I'd like for religious people to point out one single thing that religion is needed for, I haven't found one single thing.
<grain-of-salt size="80%">
I'm not very religious, but I think I can answer that one: HOPE.
The powerfully etherial, yet wonderfully ridiculously undeniable HOPE.
How, exactly, that hope manifests itself varies from religion to religion, but its quite a commonality among them.
Whether or not that hope appears justified in the eyes of another is orthogonal to the issue. People need something to believe in, something that no man can take away. Religion typically offers a way to fulfill this need. Some people fulfill that need by other means. Who is to say one is right and the other is not?
As for atheism, well obviously atheists find those other avenues. I am okay with that, too. What I am not okay with is one (demographic) group looks down on another for its beliefs. Every one of us is guilty of that at times, but to answer Hawking's question -- I believe the best way for us to survive the next 100 years is to lose the "us" vs. "them" mentality that we all tend to have. Especially when that mentality escalates to people killing others over simple differences in dogma. FWIW, I realize I am oversimplifying the problem. But with Israel Vs. Palestime going full force, N. Korea testing ICBMs, America's PR problem in the middle east, etc, I think even a little understanding by all could go a long way for all.
Hmm, now that you mention it, I HAVE noticed that the only times that I get any paypal phishing emails are after I've recently logged in to the account. I do so only rarely, and yes I think it has happened several times. I haven't logged in to paypal for a couple of months (and no paypal phishes within that time), but I just logged in to test your theory.
If there does turn out to be a correllation, I would assume that either the merchant (or their advertisers) are tracking this in order to provide phishers with valid paypal account logins. Since your paypal username is your e-mail address, that would make it pretty trivial.
FWIW, I've always thought that a website that requires its users to use their email address as their login name is irresponsible at best and negligent at worst.
Thanks for your input. I was hoping at least one non-American would post their take on it. You described essentially what I was trying to get at. Your comment about whether/when to kill a tresspasser being orthogonal to guns is absolutely correct. The reason I continued that particular example was because the OP specifically mentioned shooting the person. I guess because here in the states we are allowed to possess guns, its the most likely weapon of choice.
I'd say that if your country's system more-or-less works well, I see little reason to change it. Likewise in my country's. Its interesting that wearing military-style uniforms is prohibited. I did not know that. I understand the rationale for it. Do you think that the law was made at the time more out of distaste for the Nazis, or was there some additional underlying basis for it?
I acknowledge that we will have to agree to disagree. That is A-OK with me. I wanted to respond to a couple of your points, which do have some validity.
I really don't think so. I think you have to be reasonably sure you were in mortal danger before you took somedies life. I don't know of anybody who was able murder somebody for merely trespassing on their property and I would be shocked if any state had such a law (even texas!).
...Once again I don't think any property owner is allowed to willy nilly shoot people who enter their house. I am sure there would be trial and am sure you would be found guilty of something and spend time in jail. If not they you would be sued civilly and pay restitution to the family of the person you killed.
From what I understand (I could be mistaken), it is not a specific law so much as weight in your favor in the context of the benefit of the doubt. Yes, if you do shoot (and not even necessarily kill) an intruder, you are 100% likely to be tried in a court of law. Any jail time, if any, would likely be minimal. The court would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your life was not in mortal danger. If you truly did believe your life to be threatend, hopefully some of the forensic evidence should support the assertion. You are also correct that the family would have the right to sue you civilly, and there is a chance you'd have to pay restitution, however they would have to make a pretty strong case if you were acquitted in the legal case.
My earlier explanation was an overly simplified attempt to demonstrate that this self-preservation scenario typically favors the one who tried to save his own life. I apologize for not making that more clear before. That I said it was legal (implying little or no consequence) was a poor choice of verbiage on my part.
People who bring this scenario strike me as being naive to the point of silliness. Ask the palestenians how well it's working to shoot at their opressors. After decades of living with IDF boots on their throats they haven't accomplished jack shit with all their guns and bombs. You really think your 45 can take on the US army? Good luck with that.
