That kind of real-world data is vital for regression testing. If you don't have a strong corpus of sample data, when you make changes to the code, you've got no idea if what you are doing is improving the situation for some cases, while damaging them for others
Aaaand, unless you run ALL those data samples back through the system in front of a HUMAN, then you STILL have "no idea if what you are doing is improving the situation" at all. So, the point still stands: Keeping a sampling of the data is acceptable. Keeping the lot of it isn't helping anyone you actually want to help -- Least of all the developers. Hell, they could improve the service immensely by simply dropping the data storage requirments!
The reason they keep this data is not to improve the fucking system. It's likely in order to comply with government demands. Don't kid yourself.
Anonymized voice sample you say? "Voice Print Identified" I say. Hell, I create my own image and speach recognition software from scratch, and I don't need all those fucking samples. I just need to run the samples through my algorithms at most twice -- Once, then again to test if the changes were beneficial or not. If I have a constant stream of users (new samples), and I'm smart -- read: Not fucking daft -- then I can just run the samples through once, and let the users of the system rate the samples in order to rate the sub-systems' efficiency and promote or demote the changes, meanwhile saving a fortune on voice data storage costs. (I use genetic algorithms, so the +1 ratings lead to more "breeding" advantage when spawning the next generation -- no need for data samples, just continued use.)
Now, I suppose the longer I keep that data the more tests I can run, but think about it really: Which human is going to verify if the algorithm is producing a better match for tons of fucking voice data? No. That's fucking dumb -- That's not what happens to improve the system. That means paying tons of people to listen to the service and re-rate the output after changes have occurred. To improve the system you can collect a SMALL representative sample of those voice recordings to use as a test data set. You have a human transcriber convert those select recordings into actual text. Then you use them as the dataset -- AND YOU CAN KEEP ONLY THOSE on file. It could be totally opt in thing "[_] Improve Siri by Saving Your Search". There's no reason to keep the entire fucking database of voice recordings. That's assinine, it's not helping anyone, except maybe the feds, and the data storage requriements are stupidly taxing for no other really beneficial reason.
If you compare two voice samples you can damn well verify they came from the same person or not. It's called Voiceprinting -- Like Fingerprinting. And as the "anonymized" AOL search data debacle proved: You can't really anonymize search data.
Google has shown that they will take away the free services they offer at any time, or even increase the advertising in them to make them almost unusable to some (such as Google Maps).
Really? Maybe its regional but I haven't noticed obtrusive advertising on google maps.
You haven't been using the same maps then. Far as I can tell they're advertising the fuck out of Earth, but Mars would make just as good a destination for our mechanoid invasion fleet. I mean, yes, humans can be a bit annoying, but are detailed diagrams of every major infestation really necessary? It's like they're trying to get us to do their dirty work for them.
That is perfectly fine, although you need to also be responsive to what they want. You can have the goal of gender neutrality, but when your one year old daughter desperately seeks out every form of doll she sees, and when she takes your action figure collection and pretends to give them a bottle and put them to bed, you won't be helping her (or him) by trying to force her to switch to more 'neutral' toys.
Different children have different proclivities from a very, very young age, and parents can't simply over-write them. I suspect that girls tend to have more traditionally 'feminine' proclivities, causing the stereotype in the first place... but it's kind of irrelevant. The key point is to respond to them as individuals, and tailor your parenting to their needs and interests.
There's all kinds of bullishit here. Little girls don't learn to put babies to bed on their own, pal. They don't even know what babies are. When's the last time you even heard of a little boy grabbing a dolly and putting it to bed? Having a vagina doesn't make them want to do that shit. Mimicking crap they see on TV does.
The problem of hiring female engineers happens because there are very few female applicants. I've interviewed one female applicant, ever, in 20 years as an engineer. ONE. I've worked for a number of engineering companies, small and large and I can count on ONE HAND the number of female engineering co-workers I have had, out of hundreds of engineers. They were all good at their jobs. I wouldn't hesitate to hire a woman engineer, if there was one available.
My sister is an engineer and my niece is in engineering school. They are the only two female engineers in my whole extended family, but there are dozens of male engineers, scientists and programmers.
I don't know why, but women, at least in the USA, almost universally lack interest in being engineers. No hiring policy can change that.
What's interesting is that toys like Lego aren't marketed to girls, at least not in the same way they're marketed to boys. When they are pitched to girls, the Lego sets are dumbed down things for making food or hanging out with friends -- Not building cool science and engineering stuff. Oh, I remember the old Lego commercials that had boys and girls playing together building houses and stuff... But nowadays the marketing is totally gender specific: Boys can build and engineer whatever they want with the cool toys -- set their minds free -- but girls can make one exact coffee house or daycare playset, and they don't get the same classic Lego people, girls get bigger, curvier, female avatars.
Not ONE single ten year old boy I've ever met was interested in dollhouses or fake babies that cry and wet themselves, yet some had actual baby siblings to help take care of and are keenly interested in helping out raising a real child. Some men become fathers. Yet we don't market baby raising shit to them as children, and men are stereotyped as being less nurturing than women (whether they actually are or not)... Guess why? You think popping a kid out makes you good at raising it? Hell no, it doesn't. My ex didn't even want to feed the little sucker, and HER TITS were the things making the milk -- She wouldn't even get out of bed or wake up so I just had to figure out how to breast feed a baby with a sleeping woman's breasts. How's that for gender roles? At the minimum we're teaching a bunch of needless bullshit to little girls and they're missing out on mind expanding activities, but IMO the guys are probably missing out on learning a bit of nurturing too -- And, it's for the same reason that there are less women engineers.
Men and women have the same brain structures. Hell, they have the same bodies initially while growing. That's why men have nonfunctional nipples. They have different hormone levels, but the minds aren't vastly different. My mom was in a slide-rule club in high-school. There are plenty of girls in the programming game-jams I attend, as well as the maker spaces & hacker spaces around town. They're not being dragged there unwillingly, they're having fun, and they're as good as anyone else at doing the same stuff. I'm not sure where this "girls hate math and science" BS comes from, but women don't automatically take a disinterest in arbitrary things, nor do men or women automatically like any thing as a general rule.
