Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position.
Though I'm not rapidly pro- or anti- nuclear power, here goes:
The nature of nuclear energy precludes distributing the environmental cost of byproducts across the general population. Unlike fossil fuels, in which the environmental cost is born primarly by the users of such energy, the environmental cost of nuclear energy is borne not by its users, but by a distinct minority in remote areas of the country. Hence, there's no incentive to conserve energy when the environmental cost is passed off to others.
Nuclear fuel is an attractive nuisance. Unlike fossil fuels, even a small amount of stolen nuclear fuel is very dangerous; at worst, terrorists could build a nuclear bomb - at best, a "dirty bomb" could be used to poison thousands or millions of people, and render a large metropolitan area unusable.
The safety of nuclear energy relies on many people doing the right thing. Any weak link in the chain - from a supply mishap to a disposal accident, carries with it grave circumstances. Contrast this with fossil fuels, in which an accident seldom affects those outside of the immediate geographic area. Even the worst of fossil fuel accidents imaginable does not carry with it the risk of leaving a large geographic area uninhabitable for years.
The health effects of fossil fuels and their byproducts are well-known and can be mitigated. The combustion process of fossil fuels is well known and can be optimized to produce minimal pollution:
Smokestack scrubbers are able to recapture the burned sulphur as sulfates useful in other industrial processes.
Fuel injection can optimize the burning process to produce fewer unburned hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and to get better fuel economy in the process.
Without generating more carbon dioxide than we consume, we cannot increase the food supply to meet the needs of an ever-growing population. The rationale is easy: in burning sugar, we generate carbon dioxide; this carbon dioxide is recaptured by plants in photosynthesis to produce sugar. With an increase in the population comes an increased need for food, food which requires carbon dioxide to grow. Without increasing our output of carbon dioxide, we would eventually reach the point at which:
Plant life would deplete the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, resulting in a colder Earth and:
Shorter growing cycles would further aggravate the food supply problem.
It is the increase in carbon dioxide which will both create a more favorable climate for food growth, as well as provide raw material for the production of sugar through photosynthesis. While this may flood coastal regions, those displaced will primarily be the wealthy and politically connected - IOW, those most able to cope with change.
The whole "global warming crisis" movement is really fueled by a group of elite liberals who fear losing their ocean-front property. What I find ironic is that it seems that the same people who cry foul over the supposed "overpopulation crisis" also cry foul over the use of fossil fuels and global warming, apparently not realizing that the latter will solve the former through longer growing cycles and an increase in the amount of usable land. Barring ignorance, it would seem that their true motivation is not really altruistic environmentalism, but rather the protection of their elite status. (See how Ted Kennedy - the supposedly "Environmentally Friendly" senator objected to the placement of wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. Apparently, his rights to view the ocean trump the rights of his constituents to have an environmentally sound energy source...)
Well, it's not as if the dedicated Microsoftie couldn't make Linux crash....
Nor is it impossible for a Microsoftie to keep a Windows box running for a year or more...
But, both of these would require a tremendous amount of effort, because neither is the norm. Normally, Linux doesn't crash. Normally, Windows does.
It isn't so much a matter of what is theoretically possible, but more of feasibility and customer need. Microsoft is really ignorant regarding HPC - they're talking about using it for computing power for an excel spreadsheet or SQL database?! Never mind the fact that the first would have to involve an idiot programmer and the second ignores factors of scale (updateable databases don't scale well in clusters - which is why mainframes are still around. And not to flame, but if your Excel spreadsheet needs supercomputer-class computing power, you're either doing something wrong or you've picked the wrong development environment.)
These folks are profoundly ignorant of what HPC is actually used for. They have no understanding whatsoever of the HPC environment. And this is why, though Microsoft may build it, no one will buy it - just like Windows NT on MIPS in 1996-98 - remember that? Microsoft was supposed to break into the "UNIX Hardware" realm with NT on MIPS, but the only problem was that they sold only 2 copies!
Microsoft simply doesn't have an enterprise mindset. They simply don't know what their customers are using HPC for....
The difference in number of exploits, viruses, bugs, etc... between Microsoft Windows and the next competitor (whether it be Apple, IBM, or Linux) is at least two orders of magnitude.
If I added all of the known exploits and viruses which targeted MVS, IRIX, HP-UX, Mac OS, Linux, Free BSD, etc... I'd still be hard pressed to find even 10% of the number that target Windows in a single year.
So, yes, you could say the subject is open to debate. But I challenge you to find any other OS vendor who:
Caused as much as 5% of the economic damage through vulnerabilities that Windows does.
Installs using the least secure settings as the default.
Has even 10% as many known bugs in all of their products as Microsoft has in one version of 32 bit Windows.
Microsoft is the exception to the rule. No one else in the industry writes software as poorly as they do:
IBM mainframes have fewer exploits in their entire 40-year history than discovered in Windows in 1 year.
Linux has had root exploits - but again, the total number of known exploits through its entire 13 year history is still less than a single year of Windows.
I could never release software which crashed at random and keep my job. Apparently, Microsoft believes this is acceptable behavior - Here's a trick: open Windows explorer, insert a scratched CDROM, and try to access the disk. Your machine locks up - this bug has existed since Windows 95, yet Microsoft still hasn't fixed it. Strangely, Konquerer will tell me after about a minute if it can't read the disk, and it doesn't lock my machine in the meantime.
I could go on, but you get the point. Microsoft isn't just a little negligent - they're nowhere near the industry standard when it comes to professionalism. The quality of their code is so poor that simply can't be compared to any other vendor - no one else has released code which comes even remotely close to the number of bugs and security exploits that Windows has.
Okay, just to collect all of the Microsoft trolls in one thread:
How can Windows ever be secure when exploits are released before the OS is available?!
It seems to me that Microsoft can't design a secure OS. After talking about security for more than 2 years, their latest incarnation is even less secure on its release date than Windows 95!
Then what would the penalty be for selling software which was designed (either through fault or negligence) to propagate viruses?
The worst of it is that Microsoft isn't embarrassed that a college student built a more reliable OS than them. In fact, they don't care - instead of accepting responsibility for their faulty design, they blame the victim - the end user. After all, once the license fee is paid, it's not their problem.
Think about it. If virus infection is such a problem, a company who sells software to millions has a moral obligation to do something about it. But virus infection is not a serious problem - if it were, Microsoft wouldn't be in business. Everyone would run Linux.
And what exactly is the cost of viruses? Well, it is less than the perceived burden of installing and learning to use Linux. Yes, we could port every single app to Linux, and retrain everybody on Linux. Corporations don't, because they believe that doing so would actually cost them more money. Given that corporations are going out of their way to outsource to India, one can pretty much be assured that if Linux was suitable for a company, they'd be using it. Most companies hate the licensing deals Microsoft foists on them, but use their products simply because they believe them to be less expensive than Linux.
I've always wondered if the choice of names wasn't somewhat coincidental.... Especially considering that one of the creators of the Simpsons is a Northern Illinois University grad.
Of course you are correct, from a legal standpoint.