I am not sure this is a very good analogy for the situation I was trying to describe. I don't care to get in to further 'what-if' scenarios regarding the US military turning on its own citizens, allowing this discussion to degenerate into an unproductive flamefest:-) It could be argued that the simple existance of the 2nd Amendment is evidence enough to suggest that the situation shouldn't/won't get to the point of your Palestinian example. However, that is a logical fallacy and moreover I understand that it will not convince you. How about if this theoretical oppressive military raided your home and threatened to kill your family, or put you and them in 'camps'? I don't consider my original point to be naive, rather a sensible and workable precaution as allowed by the Constitution to hopefully prevent that situation from ever occurring, and swiftly correcting it if it does. As I said, we will have to agree to disagree on this point. I think we can both agree that it is nicer to sit safely at our computers and trade comments rather than bullets.
Let's hope someone who doesn't like you feels the same way.
I can't tell whether to take this comment as a personal affront or if you meant it in earnest. I never said anything about killing anyone except in justified self-defense. This comment seems to connote something else. Anyway, if someone disliked me enough to kill me, I DO hope its a close-proximity shot to the head. I don't know about you, but I would rather have a quick and relatively painless death, if I were not able to successfully defend myself.
Agreed. My home state of Minnesota passed a conceal-and-carry law a couple of years ago that allows the average joe to pack heat provided they've got the C-a-C license (which requires gun safety courses and the like). The only legitimate circumstance I can see for conceal-and-carry is if one is going to (or lives in) a notoriously violent/dangerous neighborhood. But then again, its usually better to avoid such places if possible;-)
Just curious -- are you an American? If not, feel free to disregard the following for being out of context in relation to your point of view.
In many places, it is legal (in the context of the property owner) to shoot someone for Trespassing, Breaking and Entering, Attempted Burglary, etc. I am unsure how many, if any, state laws trump this right. I assume the purpose of this is to discourage would-be ne'er do wells from doing something they already know they shouldn't. Personally, if someone unknown to me enters my home uninvited (especially say after 10 P.M.), I will shoot first and ask questions later. Because property holders are allowed to shoot on sight, one has to assume that the perpitrator is likewise aware that the property holder is potentially armed, and thus is armed himself. It would take an incompetent criminal indeed not take that possibility into consideration.
With that said and for what its worth, I don't own any guns because I don't hunt and I live in what I would consider to be a safe, rural area, where the aforementioned occurance is extremely unlikely. However, I do fully support the right to bear arms for a separate, alltogether more important reason. The second amendment read as thus: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Given the political climate at the time it was written, I infer (correctly or incorreclty) that the right of the People to keep and bear arms is in part due to inherent mistrust of government. Power corrupts, and all that. If only law-enforcement officials and the military are allowed to carry weapons capable of killing a person, who ultimately can keep them in check? Given the polaraized socio-political climate presently found right here in the U.S., I can't think of better justification for owning a weapon capable of killing a person, even if the owner never intends to fire it.
Which, in the end, is my overy-verbose way of saying that it is the right and duty of every American to oppose tyranny from within, and defend the Constitution. If that means shooting agents of said tyrants... well, the price of freedom isn't free.
And finally, I personally believe a well placed bullet to the head is a very effective and comparitively humane way to take someone out. YMMV.
Interesting. Thats's the case in many suburban areas, and is all but completely true for rural areas. There is usually one, maayyyyybe two cable/inet providers in a given area. I posit that if ISPs were completely deregulated, you'd have startups shitting their pants to run fiber and (especially) wireless to anywhere they could. In a perfect world, the local market would then fragment and the incumbant ISP would not be able to compete even though they control the existing local infrastructure.
For instance, I live in a town nestled in a valley. I happen to live on top. The next major highway is a few miles away. I am pretty sure if I had the startup money I could run the five miles of fiber necessary and erect a wireless tower that would service the whole town in one shot. Assuming my monthly costs to the upstream provider weren't TOO bad (I suspect many different upstream providers have fiber on that highway), I could probably steal the majority of ISP customers from the local monopoly. And the best part is that unlike the local monopoly, I wouldn't have to maintain as large a workforce and upkeep costs would be minimal, such is the beauty of wireless.
Better yet, I could skip running the five miles of fiber and just run a wireless link from the highway to my tower servicing the town...
