But what if the back yard was fenced in? [The article didn't say.] To be more blunt - if it was definitely theft (even if not by the current "owners"), then does your approach change?
Before throwing blame, we have to know more of the story - which wasn't included in the original article.
Which is why I said the police didn't do their job - they should have directed this guy as to how to get the ball rolling so that the courts could determine ownership, and then the whole thing could come to a conclusion.
Instead of being a long-lived internet "discussion".
And yet as we progress towards more and more people with the illness (it's a genetic dominant), and more and more expensive health care... who will eventually decide who gets the cure?
Practically speaking, someone will have to do this monitoring. There will be jerks who want to post content they have no right to.
But legally speaking (which we hope maintains some semblance of correct thinking.... LOL) the question must be answered: Who is responsible for the monitoring?
I happen to agree with the courts that [in this matter] the government is not Big Brother, and that Corporations can't demand that other corporations be their Big Brother either.
Want to ensure your content isn't pirated to YouTube? Then yeah, you have to have someone spend some time checking it out. YouTube also allows users to flag infringement - a thing I make use of when I see things that I know were not posted by the owners.
Some musicians - even very wealthy ones - will post their videos to YouTube. This isn't infringement, and the current court approach correctly leaves them alone.
While the lawmakers have to create smart laws, the police have to actually help the courts uphold them.
Or else you get the situation where the people wear their pants half off of their butts, and then you can easily tell who might mug you - from the fact that their pants are worn normally!
Weird, when the normally behaving people look like criminals.
But when the police won't bother enforcing the law, then you get oddities - like this guy who wants his pet back but may become a "criminal" if he continues to press for what used to be his rights.
As for the judge... unlike in America, it looks like UK judges correctly understand that they are only to rule on court cases, and not on their perception of injustice. [In the U.S., courts have ordered things done when they had no legal standing to address the issue.]
So the court is unable to address the issue until the police do their job.
Once more, the law trumps _apparent_ common sense. Unfortunately, the common sense approach here forgets one simple thing: any claim of foul play (or if this were a duck, Fowl Play) for property rights has to go through a court system.
I really sympathize with the guy, but if I wanted my pet back, I'd report it as stolen and get the legal ball rolling.
These sorts of laws are meant to stop well-intentioned entities (such as the data companies) from releasing the right information to the wrong people. Want to prove you're the right person? Then prove it as part of the legal process. I'd rather be annoyed than have someone trick the car recovery company into delivering it to them... (yeah a weak analogy - shrug)
Of course, the lawyers (like bookies) still get rich from both parties.
I know that with my own management, they're quite uninterested in quality - and entirely interested in the "schedule". They have a schedule, and want to meet it with our client (we're consultants) no matter what that does to our quality.
Of course, once the code is accepted by the client then by #definition it is good enough and changes to existing code are only possible if we can prove that the existing code is buggy.
Then there's the bizarre requirement that developers use copy/paste whenever possible. It's not as if we get paid by the line, but it seems that some of the senior architect types think that LOC matters. (no jokes please)
Add in management's desire to see as little change to things as possible, we get a very poor heurestic for Hill Climbing as a model of our software development "practices".
Some day they'll discover that Word's binary format is actually Microsoft's best attempt to encrypt TeX source.:)
Maybe not the binary.doc format, but you should take a look at Microsoft's Rich Text Format and consider how much of it was inspired by (La)TeX... (to the tune of "Video killed the Radio Star")
Your hard facts killed my insipid joke....
What, don't all scientific writers use some form of TeX? I'm shocked. Shocked to the core! Some day they'll discover that Word's binary format is actually Microsoft's best attempt to encrypt TeX source.:)
It might - at first glance - seem from this and this
that out of state programmers wouldn't be considered goods. But of course they didn't make it that easy for out of state programmers.
While it's true that Use Tax only applies to goods sold out of state, if a service is performed out of state, then in order for its effect to make it into the state it must produce a good that is transported across state lines - making it a target of the Use Tax.
And if the service is performed inside the state, then it already is taxable.
I live in MD, and work near DC - but still in MD - contracting to the Federal Government. This means it'll be harder to find a private sector job which doesn't lead back to government contracting. Blech.
Then again, if I were only going to be a Federal Contractor, then I wouldn't care - the government (Feds and State) is immune to sales/use tax for contracted services.
I moved my home's marker just fine, but when I went to move my parents', I got this error: "Because of technical restrictions, you cannot edit this location at this time."
I wonder, does it check to make sure my IP address is near the location I'm moving, or is it just a glitch?
More likely they used cookies to mark you as having moved your address marker. They may have then noted that "you" were trying to edit a second home address.