However, from another purely legal standpoint, the Executive Branch can imprison anyone for an arbitrary length of time... provided that they classify the prisoner as an "enemy combatant".
The problem is that someone taking pictures looks suspicious to the police. And being suspected of terrorist plotting isn't something you want to have happen to you. It would be much easier for an up-and-coming prosecuting attorney to convince a jury that you are a terrorist than for you to convince them that you are an amateur cartographer - especially now that the average U.S. citizen is scared to death of terrorism.
And then there's the whole other matter of police who simply disregard what the law says.
A year or so ago, Cook County officials sent a van around photographing every house and residential street in the county. They planned to offer the pictures on the internet, but I'm not sure how successful they were.
And yes, it made the news and raised a lot of controversy, but in the end, Cook County told its critics they could shove it, and went ahead and did it anyway.
I guess its just another case of "Can't fight City Hall"....
Now, if a private citizen had attempted to do the same, you can bet they would have been arrested. And if someone tried to do it now, they'd get thrown in jail as a suspected terrorist.
There's a common misconception that radio stations have a right to broadcast. They don't. Because the radio spectrum is limited, it must be shared everyone in the broadcasting area. The FCC (theoretically, at least) grants licenses to those entities which it believes will benefit the people most through their use of the broadcast license.
The RIAA and radio stations have no right to profit from commercial radio. They don't own the airwaves. We, the people, do. If their broadcast content doesn't meet the needs of the people, we have every right to replace them with someone who will better serve the public interest.
Radio is a public medium, not a private one. Therefore, since we own the medium, a private entity cannot further restrict the dissemination of what is transmitted across our airwaves. If you want to use our broadcast medium, you have to play by our rules.
If you (RIAA) don't want to play by our rules, you can take your ball and go home. (i.e., if you want to slap DRM on your content, go get your own network - but don't expect to use ours.)
You have two options: buy their stuff, but don't complain, or don't buy their stuff, and try and support alternative markets...
It has probably been five years since I bought a CD for myself, yet I continue to rent movies on a regular basis... While the RIAA has been busy "fighting" the demons of piracy, I've been losing interest in their material.
A few years ago I heard a friend of mine (and his band) sing a rendition of a popular song. What impressed me most was that this guy was in his early 20's, and he sounded exactly like the CD. The rest of his family is into music; he's been raised with it his entire life. Though he wasn't a music major, he had developed a talent which far exceed a lot of the trash that gets put on CD's today.
And he's just one. In college, I did sound mixing for some of the music majors I knew, and even the "B" student music majors could make most of the pop-40 singers sound like amateurs. There's a lot of talent out there - good talent - and the majority of it is never heard. In fact, the smarter ones stay away from the RIAA because they've figured out that the draconian terms of an RIAA-member recording contract leave the musician with no room to actually earn a decent living.
But after hearing a few of my friends perform, my tastes in music have changed. I've been exposed to real music - music with feeling, purpose, and beauty. I can't go back to listening to pop-40, because it sounds so assinine by comparison.
The RIAA fails to understand that people are beginning to realize that listening to any RIAA music comes with a lawsuit risk. How am I supposed to relax and have a good time listening to music if I'm worried that a convenience copy could land me in court? How can I kick back and relax if I have to think about "licensing issues" every time I play a song or rip a CD?
The RIAA isn't losing sales because of Napster, or Gnutella, or file-sharing software. They are losing sales because those of us who really appreciate music find it appalling that a musician (or his representative) would sue a fan. This completely destroys a person's ability to enjoy music. It doesn't matter even if I am completely legit - the fact that I'm listening to the voice of someone with a mean streak spoils any listening pleasure I might otherwise have had.
And strangely, now that we've gotten off the CD-sales bandwagon and discovered that listening to real people making real music is more enjoyable, we aren't going back. We're spending more money than ever on music - cover charges, concert tickets, etc... but the RIAA is getting less and less of it.
And that's why the RIAA is mad. People are spending more money than ever on music, and they feel like they've been cut out of the deal. Truth is, they made money selling what never belonged to them in the first place, and now they're mad because they are losing their ability to exploit the talent of others for their own financial gain.
Remember how Microsoft destroyed the browser market by giving away Internet Explorer?
Someone at IBM does, and they know that by making the OS a commodity item, they can reap greater profits on hardware and consulting.
HP and Dell are about to get hit by a bus, and they don't even see it coming:
IBM establishes Linux as the "preferred" OS for mission-critical systems.
Dell and HP continue to sell Windows on cheap hardware. They collectively become known as the CrashWare Vendors(tm).
IBM becomes known for building PC's that Just Work(tm). They use Linux, an Advanced Operating System(tm) which is Virus-Proof(tm) and Fundamentally Secure(tm).
IBM builds a war chest with the money that would have gone to Microsoft for Windows licenses.
IBM runs HP and Dell into bankruptcy with a bidding war. Here's how:
Microsoft won't/can't reduce the cost of Windows because doing so would compound their already falling revenues, hence,
Dell and HP must either trim their margins, or reduce the hardware cost of each machine.
If the trim hardware cost, their already dismal reputation will sink to the point where they can no longer sell any machines.
If they trim their profit margins, their stock price will fall and venture capitalists will begin to favor IBM - further reinforcing IBM's war chest.
I, for one, welcome IBM's move. I'm sick of buying computer systems that Just Break(tm).
I shouldn't have to constantly patch my machine; my hardware should work the way it is supposed to; my software shouldn't welcome viruses with open arms. IBM knows this, and that's why I'll be buying IBM hardware in the future.
Before the use of plastic became prevalent in cars, the gas tanks were made of metal - from the tank all the way up to the fill pipe. Nowadays, the filler pipe is rarely made of metal - it's usually plastic or rubber.
Herein lies the problem: A metal filler pipe will ground the vehicle when the pump is placed in the opening; plastic won't. Normally, any static electicity buildup created by entering/exiting the vehicle would have been prevented by the pump grounding the vehicle. But with plastic filler pipes, the pump no longer grounds the vehicle, and hence, a static charge can build up on the vehicle as it is fueled.
Incidentally, ever time I leave my vehicle in cold, dry weather, I experience a rather substantial shock as I close the door - the friction with the seat builds up static electricity. I've often wondered what would happen if I left the door open (thus remaining staticly charged) and attempted to pump gas....
An Indiana man was indicted for fraud in an international sting operation today. The man advertised a powerbook for sale on eBay, but shipped a 3 ring binder to the buyer, instead of the computer. He is also charged with setting up fake escrow sites to dupe buyers into believing that their purchases were secured.
The man claims he shipped a binder because he believed that the buyer was trying to scam him. He claims that the fraudulent WHOIS registration led him to believe that the buyer was a scammer; police, however, believe that the man set up the escrow site with fraudulent information so he could avoid prosecution.
What if the buyer was actually legitimate, but technically inept?
Did it ever occur to anyone that the real scammer might not be the buyer, but rather, the phony escrow service, which has now taken the buyer for his $2100, plus the duty taxes on the laptop never delivered? If that's the case, then the seller could very easily convicted of fraud.