Hmmm...
Anyway, thats in a perfect world and I admit that the devil's in the details. My point, though, is that pulling something like that off would be one helluva lot easier if the local monopoly didn't have government protection. Hell, in my town I wouldn't be surprised if the infrastructure was paid for (and maintained) 100% with tax dollars.
And finally, FWIW, I am pretty sure that any ISP or backbone provider that starts intentionally screwing with the packet QoS to a heavy hitter like Google is going to get some MAJOR shit from their customers, ESPECIALLY if the ISP is the only player in town. I wouldn't want to try it if I was running the ISP;-)
Its not the bank with the horsies and the stagecoach, is it?;-)
I may or may not at one time worked there and noticed the same thing.
But to be fair, the helpdesk consisted of idiots that didn't know the first thing about the systems they were supporting, as opposed to the admins that really know what the hell is going on. I had a problem with our sales software one day (erm, well I had problems with it regularly, but thats another matter). I called the helpdesk and explained that such-and-such-sales-software-program was failing to connect to its backend database, preventing me from logging in and getting work done. In total deadpan, the helpdesk crony stated they'd never heard of such-and-such-sales-software-program before...
TOO BAD IT WAS THE ONLY *-sales-software-program WE USED!!
*sigh* I only have to remember that instance whenever I get nostalgic about THAT job;-)
Thanks for the info. As I said, 'the devil's in the details'.
I do seem to remember hearing about some sorts of cancer cells that ARE fairly easy to identify due to their accelerated rate of mitosis, and how some types of cancerous cells have enlongated or non-eroding telomeres. I have to believe there are practical ways to identify anomalous cells in the context of its physical attributes (or protein production/production rates) using simple non-fatal proteins or enzymes.
I guess it'd be analogous to a trojan or worm that infects many different Windows versions but only actively attacks one specific version. Heh, I do appreciate the irony of using a computer virus analogy to describe biological process;-)
But, I am only an armchair biologist. I imagine there are a lot of reasons this sort of thing doesn't work well or is hard to develop effectively -- I am optimistic, if not outright ignorant.
It would be theoretically possible to create a certain protein which targets cell-specific division. Like cancer cells. It wouldn't eradicate the cancerous cells, but it would certainly slow or possibly stop the cells' replication.
Of course, I imagine the devil's in the details...
Mod parent up. Just because Redhat is Linux and Microsoft is Windows does not mean that JBoss on Windows would be bad for RedHat. That is just stupid. On the contrary, RedHat would have no reason at all not to honor JBoss' prior agreement with Microsoft. If anything, I would suspect Microsoft will pull out as to not be too closely associated with RedHat/Linux.
Judging by how how long it took for my copy of Win2K3 Server to get infected (I used it for development, so no net connection) after I first hooked it up to the net.... about 20 milliseconds. I mean, really, it was ridiculous... Several seconds after the net connection was fully initialized, I got the NT_SHUTDOWN worm, which is kinda hard to fix when your computer reboots everytime you connect to the internet.. heh!
.Net applications also have the option of using the default XML config file instead, which can be edited easily by hand or with any old XML editor. That being said, there isn't any real reason I can think of to stuff settings in the registry when the local config file is functionally the same. Especially since the liklihood of the XML file getting hosed is somewhat less than that of the registry being corrupted.
As a matter of fact, if one develops a.Net app, you have to go out of your way to use the registry instead of the XML config. Good move on Microsoft's part, IMHO. Why anyone in the Linux camp would want to turn/etc into a registry is beyond me, but if they want to send me some of what they are smoking, I surely won't complain;-)
Not R'ing TFM because it'll just piss me off... I can no longer ignore or accept this sort of behavior from corporations that should definitely know better.
I realize this sort of dishonesty in product comparison happens all the time. I assume it likely happens even in analyses of products that do not originate in Redmond. What I don't understand is why the status quo is accepted. I have purchased Symantec products before. I'll NEVER do so again. If asked, I will discourage anyone else from doing so.
