Well there will be a point where SSD are cheap enough for people to decide to pay a little extra to get them.
As magnetic drives get cheaper per storage, they are sold at around the same price but with more storage. It isn't uncommon for someone to get a PC built with a few Terabytes of data in a magnetic drive. Or for the same price you can get a SSD rated in hundreds of Gigabytes.
At a particular point the faster SSD drives with be affordable enough to offer the space that they need at a cost they want to spend.
I would be happier if you could easily and cheaply replace broken parts. It isn't uncommon for these cases cost over $30.00. Now if I could say replace the glass pain, that is most likely to break for $40.00 it may still be a good deal as you don't always break your phone.
Well beyond hardware, Software reliability over the past few decades has shot right up.
Even Windows is very stable and secure. Over the past decade, I have actually seen more kernel panics from Linux than a BSOD. We can keep servers running for months or years without a reboot. Out Desktops,Laptops, and even mobile devices now perform without crashing all the time, and we work without feeling the need to save to the hard drive then backup to a floppy/removable media every time.
What changes has happened sense then on the software level. 1. Server Grade OS for the desktop/mobile devices. Windows XP on uses the NT kernel, Macs and iOS use a Unix Derivative. Android and GNU/Linux are Linux based system. All of these OS's were designed for Server based useage with proper memory management and multi-tasking as well support from SMTP. Causing a lot of those silly crashes of Yesterday a thing of the past.
2. Understanding and prevention of buffer overflow. While we knew about buffer overflows for a long time. But it was found to be a security issue in the late 1990's. So newer languages and updates to existing compilers are designed to try to prevent them. Plus the OS now randomizes the memory segments to help reduce the risk.
3. The "Try" "Catch/Except" commands. It is nearly impossible to try to break a complex program during testing. The Try/Catch idea in modern languages while many old schoolers claim leads to sloppy code, it does attempt to deal with the fact that the world isn't perfect and people make mistakes, and allows a clean way exit your program or procedure on error conditions. Meaning your program will still run when things are not perfect, as well once it quits your data is in a clean state to prevent further data corruption.
4. The rise of Server based programming. We go threw cycles of who should do the work The Server or the end use device. How often do you actually need to download a program any more, I bet most of you don't remember Software stores back in the 1990's where you had to buy a program to do everything. They were cheap $10 programs, or you can get a collection of shareware. But in general everything you needed to do on your computer needed a program. If you wanted an electronic Encyclopedia you needed to get one and have it stored on your computer. You wanted a program that had some forms and did some calculations you needed a program.... This created a situation where you had a lot of programs on your computer with DLLs/Shared Libary versions conflicting each other. Today a lot of these small program are now done over the Web, On the server, with Javascript to make the UI clean. But that means there is less stuff running on your desktop that could be conflicting with each other.
5. Rise of Virtualized Systems. If you had a server, you needed to put all your stuff on it, on the same OS, with a complex set of settings which made them more suited to mistakes. Virtualization allows you to have a bunch of custom settings designed to do one job and do it well. Vs. one server to do many things.
6. The rise of the interpreted and virtual machine languages. Most stuff done today doesn't require compiling straight to machine code, but to a virtual code (Java/.NET) or it interprets the code in run-time (Python/Ruby/PHP). That give the developer separation from the hardware. Yes it slows things down, but it also prevents a lot of oddities that happen when you make a program on a 32bit vs 64bit OS. Or even the minor difference between a Core i5 and a Core i7.
7. The fall of easy to use languages. Back in the Old days, there was a lot of languages like FoxPro, Visual Basic (not the.NET) which were designed to be used by Non-Programmers. These type of languages are not being used as much any more, that means the programming is happening with people who know how to program and not from people who just know how to use a computer. This means the programs wrote in these hard (By hard meaning there is some design and
We like like the idea of the IQ score as a measurement. It is a number to say I am better then someone else. However people are complex and their IQ is only part of the overall person. Very successful people have average or even below average IQ's as well. They can compensate it with Physical abilities, strong influential personality, or just knowing who to ask for answers and good guidance for better decisions. A person with a High IQ and they know about it use it as a crutch to make them feel superior to others, while actually inconveniencing themselves by disregarding advice from people with experience and skills they they have not gotten.
