits are simply a means for the recording industry to wring outrageous profits from a demographic of the population who they wouldn't be able to make money from otherwise, under the guise of a law that was enacted when printing presses were the technological boogeymen du jour. The argument that the unknown, indeterminable, unquantifiable amount of music that Tenenbaum actually "distributed" impacted RIAA sales in any significant way (much less than to the tune of $675K) is total lunacy...

Well, in the only case in which I am aware of the issue having come up, the judge agreed with you -- not with them. USA v. Dove held that it is absurd to argue that each unauthorized download represents a lost sale.

But what about the lost value of the licensing right? Say the RIAA has a new single, and they want to license it to retailers such as H&M or the iTunes Music Store. They go to them and say "we'll grant you a license to distribute this song in your store for 20% of your proceeds, with a minimum of $50k per year, for the next five years," and the other side says, "why the fark should I do that, it's available free on the Gnutella network. Sure, we'd have some sales, but if people can get it free, they'll just do that. We won't make that $50k back, so no. Make it $1k per year, and you've got a deal."

That's $49k per year in lost profits for the RIAA for that song, due to the loss of value of the distribution right caused by the infringer. That's completely separate from arguing that each unauthorized download represents a lost sale.

Obviously that should be "lost value of the licensing[period]" - the right involved is the distribution right.

Come on. You think that every single time that one user downloads a song from another user on a P2P network means a sale was lost? At best, these users either have no intention of buying music, or they don't believe the music is worth what they're being asked to pay. Sidestepping the issue of whether or not their actions are morally or legally correct for a moment, these users STILL have no intention of ever buying music. These lawsuits are simply a means for the recording industry to wring outrageous profits from a demographic of the population who they wouldn't be able to make money from otherwise, under the guise of a law that was enacted when printing presses were the technological boogeymen du jour. The argument that the unknown, indeterminable, unquantifiable amount of music that Tenenbaum actually "distributed" impacted RIAA sales in any significant way (much less than to the tune of $675K) is total lunacy...

Well, in the only case in which I am aware of the issue having come up, the judge agreed with you -- not with them. USA v. Dove held that it is absurd to argue that each unauthorized download represents a lost sale.

But what about the lost value of the licensing right? Say the RIAA has a new single, and they want to license it to retailers such as H&M or the iTunes Music Store. They go to them and say "we'll grant you a license to distribute this song in your store for 20% of your proceeds, with a minimum of $50k per year, for the next five years," and the other side says, "why the fark should I do that, it's available free on the Gnutella network. Sure, we'd have some sales, but if people can get it free, they'll just do that. We won't make that $50k back, so no. Make it $1k per year, and you've got a deal."

That's $49k per year in lost profits for the RIAA for that song, due to the loss of value of the distribution right caused by the infringer. That's completely separate from arguing that each unauthorized download represents a lost sale.

Come on. You think that every single time that one user downloads a song from another user on a P2P network means a sale was lost? At best, these users either have no intention of buying music, or they don't believe the music is worth what they're being asked to pay. Sidestepping the issue of whether or not their actions are morally or legally correct for a moment, these users STILL have no intention of ever buying music. These lawsuits are simply a means for the recording industry to wring outrageous profits from a demographic of the population who they wouldn't be able to make money from otherwise, under the guise of a law that was enacted when printing presses were the technological boogeymen du jour. The argument that the unknown, indeterminable, unquantifiable amount of music that Tenenbaum actually "distributed" impacted RIAA sales in any significant way (much less than to the tune of $675K) is total lunacy...

Well, in the only case in which I am aware of the issue having come up, the judge agreed with you -- not with them. USA v. Dove held that it is absurd to argue that each unauthorized download represents a lost sale.

An essay I wrote connected to a free software project on educational technology:
"Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
(The title has a double meaning. :-)

The essential part is extracted here by Bill Kerr:
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-education-technology-has-failed.html
"""
Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand.
    Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change...
    So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process.
"""

More recent stuff by me on education and socio-technological change:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

The good news is, in two to three years, people will be discarding today's fancy Google Android Smartphones, and they will make amazing educational platforms once they are free as hand-me-downs (instead of or in addition to OLPC-like endeavors):
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006250.html
No doubt most compulsory schools will try to suppress them. At least they will be usable outside of school.

More on this general idea of wearable computers changing the nature of education (and society) from Theodore Sturgeon written as a sci-fi short story "The Skills of Xanadu" in 1956, and which inspired Ted Nelson and other technology pioneers:
    http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51

I'm not sure they're just measuring memory consumption. It looks like the metric used may be what is described by the vendor as:

"The Peak Memory Pressure Index is calculated by comparing a series of 4 independent Windows metrics – the Memory\Committed Bytes counter, the Memory\Pages Input/sec counter, the PageFile\% Usage counter and the aforementioned event duration value – against a set of user-defined threshold values. The resulting individual ratios are then weighted and combined to create the single number Peak Memory Pressure Index value."

That seems equally bogus and needlessly complicated to boot though; I wouldn't want to be the guy who had to defend that measurement as useful.

I'd understand your confusion if English is not your first language. However, that sentence is explicit and unambiguous:

"resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks[...]" (emphasis mine).

The highlighted words assert that the slow-downs were a direct result of the memory consumption and that consequently virtual memory was consumed.

It is true that the article does not expressly state how they determined that virtual memory was consumed, but seeming that they make this assertion it stands to reason that it was at least observed in some manner. This is attested by a blog entry from the actual researches conducting the tests:

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/

New data from the exo.repository shows that better than 8 in 10 Windows 7 systems monitored by the exo.performance.network are running alarmingly low on physical memory. And nearly the same number are demonstrating significant delays in I/O processing - ostensibly due to heavy virtual memory activity as Windows compensates for insufficient RAM. (emphasis mine)

        -dZ.