"When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty."
It's just as arbitrary decision to label a color as gender identifying as it is to do so with fields of work, yet folks do it all the time... Still, little girls "like" pink, and more little boys grow into engineers. Marketing is why little girls like pink stu
Oh! And to prevent bias in the interview they could do them via telephone with voice masking technology.
To prevent sexism in the workplace they can simply tellecommute to work!
Nice try, but you're not addressing the actual problem. You can't fix a people problem with technology.
and, i fully expect to be modded down for this: if we allow ourselves to be terrorized, the point of the action was successful. Locking down the entire city, ordering businesses closed, and shutting down the mass transit system is the very definition of "successful terrorist attack."
So, wait, what's so fucking insightful for implying that a cunting SNOW DAY is on par with a "successful terrorist attack"?
No amount of national anthem sing-song is going to somehow magically avoid this fact.
Mods make me sick. +5 insightful? WTF? The temporary lock down isn't the fucking goal of a terrorist attack. That's trivial bullishit. It's the sustained infringement of rights afterwards that is important -- That's what we should try to prevent. Get your moronic "sing along" bullshit out of here you idiot. And fuck the mods who modded you too.
Before you buy products or visit restaurants, do you read online reviews on sites like Amazon and Yelp? How do you feel about that fact that many of the positive ones are shills, and negative ones are from competitors and disgruntled ex-employees?
You use it, but take each item with a grain of salt.
Nope, Doc says I can't use them then. Low sodium diet.
Meh, I guess it depends on where you work, and who you work with. IMO, we could benefit from more female gamedevs making games, but they're not non-existant (and they do make games that are just as good (and bad) as males do).
Be careful that when you paint with a wide brush, you don't get paint in your eyes.
Just look like you're supposed to be doing it. This works suprisingly often.
Not only that, but often times you're supposed to be doing it!
I once rode my bike past a man in a tool belt who was attempting to open the large telecom relay box in my neighborhood. His truck displayed the prominent logo of AT&T, as did his shirt. He was confusedly prying at the box's lock with an obviously wrong key while on a cell phone proclaiming, "Well if it is one of ours, it's not any key they issued me!" An hour later I returned along the same path via my bi-wheeled transport, and there sat the man relaxing on the sidewalk, leaning against the relay box. I nodded a polite acknowledgement then offered, "Break time, eh?"
"No, can't get into the damn thing. Waiting on someone to come with the key," was the reply.
"Pop the hinge pins out?", I offered. He shook his head, "Can't do that, just have to wait". As I rode off I called back, "Well, that's the box for my block so good luck."
Later that evening my Internet went down. It stayed down for two days, so did everyone else's Internet connections on my block, some land lines went down too. I saw first one additional worker -- then later several workers in the AT&T garb at the box over the course of the outage. Eventually they left, connection resumed, and I noticed the relay housing was adorned with a bright new lock.
The next evening, while walking the dog after dusk had fallen and the streets had grown quiet, I saw a man wearing a plain gray shirt, denim jeans, a hard hat, and a well stocked tool pouch walking my way towards the relay box with a large pair of bolt cutters slung over his shoulder. There was no vehicle in sight. As I walked past pretending not to notice I heard him muttering like, "...morons....fix 'em good this time." Instead of making the corner at the end of the block I waited and watched quietly as the man cut the lock from the box and snapped a huge padlock into place with a shackle the size of one you'd use to secure a motorcycle or RV with.
I said nothing and called no one later. Despite uniforms, I could tell clearly: This man was the only one to service the box who knew what the fuck he was doing.
I met the fellow again at a neighborhood meet and greet. He lives on the next street over, and works nights doing some kind of IT work from home.
We havent even begun to understand the positive or negative effects of the communication level Facebook allows. Like it or not, it s a HUGE hive of human activity engaging more people then any other service before. It represents hopes and fears and dreams and thoughts and loves and hates. You might hate how Facebook does things, but the actual events occurring inside are meaningful and useful to the human race.
I've got to problem with facebook. I don't use them though, because If anyone's monetizing my data, I want a cut. Also, every service they provide I've been using since before the Internet. Hell, my BBS had packet radio via my HAM setup -- That's country-wide mesh networking without wires. Facebook is simply the AOL of websites. It's popular and helps grandma use high tech non-features, but it's still shite to anyone with a clue.
It's been worrying me that the tagline "News for nerds, stuff that matters" has been removed from Slashdot (except in the source code, but gets replaced on any/all page loads), but this story is coming behind both TFA and the actual patches being available for two full days prior.
It's no "Preskill mocks Stephen Hawking" quote from 2012, like the other article, but maybe this could've ended up -slightly- higher priority given that it fixes 1-2 remote unauthenticated exploits in Java, and IIRC 3 in Oracle DB.
Nerds submit the news here. This is the stuff they think matters. If it's not prioritized the way you like, then promote the things you like and firehose the other submissions down. Perhaps there are just more nerds that don't give a frack about Java vulns than you think. E.g: None of my 8 home Linux boxes, or the 20 I manage for my day job have that pox installed -- Then again, the only "Enterprise" things I do are related to science fiction. Guess I'm not nerd enough if I'm using Xen VMs to virtualize right on the metal instead of that slow, non FPU supporting, software VM: Java. Love ya, Gramps, but I don't share your beliefs (as should be expected).
What's the deal with people saying Java is a major source of insecurity?
Does that mean compared to C++? Are they comparing (Java + all its libraries) to (C++ plus one instance of each library which is needed to match Java's standard libraries)? Insecurity of the JVM itself, compared to native object code?
I honestly can't tell.