Microsoft's dominance was in the Desktop. In other areas Mobile, Video Games, Servers, etc... Microsoft was just a major player, perhaps being #1 in the market but but not by the the huge margins it had on the Desktop.
With the traditional Desktop/Laptop market moving to Personal Computers that are more in a tablet small form factor, combined with the rise of development with non-platform particular languages, HTML 5, Java Script, Java, and Server Side processing. It is creating a fairer playing field for consumers to choose a platform.
If you just tell the company and not anyone else, chances are they will thank you, or arrest you, then not put the time or money into fixing the problem.
If you tell the public, or any other group, they will be some bad apples who will use the information for their own misdeeds.
If you tell the government, they will use it to their advantage as well.
Lets say someone had little security, akin to not locking the door, and someone gets into the system and seals data. That is the same as if someone just walked in and made photocopies of all the data and left the building.
If they needed to break in, where the computers are in a more compromised state then it is breaking and entering.
Reading the source isn't documentation. You can see what it is doing, but you don't know why is it doing it, or what it is trying to accomplish.
Much like the idea if it is Open Source then it is also Open Specification. Which isn't true. The source is the instructions for the computer to follow, the documentation and specifications are for the people to know what the product suppose to do.
Often software will have a glitch, it doesn't get fixed, because there is not documentation or specification to compare it against. So the bug either gets worked around or just ignored while the program is still faulty.
The problem is most software is complex, and documentation is an attempt to simplify the work flow. But the documentation if complete would probably be just as large if not larger then the code, and just as complex to read.
What I find for good documentation is down in the FAQ, or a quick spot where you know a particular area is kinda clunky in the UI, or just a list of of the features you can use and what they do. Not a formal write up in a 1000 page book. But the appendix, and the list of tables is usually enough.
In theory... However you will need to get a really good video image of a planet. Right now most of the planets outside of our solar system is extrapolated mathematically not actually seen directly with a camera.
Then you will need to get a really really good resolution (To a point where you can probably see the life on the planet anyways) Then you will need to send it back, to earth for translation. So by the time we say hello. to them it may just be a lost language, or at least sounding quite out of place.
Re:It's better to hear people you might disagree w
on
The CIA Does Las Vegas
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You know the news doesn't cover it when when the CIA tells the truth.
If you feeling completely outraged about something, you probably do not have enough information. When you have enough information you can be angry at a particular subset of an issue not just the entire thing.
The Cray supercomputers use to look really impressive. Blinking Lights, Red Liquid coolant dripping down a glass/plexiglass enclosure. Even the Cray 1 with its round design, with benches made it look really cool. Now it is just a bunch of Printed Plastic covers, on a set of square boxes.
For the cost, you might as well make it look really impressive.
But how many professional programmers are academic?
Most of us work for business, government, ngo, not for profit. Where we really don't need to cite your work, just as long as it works and you are not stepping on someones patent or license you are OK.
While I am not trying to belittle your hobbies. But Model Trains isn't for everyone, and a lot of peoples hobbies are not about making toys.
Sure if you are making toys, then fine, If I was a 7 year old kid, and I had access to a 3d printer, I would be printing out all kinds of cool stuff, from guns for my action figures, to special Lego blocks.
But my hobbies and interests today do not require too much plastic parts. And the occasional replacement part isn't worth the expense.
Well the issue of cheating wasn't really a full security risk, as most of the cheaters would have passed anyways. But with a 90% pass rate, the idea if you got a 90%-92% = D 93%-95% = C 96%-97% = B 98%-100% = A
I am sure most of you who have been threw academia, with percentages so close that any number of factors can fluctuate your score by a few percentage. Too tired from a night of studying. Too Hungry, too full, having to go pee, Feeling too anxious or too confidant....