Now that the seller has shipped a worthless piece of plastic, it would be very difficult for him to convince a jury that he wasn't the one running the phony escrow site, and duped an innocent foreign buyer.
...like you just throw atoms into a bucket and shake it, hoping they stick together.
Actually, this sums up what was taught in classrooms regarding evolution for the better part of a decade. We were supposed to believe that if we threw enough chemicals in a bucket, life would "magically" appear.
You know what the real problem is? It's that people like you aren't involved in science. For the better part of fifty years, the explanation you gave above was bandied about as Gospel truth. It was taught in grade schools and colleges, in spite of the glaring logical flaws.
Those who think evolution is science would do well to study the "evolution" of evolutionary theory. To Darwin's credit, at least his theory of natural selection was logically sound. But for the better part of the last century and a half, those who followed in Darwin's footsteps have been absolute morons - the theories proposed were neither scientific, nor logically sound. From 1850 through 1990, very few evolutionary biologists, at least those concerned with abiogenesis, produced valid scientific theories. It wasn't until a mere ten years ago that empirically verifiable hypothesis became the norm in this area.
From the link:
Firstly, the formation of biological polymers from monomers is a function of the laws of chemistry and biochemistry, and these are decidedly not random.
Which I believe is correct. The unfortunate thing is that the early (pre 1980-90) abiogenesis theories posited the exact opposite. Supposedly, a cell was formed not by the laws of chemistry or physics, but by those of probability. Their theory, which was really no theory at all, relied on the improbable happening if given enough time. They didn't actually explain how life came about aside from saying that it was a "fortunate" accident that occurred because, well, "anything's possible" given enough time. It was intellectual bankruptcy at its worst.
Christianity, OTOH, is not diminished by scientific discovery.
Too bad that hosts of creationist trolls seem to think otherwise. If you succeed convincing some of those, we'll really owe you one
Ah, but we can dream, can't we...
It is a hard point to get across. Science, by its own admission, is not absolute truth, nor does in claim to be. Yet this fact stops neither the creationist nor the atheist trolls from bowing down at the almighty altar of science, seeking something from science which it plainly claims not to possess.
Is actually on a shaky foundation. The problem is that the early geologists used paleontologist opinions to date their strata, and paleontologists used strata to date their fossils.
Does anyone see a problem here?
And the dating using radioisotope decay is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the relative concentrations of isotopes have remained fixed throughout history. In fact, some geologists are taking flak because they've discovered that the strata dating based on uranium isotope decay is fundamentally flawed; they're finding additional isotopes in the samples which indicate that at least some the "decay" isotopes present may have come not from the decay of uranium, but of other heavy metals also present - which have a much shorter half-life.
As for the killing 80% of multicellular life - well, that's just speculation at this point - the number could up or down.
The problem, as I see it, is that a certain group of people are trying to transform science - which is at best a tentative explanation, and quite frequently wrong - into a religion. They seek science as the ultimate authority in all matters, when such authority is specifically precluded by the use of the scientific method. Modern science is founded on the assertion that we don't know everything there is to know about the Universe - if we did, there would be no point in further study. There are people who view questioning evolutionary theory as tantamount to blasphemy, in spite of the fact that the progress of science as a whole is dependent upon skepticism.
And this is what irks me - the valid questions and logical problems inherent in abiogenesis are simply left unaddressed by the current theories. If anything, it is an embarassment to science - it isn't empirically verifiable, and worse, it offers no enlightened understanding of the subject matter. It is claimed that the events by which life would come to exist on its own are extremely rare, and hence, an Old Earth is required for an extremely small probability to become a reality. Belief that God created life is not contingent, though, on the age of the Universe - regardless of whether the Earth is four thousand or four billion years old.
But the problem is worse than that. Even given the current accepted age of the Universe, with the currently accepted mass of the Universe, there is simply not enough atoms nor enough time for even one useful protein molecule to stand a better than even chance of coming about through random interaction. A statistician could easily poke holes in the "random chance" model of life's beginnings. Because it lacks empirical verifiability, abiogenesis isn't a valid scientific theory. And because the logical model is flawed, it isn't a good philosophy either. Even were we to accept abiogenesis on faith, it still provides no deeper insight regarding life than simply saying we were created by God; it provides us no mechanism of generation, it cannot explain why certain molecules were used as opposed to others (for example, why we don't have a hydrocarbon base as opposed to an aqueous one. Even though many more chemical reactions take place in water, the underlying assumption of abiogenesis is that unlikely events do occur, so such is a reasonable question. It would seem that if we ignore statistics, a hydrocarbon metabolism would be as plausible as an aqueous one.)
It is far more plausible to posit that we were created by God than to suggest life came about by a highly unlikely chain of events for which the exact mechanisms are not understood. Neither theory explains the exact mechanism, nor is empirically verifiable. The difference, however, is that the first does not claim to be science, yet is logically sound, whereas the second does claim to be science, but is neither logically sound, nor proper science.
As science prides itself on finding truth through skepticism, it should welcome new discoveries, even if they cast doubt on accepted theories. The problem, however,
At first, abiogenesis was centered around the notion that a possible, but highly unlikely, chain of events happened billions of years ago. Supposedly, through billions of years of evolution, man evolved from creatures more primitive.
The theory was made at least partially plausible by the "logic of big numbers" - given enough time, anything is bound to happen, no matter how small the probability. Their explanation relied on faith in statistics, rather than God, and contained very little that was actually scientific. This explanation was little better than the creationist dogma that God created the Universe, Earth, and Man in a literally 7 24-hour periods.
Now, instead of four billion years, they've got to explain in it 250 million years. Given that they've already posited that mankind's ancestors appeared about 50 million years ago, they're down to a mere 200 million years to go from single-celled to upright and walking.
What really gets me is that none of the so called "scientific" origin-of-life theories are logically sound. Nor are they scientific, in the truest sense of the word - their hypotheses cannot be tested.
Ultimately, I think, it comes down to faith. I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't know the mechanisms by which life came about - whether God created mankind as a series of steps taking millions of years, or constructed modern man in a single instant of inspired creation. But, because I believe in God, I don't risk having my beliefs invalidated by a scientific discovery.
I think that this is hard point to get across. Evolutionary biology is not necessarily contradictory to faith in God. However, faith in evolution as the ultimate explanation for our existence leaves much to be desired, and because atheists have accepted this notion as a de-facto religion, true scientific progress is often held up by such biases. No atheist scientist could ever admit any finding which would cast doubt on the pre-conceived notions of abiogenisis, because to do so would destroy his religion. Christianity, OTOH, is not diminished by scientific discovery. Rather, science often illumines our knowledge of God - we discover the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created.
What so many people don't understand is that the largest single factor determining fuel economy is the mass of the vehicle. This is even more pronounced in stop and go driving:
Yes, reduced drag coefficient can improve fuel economy, but it's not by much. In the 80's, Ford was really big on aerodynamic styling, and they could only improve fuel economy by about 5 mpg. Even though motorcycles have horrible drag coefficients, they weigh only 1/3 to 1/4 what a subcompact does, and can easily get 40 or 50 mpg (Kawasaki Ninja 250's can reportedly get 80 mpg).