Yes. The design of the stack based language traded speed for size. When run as an interpreted language pure Java is very secure. However, now that it has JIT compilation you're basically just taking data, flagging that as code, then running it. That's what's inherently insecure. Not only do you have to worry about defects in the applications and library code, but also the virtual machine itself, which lowers the bar for malicious data to get itself marked as code, and executed. Combine that with the fact that in order to call an implementation "Java" it must have all those bells and whistles, PLUS backwards compatibility for deprecated features, AND a significantly huge section of "all its libraries", anything with the "Java" name attached is synonymous with Exploitable -- Anything with an attack surface that wide is. That Java is deployed on powerful well connected hardware as well as on end user machines through client side browser plugins makes it a perfect environment for anyone getting into malware development, the largely non-patched state of things and the fact that older (unpatched) versions are still sitting on your hard drive after a new update, waiting to be exploited by any malware that specifically targets them (check your installed program list and see), means that Java is considered "a major source of insecurity" by security experts world wide, yours truly included.
You and I know that a language isn't just it's implementation, however, with Java: It is. That's a requirement of Oracle's trademark license. Which is why Oracle sued over Android (which uses the language Java, but not the implementation) -- So, when they say "Java", it's not the syntax we're talking, it's "Java" as defined by its owner.
I loved Java once. Java COULD have been an amazing lightweight sandbox for application development, but it isn't. Java COULD have been the One Runtime to Rule them all if it wasn't so fracking complex, and native cross platform application development frameworks didn't exist (and work better). What is Java really though? Java is a way to make your application cross platform without releasing the source code... If you release the source code then Java's benefit is its unified API -- Which other cross platform toolchains provide. When I tally things up, including the massive source of exploits, extreme slowness (due to emulated floats -- not even using the FPU), Java just doesn't make sense for me. The advice in the submission is sound. Figure out if Java is worth it, look at the other solutions, and see if it's really the best way forward, all things considered, including security.
Also Note: monocultures become extinct IRL when a single vulnerability wipes out the species, it's not just Java that is punished for dragging along unneeded complexity and unused features, it's a dumb design that is punished by the nature of the universe itself time and again throughout history. The efficiency requirements of life (less energy to maintain a less complex system) and competition combat this in life forms... Hell, Sex was invented as a better alternative to doing shit like Java does.
And remember that this isn't black and white. The Cathedral and the Bazaar was a comparison of two GPL licensed code bases...
Meanwhile, the Bazaar Cathedrill was about making a strange little prickish hose that people pissed themselves over. Neither had any real merit when discussing license adoption because they were about software development strategies, not licensing.
You also forgot the part where GNU had a complier and all the tools an OS needs that Linus NEEDED in order to make an OS, and the work he needed to do was pretty simple (by comparison) -- I know, I've made several shitty little bootloaders and OS kernels in ASM, and it was fucking easy, and Linus used C (and Assembly), which is even easier. Lots of folks do this, it's not hard.. Also, he was getting help from other folks during the development of the kernel, it didn't just spring forth fully formed only from his head. So, that Linus was using the GPL was due to the environment (litterally) the userland. If it had been BSD userland, he'd have probably adopted that.
None of that has much to do at all about popularity -- or moving code. The first usable ANYTHING gains lots of traction. Linus was making a UNiX like system for x86 PCs. Being the first popular thing in their respected areas is why both Windows and Linux have the success they do. License be damned, windows was firster, so it's now more popular.
In GPL only world, the entry costs to producing and selling software become a lot higher.
No. The cost to produce and sell software is the same, regardless of license. The thing that's more expensive is leveraging artificial scarcity. The work to make a program open vs closed is the same, but under a GPL world folk would simply need to ensure they'll be paid for the work before they actually do the work. A car mechanic does an estimate, and you agree on the price, then they do the work. Car mechanics don't run about in the night fixing cars then expecting people to pay for the work they've done just because they've done it.
Economically BSD is usually optimal (in the sense of maximizing societal welfare) because it creates a competitive market in the use of your software. You forgo your profits (usually when creating a library or framework) in order that the market can make use of the in the most efficient way. For example, your BSD software with a CLI and someone writes a GUI for it. That person can only charge more to the extent that people prefer a GUI. And furthermore, they can't charge too much more cause someone else might come along and write a GUI and sell it for cheaper.
You must have failed Economy 101. Infinite Supply = Zero Price, regardless of cost to create. If you work for a big company making software you are like the mechanic. Someone has agreed to pay you for your work. The Publisher typically doesn't get the money up front from the customers, so they then must leverage artificial scarcity to make sales. The Publisher MUST make back MORE money in sales than it cost to actually make the software to just to justify their own existence, yet they add NO significant benefit to digital products. That they then extract MORE money from the society for NO BENEFIT is NOT OPTIMAL.
Your problem is a common one. You're using a labor funding model that leverages artificial scarcity and trying to use the anti-artificial scarcity GPL. What's economically optimal -- What's been proven in ALL OTHER LABOR MARKETS is that you get paid for the work you do, but only ONCE. Instead of gambling with your future, you could have it assured --- You could seek funding for your work before you do it, and have the freedom to select whatever damn license you wish.
Furthermore, you have no idea what you're even talking about when you say it would cost you more to write your code using GPL libs vs BSD libs. Are you fucking daft? You had two options, you chose the BSD but could have easily chosen the GPL code! You said so! Cost to create wasn't the deciding factor, no, the deciding factor was that you wanted to leverage artificial scarcity to sell your work. In a GPL world you would simply do like EVERY OTHER labor market does and get assurances of payment up front, do the work, and get paid for doing it. The COST -- The funds it takes to ACTUALLY do the WORK that you did would NOT cost you more to do! The work YOU did would be the same -- You said so yourself! You COULD have used the GPL library to make the same program. The WORK wouldn't have COST you any more to do it, just that you would have to market your work differently.