Studies have shown that accurate numbers aren't any more useful than ones you make up."


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_oqH68z1KYWk/SCMhkz0851I/AAAAAAAAAGQ/7hQDeVNcikA/s1600-h/5652.strip.print.gif

Barth acknowledged that XPnet's data couldn't determine whether the memory usage was by the operating system itself, or an increased number of applications. So yeah, it doesn't seem like the author really knows what's going on...

While that's true, one would probably make the assumption that it is normalized in XP vs Windows 7 since they have no way of tracking it. What I mean is that you would assume the Windows 7 user runs the same number of programs as the XP user.

I actually followed the blog link in the story and while they can't pin it on application or OS, they can say that the disk I/O is backlogged on 36% of XP machines sampled, 83% of Vista machines sampled and 85% of Windows 7 machines sampled.

While they don't know anything about the applications being run, this backlog is probably how they determined that processes were being forced to resort to virtual memory running on the disk. Is there a better explanation for those numbers?

Not commenting code adequately, especially ad hoc debugging fixes, leaving it near-unmaintainable....

I'm going through this right now..... Bugger. Why not document, please?

Hit: http://jamals-massive.blogspot.com/

Rick Roll? http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x1922.xml What does he have to do with it?
Was he the first guy to Rick Roll someone?
Hit me up, butch: http://jamals.massive.blogspot.com/

That's right, see this as an example http://jamals-massive.blogspot.com/

Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.

Funny sig considering that, not too long ago, I wrote an article titled Why I Hate All Computer Programming Languages. LOL.

The solution to the software reliability crisis is to abandon the Turing Computing Model and adopt a deterministic, non-algorithmic, implicitly parallel, synchronous and reactive software model. This model is based on the notion that almost all unforeseen (and unpreventable by syntactic debuggers) bugs are due to erroneous temporal expectations within computer programs. Timing is the critical element of computing that is missing from the Turing Computing Model. And it's not a matter of providing clock objects for use in certain time-dependent applications. Timing is critical at the instruction level because it allows us to determine the invariant temporal signature of a program and sound an alarm whenever a deviation is detected. Software should be such that it should be possible to determine whether any two events (operations) within a program are either concurrent or sequential under various conditions. This sort of temporal determinism will enhance security and reliability by many orders of magnitude if not cure the problem once and for all. If you're serious about finding a solution to the parallel programming crisis that is also a solution to the reliability problem, check out the links below. It's free info. Take it or leave it.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis
Parallel Computing: The End of the Turing Madness
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It

The jest of it is that we must reinvent the computer. We are using essentially the same model that Babbage invented more than 150 years ago, the thread concept. It's time to change.

The solution to the software reliability crisis is to abandon the Turing Computing Model and adopt a deterministic, non-algorithmic, implicitly parallel, synchronous and reactive software model. This model is based on the notion that almost all unforeseen (and unpreventable by syntactic debuggers) bugs are due to erroneous temporal expectations within computer programs. Timing is the critical element of computing that is missing from the Turing Computing Model. And it's not a matter of providing clock objects for use in certain time-dependent applications. Timing is critical at the instruction level because it allows us to determine the invariant temporal signature of a program and sound an alarm whenever a deviation is detected. Software should be such that it should be possible to determine whether any two events (operations) within a program are either concurrent or sequential under various conditions. This sort of temporal determinism will enhance security and reliability by many orders of magnitude if not cure the problem once and for all. If you're serious about finding a solution to the parallel programming crisis that is also a solution to the reliability problem, check out the links below. It's free info. Take it or leave it.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis
Parallel Computing: The End of the Turing Madness
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It

The jest of it is that we must reinvent the computer. We are using essentially the same model that Babbage invented more than 150 years ago, the thread concept. It's time to change.

Also see http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Anatoli Bugorski

After sticking his head in the beam, he looked like this

It was almost painless. It just killed every cell along the path, which wasn't too bad until the skin peeled off. He's lived nearly 30 years, even finished his PhD, despite receiving enough radiation to kill a person if it were spread evenly.

Please. I do agree with what you say, but nuclear is also a "green technology", no matter how much eco-crazies try to spin it differently. By contrasting nuclear against "green", you're playing into their hands.

Nuclear is the choice of a pragmatic, responsible conservationalist. Greenpeace and other fundies don't talk for all of us.

Fair enough. Nuclear is (absurdly) hated by the Green Party, which is why I don't call it green. But you're absolutely right - we need to change the language to include nuclear in the list of green solutions out there.

Greenpeace doesn't like nuclear power, but the co-founder of it does. He explains that back in the day they equated nuclear power with nuclear war, and so the power plants got tainted by the wide brush.

http://populistdemocrats.blogspot.com/2009/04/greenpeace-founder-supports-increased.html

Nowadays, I think it is the only power technology that makes sense both economically and environmentally.

Can you say eyesore?

Some infrastructure the government should contract out to business. And then mandate free access to all competitors. Like roads, water, sewage. For some reason, phone, cable and internet didn't follow that philosophy.

Aren't thorium fueled reactors considered "green nuclear"? http://www.thoriumenergy.com/ and http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/

Bill is always right people! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

How can game engines not take advantage of multiple cores? I had no idea this was the case, and find it very surprising given that the PS3 has 7 cores to work with. Are games so lazily programmed that they don't take advantage of that either?

this was the case a couple of years ago, nowadays all major games(dragon age, mass effect 2, battlefield bad company 2, etc..) uses my dual core at 100%

the frostbite engine(used in bfbc2 and bf1943) is even designed to use up to 16 threads http://repi.blogspot.com/2009/11/parallel-futures-of-game-engine.html