Reducing rolling resistance may help a little, but it comes at the expense of safety. Given that hybrids have minimal protection, one really doesn't want to risk an accident.
It takes a given amount of energy to travel a given distance; first, there's the acceleration, and then there's the air and rubber-pavement friction. The only manner in which one can reduce both the energy of acceleration and rolling resistance is to decrease the mass.
The problem with hybrids is that they use a gasoline engine - at best, these engines convert 25% of the combustion energy into mechanical output. Diesel engines, in contrast, convert nearly 40% of their energy into mechanical work. Even with regenerative braking, there is a certain inefficiency in both storing the energy as electricity, and as converting it back to mechanical energy. In addition to an engine and transmission, a hybrid must lug around batteries and an electric motor, which increases the size and mass of the vehicle, which increases the rolling resistance....
Hybrids are the worst of both worlds - they're dangerous in an accident, and their performance and fuel economy suffer.
Someone who wants to risk their life for better fuel economy would be better off with a motorcycle. Not only will they get better mileage, the insurance is substantially cheaper, and they are a lot more fun to drive than an underpowered econo-box.
As both a resident of Illinois and a freelance developer, this doesn't look good. While my paying clients might not like having to fork over another 5 - 10% above their quoted price, this could absolutely destroy free software.
Here's the dangerous part:
(subject to service occupation tax on the value of tangible personal property transferred with the software) [emphasis mine]
The law is written so that the tax is applied to the value of software transferred - IOW, installing Linux on a client's computer could cost the customer $250 - 500 regardless of how much you actually paid for it. Should the Illinois Government use the Microsoft pricing model ($5000 for a server OS...), a developer who volunteers to help out a client by installing Linux on their server could end up owing the state $250 to $500 in sales taxes.
The biggest threat I see to this is the destruction of free software. Since the tax is charged on the value, rather than the price charged, even giving away custom software would impose a tax liability on the author.
And believe me, there are a lot of programmers in Illinois that will remember this when the elections come up. With the economic downturn, quite a few of us have had to resort to picking up side jobs for extra income - the last thing we need is a tax which would take away our business.
There is a downside to this, though. When programmers hear their company allowing telecommuting, they think of working in their pajamas during normal working hours. Companies often have something completely different in mind...
Companies view telecommuting not as working from home instead of coming to work, but rather, as working from home in addition to coming to work. There are firms which expect their employees not only to work a full 8 hour day at the office, but log on and work from home after office hours. Because the employee isn't at the employer's "place of business", the employer believes they owe the employee no additional compensation for those extra hours.
And unfortunately, employees who convince their employer they need not be physically present to do their job find their jobs outsourced to other countries. Thus, telecommuting can never completely replace the office for the average American worker.
Maybe someday if slashdot regains its past glories we can have a thread devoted to the subject of whether ultimate code correctness bears any relationship to personal discipline, or if the entire matter rests with finding a suitable womb in which to program with protects the programmer from his or her own nature.
I think that sums up the core problem of "language debates" rather nicely. I've found that certain languages are better than others when it comes to certain types of problems, and I will readily implement in the most appropriate language:
Assembly is very good for coding simple problems which must be fast, reliable, and small. Typically, this means OS components and other hardware-level code.
C is good for general utility programs, or programs meant to work on relatively small tasks in a larger context. It particularly excels at managing flat-files and other data structures of fixed size.
C++ is good for building robust applications. It is more complex than C, but in the hands of a well disciplined coder, is much more powerful and much more productive.
Visual Basic and Java are good for building enterprise level systems. VB is particularly problematic in regard to external dependencies; setting up a box to run your VB app can take as long as coding itself. Java, OTOH, has a much more sane, portable, approach, but it is decidedly limited in accessing system-specific details.
I know that some are going to take issue with my depictions of their favorite language, and these are the people most in need of correction. With few exceptions, the inability to solve a problem with a given language is almost never the fault of the language.
Granted, some languages do restrict what a programmer can do, but I've found that, more often than not, the supposed "failure" of a language has more to do with the ineptitude of the coder than the deficiencies of the language paradigm. The fundamental difference between the l33t c0dR and the programmer analyst is that the analyst approaches the problem in terms of processes and algorithms, where the coder thinks only in terms of their favorite language; if said language doesn't solve the problem nicely, they blame the language rather than themselves.
Having worked on enterprise level systems, I can truly say that the implementation language is of almost a trivial relevance from a problem-solution perspective. The primary difference between the different languages is the time required to build the system. Since some of the higher level languages (and their libraries) do much for the programmer, they require few low-level design details, and are hence faster. But while this makes design a little easier, it neither prevents the programmer from choosing inefficient algorithms, nor making logical errors. Someone who gave up C++ in favor of Java for any reason other than development time will find that the problem of complexity hasn't gone away; rather it has simply been moved up a level. Those same complexity problems C++ faced at the statement level will now reappear at the module level (Such as two objects which support the same syntactic interface, yet do subtly different things...) And so it goes with every language transition - the problem of complexity doesn't go away, but rather, is shifted to a higher level. A programmer analyst, who thinks from a top-down perspective, addresses the problem of complexity with the high level design, rather than the facilities of the language. Thus, once the overall design is done, there is considerable leeway in choosing the correct language for implementation.
Yes, though one must consider the impact of that process on other systems. Linux requires much less time to keep secure than Windows; basically, Linux requires patching every year or so, where Windows requires a patch every month. Worse, since so many of the security exploits affected required components of the OS such as IE, I seldom have the option of turning off or uninstalling insecure software. The wuftpd and SSH vulnerabilities that anti-Linux zealots love to trump up didn't affect me at all, because I don't use either, and hence, don't have to download patches.
assume you still look both ways before crossing the street
That was a bad analogy to prove your point, really. Yes, I look both ways before crossing the street, but in the case of Windows, its more akin to being thrown into expressway traffic and having to dodge cars. Windows simply doesn't allow you to see oncoming security problems because you can't inspect the code; their "hide everything from the user" mentality makes it difficult to find potential security flaws before they are exploited. The security flaws discovered in Linux were often discovered at the source code level before an exploit was discovered; but with Windows, almost every security patch is the result of someone's server getting exploited and Microsoft trying to figure out what happened. The fundamental difference is that Linux takes a proactive stance, fixing security problems before they cause problems. Windows OTOH mandates a completely reactive stance - you must wait on Redmond to issue a fix, and Redmond doesn't know about it until someone's box gets owned.
To do a bad paraphrase of Clint Eastwood:
"I know what you're thinkin': 'I just patched my windows boxen, I must really be secure.' Well just ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well.... Do ya, punk?"
Do you feel lucky? Are you betting the next Windows exploit will infect someone else's machine before it gets to yours? Are you betting that Microsoft will be able to acknowledge the problem and find a workaround before your server gets hit?
Yeah, so Windows has patches. But how am I supposed to download said patch, when connecting to the internet to do so exposes me to the very same infection I'm trying to prevent?