Consider that there is no mapping from IP to physical address that works for all IP addresses.
So, it's an error when printf() doesn't output the expected number of bytes. Check.
Ummm, how do you determine exactly how many bytes it should have written so that you can compare the values? I can't really think of any way you could correctly do that in a locale-sensitive manner without re-implementing printf() in the first place, at which point the whole think is moot and you're fired for dicking around too much on the job.
Someone who thinks!!
Yep - that's why I turned to C++ in the first place. All too often I found that the logical conclusion was to call abort() or to not do enough when error conditions occur.
And neither of those options is usually sufficient in a complex program.
Reminds me of a quote I heard one time: "Coding in C++ is like high school sex. A lot of people talk about doing it, not a lot of people actually do it, and those who do, do it poorly."
Sort of like my college calc professor who said, "Calculus is the beginning of real math - everything up to this was just baby math."
Or my saying, "Without proper use of templates, it's just baby C++ at best, C+ at worst."
I was pointing out something that about 2 people understood by their posts: Most "experts" aren't.
And you were attacking programmers why...? Because they are such an easy target? Because programmers are typically in charge of external security, in your worldview? I still don't see what the first point in your post had to do with anything - it would be at best borderline relevant in a discussion about good programming practices, and even then only if you want to be extremely pedantic.
By mentioning those specific items in this context you are very loudly implying that programmers are at fault for not installing firewalls. I pose that programmers have no business touching firewalls or system configuration - that is a job for system maintainers.
And yet, what they should be doing is learning how to write good software, instead of writing borderline flamebait.
BORDERLINE flamebait? Damnit, I should try harder...
Oh, and I smile on your implication that I don't already know how to write good software;-)
sigh I wasn't suggesting that programmers are stupid/bad/etc/etc. I am one, and am not in management. I've been tasked for a while with doing technical portions of interviews. While I have been using things since Bitnet, and used to type-race 300 baud modems when they were state-of-the-art, I prefer my technical skills to the lies.... er, management track.
I was trying to suggest that if you wanted to bait me than you have more work to do. I have small children, and it takes a bit more effort than someone saying "You're a..." at me when they're upset.
And to answer your first presumption in the quote, I wasn't attacking programmers and I didn't imply anything, but rather you were inferring something I didn't intend - for your own reasons of which I'm neither knowledgeable nor interested.
What I was trying to do with my original post was to point out that most of humanity is a bit sloppy, and has a bit less of a work ethic than we'd like them to have when their work affects us - waiiiit for it.... - and that being in technology doesn't change that nearly as much as we geeks would like to think.
Re-read that last paragraph, and if you still want to whine about what I actually said, then I'll say some things you can mock me for... and then you can say that you baited me. (If it were done well enough, I'd even mod you up when it came time for more points... that is, if I were allowed to..)
Don't know if printf() was the best example, but this is really the reason you want a language that throws exceptions when things go wrong. That either forces programmers to write error handling code (if the compiler requires you to catch a certain exception), or gives the runtime a chance to present a stack trace when an exception is thrown.
C++ exceptions don't carry a stack trace with them - Java does.
In C++, we'd cover the code with unit tests and use exceptions to illustrate (via the unit tests) which sorts of uses would break the code. Using that feedback, we make the code bulletproof.
To be more precise - somewhere between the external interfaces and the core code there should be a line across which once you cross, all inputs are trusted. On the "outside" we can't trust the data, but we can once inside that line. Obviously verification is done at the place where we'd draw the line (or we can say it the other way around if you like: we draw the line where verification is done).
Inside the line we need not be as concerned about some error-checking - the checks for those conditions precluded by the verification we've done. But we still pay attention to things we can't control.
Cutting this short - I've just been given something productive to do. Hope this has benefited someone in the universe.:)
So you are saying that the reason many databases are unprotected is because many systems are unprotected? That's some stellar reasoning there, Captain Obvious!
No. That's not what I'm saying. If that had been what I was saying then your titling me as Captain Obvious would not have been as silly as it was.
I was pointing out something that about 2 people understood by their posts: Most "experts" aren't.
I've written most types of software at one time or another, and for the most part people are only interested in how to do "the job" well enough to get paid and then go on to the next hack.
And yet, what they should be doing is learning how to write good software, instead of writing borderline flamebait.
And what exactly are you supposed to do when printf() returns false? Display an error message?
If you can't correct it, you needn't detect it.
Well, to answer another poster - yes I was being insufficiently precise when I used the term system call. printf() is a C library call.
To answer the quote above: in C and C++ printf() [including fprintf() and sprintf()] returns an int, representing the number of characters formatted and written out - and not including any null byte appended as a string terminator.