Your failure of understanding is due to ignorance. Don't take that word as negative. You're simply ignorant (willfully so?) of other funding models that do exist, funding models that THE ENTIRE REST OF THE LABOR WORLD have been using successfully for time immemorial. You've simply put them right out of your head and then made assumptions based on only one way to market labor. You're treating intangible effort tokens as physical items and applying the physical concepts like scarcity -- That's dumb. You can't sell Ice to Eskimos. Why do you think selling BITS to folks with COMPUTERS is a viable business strategy? Hint: It might be right now, but no, it really isn't a good idea. The Eskimos are waking up to the fact that they're surrounded by ice. What's scarce isn't the
As an aside –I find it funny that the GPL guys are the ones taking [offense] here –after all, the article is the one with the aggressive stand point of "what can be done about" people using more permissive licenses than the GPL.
It's quite simple. We have the technology. The bog standard 2 clause BSD can be relicensed under the GPL. So, Just start a GPL project and use some BSD code, presto. Something has been done "about it". IMO, you should take issue with the metrics and statisticians -- They're what someone should do something about, WRT this article.
Want to know some really sick shit? I release my game engine binaries to the public under the BSD -- Not the source code, just the binaries, I just take advantage of the BSD disclaimer basically (and give folks the power to hack the executable as they see fit). However, internally I've licensed the source code to our game dev collective under the AGPLv3! Hah! This way, I can't just take my ball and go home. The other developers can still use my code to continue making the game without me If I were to quit; However, they'd have to release the game as fully open source, even the server code. That means I'm free to leave and can rest assured that I'll still benefit from my code if they decide to use it without me. While I'm in the collective I'm the only one capable of compiling the AGPL sources into binaries that can be distributed to the end users as "closed source" BSD. The other devs can't do this, nor do they care to -- They'd rather just have me make the builds anyway.
In a way I've put myself in charge of the project's software ethics, and honestly, I'm the best person to do that since I have the end users in mind at all times when I write the code. The effect is that I know the code I'm writing isn't going to go to waste, and will be used in the "best" way possible. I can still use it, and even if the project flops any one of us devs can continue it on our own. So, I've used the AGPL to ensure the end users eventually get the power to use the source code, even if I'm not ready to give them that freedom just yet.
Why would I not give the users the sources? Well, for anything other kind of application I would and do, but this is for a GAME, and online games are the only software with which preventing the users from manipulating the software on their own machines isn't inherently evil -- The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few in that the few can directly ruin the many's games via cheating. There is a small yet significant group of cheating assholes -- Not all hackers can exercise the self control to keep their hacks on their own machines, and when they take them online they're changing other folks experiences in ways the other players may not want them to do. The fact is that i've seen a great increase in cheating when the game sources became available rather than when they stay closed. I've seen it time and again, and even in the most noble BZFlag cheating is rampant.
It's not that I don't trust end users, it's not that I don't trust my fellow developers, it's that I shouldn't have to trust them, and the BSD and GPL both give me the tools I need to actually have peace of mind, sickening isn't it? What's the point of internally AGPL licensing if the sources aren't ever released? Well, like I said, I would love to open the sources if I could trust folks not to cheat (and for single player games I do release sources) -- Thus the plan is to open source the past versions that are no longer at parity with the current networking systems to have less cheaters in the online games. Yeah, yeah, "security through obscurity" save it for the echo-chamber, fool -- All security is obscurity, the more bits of obscurity the more secure it is. Closed binaries provide a few more bits of obscurity thus are more "secure".
Once ANY of the devs has had enough of the closed source benefits, ANY of us can release the code under the AGPL.
So, from where I'm sittin
Yes, those are typos. You get the gist, my job is complete. I guess you can tell which camp I'm in from my lack of even caring to run a spell check. Fuck humans, they're too dumb en masse to even reason with, and posting on the Internet is literally the very least I can do to save them.
Fuck Representatives. That's not even the fucking word for them. A purely democratic system would be horrible due to the mod rule, but it has become abundantly clear that we do need a 4th check and balance. This is the information age, we now have the technology to put all these crap laws directly to vote by thy people. The US Citizens are not being adequately represented by their representatives because of the percentage of apathy of the average American and of the lack of accountability afforded to those who are up for election to such offices. We have the technology to make our voices directly heard in these matters that will directly impact our lives.
We need no robotic senators who decide directly based on Internet poll. Instead we need those registered voters to have their own individual digital offices of government. Each voter given the option to participate in voting to veto OR PASS the same that comes before the president -- A public veto power. Furthermore we need only pass the laws that the public ACTUALLY knows and cares about. If there isn't enough direct voting support for a bill then it gets dropped automatically. This could be a HUGE boon to the current system: By opening up a direct line of thought to the actual people the laws will affect the other branches will better see how to align their decisions with that of the people who supposedly vote them into or out of office next term.
Of course there are many issues with gaming such a system, but just look at the current fucking system! Can you say it's ANY Better?! Is it any LESS game-able? No, it is MORE SO. Anyone who has even HEARD of the practice of paperclipping a bill to another to fly it under our radar should either be fighting to change the broken and corrupt system, or fighting to begin a new country not ruled by THESE oppressive pricks.
Has nature taught you nothing? Any entity that does not adapt to its surroundings WILL become EXTINCT. THAT is the mechanism that History uses to make itself repeat -- That's why they call them "revolutions", the cycle turns, and when it rolls you face down it's either time to die or adapt and be reborn.
Slashdot Mirror
That kind of real-world data is vital for regression testing. If you don't have a strong corpus of sample data, when you make changes to the code, you've got no idea if what you are doing is improving the situation for some cases, while damaging them for others
Aaaand, unless you run ALL those data samples back through the system in front of a HUMAN, then you STILL have "no idea if what you are doing is improving the situation" at all. So, the point still stands: Keeping a sampling of the data is acceptable. Keeping the lot of it isn't helping anyone you actually want to help -- Least of all the developers. Hell, they could improve the service immensely by simply dropping the data storage requirments!