What it really comes down to is that Linux simply takes less time to keep secure than Windows. Yes, I suppose their are exploits for Linux yet undiscovered. But, it is far more likely that there are far more undiscovered security holes in Windows than in Linux.
I've found that the best solution to the problem of Microsoft's constant and ever more serious security holes is simple:
Dual boot with Linux. Linux for the network; Windows for the games.
Just use Linux as your network-enabled OS, and Windows for everything else. Log off the internet or disconnect your DSL or broadband before you reboot into Windows, and you'll be fine.
It is really that simple - I just disconnect my network connection when I'm running Windows. Let's face reality here:
The majority of PC users run Windows. So you need Windows to communicate with the rest of the world. If you want to write free software that benefits the average PC user, you have to target Windows. There are a lot of "average" users who couldn't use Linux, but not many geeks that can't use Windows.
Linux is far more secure when exposed to a network than Windows.
Yes, there are patches available for Windows, but some of us have better things to do than constantly patch our machines and spending hours trying to figure out why the latest Microsoft patch "broke" something that worked previously. And...
Neither I nor my professional colleagues have the time to constantly patch our desktop machines. We have work to do. We shouldn't have to deal with security holes that shouldn't be present in a commercial operating system.
Even should you put forth the effort to stay fully up to date, your boxes still contain a plethora of security holes; 6 months from now, Microsoft will be issuing patches for today's vulnerabilities that have yet to be discovered. Considering that more Windows security holes are discovered in the average month than have been discovered in all 10+ years of Linux's history, I feel a little safer running Linux.
So the solution is simple: Linux is your network OS, and Windows is your "friends and family" OS.
Great! So instead of printing a copy of the classics downloaded from the internet at a few pennies per copy, my child can now use a $1350 laptop:
Bullies might not care for Johnny's printouts of Wuthering Heights, but they'd be glad to take his laptop.
Instead of paying $50 per child per year for textbook rental, parents will now have to pay $50 per year per laptop for antivirus subscriptions, and buy a ~$1000 laptop for each of their children.
Lost laptops are a much bigger problem than lost books.
How many kids hawk their textbooks for drug money? How many kids would hawk their laptop for drug money?
I don't see any sense in this at all. Basically, this makes every child a target of criminal activity. But worse, it seems to me that this is a part of the greater "worship computers because they are the future..." mantra I see in schools. Just because little Johnny can use a computer doesn't mean he's not an idiot, and I believe that most businesses are aware of this fact. What's going to happen is that these parents are going to find out the hard way that the money they spent on computer hardware is actually going to be a disadvantage when it comes to their children going to college - you can't use a computer on standardized tests, and without it, little Johnny's going to be lost. No worry, though - he can still qualify for that fast food job and go to a "computer school," or community college where he'll learn how to be a Windows Admin for $6/hour (or whatever it pays by then). If he looks good, they might feature him in the commercials...
Rest assured, these students won't learn any computer science during this program. In fact, they'll be lucky to read even 10% of the books installed...
Computers don't teach logic or reason - if they did, a substantial portion of the population would not be making a living teaching inherently stupid machines to perform monotonous tasks.
Slashdot Mirror
Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position.
Though I'm not rapidly pro- or anti- nuclear power, here goes:
- Plant life would deplete the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, resulting in a colder Earth and:
- Shorter growing cycles would further aggravate the food supply problem.
It is the increase in carbon dioxide which will both create a more favorable climate for food growth, as well as provide raw material for the production of sugar through photosynthesis. While this may flood coastal regions, those displaced will primarily be the wealthy and politically connected - IOW, those most able to cope with change.The whole "global warming crisis" movement is really fueled by a group of elite liberals who fear losing their ocean-front property. What I find ironic is that it seems that the same people who cry foul over the supposed "overpopulation crisis" also cry foul over the use of fossil fuels and global warming, apparently not realizing that the latter will solve the former through longer growing cycles and an increase in the amount of usable land. Barring ignorance, it would seem that their true motivation is not really altruistic environmentalism, but rather the protection of their elite status. (See how Ted Kennedy - the supposedly "Environmentally Friendly" senator objected to the placement of wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. Apparently, his rights to view the ocean trump the rights of his constituents to have an environmentally sound energy source...)
Well, it's not as if the dedicated Microsoftie couldn't make Linux crash....
Nor is it impossible for a Microsoftie to keep a Windows box running for a year or more...
But, both of these would require a tremendous amount of effort, because neither is the norm. Normally, Linux doesn't crash. Normally, Windows does.
It isn't so much a matter of what is theoretically possible, but more of feasibility and customer need. Microsoft is really ignorant regarding HPC - they're talking about using it for computing power for an excel spreadsheet or SQL database?! Never mind the fact that the first would have to involve an idiot programmer and the second ignores factors of scale (updateable databases don't scale well in clusters - which is why mainframes are still around. And not to flame, but if your Excel spreadsheet needs supercomputer-class computing power, you're either doing something wrong or you've picked the wrong development environment.)
These folks are profoundly ignorant of what HPC is actually used for. They have no understanding whatsoever of the HPC environment. And this is why, though Microsoft may build it, no one will buy it - just like Windows NT on MIPS in 1996-98 - remember that? Microsoft was supposed to break into the "UNIX Hardware" realm with NT on MIPS, but the only problem was that they sold only 2 copies!
Microsoft simply doesn't have an enterprise mindset. They simply don't know what their customers are using HPC for....
The difference in number of exploits, viruses, bugs, etc... between Microsoft Windows and the next competitor (whether it be Apple, IBM, or Linux) is at least two orders of magnitude.
If I added all of the known exploits and viruses which targeted MVS, IRIX, HP-UX, Mac OS, Linux, Free BSD, etc... I'd still be hard pressed to find even 10% of the number that target Windows in a single year.
So, yes, you could say the subject is open to debate. But I challenge you to find any other OS vendor who:
Microsoft is the exception to the rule. No one else in the industry writes software as poorly as they do:
I could go on, but you get the point. Microsoft isn't just a little negligent - they're nowhere near the industry standard when it comes to professionalism. The quality of their code is so poor that simply can't be compared to any other vendor - no one else has released code which comes even remotely close to the number of bugs and security exploits that Windows has.
Okay, just to collect all of the Microsoft trolls in one thread:
How can Windows ever be secure when exploits are released before the OS is available?!
It seems to me that Microsoft can't design a secure OS. After talking about security for more than 2 years, their latest incarnation is even less secure on its release date than Windows 95!
Microsoft: the Day Zero Exploit(tm) company
Then what would the penalty be for selling software which was designed (either through fault or negligence) to propagate viruses?
The worst of it is that Microsoft isn't embarrassed that a college student built a more reliable OS than them. In fact, they don't care - instead of accepting responsibility for their faulty design, they blame the victim - the end user. After all, once the license fee is paid, it's not their problem.
Think about it. If virus infection is such a problem, a company who sells software to millions has a moral obligation to do something about it. But virus infection is not a serious problem - if it were, Microsoft wouldn't be in business. Everyone would run Linux.