Now a lot of these people taking the test worried their promotion prospects are tied to these test scores, so if you have a C or B it will look bad, compared to the next guy who got an A. While the next guy might have just had a better day that day. So Cheating was rampant, not in the dangerous level where they wouldn't have passed the test, but in making sure everyone had that little extra to get promoted when the time comes.
Wow the problems of the world are based on a particular Academic degree? You know Slashdot blame the MBA for a lot of the problems of the world. However I haven't ran into too many of them. A lot of the bosses making these type of decisions don't have an MBA, but some other degree. BA in History, or Arts, BS in Computer Science or Physics...
Also a lot of those MBA are not the ones in charge, but can be the Tech guy next to you doing coding as well.
I have worked directly with CEO's in the past, when they are doing leisure they are still working. Their phone will go off all times of day. So he may be on a Yacht, he was probably still working there.
The issue with drugs is it gives people an unfair advantage. At the cost of their long term health. If you are in an environment where everyone else is working 80+ hours per week, you need to in order to not look like a lazy employee dragging everyone down.
It seems that a lot of internet companies make their money from adds. If this buisness model was so bad it would have stopped decades ago.
So how do you propose web sites to be funded. People don't like a pay wall, ISP will not pay you for their customers visit. If your site doesn't meet the need for the greater common good then you probably won't have the government or some other large grant funding you. However you have costs to pay for. The add model is the best we can get unless you know of some superior buisness model.
The real issue with Video Game sports is the fact for the time for the people to get the 10,000 hours of practice to be a real master at it will take at least a couple of years. At the point where people are ready for it to be a sport, the game is already kinda old, and the new kids who are coming in are training on new games.
Slashdot Mirror
Well there will be a point where SSD are cheap enough for people to decide to pay a little extra to get them.
As magnetic drives get cheaper per storage, they are sold at around the same price but with more storage. It isn't uncommon for someone to get a PC built with a few Terabytes of data in a magnetic drive. Or for the same price you can get a SSD rated in hundreds of Gigabytes.
At a particular point the faster SSD drives with be affordable enough to offer the space that they need at a cost they want to spend.
Being that you probably have shelled out a lot of money for the Motercycle. You might as well spend some more for a good helmet.
How much more does your automobile cost you for its safety equipment.
That is why I preference my statement with "It isn't uncommon"
Yes you can get cheaper ones. But your $23.00 case isn't that much cheaper than $30.00. Espectially if like me you keep the same case for years.
I would be happier if you could easily and cheaply replace broken parts.
It isn't uncommon for these cases cost over $30.00. Now if I could say replace the glass pain, that is most likely to break for $40.00 it may still be a good deal as you don't always break your phone.
Well beyond hardware, Software reliability over the past few decades has shot right up.
Even Windows is very stable and secure. Over the past decade, I have actually seen more kernel panics from Linux than a BSOD. We can keep servers running for months or years without a reboot. Out Desktops,Laptops, and even mobile devices now perform without crashing all the time, and we work without feeling the need to save to the hard drive then backup to a floppy/removable media every time.
What changes has happened sense then on the software level.
1. Server Grade OS for the desktop/mobile devices. Windows XP on uses the NT kernel, Macs and iOS use a Unix Derivative. Android and GNU/Linux are Linux based system. All of these OS's were designed for Server based useage with proper memory management and multi-tasking as well support from SMTP. Causing a lot of those silly crashes of Yesterday a thing of the past.
2. Understanding and prevention of buffer overflow. While we knew about buffer overflows for a long time. But it was found to be a security issue in the late 1990's. So newer languages and updates to existing compilers are designed to try to prevent them. Plus the OS now randomizes the memory segments to help reduce the risk.
3. The "Try" "Catch/Except" commands. It is nearly impossible to try to break a complex program during testing. The Try/Catch idea in modern languages while many old schoolers claim leads to sloppy code, it does attempt to deal with the fact that the world isn't perfect and people make mistakes, and allows a clean way exit your program or procedure on error conditions. Meaning your program will still run when things are not perfect, as well once it quits your data is in a clean state to prevent further data corruption.