I'd expect this sort of behavior from Microsoft or its usual hired lackeys, but this takes the cake! Its pretty clear that comparing the totals of only the 'admitted' 'critical' security problems in each browser is practically as unscientific as you can get. Anyone who made a major infrastructure decision because of it should sue Symantec immediately, IMHO. This sort of behavior can potentially (and probably did) artificially influence the market.
</rant>
Of course, I am not saying that a company should face severe penalties every time they report research findings that turn out to be incorrect, but c'mon, any 1st year science student knows what the scientific method is. Willfully releasing false and/or misleading information that impacts a given market should at the very least prompt SEC investigation. I guess at least Symantec admitted what that did was the wrong way to conduct the comparison, though at this point, I have a hard time believing they are admitting fault for any virtuous reason.
Hmm... Looks like I got pissed off anyway. Time for a beer;-)
With the.Net stuff, you have to at least explain the reason for all these things in a cursory way. In the case of Perl, you just have to tell them that the print command prints stuff.
Yes, that is definitely true. I guess it comes down to whether or not one believes teaching OO right away is necessary or appropriate. I started off with perl (well QBASIC, but I don't really count that;-), and sometimes I think that I'd have been better off learning OO concepts around that time as well. OTOH, I've made some pretty robust applications with just the perl core.
For the most part you're right, but I'd like to comment on a couple of things:
I guess the only difference between any two languages is syntax--that's what a language is. The rest is just API.
In the specific case of VB.Net and C#.Net, its a little different. Both languages compile directly to MSIL, which means analogous code in both languages should in theory compile down to the exact same binary.
VB is a syntactically ambiguous language, which is why C# to VB.NET translators are easy to come by, but VB.NET to C# translators are a bit more problematic. For example X=A(5) could refer to a function call, an array index, or a number of other possibilities, depending on what "A" is, which you may not know based on just that one.vb file.
As I understand it, the System.Reflection namespace takes care of this just fine. Reflection allows the code translator parse all elements of the code on-the-fly. Reflection should allow direct transcription from one.Net language to another. I've played with this a bit for VB.Net and C#, but I don't know how well this works for 3rd party language support such as PHP.Net. FWIW, unless you are trying to build a code translator, I don't really feel that the so-called ambiguity in VB.Net's syntax is really an issue, especially if you don't have prior programming experience. In that case, using the single '=' to test for equality probably makes more sense to a person than using '=='. The first thing I do when I try a new language is RTFM for the keywords, control structures, and operators. The fact that these are similar in many languages shouldn't be taken for granted by any programmer worth his salt. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me that some cultures use a full-stop as a numerical thousands delimiter instead of a comma, but I am aware that such things can vary from what I am familiar with.
In the end, I feel that choosing either VB.Net or C#.Net over the other is really a matter of preference. It is advisable to choose C#.Net as a learning language if you want to become familiar with other C-style languages. Personally I prefer VB.Net, because I don't necessarily perfer C-style syntax (brackets, braces, semicolons, etc etc), which seems messy to me. VB.Net on its own does not encourage bad programming practice any more than C#.Net does.
In the context of the code you were referring to, Button1 is simply the name of the object that is being manipulated. If you change the name of the button object to someting more descriptive, such as "SelfDestructButton", the wizard will use that when generating the click event handler instead, which would look like this:
Sub SelfDestructButton_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs) ... End Sub
So, blame the unimaginative coder that doesn't use descriptive variable names, not the IDE wizards;-)
If the.Net Framework and the CLI were truly proprietary in the context of your comment, the guys at the Mono project would be in jail right now. Further, both VB.Net and C#.Net enforce strong-typing and are very particular about typecasting, as long as the Strict and Explict options are turned on.
Finally, FWIW, I personally don't see anything at all about C++ that inherently promotes understanding anything, unless you are talking about how the programmer is required to perform his/her own memory management. If that's the case, I'd argue that C++ has failed its developer base from the perspective that buffer overflows are just as common in C++ (perhaps more so) than in a managed framework such as Java or.Net.
Perl is perfect to start out with. Hello World is one line, and it allows for most of the OO features of the "big" languages.