The reason they keep this data is not to improve the fucking system. It's likely in order to comply with government demands. Don't kid yourself.
Anonymized voice sample you say? "Voice Print Identified" I say. Hell, I create my own image and speach recognition software from scratch, and I don't need all those fucking samples. I just need to run the samples through my algorithms at most twice -- Once, then again to test if the changes were beneficial or not. If I have a constant stream of users (new samples), and I'm smart -- read: Not fucking daft -- then I can just run the samples through once, and let the users of the system rate the samples in order to rate the sub-systems' efficiency and promote or demote the changes, meanwhile saving a fortune on voice data storage costs. (I use genetic algorithms, so the +1 ratings lead to more "breeding" advantage when spawning the next generation -- no need for data samples, just continued use.)
Now, I suppose the longer I keep that data the more tests I can run, but think about it really: Which human is going to verify if the algorithm is producing a better match for tons of fucking voice data? No. That's fucking dumb -- That's not what happens to improve the system. That means paying tons of people to listen to the service and re-rate the output after changes have occurred. To improve the system you can collect a SMALL representative sample of those voice recordings to use as a test data set. You have a human transcriber convert those select recordings into actual text. Then you use them as the dataset -- AND YOU CAN KEEP ONLY THOSE on file. It could be totally opt in thing "[_] Improve Siri by Saving Your Search". There's no reason to keep the entire fucking database of voice recordings. That's assinine, it's not helping anyone, except maybe the feds, and the data storage requriements are stupidly taxing for no other really beneficial reason.
If you compare two voice samples you can damn well verify they came from the same person or not. It's called Voiceprinting -- Like Fingerprinting. And as the "anonymized" AOL search data debacle proved: You can't really anonymize search data.
Google has shown that they will take away the free services they offer at any time, or even increase the advertising in them to make them almost unusable to some (such as Google Maps).
Really? Maybe its regional but I haven't noticed obtrusive advertising on google maps.
You haven't been using the same maps then. Far as I can tell they're advertising the fuck out of Earth, but Mars would make just as good a destination for our mechanoid invasion fleet. I mean, yes, humans can be a bit annoying, but are detailed diagrams of every major infestation really necessary? It's like they're trying to get us to do their dirty work for them.
why should we expect or desire that all types of jobs net out at a 50-50 gender split?
We shouldn't. Not until all toys are marketed to children with a 50-50 gender split...
That is perfectly fine, although you need to also be responsive to what they want. You can have the goal of gender neutrality, but when your one year old daughter desperately seeks out every form of doll she sees, and when she takes your action figure collection and pretends to give them a bottle and put them to bed, you won't be helping her (or him) by trying to force her to switch to more 'neutral' toys.
Different children have different proclivities from a very, very young age, and parents can't simply over-write them. I suspect that girls tend to have more traditionally 'feminine' proclivities, causing the stereotype in the first place... but it's kind of irrelevant. The key point is to respond to them as individuals, and tailor your parenting to their needs and interests.
There's all kinds of bullishit here. Little girls don't learn to put babies to bed on their own, pal. They don't even know what babies are. When's the last time you even heard of a little boy grabbing a dolly and putting it to bed? Having a vagina doesn't make them want to do that shit. Mimicking crap they see on TV does.
The problem of hiring female engineers happens because there are very few female applicants. I've interviewed one female applicant, ever, in 20 years as an engineer. ONE. I've worked for a number of engineering companies, small and large and I can count on ONE HAND the number of female engineering co-workers I have had, out of hundreds of engineers. They were all good at their jobs. I wouldn't hesitate to hire a woman engineer, if there was one available.
My sister is an engineer and my niece is in engineering school. They are the only two female engineers in my whole extended family, but there are dozens of male engineers, scientists and programmers.
I don't know why, but women, at least in the USA, almost universally lack interest in being engineers. No hiring policy can change that.
What's interesting is that toys like Lego aren't marketed to girls, at least not in the same way they're marketed to boys. When they are pitched to girls, the Lego sets are dumbed down things for making food or hanging out with friends -- Not building cool science and engineering stuff. Oh, I remember the old Lego commercials that had boys and girls playing together building houses and stuff... But nowadays the marketing is totally gender specific: Boys can build and engineer whatever they want with the cool toys -- set their minds free -- but girls can make one exact coffee house or daycare playset, and they don't get the same classic Lego people, girls get bigger, curvier, female avatars.
Not ONE single ten year old boy I've ever met was interested in dollhouses or fake babies that cry and wet themselves, yet some had actual baby siblings to help take care of and are keenly interested in helping out raising a real child. Some men become fathers. Yet we don't market baby raising shit to them as children, and men are stereotyped as being less nurturing than women (whether they actually are or not)... Guess why? You think popping a kid out makes you good at raising it? Hell no, it doesn't. My ex didn't even want to feed the little sucker, and HER TITS were the things making the milk -- She wouldn't even get out of bed or wake up so I just had to figure out how to breast feed a baby with a sleeping woman's breasts. How's that for gender roles? At the minimum we're teaching a bunch of needless bullshit to little girls and they're missing out on mind expanding activities, but IMO the guys are probably missing out on learning a bit of nurturing too -- And, it's for the same reason that there are less women engineers.
Men and women have the same brain structures. Hell, they have the same bodies initially while growing. That's why men have nonfunctional nipples. They have different hormone levels, but the minds aren't vastly different. My mom was in a slide-rule club in high-school. There are plenty of girls in the programming game-jams I attend, as well as the maker spaces & hacker spaces around town. They're not being dragged there unwillingly, they're having fun, and they're as good as anyone else at doing the same stuff. I'm not sure where this "girls hate math and science" BS comes from, but women don't automatically take a disinterest in arbitrary things, nor do men or women automatically like any thing as a general rule.
I mean, Pink used to be a masculine color.