And what exactly is the cost of viruses? Well, it is less than the perceived burden of installing and learning to use Linux. Yes, we could port every single app to Linux, and retrain everybody on Linux. Corporations don't, because they believe that doing so would actually cost them more money. Given that corporations are going out of their way to outsource to India, one can pretty much be assured that if Linux was suitable for a company, they'd be using it. Most companies hate the licensing deals Microsoft foists on them, but use their products simply because they believe them to be less expensive than Linux.
I've always wondered if the choice of names wasn't somewhat coincidental.... Especially considering that one of the creators of the Simpsons is a Northern Illinois University grad.
Of course you are correct, from a legal standpoint.
However, from another purely legal standpoint, the Executive Branch can imprison anyone for an arbitrary length of time... provided that they classify the prisoner as an "enemy combatant".
The problem is that someone taking pictures looks suspicious to the police. And being suspected of terrorist plotting isn't something you want to have happen to you. It would be much easier for an up-and-coming prosecuting attorney to convince a jury that you are a terrorist than for you to convince them that you are an amateur cartographer - especially now that the average U.S. citizen is scared to death of terrorism.
And then there's the whole other matter of police who simply disregard what the law says.
A year or so ago, Cook County officials sent a van around photographing every house and residential street in the county. They planned to offer the pictures on the internet, but I'm not sure how successful they were.
And yes, it made the news and raised a lot of controversy, but in the end, Cook County told its critics they could shove it, and went ahead and did it anyway.
I guess its just another case of "Can't fight City Hall"....
Now, if a private citizen had attempted to do the same, you can bet they would have been arrested. And if someone tried to do it now, they'd get thrown in jail as a suspected terrorist.
That the airwaves are owned by the public.
There's a common misconception that radio stations have a right to broadcast. They don't. Because the radio spectrum is limited, it must be shared everyone in the broadcasting area. The FCC (theoretically, at least) grants licenses to those entities which it believes will benefit the people most through their use of the broadcast license.
The RIAA and radio stations have no right to profit from commercial radio. They don't own the airwaves. We, the people, do. If their broadcast content doesn't meet the needs of the people, we have every right to replace them with someone who will better serve the public interest.
Radio is a public medium, not a private one. Therefore, since we own the medium, a private entity cannot further restrict the dissemination of what is transmitted across our airwaves. If you want to use our broadcast medium, you have to play by our rules.
If you (RIAA) don't want to play by our rules, you can take your ball and go home. (i.e., if you want to slap DRM on your content, go get your own network - but don't expect to use ours.)
You have two options: buy their stuff, but don't complain, or don't buy their stuff, and try and support alternative markets...
It has probably been five years since I bought a CD for myself, yet I continue to rent movies on a regular basis... While the RIAA has been busy "fighting" the demons of piracy, I've been losing interest in their material.
A few years ago I heard a friend of mine (and his band) sing a rendition of a popular song. What impressed me most was that this guy was in his early 20's, and he sounded exactly like the CD. The rest of his family is into music; he's been raised with it his entire life. Though he wasn't a music major, he had developed a talent which far exceed a lot of the trash that gets put on CD's today.
And he's just one. In college, I did sound mixing for some of the music majors I knew, and even the "B" student music majors could make most of the pop-40 singers sound like amateurs. There's a lot of talent out there - good talent - and the majority of it is never heard. In fact, the smarter ones stay away from the RIAA because they've figured out that the draconian terms of an RIAA-member recording contract leave the musician with no room to actually earn a decent living.
But after hearing a few of my friends perform, my tastes in music have changed. I've been exposed to real music - music with feeling, purpose, and beauty. I can't go back to listening to pop-40, because it sounds so assinine by comparison.
The RIAA fails to understand that people are beginning to realize that listening to any RIAA music comes with a lawsuit risk. How am I supposed to relax and have a good time listening to music if I'm worried that a convenience copy could land me in court? How can I kick back and relax if I have to think about "licensing issues" every time I play a song or rip a CD?
The RIAA isn't losing sales because of Napster, or Gnutella, or file-sharing software. They are losing sales because those of us who really appreciate music find it appalling that a musician (or his representative) would sue a fan. This completely destroys a person's ability to enjoy music. It doesn't matter even if I am completely legit - the fact that I'm listening to the voice of someone with a mean streak spoils any listening pleasure I might otherwise have had.
And strangely, now that we've gotten off the CD-sales bandwagon and discovered that listening to real people making real music is more enjoyable, we aren't going back. We're spending more money than ever on music - cover charges, concert tickets, etc... but the RIAA is getting less and less of it.
And that's why the RIAA is mad. People are spending more money than ever on music, and they feel like they've been cut out of the deal. Truth is, they made money selling what never belonged to them in the first place, and now they're mad because they are losing their ability to exploit the talent of others for their own financial gain.
Remember how Microsoft sunk OS/2?
Remember how Microsoft destroyed the browser market by giving away Internet Explorer?
Someone at IBM does, and they know that by making the OS a commodity item, they can reap greater profits on hardware and consulting.
HP and Dell are about to get hit by a bus, and they don't even see it coming:
I, for one, welcome IBM's move. I'm sick of buying computer systems that Just Break(tm). I shouldn't have to constantly patch my machine; my hardware should work the way it is supposed to; my software shouldn't welcome viruses with open arms. IBM knows this, and that's why I'll be buying IBM hardware in the future.
Are the real cause of the problem.
Before the use of plastic became prevalent in cars, the gas tanks were made of metal - from the tank all the way up to the fill pipe. Nowadays, the filler pipe is rarely made of metal - it's usually plastic or rubber.
Herein lies the problem: A metal filler pipe will ground the vehicle when the pump is placed in the opening; plastic won't. Normally, any static electicity buildup created by entering/exiting the vehicle would have been prevented by the pump grounding the vehicle. But with plastic filler pipes, the pump no longer grounds the vehicle, and hence, a static charge can build up on the vehicle as it is fueled.
Incidentally, ever time I leave my vehicle in cold, dry weather, I experience a rather substantial shock as I close the door - the friction with the seat builds up static electricity. I've often wondered what would happen if I left the door open (thus remaining staticly charged) and attempted to pump gas....
An Indiana man was indicted for fraud in an international sting operation today. The man advertised a powerbook for sale on eBay, but shipped a 3 ring binder to the buyer, instead of the computer. He is also charged with setting up fake escrow sites to dupe buyers into believing that their purchases were secured.
The man claims he shipped a binder because he believed that the buyer was trying to scam him. He claims that the fraudulent WHOIS registration led him to believe that the buyer was a scammer; police, however, believe that the man set up the escrow site with fraudulent information so he could avoid prosecution.
What if the buyer was actually legitimate, but technically inept?
Did it ever occur to anyone that the real scammer might not be the buyer, but rather, the phony escrow service, which has now taken the buyer for his $2100, plus the duty taxes on the laptop never delivered? If that's the case, then the seller could very easily convicted of fraud. Now that the seller has shipped a worthless piece of plastic, it would be very difficult for him to convince a jury that he wasn't the one running the phony escrow site, and duped an innocent foreign buyer.