Hello world, in perl:
print "Hello World!\n";
In VB.Net:
Console.Writeline("Hello World")
Seriously, which one of these examples looks like it is using OO features? Anyway, I would have to disagree with teaching Perl as a first language. It was my first langauge, and I can't say that it benefitted me in the long run. Perl can be abused and used 'incorrectly' far easier than a.Net language. For example, $perl_variables give no context about what sort of variable is being stored. Is it an Integer? Is it a String? Is it an object reference?.Net is much more strict about this, and the IDE will carp if you don't specifically declare the variable type and the code won't compile. The perl interpreter isn't as picky about strong-typing in general and this can lead to all sorts of confusing debugging scenarios.
First, I actually RTFA, but am too lazy to further research this phenomena.
I dont quite get how they are measuring that this "off" program is actually producing any result.
That aside, consider that the "off" program is actually eventually run at some indeterminate time in the future. Maybe there is some reverse-time thing going on, so that in linear time a result is returned "before" the program is executed. If it is at all possible that some particles travel backwards through time, or exist simultaenously at all points on the time-axis, then thats what I'd put my money on. It may be a far-fetched solution, but what the hell, we're talking quantum-mechanics here;-)
Exactly what I thought, but you beat me to the punch. I am too lazy to look for specific references to ATI cards and HDCP, but it raises an interesting point. Its not really worth the effort on ATI's part to try to cover their tracks. If the fact is they falsely advertised (and sold) products, a careful search through archive.org or other web-caches should provide sufficient basis for class-action. Also, it will probably be fairly easy to find actual product packaging or manuals that corroborate the accusations of the class-action suit.
A bit offtopic, but sites like archive.org provide an interesting and useful service. The downside is that it brings 'big brother is watching' to a whole new level. Don't ever post anything on the internet that you wouldn't want to answer for;-)
Slashdot Mirror
hahah actually so did I. Figured the article was about the Wii-mote being a little too much for some peeps ;-)
I'd like for religious people to point out one single thing that religion is needed for, I haven't found one single thing.
<grain-of-salt size="80%">
I'm not very religious, but I think I can answer that one: HOPE.
The powerfully etherial, yet wonderfully ridiculously undeniable HOPE.
How, exactly, that hope manifests itself varies from religion to religion, but its quite a commonality among them.
Whether or not that hope appears justified in the eyes of another is orthogonal to the issue. People need something to believe in, something that no man can take away. Religion typically offers a way to fulfill this need. Some people fulfill that need by other means. Who is to say one is right and the other is not?
As for atheism, well obviously atheists find those other avenues. I am okay with that, too. What I am not okay with is one (demographic) group looks down on another for its beliefs. Every one of us is guilty of that at times, but to answer Hawking's question -- I believe the best way for us to survive the next 100 years is to lose the "us" vs. "them" mentality that we all tend to have. Especially when that mentality escalates to people killing others over simple differences in dogma. FWIW, I realize I am oversimplifying the problem. But with Israel Vs. Palestime going full force, N. Korea testing ICBMs, America's PR problem in the middle east, etc, I think even a little understanding by all could go a long way for all.
How come I only get mod points when there of no use? Today no points, and a post worth modding WAY up. Thanks for the thoughtful post.
Hmm, now that you mention it, I HAVE noticed that the only times that I get any paypal phishing emails are after I've recently logged in to the account. I do so only rarely, and yes I think it has happened several times. I haven't logged in to paypal for a couple of months (and no paypal phishes within that time), but I just logged in to test your theory.
If there does turn out to be a correllation, I would assume that either the merchant (or their advertisers) are tracking this in order to provide phishers with valid paypal account logins. Since your paypal username is your e-mail address, that would make it pretty trivial.
FWIW, I've always thought that a website that requires its users to use their email address as their login name is irresponsible at best and negligent at worst.
Thanks for your input. I was hoping at least one non-American would post their take on it. You described essentially what I was trying to get at. Your comment about whether/when to kill a tresspasser being orthogonal to guns is absolutely correct. The reason I continued that particular example was because the OP specifically mentioned shooting the person. I guess because here in the states we are allowed to possess guns, its the most likely weapon of choice.
