Among all the hacker vs. cracker comments here, I might have missed something, but did anyone else notice the end of the 20/20 article? The article was about hacking & cracking, but the tips they gave at the end were about viruses! I can understand the media's (ongoing) hacking/cracking confusion, but can't they tell the difference between that and a virus?!
Oh well, I guess soon we will have devices that breath for us. *sigh*
They already have those. They're called iron lungs. I don't think you'll want one, though; they're really heavy, and people tend to soil themselves in them.
It's not that simple. There could be different rates for different countries. There could be special agreements with some countries which would then have no duties. There could be some products with no duties and others with duties. There are lots of different possibilities. If we have to deal with a complicated system, it can get really difficult. We have to keep track of all of the possible duty rates, plus we have to find out where the recipient is (which means we have to have a means of preventing someone from lying), and we have to keep track of which products have duties. This could easily become a complicated algorithm, even with a relatively simple structure. And it gets even worse when you consider that we have to constantly update our code to reflect any changes.
Of course M$ is against duties on online transactions. First, it makes their products less expensive to consumers overseas. I guess that's not really a problem for them right now, but it could become one. But the real reason M$ doesn't want duties is because they don't want to deal with them. I work for an e-commerce company myself, and so I can tell you it will make things a lot easier for me if I don't have to worry about including duties in my pricing code. It would save my company a lot of time and money, too. Micro$oft just sees this as a way to save money, and as much as it surprises me to say this, I completely agree.
Traditionally, an Alpha version was like a Beta version, but only for internal use. i.e. It's (basically) complete, but too buggy even to release to beta testers. It's then released as a Beta when most of the known bugs have been fixed.
But it doesn't seem like this is how the article is using these terms.
When you find this happening you just have to start missing some deadlines. Pick the projects you think are most important, get them done, let the lesser ones be late. Make sure to make it clear to your boss that there just isn't enough time for you to get all of them done. Don't be insulting or argumentative about it, but don't let them think you are just being lazy. There are two possible outcomes of this: 1) They fire you because you missed some deadlines. So what? The job was starting to suck anyways, find something better. 2) They understand there is only so much work they can get out of you, and they keep your workload to a reasonable level.
Another thing to keep in mind: in most US states (I don't know about anywhere else), companies are required to pay their salaried employees overtime if they meet certain criteria. Many companies ignore this, and unfortunately, so do many employees. Check your local laws to see if you should be entitled to overtime.
"The patent system itself, conceived to reward human innovation with a limited monopoly..."
Actually, this isn't quite correct. In the US Constitution (I don't know the details in other countries, but I will assume similarity, for argument's sake), the phrase regarding patents and copyrights goes:
"Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
This implies not a reward so much as an incentive. A person is less likely to share their discoveries, or even go to the trouble of making advancements at all, if they cannot expect to get a certain amount of control over (and, yes, profit from) them.
Let me give an example. Let's say I'm a insomniac techie with too much spare time (entirely true). Now let's say that late at night some time I figure out a revolutionary new data storage method that would make all of today's storage obsolete. If I patent that idea, I can make a bundle, retire in luxury, be surrounded by beautiful women, all the latest geek toys, a Cray supercomputer... Sorry, I got distracted there. But the point is, of course I would patent this, and therefore share it with the world, and improve technology. On the other hand, let's say there are no patents. That means, as soon as I introduce this idea, all of the major data storage companies are going to start making them, too. Not only that, but they're going to be able to make them faster, cheaper, and in larger quantities than I possibly could. I'm not going to get anything from this, except maybe an occasional footnote in a magazine article. So I'm not going to tell anyone; I'm going to hang onto this idea until I can find a way to make money out of it (kind of selfish, maybe, but that's how many people/corporations are). And that might never happen, so this technology might be delayed until someone else develops it.
A good real-world example might be IBM, which (if I have my facts straight - I might be thinking of someone else) has a huge R&D budget, mostly for the purpose of getting patents. They don't use the technology they develop, but they develop it anyways so they can sell it to someone else. If they couldn't patent their discoveries, they wouldn't have any incentive to develop anything they aren't going to use themselves. That would definitely slow down technological evolution.