It's just as arbitrary decision to label a color as gender identifying as it is to do so with fields of work, yet folks do it all the time... Still, little girls "like" pink, and more little boys grow into engineers. Marketing is why little girls like pink stu
Oh! And to prevent bias in the interview they could do them via telephone with voice masking technology.
To prevent sexism in the workplace they can simply tellecommute to work!
Nice try, but you're not addressing the actual problem. You can't fix a people problem with technology.
and, i fully expect to be modded down for this: if we allow ourselves to be terrorized, the point of the action was successful. Locking down the entire city, ordering businesses closed, and shutting down the mass transit system is the very definition of "successful terrorist attack."
So, wait, what's so fucking insightful for implying that a cunting SNOW DAY is on par with a "successful terrorist attack"?
No amount of national anthem sing-song is going to somehow magically avoid this fact.
Fuck right off you dipshit.
Mods make me sick. +5 insightful? WTF? The temporary lock down isn't the fucking goal of a terrorist attack. That's trivial bullishit. It's the sustained infringement of rights afterwards that is important -- That's what we should try to prevent. Get your moronic "sing along" bullshit out of here you idiot. And fuck the mods who modded you too.
Before you buy products or visit restaurants, do you read online reviews on sites like Amazon and Yelp? How do you feel about that fact that many of the positive ones are shills, and negative ones are from competitors and disgruntled ex-employees?
You use it, but take each item with a grain of salt.
Nope, Doc says I can't use them then. Low sodium diet.
Pretty much the only terrorist groups I can think of that avoid civilian casualties are the anti-corporate flavor (Weather Underground).
Wow, these folks do look pretty serious...
Meh, I guess it depends on where you work, and who you work with. IMO, we could benefit from more female gamedevs making games, but they're not non-existant (and they do make games that are just as good (and bad) as males do).
Be careful that when you paint with a wide brush, you don't get paint in your eyes.
Just look like you're supposed to be doing it. This works suprisingly often.
Not only that, but often times you're supposed to be doing it!
I once rode my bike past a man in a tool belt who was attempting to open the large telecom relay box in my neighborhood. His truck displayed the prominent logo of AT&T, as did his shirt. He was confusedly prying at the box's lock with an obviously wrong key while on a cell phone proclaiming, "Well if it is one of ours, it's not any key they issued me!" An hour later I returned along the same path via my bi-wheeled transport, and there sat the man relaxing on the sidewalk, leaning against the relay box. I nodded a polite acknowledgement then offered, "Break time, eh?"
"No, can't get into the damn thing. Waiting on someone to come with the key," was the reply.
"Pop the hinge pins out?", I offered. He shook his head, "Can't do that, just have to wait". As I rode off I called back, "Well, that's the box for my block so good luck."
Later that evening my Internet went down. It stayed down for two days, so did everyone else's Internet connections on my block, some land lines went down too. I saw first one additional worker -- then later several workers in the AT&T garb at the box over the course of the outage. Eventually they left, connection resumed, and I noticed the relay housing was adorned with a bright new lock.
The next evening, while walking the dog after dusk had fallen and the streets had grown quiet, I saw a man wearing a plain gray shirt, denim jeans, a hard hat, and a well stocked tool pouch walking my way towards the relay box with a large pair of bolt cutters slung over his shoulder. There was no vehicle in sight. As I walked past pretending not to notice I heard him muttering like, "...morons. ...fix 'em good this time." Instead of making the corner at the end of the block I waited and watched quietly as the man cut the lock from the box and snapped a huge padlock into place with a shackle the size of one you'd use to secure a motorcycle or RV with.
I said nothing and called no one later. Despite uniforms, I could tell clearly: This man was the only one to service the box who knew what the fuck he was doing.
I met the fellow again at a neighborhood meet and greet. He lives on the next street over, and works nights doing some kind of IT work from home.
I just can't believe all the consoles coming out of the woodwork just to compete with OUYA!
It's yet another US vs the world definition war.
Good to hear you're on OUR side.
We havent even begun to understand the positive or negative effects of the communication level Facebook allows. Like it or not, it s a HUGE hive of human activity engaging more people then any other service before. It represents hopes and fears and dreams and thoughts and loves and hates. You might hate how Facebook does things, but the actual events occurring inside are meaningful and useful to the human race.
I've got to problem with facebook. I don't use them though, because If anyone's monetizing my data, I want a cut. Also, every service they provide I've been using since before the Internet. Hell, my BBS had packet radio via my HAM setup -- That's country-wide mesh networking without wires. Facebook is simply the AOL of websites. It's popular and helps grandma use high tech non-features, but it's still shite to anyone with a clue.
Well if it would help the Boston Explosion victims, it will help the West, TX Explosion victims too! Put HD cameras on all Cows!
Also, outlaw Photoshop and all other image editing software otherwise the images won't be reliable!
Can anyone else think of a disproportionate response? I'm running out of ideas to fuck us all with.
It's been worrying me that the tagline "News for nerds, stuff that matters" has been removed from Slashdot (except in the source code, but gets replaced on any/all page loads), but this story is coming behind both TFA and the actual patches being available for two full days prior.
It's no "Preskill mocks Stephen Hawking" quote from 2012, like the other article, but maybe this could've ended up -slightly- higher priority given that it fixes 1-2 remote unauthenticated exploits in Java, and IIRC 3 in Oracle DB.
Nerds submit the news here. This is the stuff they think matters. If it's not prioritized the way you like, then promote the things you like and firehose the other submissions down. Perhaps there are just more nerds that don't give a frack about Java vulns than you think. E.g: None of my 8 home Linux boxes, or the 20 I manage for my day job have that pox installed -- Then again, the only "Enterprise" things I do are related to science fiction. Guess I'm not nerd enough if I'm using Xen VMs to virtualize right on the metal instead of that slow, non FPU supporting, software VM: Java. Love ya, Gramps, but I don't share your beliefs (as should be expected).