I'd say that if your country's system more-or-less works well, I see little reason to change it. Likewise in my country's. Its interesting that wearing military-style uniforms is prohibited. I did not know that. I understand the rationale for it. Do you think that the law was made at the time more out of distaste for the Nazis, or was there some additional underlying basis for it?
I acknowledge that we will have to agree to disagree. That is A-OK with me. I wanted to respond to a couple of your points, which do have some validity.
...Once again I don't think any property owner is allowed to willy nilly shoot people who enter their house. I am sure there would be trial and am sure you would be found guilty of something and spend time in jail. If not they you would be sued civilly and pay restitution to the family of the person you killed.
:-)
I really don't think so. I think you have to be reasonably sure you were in mortal danger before you took somedies life. I don't know of anybody who was able murder somebody for merely trespassing on their property and I would be shocked if any state had such a law (even texas!).
From what I understand (I could be mistaken), it is not a specific law so much as weight in your favor in the context of the benefit of the doubt. Yes, if you do shoot (and not even necessarily kill) an intruder, you are 100% likely to be tried in a court of law. Any jail time, if any, would likely be minimal. The court would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your life was not in mortal danger. If you truly did believe your life to be threatend, hopefully some of the forensic evidence should support the assertion. You are also correct that the family would have the right to sue you civilly, and there is a chance you'd have to pay restitution, however they would have to make a pretty strong case if you were acquitted in the legal case. My earlier explanation was an overly simplified attempt to demonstrate that this self-preservation scenario typically favors the one who tried to save his own life. I apologize for not making that more clear before. That I said it was legal (implying little or no consequence) was a poor choice of verbiage on my part.
People who bring this scenario strike me as being naive to the point of silliness. Ask the palestenians how well it's working to shoot at their opressors. After decades of living with IDF boots on their throats they haven't accomplished jack shit with all their guns and bombs. You really think your 45 can take on the US army? Good luck with that.
I am not sure this is a very good analogy for the situation I was trying to describe. I don't care to get in to further 'what-if' scenarios regarding the US military turning on its own citizens, allowing this discussion to degenerate into an unproductive flamefest
It could be argued that the simple existance of the 2nd Amendment is evidence enough to suggest that the situation shouldn't/won't get to the point of your Palestinian example. However, that is a logical fallacy and moreover I understand that it will not convince you. How about if this theoretical oppressive military raided your home and threatened to kill your family, or put you and them in 'camps'? I don't consider my original point to be naive, rather a sensible and workable precaution as allowed by the Constitution to hopefully prevent that situation from ever occurring, and swiftly correcting it if it does. As I said, we will have to agree to disagree on this point. I think we can both agree that it is nicer to sit safely at our computers and trade comments rather than bullets.
Let's hope someone who doesn't like you feels the same way.
I can't tell whether to take this comment as a personal affront or if you meant it in earnest. I never said anything about killing anyone except in justified self-defense. This comment seems to connote something else. Anyway, if someone disliked me enough to kill me, I DO hope its a close-proximity shot to the head. I don't know about you, but I would rather have a quick and relatively painless death, if I were not able to successfully defend myself.
Agreed. My home state of Minnesota passed a conceal-and-carry law a couple of years ago that allows the average joe to pack heat provided they've got the C-a-C license (which requires gun safety courses and the like). The only legitimate circumstance I can see for conceal-and-carry is if one is going to (or lives in) a notoriously violent/dangerous neighborhood. But then again, its usually better to avoid such places if possible ;-)
Just curious -- are you an American? If not, feel free to disregard the following for being out of context in relation to your point of view.
In many places, it is legal (in the context of the property owner) to shoot someone for Trespassing, Breaking and Entering, Attempted Burglary, etc. I am unsure how many, if any, state laws trump this right. I assume the purpose of this is to discourage would-be ne'er do wells from doing something they already know they shouldn't. Personally, if someone unknown to me enters my home uninvited (especially say after 10 P.M.), I will shoot first and ask questions later. Because property holders are allowed to shoot on sight, one has to assume that the perpitrator is likewise aware that the property holder is potentially armed, and thus is armed himself. It would take an incompetent criminal indeed not take that possibility into consideration.