Although I agree that the patent system needs to be redesigned, but I think the purpose of patents is still clearly needed. I like the idea of GPL and Open Source philosophy, but you can't force it on people. Some people actually do this stuff for a living, and telling them "you should be proud of yourself" just won't feed them very well.
'A patent is denied when an invention is obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art....'
It seems to me, if there is software available commercially which comes up with patent-worthy advances, then anyone who could buy it would have the "ordinary skill" it takes to come up with those same advances. Shouldn't that therefore disqualify most patents based on the work of computers (such as those in the article)?
If that isn't so, or in the cases where that would not apply, I think the patents(and any applicable copyrights) should belong to the user of the program. After all, if I use software today to develop new products, I can patent them, but the software developer can't. A computer program, no matter how advanced (within the foreseeable future, at least) is only a tool, and patents do not go to the tool maker, only the user.
My only other thought on this matter is, regardless of how this particular issue may be resolved, I think the time has come to reevaluate patent laws. I think most/.ers will agree with me when I say some of the recent patents we have seen really show that something is wrong. Many other laws are being rethought because of technological advances; shouldn't this be one of them?
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it sounds to me that the "intercepted" messages were ones sent to Alibris' email clients. Isn't it pretty standard by now for all email providers to say, "Hey, by the way, your email may be monitored"? Users know that their providers may be seeing their "private" messages. And anyone sending a message should understand that, too.
I understand the alleged motive, since they are a competitor of Amazon, but what if this had been messages from a non-competitor? Would they have been charged the same?
In the words of the Rutles:(To the tune of "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles)All you need is cash.All you need is cash.All you need is cash.Cash is all you need.The only way to get a geek a good present is to let him buy it himself. Otherwise it's just going to be another year of, "Thanks, Grandma. I really needed another pair of thermal underwear. And look [holding it up for a size comparison], I can invite all my friends!"
That was HILARIOUS! I know it was a joke, but I think he should get the part anyways. Probably won't, though. Oh well, maybe he can get a part in a parody. That would be fitting, wouldn't it?
While I think this is a good point, I don't think most philosophers would agree. There is a major debate in philosophy about whether humans actually "think or have desires" or if we, too, simply follow (extremely complex) programs.
I'm not qualified to argue this debate, so I won't offer my opinion on it, but I think if you're going to approach this philosophically, before you can decide whether computers "think or have desires," you must decide whether humans do.
Well thank you so much for jumping to stupid conclusions and making all kinds of foolish assumptions about my code. Unfortunately, you're completely wrong. I know all about abstracting code. I won't go into the details of why these functions require so many parameters, because that in itself involves trade secrets. I will say, however, that every one of the parameters is necessary, and these functions cannot be broken down. Furthermore, even if I wanted to create a struct, I can't because I'm writing in Javascript!
Next time, keep your pathetic judgements to yourself, coward.
To clarify: "cow-orker" is an intentional misspelling of co-worker. I just like the way it sounds. I picked it up from the Dilbert List of the Day. It's not uncommon there.
I have a cow-orker (we're both programmers) who once spent a day lauding the benefits of word wrap in editors, despite denials from the rest of us. Now I indent all of my code so that the lines just "happen" to wrap in such a way that it seems to nest wrong only for him. >:)
In naming functions, make heavy use of abstract words like it, everything, data, handle, stuff, do, routine, perform and the digits e.g. routineX48, PerformDataFunction, DoIt, HandleStuff and do_args_method.
He forgot "Thingy"! How can you forget "Thingy"? As in "Take the thingy passed in by the user, send it through the thingy, and return the thingy to the user" and "Merge the two thingies, extract the resultant thingy, discard the other thingy, you don't need it here, and then pass the thingy on to the next thingy."
Slashdot Mirror
Among all the hacker vs. cracker comments here, I might have missed something, but did anyone else notice the end of the 20/20 article? The article was about hacking & cracking, but the tips they gave at the end were about viruses! I can understand the media's (ongoing) hacking/cracking confusion, but can't they tell the difference between that and a virus?!