...like you just throw atoms into a bucket and shake it, hoping they stick together.
Actually, this sums up what was taught in classrooms regarding evolution for the better part of a decade. We were supposed to believe that if we threw enough chemicals in a bucket, life would "magically" appear.You know what the real problem is? It's that people like you aren't involved in science. For the better part of fifty years, the explanation you gave above was bandied about as Gospel truth. It was taught in grade schools and colleges, in spite of the glaring logical flaws.
Those who think evolution is science would do well to study the "evolution" of evolutionary theory. To Darwin's credit, at least his theory of natural selection was logically sound. But for the better part of the last century and a half, those who followed in Darwin's footsteps have been absolute morons - the theories proposed were neither scientific, nor logically sound. From 1850 through 1990, very few evolutionary biologists, at least those concerned with abiogenesis, produced valid scientific theories. It wasn't until a mere ten years ago that empirically verifiable hypothesis became the norm in this area.
From the link:
Firstly, the formation of biological polymers from monomers is a function of the laws of chemistry and biochemistry, and these are decidedly not random.
Which I believe is correct. The unfortunate thing is that the early (pre 1980-90) abiogenesis theories posited the exact opposite. Supposedly, a cell was formed not by the laws of chemistry or physics, but by those of probability. Their theory, which was really no theory at all, relied on the improbable happening if given enough time. They didn't actually explain how life came about aside from saying that it was a "fortunate" accident that occurred because, well, "anything's possible" given enough time. It was intellectual bankruptcy at its worst.
Christianity, OTOH, is not diminished by scientific discovery.
Too bad that hosts of creationist trolls seem to think otherwise. If you succeed convincing some of those, we'll really owe you one
Ah, but we can dream, can't we...
It is a hard point to get across. Science, by its own admission, is not absolute truth, nor does in claim to be. Yet this fact stops neither the creationist nor the atheist trolls from bowing down at the almighty altar of science, seeking something from science which it plainly claims not to possess.
Is actually on a shaky foundation. The problem is that the early geologists used paleontologist opinions to date their strata, and paleontologists used strata to date their fossils.
Does anyone see a problem here?
And the dating using radioisotope decay is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the relative concentrations of isotopes have remained fixed throughout history. In fact, some geologists are taking flak because they've discovered that the strata dating based on uranium isotope decay is fundamentally flawed; they're finding additional isotopes in the samples which indicate that at least some the "decay" isotopes present may have come not from the decay of uranium, but of other heavy metals also present - which have a much shorter half-life.
As for the killing 80% of multicellular life - well, that's just speculation at this point - the number could up or down.
The problem, as I see it, is that a certain group of people are trying to transform science - which is at best a tentative explanation, and quite frequently wrong - into a religion. They seek science as the ultimate authority in all matters, when such authority is specifically precluded by the use of the scientific method. Modern science is founded on the assertion that we don't know everything there is to know about the Universe - if we did, there would be no point in further study. There are people who view questioning evolutionary theory as tantamount to blasphemy, in spite of the fact that the progress of science as a whole is dependent upon skepticism.
And this is what irks me - the valid questions and logical problems inherent in abiogenesis are simply left unaddressed by the current theories. If anything, it is an embarassment to science - it isn't empirically verifiable, and worse, it offers no enlightened understanding of the subject matter. It is claimed that the events by which life would come to exist on its own are extremely rare, and hence, an Old Earth is required for an extremely small probability to become a reality. Belief that God created life is not contingent, though, on the age of the Universe - regardless of whether the Earth is four thousand or four billion years old.
But the problem is worse than that. Even given the current accepted age of the Universe, with the currently accepted mass of the Universe, there is simply not enough atoms nor enough time for even one useful protein molecule to stand a better than even chance of coming about through random interaction. A statistician could easily poke holes in the "random chance" model of life's beginnings. Because it lacks empirical verifiability, abiogenesis isn't a valid scientific theory. And because the logical model is flawed, it isn't a good philosophy either. Even were we to accept abiogenesis on faith, it still provides no deeper insight regarding life than simply saying we were created by God; it provides us no mechanism of generation, it cannot explain why certain molecules were used as opposed to others (for example, why we don't have a hydrocarbon base as opposed to an aqueous one. Even though many more chemical reactions take place in water, the underlying assumption of abiogenesis is that unlikely events do occur, so such is a reasonable question. It would seem that if we ignore statistics, a hydrocarbon metabolism would be as plausible as an aqueous one.)
It is far more plausible to posit that we were created by God than to suggest life came about by a highly unlikely chain of events for which the exact mechanisms are not understood. Neither theory explains the exact mechanism, nor is empirically verifiable. The difference, however, is that the first does not claim to be science, yet is logically sound, whereas the second does claim to be science, but is neither logically sound, nor proper science.
As science prides itself on finding truth through skepticism, it should welcome new discoveries, even if they cast doubt on accepted theories. The problem, however,
At first, abiogenesis was centered around the notion that a possible, but highly unlikely, chain of events happened billions of years ago. Supposedly, through billions of years of evolution, man evolved from creatures more primitive.
The theory was made at least partially plausible by the "logic of big numbers" - given enough time, anything is bound to happen, no matter how small the probability. Their explanation relied on faith in statistics, rather than God, and contained very little that was actually scientific. This explanation was little better than the creationist dogma that God created the Universe, Earth, and Man in a literally 7 24-hour periods.
Now, instead of four billion years, they've got to explain in it 250 million years. Given that they've already posited that mankind's ancestors appeared about 50 million years ago, they're down to a mere 200 million years to go from single-celled to upright and walking.
What really gets me is that none of the so called "scientific" origin-of-life theories are logically sound. Nor are they scientific, in the truest sense of the word - their hypotheses cannot be tested.
Ultimately, I think, it comes down to faith. I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't know the mechanisms by which life came about - whether God created mankind as a series of steps taking millions of years, or constructed modern man in a single instant of inspired creation. But, because I believe in God, I don't risk having my beliefs invalidated by a scientific discovery.
I think that this is hard point to get across. Evolutionary biology is not necessarily contradictory to faith in God. However, faith in evolution as the ultimate explanation for our existence leaves much to be desired, and because atheists have accepted this notion as a de-facto religion, true scientific progress is often held up by such biases. No atheist scientist could ever admit any finding which would cast doubt on the pre-conceived notions of abiogenisis, because to do so would destroy his religion. Christianity, OTOH, is not diminished by scientific discovery. Rather, science often illumines our knowledge of God - we discover the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created.
What so many people don't understand is that the largest single factor determining fuel economy is the mass of the vehicle. This is even more pronounced in stop and go driving:
The problem with hybrids is that they use a gasoline engine - at best, these engines convert 25% of the combustion energy into mechanical output. Diesel engines, in contrast, convert nearly 40% of their energy into mechanical work. Even with regenerative braking, there is a certain inefficiency in both storing the energy as electricity, and as converting it back to mechanical energy. In addition to an engine and transmission, a hybrid must lug around batteries and an electric motor, which increases the size and mass of the vehicle, which increases the rolling resistance....