With that said and for what its worth, I don't own any guns because I don't hunt and I live in what I would consider to be a safe, rural area, where the aforementioned occurance is extremely unlikely. However, I do fully support the right to bear arms for a separate, alltogether more important reason. The second amendment read as thus: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Given the political climate at the time it was written, I infer (correctly or incorreclty) that the right of the People to keep and bear arms is in part due to inherent mistrust of government. Power corrupts, and all that. If only law-enforcement officials and the military are allowed to carry weapons capable of killing a person, who ultimately can keep them in check? Given the polaraized socio-political climate presently found right here in the U.S., I can't think of better justification for owning a weapon capable of killing a person, even if the owner never intends to fire it.
Which, in the end, is my overy-verbose way of saying that it is the right and duty of every American to oppose tyranny from within, and defend the Constitution. If that means shooting agents of said tyrants... well, the price of freedom isn't free.
And finally, I personally believe a well placed bullet to the head is a very effective and comparitively humane way to take someone out. YMMV.
;-)
If I had mod points, I'd be unsure whether to mod this up +1 Informative or +1 Funny.
Hmmm..
;-)
Interesting. Thats's the case in many suburban areas, and is all but completely true for rural areas. There is usually one, maayyyyybe two cable/inet providers in a given area. I posit that if ISPs were completely deregulated, you'd have startups shitting their pants to run fiber and (especially) wireless to anywhere they could. In a perfect world, the local market would then fragment and the incumbant ISP would not be able to compete even though they control the existing local infrastructure.
For instance, I live in a town nestled in a valley. I happen to live on top. The next major highway is a few miles away. I am pretty sure if I had the startup money I could run the five miles of fiber necessary and erect a wireless tower that would service the whole town in one shot. Assuming my monthly costs to the upstream provider weren't TOO bad (I suspect many different upstream providers have fiber on that highway), I could probably steal the majority of ISP customers from the local monopoly. And the best part is that unlike the local monopoly, I wouldn't have to maintain as large a workforce and upkeep costs would be minimal, such is the beauty of wireless.
Better yet, I could skip running the five miles of fiber and just run a wireless link from the highway to my tower servicing the town...
Hmmm...
Anyway, thats in a perfect world and I admit that the devil's in the details. My point, though, is that pulling something like that off would be one helluva lot easier if the local monopoly didn't have government protection. Hell, in my town I wouldn't be surprised if the infrastructure was paid for (and maintained) 100% with tax dollars.
And finally, FWIW, I am pretty sure that any ISP or backbone provider that starts intentionally screwing with the packet QoS to a heavy hitter like Google is going to get some MAJOR shit from their customers, ESPECIALLY if the ISP is the only player in town. I wouldn't want to try it if I was running the ISP
Its not the bank with the horsies and the stagecoach, is it? ;-)
I may or may not at one time worked there and noticed the same thing.
;-)
But to be fair, the helpdesk consisted of idiots that didn't know the first thing about the systems they were supporting, as opposed to the admins that really know what the hell is going on. I had a problem with our sales software one day (erm, well I had problems with it regularly, but thats another matter). I called the helpdesk and explained that such-and-such-sales-software-program was failing to connect to its backend database, preventing me from logging in and getting work done. In total deadpan, the helpdesk crony stated they'd never heard of such-and-such-sales-software-program before...
TOO BAD IT WAS THE ONLY *-sales-software-program WE USED!!
*sigh* I only have to remember that instance whenever I get nostalgic about THAT job
Thanks for the info. As I said, 'the devil's in the details'. I do seem to remember hearing about some sorts of cancer cells that ARE fairly easy to identify due to their accelerated rate of mitosis, and how some types of cancerous cells have enlongated or non-eroding telomeres. I have to believe there are practical ways to identify anomalous cells in the context of its physical attributes (or protein production/production rates) using simple non-fatal proteins or enzymes. I guess it'd be analogous to a trojan or worm that infects many different Windows versions but only actively attacks one specific version. Heh, I do appreciate the irony of using a computer virus analogy to describe biological process ;-)
But, I am only an armchair biologist. I imagine there are a lot of reasons this sort of thing doesn't work well or is hard to develop effectively -- I am optimistic, if not outright ignorant.