Oh well, I guess soon we will have devices that breath for us. *sigh*
They already have those. They're called iron lungs. I don't think you'll want one, though; they're really heavy, and people tend to soil themselves in them.
How many of you just had to try out the "crash" command?
:)
Me, too.
It's not that simple. There could be different rates for different countries. There could be special agreements with some countries which would then have no duties. There could be some products with no duties and others with duties. There are lots of different possibilities. If we have to deal with a complicated system, it can get really difficult. We have to keep track of all of the possible duty rates, plus we have to find out where the recipient is (which means we have to have a means of preventing someone from lying), and we have to keep track of which products have duties. This could easily become a complicated algorithm, even with a relatively simple structure. And it gets even worse when you consider that we have to constantly update our code to reflect any changes.
Of course M$ is against duties on online transactions. First, it makes their products less expensive to consumers overseas. I guess that's not really a problem for them right now, but it could become one. But the real reason M$ doesn't want duties is because they don't want to deal with them. I work for an e-commerce company myself, and so I can tell you it will make things a lot easier for me if I don't have to worry about including duties in my pricing code. It would save my company a lot of time and money, too. Micro$oft just sees this as a way to save money, and as much as it surprises me to say this, I completely agree.
Traditionally, an Alpha version was like a Beta version, but only for internal use. i.e. It's (basically) complete, but too buggy even to release to beta testers. It's then released as a Beta when most of the known bugs have been fixed.
But it doesn't seem like this is how the article is using these terms.
When you find this happening you just have to start missing some deadlines. Pick the projects you think are most important, get them done, let the lesser ones be late. Make sure to make it clear to your boss that there just isn't enough time for you to get all of them done. Don't be insulting or argumentative about it, but don't let them think you are just being lazy. There are two possible outcomes of this:
1) They fire you because you missed some deadlines. So what? The job was starting to suck anyways, find something better.
2) They understand there is only so much work they can get out of you, and they keep your workload to a reasonable level.
Another thing to keep in mind: in most US states (I don't know about anywhere else), companies are required to pay their salaried employees overtime if they meet certain criteria. Many companies ignore this, and unfortunately, so do many employees. Check your local laws to see if you should be entitled to overtime.
"The patent system itself, conceived to reward human innovation with a limited monopoly..."
:)
Actually, this isn't quite correct. In the US Constitution (I don't know the details in other countries, but I will assume similarity, for argument's sake), the phrase regarding patents and copyrights goes:
"Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for a limited time to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
This implies not a reward so much as an incentive. A person is less likely to share their discoveries, or even go to the trouble of making advancements at all, if they cannot expect to get a certain amount of control over (and, yes, profit from) them.
Let me give an example. Let's say I'm a insomniac techie with too much spare time (entirely true). Now let's say that late at night some time I figure out a revolutionary new data storage method that would make all of today's storage obsolete. If I patent that idea, I can make a bundle, retire in luxury, be surrounded by beautiful women, all the latest geek toys, a Cray supercomputer... Sorry, I got distracted there. But the point is, of course I would patent this, and therefore share it with the world, and improve technology. On the other hand, let's say there are no patents. That means, as soon as I introduce this idea, all of the major data storage companies are going to start making them, too. Not only that, but they're going to be able to make them faster, cheaper, and in larger quantities than I possibly could. I'm not going to get anything from this, except maybe an occasional footnote in a magazine article. So I'm not going to tell anyone; I'm going to hang onto this idea until I can find a way to make money out of it (kind of selfish, maybe, but that's how many people/corporations are). And that might never happen, so this technology might be delayed until someone else develops it.
A good real-world example might be IBM, which (if I have my facts straight - I might be thinking of someone else) has a huge R&D budget, mostly for the purpose of getting patents. They don't use the technology they develop, but they develop it anyways so they can sell it to someone else. If they couldn't patent their discoveries, they wouldn't have any incentive to develop anything they aren't going to use themselves. That would definitely slow down technological evolution.
Although I agree that the patent system needs to be redesigned, but I think the purpose of patents is still clearly needed. I like the idea of GPL and Open Source philosophy, but you can't force it on people. Some people actually do this stuff for a living, and telling them "you should be proud of yourself" just won't feed them very well.