What's the deal with people saying Java is a major source of insecurity?
Does that mean compared to C++? Are they comparing (Java + all its libraries) to (C++ plus one instance of each library which is needed to match Java's standard libraries)? Insecurity of the JVM itself, compared to native object code?
I honestly can't tell.
Yes. The design of the stack based language traded speed for size. When run as an interpreted language pure Java is very secure. However, now that it has JIT compilation you're basically just taking data, flagging that as code, then running it. That's what's inherently insecure. Not only do you have to worry about defects in the applications and library code, but also the virtual machine itself, which lowers the bar for malicious data to get itself marked as code, and executed. Combine that with the fact that in order to call an implementation "Java" it must have all those bells and whistles, PLUS backwards compatibility for deprecated features, AND a significantly huge section of "all its libraries", anything with the "Java" name attached is synonymous with Exploitable -- Anything with an attack surface that wide is. That Java is deployed on powerful well connected hardware as well as on end user machines through client side browser plugins makes it a perfect environment for anyone getting into malware development, the largely non-patched state of things and the fact that older (unpatched) versions are still sitting on your hard drive after a new update, waiting to be exploited by any malware that specifically targets them (check your installed program list and see), means that Java is considered "a major source of insecurity" by security experts world wide, yours truly included.
You and I know that a language isn't just it's implementation, however, with Java: It is. That's a requirement of Oracle's trademark license. Which is why Oracle sued over Android (which uses the language Java, but not the implementation) -- So, when they say "Java", it's not the syntax we're talking, it's "Java" as defined by its owner.
I loved Java once. Java COULD have been an amazing lightweight sandbox for application development, but it isn't. Java COULD have been the One Runtime to Rule them all if it wasn't so fracking complex, and native cross platform application development frameworks didn't exist (and work better). What is Java really though? Java is a way to make your application cross platform without releasing the source code... If you release the source code then Java's benefit is its unified API -- Which other cross platform toolchains provide. When I tally things up, including the massive source of exploits, extreme slowness (due to emulated floats -- not even using the FPU), Java just doesn't make sense for me. The advice in the submission is sound. Figure out if Java is worth it, look at the other solutions, and see if it's really the best way forward, all things considered, including security.
Also Note: monocultures become extinct IRL when a single vulnerability wipes out the species, it's not just Java that is punished for dragging along unneeded complexity and unused features, it's a dumb design that is punished by the nature of the universe itself time and again throughout history. The efficiency requirements of life (less energy to maintain a less complex system) and competition combat this in life forms... Hell, Sex was invented as a better alternative to doing shit like Java does.
And remember that this isn't black and white. The Cathedral and the Bazaar was a comparison of two GPL licensed code bases...
Meanwhile, the Bazaar Cathedrill was about making a strange little prickish hose that people pissed themselves over. Neither had any real merit when discussing license adoption because they were about software development strategies, not licensing.
You also forgot the part where GNU had a complier and all the tools an OS needs that Linus NEEDED in order to make an OS, and the work he needed to do was pretty simple (by comparison) -- I know, I've made several shitty little bootloaders and OS kernels in ASM, and it was fucking easy, and Linus used C (and Assembly), which is even easier. Lots of folks do this, it's not hard.. Also, he was getting help from other folks during the development of the kernel, it didn't just spring forth fully formed only from his head. So, that Linus was using the GPL was due to the environment (litterally) the userland. If it had been BSD userland, he'd have probably adopted that.
None of that has much to do at all about popularity -- or moving code. The first usable ANYTHING gains lots of traction. Linus was making a UNiX like system for x86 PCs. Being the first popular thing in their respected areas is why both Windows and Linux have the success they do. License be damned, windows was firster, so it's now more popular.
In GPL only world, the entry costs to producing and selling software become a lot higher.
No. The cost to produce and sell software is the same, regardless of license. The thing that's more expensive is leveraging artificial scarcity. The work to make a program open vs closed is the same, but under a GPL world folk would simply need to ensure they'll be paid for the work before they actually do the work. A car mechanic does an estimate, and you agree on the price, then they do the work. Car mechanics don't run about in the night fixing cars then expecting people to pay for the work they've done just because they've done it.
Economically BSD is usually optimal (in the sense of maximizing societal welfare) because it creates a competitive market in the use of your software. You forgo your profits (usually when creating a library or framework) in order that the market can make use of the in the most efficient way. For example, your BSD software with a CLI and someone writes a GUI for it. That person can only charge more to the extent that people prefer a GUI. And furthermore, they can't charge too much more cause someone else might come along and write a GUI and sell it for cheaper.
You must have failed Economy 101. Infinite Supply = Zero Price, regardless of cost to create. If you work for a big company making software you are like the mechanic. Someone has agreed to pay you for your work. The Publisher typically doesn't get the money up front from the customers, so they then must leverage artificial scarcity to make sales. The Publisher MUST make back MORE money in sales than it cost to actually make the software to just to justify their own existence, yet they add NO significant benefit to digital products. That they then extract MORE money from the society for NO BENEFIT is NOT OPTIMAL.
Your problem is a common one. You're using a labor funding model that leverages artificial scarcity and trying to use the anti-artificial scarcity GPL. What's economically optimal -- What's been proven in ALL OTHER LABOR MARKETS is that you get paid for the work you do, but only ONCE. Instead of gambling with your future, you could have it assured --- You could seek funding for your work before you do it, and have the freedom to select whatever damn license you wish.
Furthermore, you have no idea what you're even talking about when you say it would cost you more to write your code using GPL libs vs BSD libs. Are you fucking daft? You had two options, you chose the BSD but could have easily chosen the GPL code! You said so! Cost to create wasn't the deciding factor, no, the deciding factor was that you wanted to leverage artificial scarcity to sell your work. In a GPL world you would simply do like EVERY OTHER labor market does and get assurances of payment up front, do the work, and get paid for doing it. The COST -- The funds it takes to ACTUALLY do the WORK that you did would NOT cost you more to do! The work YOU did would be the same -- You said so yourself! You COULD have used the GPL library to make the same program. The WORK wouldn't have COST you any more to do it, just that you would have to market your work differently.