In C, an error message and potentially an exit was in order.
In C++, in an exceptional situation then an exception may be appropriate to throw.
No offense intended, but in no case should any programmer fail to see that "If you can't correct it, you needn't detect it." is rubbish. If I were told that in an interview, then I'd recommend against hiring the person who stated it.
Oh wait, I have refrained from hiring such interviewees. I know that those who subscribe to such broken ideas are typically more damaging than they're helpful. IOW - "More trouble than they're worth."
Independent doesn't equate to "neutral". Also, most humans are incapable of being objective. Not being a reader of the WND site, I'm under the presumption that they neither claim to be "neutral" nor "objective", but are probably pretty open about their leanings. So no, I'd not call them hypocrites on those counts - to do so would be dishonest.
Google, however, doesn't openly claim anything about their leanings, and if WND's accusations are true, then that'd be pretty disgusting of any service like Google to do. You seem to be leaving wide open the inference that you consider Google to be neutral, fair, and unbiased. I always have had that presumption, but perhaps I should do some research on the topic before I cling to that illusion.
Be careful about using word hypocrite against an obvious and publicly biased organization when you are without actual proof that either that 1) the first organization is in fact being hypocritical in the fashion you mention, or 2) that Google is as neutral as you seem to imply.
You could get 1 GB RAM from HP for $9 (look at the rebate form: it really is a $40 rebate on a $49 item). A used power supply costs $5. I never pay for a monitor, mouse or keyboard; too many are being thrown or given away these days in the rush to flat screens and wireless mice.
You mean you could have gotten that deal.
The deal specifies that any ram must be purchased before 10/31/07 - and you posted about it a few days later.
But at least I'm aware of that site now, so thanks for the mention of the link.
Here and I thought that molecular gastronomy was a way for my kids to detect when they shouldn't come into the same room, by noticing what I ate at the restaurant.
in the current political scene it should be easy enough to get Congress involved in investigating the FBI.
You're kidding, right? The current Congress, even though theoretically dominated by the "opposition" party, has consistently given the Bush administration whatever it wants in regards to foreign policy and domestic law enforcement and surveillance. If they do anything it will be to pass a law explicitly directing the FBI to keep doing what they're already doing.
<socratic method>So, then... why do you think the opposition party is not, in fact, in opposition to the passing of more laws that would remove freedom (as in liber) when they proclaim to be the party of freedom?</socratic method>
I'm not trolling, or flamebaiting, but there's something to be had in understanding where the FBI's actions fit into the behaviorally-observed goals of both parties.
And we must be very careful not to Godwin the discussion (whether with that subset of Germans or with a religious group or...)
If you look here and research the case a bit, you'll find that a Maryland company may have actually been more responsible for ATT's abilities than ATT would like to admit. That company is now defunct, unfortunately, and so it's now safe for ATT to pretend that they've done work in the area without answering to more law suits.
It was a very technically challenging job. We helped to index records for these guys until mid-2005. We did it in effectively O(n) time - the cool factor was higher than the say-nothing factor.
And yes - I know that academia will claim that it's not possible, that data correlation must be O(n^2). For the decade that we did it, we were sure glad that academia held to that position.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if the back yard was fenced in? [The article didn't say.] To be more blunt - if it was definitely theft (even if not by the current "owners"), then does your approach change?
Before throwing blame, we have to know more of the story - which wasn't included in the original article.
Which is why I said the police didn't do their job - they should have directed this guy as to how to get the ball rolling so that the courts could determine ownership, and then the whole thing could come to a conclusion.
Instead of being a long-lived internet "discussion".
And yet as we progress towards more and more people with the illness (it's a genetic dominant), and more and more expensive health care... who will eventually decide who gets the cure?
Practically speaking, someone will have to do this monitoring. There will be jerks who want to post content they have no right to.
But legally speaking (which we hope maintains some semblance of correct thinking.... LOL) the question must be answered: Who is responsible for the monitoring?
I happen to agree with the courts that [in this matter] the government is not Big Brother, and that Corporations can't demand that other corporations be their Big Brother either.
Want to ensure your content isn't pirated to YouTube? Then yeah, you have to have someone spend some time checking it out. YouTube also allows users to flag infringement - a thing I make use of when I see things that I know were not posted by the owners.
Some musicians - even very wealthy ones - will post their videos to YouTube. This isn't infringement, and the current court approach correctly leaves them alone.
Ah - so the police are the morons in this case.
While the lawmakers have to create smart laws, the police have to actually help the courts uphold them.
Or else you get the situation where the people wear their pants half off of their butts, and then you can easily tell who might mug you - from the fact that their pants are worn normally!