Man, I'm long-winded. Whew!
'A patent is denied when an invention is obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art....'
/.ers will agree with me when I say some of the recent patents we have seen really show that something is wrong. Many other laws are being rethought because of technological advances; shouldn't this be one of them?
It seems to me, if there is software available commercially which comes up with patent-worthy advances, then anyone who could buy it would have the "ordinary skill" it takes to come up with those same advances. Shouldn't that therefore disqualify most patents based on the work of computers (such as those in the article)?
If that isn't so, or in the cases where that would not apply, I think the patents(and any applicable copyrights) should belong to the user of the program. After all, if I use software today to develop new products, I can patent them, but the software developer can't. A computer program, no matter how advanced (within the foreseeable future, at least) is only a tool, and patents do not go to the tool maker, only the user.
My only other thought on this matter is, regardless of how this particular issue may be resolved, I think the time has come to reevaluate patent laws. I think most
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it sounds to me that the "intercepted" messages were ones sent to Alibris' email clients. Isn't it pretty standard by now for all email providers to say, "Hey, by the way, your email may be monitored"? Users know that their providers may be seeing their "private" messages. And anyone sending a message should understand that, too.
I understand the alleged motive, since they are a competitor of Amazon, but what if this had been messages from a non-competitor? Would they have been charged the same?
In the words of the Rutles:(To the tune of "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles)All you need is cash.All you need is cash.All you need is cash.Cash is all you need.The only way to get a geek a good present is to let him buy it himself. Otherwise it's just going to be another year of, "Thanks, Grandma. I really needed another pair of thermal underwear. And look [holding it up for a size comparison], I can invite all my friends!"
That was HILARIOUS! I know it was a joke, but I think he should get the part anyways. Probably won't, though. Oh well, maybe he can get a part in a parody. That would be fitting, wouldn't it?
I like this one! Where are those damn moderator points when I need them!? :)
While I think this is a good point, I don't think most philosophers would agree. There is a major debate in philosophy about whether humans actually "think or have desires" or if we, too, simply follow (extremely complex) programs.
I'm not qualified to argue this debate, so I won't offer my opinion on it, but I think if you're going to approach this philosophically, before you can decide whether computers "think or have desires," you must decide whether humans do.
I strongly believe that computers praying have exactly the same effect as humans praying.
So will Posner be responsible for what is done to M$? Or will Jackson still have a say?
Well thank you so much for jumping to stupid conclusions and making all kinds of foolish assumptions about my code. Unfortunately, you're completely wrong. I know all about abstracting code. I won't go into the details of why these functions require so many parameters, because that in itself involves trade secrets. I will say, however, that every one of the parameters is necessary, and these functions cannot be broken down. Furthermore, even if I wanted to create a struct, I can't because I'm writing in Javascript!
Next time, keep your pathetic judgements to yourself, coward.
Every day is Odd Day for me.
1999 is indeed prime.
It was. So were 11-13-1999 and 11-15-1999. The point is this is the last odd day for over 1000 years.
To clarify: "cow-orker" is an intentional misspelling of co-worker. I just like the way it sounds. I picked it up from the Dilbert List of the Day. It's not uncommon there.
Whole function on one page!? Hell, I have functions whose calls don't even fit on one page.
Sadly true...
I have a cow-orker (we're both programmers) who once spent a day lauding the benefits of word wrap in editors, despite denials from the rest of us. Now I indent all of my code so that the lines just "happen" to wrap in such a way that it seems to nest wrong only for him. >:)
Of course not. We all know that M$ already knows all about writing bad code.
In naming functions, make heavy use of abstract words like it, everything, data, handle, stuff, do, routine, perform and the digits e.g. routineX48, PerformDataFunction, DoIt, HandleStuff and do_args_method.
He forgot "Thingy"! How can you forget "Thingy"? As in "Take the thingy passed in by the user, send it through the thingy, and return the thingy to the user" and "Merge the two thingies, extract the resultant thingy, discard the other thingy, you don't need it here, and then pass the thingy on to the next thingy."