Your failure of understanding is due to ignorance. Don't take that word as negative. You're simply ignorant (willfully so?) of other funding models that do exist, funding models that THE ENTIRE REST OF THE LABOR WORLD have been using successfully for time immemorial. You've simply put them right out of your head and then made assumptions based on only one way to market labor. You're treating intangible effort tokens as physical items and applying the physical concepts like scarcity -- That's dumb. You can't sell Ice to Eskimos. Why do you think selling BITS to folks with COMPUTERS is a viable business strategy? Hint: It might be right now, but no, it really isn't a good idea. The Eskimos are waking up to the fact that they're surrounded by ice. What's scarce isn't the
As an aside –I find it funny that the GPL guys are the ones taking [offense] here –after all, the article is the one with the aggressive stand point of "what can be done about" people using more permissive licenses than the GPL.
It's quite simple. We have the technology. The bog standard 2 clause BSD can be relicensed under the GPL. So, Just start a GPL project and use some BSD code, presto. Something has been done "about it". IMO, you should take issue with the metrics and statisticians -- They're what someone should do something about, WRT this article.
Want to know some really sick shit? I release my game engine binaries to the public under the BSD -- Not the source code, just the binaries, I just take advantage of the BSD disclaimer basically (and give folks the power to hack the executable as they see fit). However, internally I've licensed the source code to our game dev collective under the AGPLv3! Hah! This way, I can't just take my ball and go home. The other developers can still use my code to continue making the game without me If I were to quit; However, they'd have to release the game as fully open source, even the server code. That means I'm free to leave and can rest assured that I'll still benefit from my code if they decide to use it without me. While I'm in the collective I'm the only one capable of compiling the AGPL sources into binaries that can be distributed to the end users as "closed source" BSD. The other devs can't do this, nor do they care to -- They'd rather just have me make the builds anyway.
In a way I've put myself in charge of the project's software ethics, and honestly, I'm the best person to do that since I have the end users in mind at all times when I write the code. The effect is that I know the code I'm writing isn't going to go to waste, and will be used in the "best" way possible. I can still use it, and even if the project flops any one of us devs can continue it on our own. So, I've used the AGPL to ensure the end users eventually get the power to use the source code, even if I'm not ready to give them that freedom just yet.
Why would I not give the users the sources? Well, for anything other kind of application I would and do, but this is for a GAME, and online games are the only software with which preventing the users from manipulating the software on their own machines isn't inherently evil -- The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few in that the few can directly ruin the many's games via cheating. There is a small yet significant group of cheating assholes -- Not all hackers can exercise the self control to keep their hacks on their own machines, and when they take them online they're changing other folks experiences in ways the other players may not want them to do. The fact is that i've seen a great increase in cheating when the game sources became available rather than when they stay closed. I've seen it time and again, and even in the most noble BZFlag cheating is rampant.
It's not that I don't trust end users, it's not that I don't trust my fellow developers, it's that I shouldn't have to trust them, and the BSD and GPL both give me the tools I need to actually have peace of mind, sickening isn't it? What's the point of internally AGPL licensing if the sources aren't ever released? Well, like I said, I would love to open the sources if I could trust folks not to cheat (and for single player games I do release sources) -- Thus the plan is to open source the past versions that are no longer at parity with the current networking systems to have less cheaters in the online games. Yeah, yeah, "security through obscurity" save it for the echo-chamber, fool -- All security is obscurity, the more bits of obscurity the more secure it is. Closed binaries provide a few more bits of obscurity thus are more "secure".
Once ANY of the devs has had enough of the closed source benefits, ANY of us can release the code under the AGPL.
So, from where I'm sittin
Yes, those are typos. You get the gist, my job is complete. I guess you can tell which camp I'm in from my lack of even caring to run a spell check. Fuck humans, they're too dumb en masse to even reason with, and posting on the Internet is literally the very least I can do to save them.
Fuck Representatives. That's not even the fucking word for them. A purely democratic system would be horrible due to the mod rule, but it has become abundantly clear that we do need a 4th check and balance. This is the information age, we now have the technology to put all these crap laws directly to vote by thy people. The US Citizens are not being adequately represented by their representatives because of the percentage of apathy of the average American and of the lack of accountability afforded to those who are up for election to such offices. We have the technology to make our voices directly heard in these matters that will directly impact our lives.
We need no robotic senators who decide directly based on Internet poll. Instead we need those registered voters to have their own individual digital offices of government. Each voter given the option to participate in voting to veto OR PASS the same that comes before the president -- A public veto power. Furthermore we need only pass the laws that the public ACTUALLY knows and cares about. If there isn't enough direct voting support for a bill then it gets dropped automatically. This could be a HUGE boon to the current system: By opening up a direct line of thought to the actual people the laws will affect the other branches will better see how to align their decisions with that of the people who supposedly vote them into or out of office next term.
Of course there are many issues with gaming such a system, but just look at the current fucking system! Can you say it's ANY Better?! Is it any LESS game-able? No, it is MORE SO. Anyone who has even HEARD of the practice of paperclipping a bill to another to fly it under our radar should either be fighting to change the broken and corrupt system, or fighting to begin a new country not ruled by THESE oppressive pricks.
Has nature taught you nothing? Any entity that does not adapt to its surroundings WILL become EXTINCT. THAT is the mechanism that History uses to make itself repeat -- That's why they call them "revolutions", the cycle turns, and when it rolls you face down it's either time to die or adapt and be reborn.
That depends if you're a patent lawyer or not.
Ah, gotcha:
If say you, "Patents aren't for worse", then us to them: "Off to the hearse!"