Weird, when the normally behaving people look like criminals.
But when the police won't bother enforcing the law, then you get oddities - like this guy who wants his pet back but may become a "criminal" if he continues to press for what used to be his rights.
As for the judge... unlike in America, it looks like UK judges correctly understand that they are only to rule on court cases, and not on their perception of injustice. [In the U.S., courts have ordered things done when they had no legal standing to address the issue.]
So the court is unable to address the issue until the police do their job.
Great! I only hope the rest of the court systems in the world will maintain some semblance to sanity. [Come on, I can't be the First Post.... ]
Once more, the law trumps _apparent_ common sense. Unfortunately, the common sense approach here forgets one simple thing: any claim of foul play (or if this were a duck, Fowl Play) for property rights has to go through a court system.
I really sympathize with the guy, but if I wanted my pet back, I'd report it as stolen and get the legal ball rolling.
These sorts of laws are meant to stop well-intentioned entities (such as the data companies) from releasing the right information to the wrong people. Want to prove you're the right person? Then prove it as part of the legal process. I'd rather be annoyed than have someone trick the car recovery company into delivering it to them... (yeah a weak analogy - shrug)
Of course, the lawyers (like bookies) still get rich from both parties.
I know that with my own management, they're quite uninterested in quality - and entirely interested in the "schedule". They have a schedule, and want to meet it with our client (we're consultants) no matter what that does to our quality.
Of course, once the code is accepted by the client then by #definition it is good enough and changes to existing code are only possible if we can prove that the existing code is buggy.
Then there's the bizarre requirement that developers use copy/paste whenever possible. It's not as if we get paid by the line, but it seems that some of the senior architect types think that LOC matters. (no jokes please)
Add in management's desire to see as little change to things as possible, we get a very poor heurestic for Hill Climbing as a model of our software development "practices".
Ok... that should've read "Bad Summary Line" as a title...
More proof that just previewing a post isn't enough. I have to be awake too!
It's not as if the cell phone's contents are in any way being divulged... but rather a qualitative indication of battery life.
It might - at first glance - seem from this and this that out of state programmers wouldn't be considered goods. But of course they didn't make it that easy for out of state programmers.
While it's true that Use Tax only applies to goods sold out of state, if a service is performed out of state, then in order for its effect to make it into the state it must produce a good that is transported across state lines - making it a target of the Use Tax.
And if the service is performed inside the state, then it already is taxable.
I live in MD, and work near DC - but still in MD - contracting to the Federal Government. This means it'll be harder to find a private sector job which doesn't lead back to government contracting. Blech.
Then again, if I were only going to be a Federal Contractor, then I wouldn't care - the government (Feds and State) is immune to sales/use tax for contracted services.
I wonder, does it check to make sure my IP address is near the location I'm moving, or is it just a glitch?
More likely they used cookies to mark you as having moved your address marker. They may have then noted that "you" were trying to edit a second home address.
Consider that there is no mapping from IP to physical address that works for all IP addresses.
So, it's an error when printf() doesn't output the expected number of bytes. Check.
Ummm, how do you determine exactly how many bytes it should have written so that you can compare the values? I can't really think of any way you could correctly do that in a locale-sensitive manner without re-implementing printf() in the first place, at which point the whole think is moot and you're fired for dicking around too much on the job.
Someone who thinks!!
Yep - that's why I turned to C++ in the first place. All too often I found that the logical conclusion was to call abort() or to not do enough when error conditions occur.
And neither of those options is usually sufficient in a complex program.
Sort of like my college calc professor who said, "Calculus is the beginning of real math - everything up to this was just baby math."
Or my saying, "Without proper use of templates, it's just baby C++ at best, C+ at worst."
sigh I wasn't suggesting that programmers are stupid/bad/etc/etc. I am one, and am not in management. I've been tasked for a while with doing technical portions of interviews. While I have been using things since Bitnet, and used to type-race 300 baud modems when they were state-of-the-art, I prefer my technical skills to the lies.... er, management track.
I was trying to suggest that if you wanted to bait me than you have more work to do. I have small children, and it takes a bit more effort than someone saying "You're a..." at me when they're upset.
And to answer your first presumption in the quote, I wasn't attacking programmers and I didn't imply anything, but rather you were inferring something I didn't intend - for your own reasons of which I'm neither knowledgeable nor interested.
What I was trying to do with my original post was to point out that most of humanity is a bit sloppy, and has a bit less of a work ethic than we'd like them to have when their work affects us - waiiiit for it.... - and that being in technology doesn't change that nearly as much as we geeks would like to think.