4. The rise of Server based programming. We go threw cycles of who should do the work The Server or the end use device. How often do you actually need to download a program any more, I bet most of you don't remember Software stores back in the 1990's where you had to buy a program to do everything. They were cheap $10 programs, or you can get a collection of shareware. But in general everything you needed to do on your computer needed a program. If you wanted an electronic Encyclopedia you needed to get one and have it stored on your computer. You wanted a program that had some forms and did some calculations you needed a program.... This created a situation where you had a lot of programs on your computer with DLLs/Shared Libary versions conflicting each other. Today a lot of these small program are now done over the Web, On the server, with Javascript to make the UI clean. But that means there is less stuff running on your desktop that could be conflicting with each other.
5. Rise of Virtualized Systems. If you had a server, you needed to put all your stuff on it, on the same OS, with a complex set of settings which made them more suited to mistakes. Virtualization allows you to have a bunch of custom settings designed to do one job and do it well. Vs. one server to do many things.
6. The rise of the interpreted and virtual machine languages. Most stuff done today doesn't require compiling straight to machine code, but to a virtual code (Java/.NET) or it interprets the code in run-time (Python/Ruby/PHP). That give the developer separation from the hardware. Yes it slows things down, but it also prevents a lot of oddities that happen when you make a program on a 32bit vs 64bit OS. Or even the minor difference between a Core i5 and a Core i7.
7. The fall of easy to use languages. Back in the Old days, there was a lot of languages like FoxPro, Visual Basic (not the .NET) which were designed to be used by Non-Programmers. These type of languages are not being used as much any more, that means the programming is happening with people who know how to program and not from people who just know how to use a computer. This means the programs wrote in these hard (By hard meaning there is some design and
We like like the idea of the IQ score as a measurement. It is a number to say I am better then someone else.
However people are complex and their IQ is only part of the overall person. Very successful people have average or even below average IQ's as well. They can compensate it with Physical abilities, strong influential personality, or just knowing who to ask for answers and good guidance for better decisions.
A person with a High IQ and they know about it use it as a crutch to make them feel superior to others, while actually inconveniencing themselves by disregarding advice from people with experience and skills they they have not gotten.
Microsoft's dominance was in the Desktop. In other areas Mobile, Video Games, Servers, etc... Microsoft was just a major player, perhaps being #1 in the market but but not by the the huge margins it had on the Desktop.
With the traditional Desktop/Laptop market moving to Personal Computers that are more in a tablet small form factor, combined with the rise of development with non-platform particular languages, HTML 5, Java Script, Java, and Server Side processing. It is creating a fairer playing field for consumers to choose a platform.
Can you trust anyone with a zero-day exploit?
If you just tell the company and not anyone else, chances are they will thank you, or arrest you, then not put the time or money into fixing the problem.
If you tell the public, or any other group, they will be some bad apples who will use the information for their own misdeeds.
If you tell the government, they will use it to their advantage as well.
Lets say someone had little security, akin to not locking the door, and someone gets into the system and seals data. That is the same as if someone just walked in and made photocopies of all the data and left the building.
If they needed to break in, where the computers are in a more compromised state then it is breaking and entering.
Reading the source isn't documentation.
You can see what it is doing, but you don't know why is it doing it, or what it is trying to accomplish.
Much like the idea if it is Open Source then it is also Open Specification. Which isn't true.
The source is the instructions for the computer to follow, the documentation and specifications are for the people to know what the product suppose to do.
Often software will have a glitch, it doesn't get fixed, because there is not documentation or specification to compare it against. So the bug either gets worked around or just ignored while the program is still faulty.
The problem is most software is complex, and documentation is an attempt to simplify the work flow. But the documentation if complete would probably be just as large if not larger then the code, and just as complex to read.
What I find for good documentation is down in the FAQ, or a quick spot where you know a particular area is kinda clunky in the UI, or just a list of of the features you can use and what they do. Not a formal write up in a 1000 page book. But the appendix, and the list of tables is usually enough.
You could blow the junk into smaller pieces so they will burn up faster too.
But a military space race would be a good thing towards progress in space.
It gives governments reasons to invest into space.
Plus they will need to build up so they are not the wimpiest ones in space.