Hybrids are the worst of both worlds - they're dangerous in an accident, and their performance and fuel economy suffer.
Someone who wants to risk their life for better fuel economy would be better off with a motorcycle. Not only will they get better mileage, the insurance is substantially cheaper, and they are a lot more fun to drive than an underpowered econo-box.
As both a resident of Illinois and a freelance developer, this doesn't look good. While my paying clients might not like having to fork over another 5 - 10% above their quoted price, this could absolutely destroy free software.
Here's the dangerous part:
(subject to service occupation tax on the value of tangible personal property transferred with the software) [emphasis mine]
The law is written so that the tax is applied to the value of software transferred - IOW, installing Linux on a client's computer could cost the customer $250 - 500 regardless of how much you actually paid for it. Should the Illinois Government use the Microsoft pricing model ($5000 for a server OS...), a developer who volunteers to help out a client by installing Linux on their server could end up owing the state $250 to $500 in sales taxes.
The biggest threat I see to this is the destruction of free software. Since the tax is charged on the value, rather than the price charged, even giving away custom software would impose a tax liability on the author.
And believe me, there are a lot of programmers in Illinois that will remember this when the elections come up. With the economic downturn, quite a few of us have had to resort to picking up side jobs for extra income - the last thing we need is a tax which would take away our business.
There is a downside to this, though. When programmers hear their company allowing telecommuting, they think of working in their pajamas during normal working hours. Companies often have something completely different in mind...
Companies view telecommuting not as working from home instead of coming to work, but rather, as working from home in addition to coming to work. There are firms which expect their employees not only to work a full 8 hour day at the office, but log on and work from home after office hours. Because the employee isn't at the employer's "place of business", the employer believes they owe the employee no additional compensation for those extra hours.
And unfortunately, employees who convince their employer they need not be physically present to do their job find their jobs outsourced to other countries. Thus, telecommuting can never completely replace the office for the average American worker.
I think that sums up the core problem of "language debates" rather nicely. I've found that certain languages are better than others when it comes to certain types of problems, and I will readily implement in the most appropriate language:
I know that some are going to take issue with my depictions of their favorite language, and these are the people most in need of correction. With few exceptions, the inability to solve a problem with a given language is almost never the fault of the language.
Granted, some languages do restrict what a programmer can do, but I've found that, more often than not, the supposed "failure" of a language has more to do with the ineptitude of the coder than the deficiencies of the language paradigm. The fundamental difference between the l33t c0dR and the programmer analyst is that the analyst approaches the problem in terms of processes and algorithms, where the coder thinks only in terms of their favorite language; if said language doesn't solve the problem nicely, they blame the language rather than themselves.
Having worked on enterprise level systems, I can truly say that the implementation language is of almost a trivial relevance from a problem-solution perspective. The primary difference between the different languages is the time required to build the system. Since some of the higher level languages (and their libraries) do much for the programmer, they require few low-level design details, and are hence faster. But while this makes design a little easier, it neither prevents the programmer from choosing inefficient algorithms, nor making logical errors. Someone who gave up C++ in favor of Java for any reason other than development time will find that the problem of complexity hasn't gone away; rather it has simply been moved up a level. Those same complexity problems C++ faced at the statement level will now reappear at the module level (Such as two objects which support the same syntactic interface, yet do subtly different things...) And so it goes with every language transition - the problem of complexity doesn't go away, but rather, is shifted to a higher level. A programmer analyst, who thinks from a top-down perspective, addresses the problem of complexity with the high level design, rather than the facilities of the language. Thus, once the overall design is done, there is considerable leeway in choosing the correct language for implementation.
Yes, though one must consider the impact of that process on other systems. Linux requires much less time to keep secure than Windows; basically, Linux requires patching every year or so, where Windows requires a patch every month. Worse, since so many of the security exploits affected required components of the OS such as IE, I seldom have the option of turning off or uninstalling insecure software. The wuftpd and SSH vulnerabilities that anti-Linux zealots love to trump up didn't affect me at all, because I don't use either, and hence, don't have to download patches.
assume you still look both ways before crossing the street
That was a bad analogy to prove your point, really. Yes, I look both ways before crossing the street, but in the case of Windows, its more akin to being thrown into expressway traffic and having to dodge cars. Windows simply doesn't allow you to see oncoming security problems because you can't inspect the code; their "hide everything from the user" mentality makes it difficult to find potential security flaws before they are exploited. The security flaws discovered in Linux were often discovered at the source code level before an exploit was discovered; but with Windows, almost every security patch is the result of someone's server getting exploited and Microsoft trying to figure out what happened. The fundamental difference is that Linux takes a proactive stance, fixing security problems before they cause problems. Windows OTOH mandates a completely reactive stance - you must wait on Redmond to issue a fix, and Redmond doesn't know about it until someone's box gets owned.
To do a bad paraphrase of Clint Eastwood:
"I know what you're thinkin': 'I just patched my windows boxen, I must really be secure.' Well just ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well.... Do ya, punk?"
Do you feel lucky? Are you betting the next Windows exploit will infect someone else's machine before it gets to yours? Are you betting that Microsoft will be able to acknowledge the problem and find a workaround before your server gets hit?
Yeah, so Windows has patches. But how am I supposed to download said patch, when connecting to the internet to do so exposes me to the very same infection I'm trying to prevent?
What it really comes down to is that Linux simply takes less time to keep secure than Windows. Yes, I suppose their are exploits for Linux yet undiscovered. But, it is far more likely that there are far more undiscovered security holes in Windows than in Linux.
I've found that the best solution to the problem of Microsoft's constant and ever more serious security holes is simple:
Dual boot with Linux. Linux for the network; Windows for the games.
Just use Linux as your network-enabled OS, and Windows for everything else. Log off the internet or disconnect your DSL or broadband before you reboot into Windows, and you'll be fine.
It is really that simple - I just disconnect my network connection when I'm running Windows. Let's face reality here:
So the solution is simple: Linux is your network OS, and Windows is your "friends and family" OS.
Great! So instead of printing a copy of the classics downloaded from the internet at a few pennies per copy, my child can now use a $1350 laptop:
I don't see any sense in this at all. Basically, this makes every child a target of criminal activity. But worse, it seems to me that this is a part of the greater "worship computers because they are the future..." mantra I see in schools. Just because little Johnny can use a computer doesn't mean he's not an idiot, and I believe that most businesses are aware of this fact. What's going to happen is that these parents are going to find out the hard way that the money they spent on computer hardware is actually going to be a disadvantage when it comes to their children going to college - you can't use a computer on standardized tests, and without it, little Johnny's going to be lost. No worry, though - he can still qualify for that fast food job and go to a "computer school," or community college where he'll learn how to be a Windows Admin for $6/hour (or whatever it pays by then). If he looks good, they might feature him in the commercials...
Rest assured, these students won't learn any computer science during this program. In fact, they'll be lucky to read even 10% of the books installed...
Computers don't teach logic or reason - if they did, a substantial portion of the population would not be making a living teaching inherently stupid machines to perform monotonous tasks.