Re-read that last paragraph, and if you still want to whine about what I actually said, then I'll say some things you can mock me for... and then you can say that you baited me. (If it were done well enough, I'd even mod you up when it came time for more points... that is, if I were allowed to..)
Don't know if printf() was the best example, but this is really the reason you want a language that throws exceptions when things go wrong. That either forces programmers to write error handling code (if the compiler requires you to catch a certain exception), or gives the runtime a chance to present a stack trace when an exception is thrown.
C++ exceptions don't carry a stack trace with them - Java does.
In C++, we'd cover the code with unit tests and use exceptions to illustrate (via the unit tests) which sorts of uses would break the code. Using that feedback, we make the code bulletproof.
To be more precise - somewhere between the external interfaces and the core code there should be a line across which once you cross, all inputs are trusted. On the "outside" we can't trust the data, but we can once inside that line. Obviously verification is done at the place where we'd draw the line (or we can say it the other way around if you like: we draw the line where verification is done).
Inside the line we need not be as concerned about some error-checking - the checks for those conditions precluded by the verification we've done. But we still pay attention to things we can't control.
Cutting this short - I've just been given something productive to do. Hope this has benefited someone in the universe. :)
No. That's not what I'm saying. If that had been what I was saying then your titling me as Captain Obvious would not have been as silly as it was.
I was pointing out something that about 2 people understood by their posts: Most "experts" aren't.
I've written most types of software at one time or another, and for the most part people are only interested in how to do "the job" well enough to get paid and then go on to the next hack.
And yet, what they should be doing is learning how to write good software, instead of writing borderline flamebait.
And what exactly are you supposed to do when printf() returns false? Display an error message?
If you can't correct it, you needn't detect it.
Well, to answer another poster - yes I was being insufficiently precise when I used the term system call. printf() is a C library call.
To answer the quote above: in C and C++ printf() [including fprintf() and sprintf()] returns an int, representing the number of characters formatted and written out - and not including any null byte appended as a string terminator.
In C, an error message and potentially an exit was in order.
In C++, in an exceptional situation then an exception may be appropriate to throw.
No offense intended, but in no case should any programmer fail to see that "If you can't correct it, you needn't detect it." is rubbish. If I were told that in an interview, then I'd recommend against hiring the person who stated it.
Oh wait, I have refrained from hiring such interviewees. I know that those who subscribe to such broken ideas are typically more damaging than they're helpful. IOW - "More trouble than they're worth."
This isn't so suprising:
The world at large is uninterested and/or unaware of security when it comes to computers.
Independent doesn't equate to "neutral". Also, most humans are incapable of being objective. Not being a reader of the WND site, I'm under the presumption that they neither claim to be "neutral" nor "objective", but are probably pretty open about their leanings. So no, I'd not call them hypocrites on those counts - to do so would be dishonest.
Google, however, doesn't openly claim anything about their leanings, and if WND's accusations are true, then that'd be pretty disgusting of any service like Google to do. You seem to be leaving wide open the inference that you consider Google to be neutral, fair, and unbiased. I always have had that presumption, but perhaps I should do some research on the topic before I cling to that illusion.
Be careful about using word hypocrite against an obvious and publicly biased organization when you are without actual proof that either that 1) the first organization is in fact being hypocritical in the fashion you mention, or 2) that Google is as neutral as you seem to imply.
You mean you could have gotten that deal.
The deal specifies that any ram must be purchased before 10/31/07 - and you posted about it a few days later.
But at least I'm aware of that site now, so thanks for the mention of the link.
Here and I thought that molecular gastronomy was a way for my kids to detect when they shouldn't come into the same room, by noticing what I ate at the restaurant.
<socratic method>So, then... why do you think the opposition party is not, in fact, in opposition to the passing of more laws that would remove freedom (as in liber) when they proclaim to be the party of freedom?</socratic method>
I'm not trolling, or flamebaiting, but there's something to be had in understanding where the FBI's actions fit into the behaviorally-observed goals of both parties.
And we must be very careful not to Godwin the discussion (whether with that subset of Germans or with a religious group or ...)
If you look here and research the case a bit, you'll find that a Maryland company may have actually been more responsible for ATT's abilities than ATT would like to admit. That company is now defunct, unfortunately, and so it's now safe for ATT to pretend that they've done work in the area without answering to more law suits.
It was a very technically challenging job. We helped to index records for these guys until mid-2005. We did it in effectively O(n) time - the cool factor was higher than the say-nothing factor.
And yes - I know that academia will claim that it's not possible, that data correlation must be O(n^2). For the decade that we did it, we were sure glad that academia held to that position.
Enough reminiscing.