In theory... However you will need to get a really good video image of a planet.
Right now most of the planets outside of our solar system is extrapolated mathematically not actually seen directly with a camera.
Then you will need to get a really really good resolution (To a point where you can probably see the life on the planet anyways) Then you will need to send it back, to earth for translation. So by the time we say hello. to them it may just be a lost language, or at least sounding quite out of place.
You know the news doesn't cover it when when the CIA tells the truth.
If you feeling completely outraged about something, you probably do not have enough information. When you have enough information you can be angry at a particular subset of an issue not just the entire thing.
The Cray supercomputers use to look really impressive. Blinking Lights, Red Liquid coolant dripping down a glass/plexiglass enclosure. Even the Cray 1 with its round design, with benches made it look really cool.
Now it is just a bunch of Printed Plastic covers, on a set of square boxes.
For the cost, you might as well make it look really impressive.
But how many professional programmers are academic?
Most of us work for business, government, ngo, not for profit. Where we really don't need to cite your work, just as long as it works and you are not stepping on someones patent or license you are OK.
While I am not trying to belittle your hobbies. But Model Trains isn't for everyone, and a lot of peoples hobbies are not about making toys.
Sure if you are making toys, then fine, If I was a 7 year old kid, and I had access to a 3d printer, I would be printing out all kinds of cool stuff, from guns for my action figures, to special Lego blocks.
But my hobbies and interests today do not require too much plastic parts. And the occasional replacement part isn't worth the expense.
I find it kinda funny that TOR is used by many Black Hats is being hacked by Them. TO expose who they are...
Well the issue of cheating wasn't really a full security risk, as most of the cheaters would have passed anyways. But with a 90% pass rate, the idea if you got a 90%-92% = D
93%-95% = C
96%-97% = B
98%-100% = A
I am sure most of you who have been threw academia, with percentages so close that any number of factors can fluctuate your score by a few percentage.
Too tired from a night of studying. Too Hungry, too full, having to go pee, Feeling too anxious or too confidant....
Now a lot of these people taking the test worried their promotion prospects are tied to these test scores, so if you have a C or B it will look bad, compared to the next guy who got an A. While the next guy might have just had a better day that day. So Cheating was rampant, not in the dangerous level where they wouldn't have passed the test, but in making sure everyone had that little extra to get promoted when the time comes.
The real issue right now with 3D Printing, most of the stuff you can print is stuff most people really don't need.
The last time I wished I could have a 3D printer was to replace a Worm Gear for my Garage Door Opener. That was about 6 Months ago.
For decoration, I really don't want Cheap Plastic decorations, and a new phone case isn't that interesting either.
Right now 3D Printing is really still for industry.
Wow the problems of the world are based on a particular Academic degree?
You know Slashdot blame the MBA for a lot of the problems of the world. However I haven't ran into too many of them. A lot of the bosses making these type of decisions don't have an MBA, but some other degree. BA in History, or Arts, BS in Computer Science or Physics...
Also a lot of those MBA are not the ones in charge, but can be the Tech guy next to you doing coding as well.
How does PostGreSQL compare?
I have worked directly with CEO's in the past, when they are doing leisure they are still working. Their phone will go off all times of day.
So he may be on a Yacht, he was probably still working there.
The issue with drugs is it gives people an unfair advantage. At the cost of their long term health. If you are in an environment where everyone else is working 80+ hours per week, you need to in order to not look like a lazy employee dragging everyone down.
It seems that a lot of internet companies make their money from adds. If this buisness model was so bad it would have stopped decades ago.
So how do you propose web sites to be funded. People don't like a pay wall, ISP will not pay you for their customers visit. If your site doesn't meet the need for the greater common good then you probably won't have the government or some other large grant funding you. However you have costs to pay for. The add model is the best we can get unless you know of some superior buisness model.
The real issue with Video Game sports is the fact for the time for the people to get the 10,000 hours of practice to be a real master at it will take at least a couple of years. At the point where people are ready for it to be a sport, the game is already kinda old, and the new kids who are coming in are training on new games.