If this is for real, all I can say is
Holy shit!
It would be theoretically possible to create a certain protein which targets cell-specific division. Like cancer cells. It wouldn't eradicate the cancerous cells, but it would certainly slow or possibly stop the cells' replication.
Of course, I imagine the devil's in the details...
Mod parent up. Just because Redhat is Linux and Microsoft is Windows does not mean that JBoss on Windows would be bad for RedHat. That is just stupid. On the contrary, RedHat would have no reason at all not to honor JBoss' prior agreement with Microsoft. If anything, I would suspect Microsoft will pull out as to not be too closely associated with RedHat/Linux.
About the only thing I can think of is that they added support for the PNG format. I'm not totally sure when that was added though.
;-)
Its kind of funny, because IE6 STILL can't display transparent PNGs right
Judging by how how long it took for my copy of Win2K3 Server to get infected (I used it for development, so no net connection) after I first hooked it up to the net.... about 20 milliseconds. I mean, really, it was ridiculous... Several seconds after the net connection was fully initialized, I got the NT_SHUTDOWN worm, which is kinda hard to fix when your computer reboots everytime you connect to the internet.. heh!
.Net applications also have the option of using the default XML config file instead, which can be edited easily by hand or with any old XML editor. That being said, there isn't any real reason I can think of to stuff settings in the registry when the local config file is functionally the same. Especially since the liklihood of the XML file getting hosed is somewhat less than that of the registry being corrupted.
.Net app, you have to go out of your way to use the registry instead of the XML config. Good move on Microsoft's part, IMHO. Why anyone in the Linux camp would want to turn /etc into a registry is beyond me, but if they want to send me some of what they are smoking, I surely won't complain ;-)
As a matter of fact, if one develops a
Not R'ing TFM because it'll just piss me off... I can no longer ignore or accept this sort of behavior from corporations that should definitely know better.
I realize this sort of dishonesty in product comparison happens all the time. I assume it likely happens even in analyses of products that do not originate in Redmond. What I don't understand is why the status quo is accepted. I have purchased Symantec products before. I'll NEVER do so again. If asked, I will discourage anyone else from doing so.
I'd expect this sort of behavior from Microsoft or its usual hired lackeys, but this takes the cake! Its pretty clear that comparing the totals of only the 'admitted' 'critical' security problems in each browser is practically as unscientific as you can get. Anyone who made a major infrastructure decision because of it should sue Symantec immediately, IMHO. This sort of behavior can potentially (and probably did) artificially influence the market.
</rant>
Of course, I am not saying that a company should face severe penalties every time they report research findings that turn out to be incorrect, but c'mon, any 1st year science student knows what the scientific method is. Willfully releasing false and/or misleading information that impacts a given market should at the very least prompt SEC investigation. I guess at least Symantec admitted what that did was the wrong way to conduct the comparison, though at this point, I have a hard time believing they are admitting fault for any virtuous reason.
Hmm... Looks like I got pissed off anyway. Time for a beer
With the .Net stuff, you have to at least explain the reason for all these things in a cursory way. In the case of Perl, you just have to tell them that the print command prints stuff.
;-), and sometimes I think that I'd have been better off learning OO concepts around that time as well. OTOH, I've made some pretty robust applications with just the perl core.
/me shrugs
Yes, that is definitely true. I guess it comes down to whether or not one believes teaching OO right away is necessary or appropriate. I started off with perl (well QBASIC, but I don't really count that
For the most part you're right, but I'd like to comment on a couple of things:
.vb file.
.Net language to another. I've played with this a bit for VB.Net and C#, but I don't know how well this works for 3rd party language support such as PHP.Net. FWIW, unless you are trying to build a code translator, I don't really feel that the so-called ambiguity in VB.Net's syntax is really an issue, especially if you don't have prior programming experience. In that case, using the single '=' to test for equality probably makes more sense to a person than using '=='. The first thing I do when I try a new language is RTFM for the keywords, control structures, and operators. The fact that these are similar in many languages shouldn't be taken for granted by any programmer worth his salt. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me that some cultures use a full-stop as a numerical thousands delimiter instead of a comma, but I am aware that such things can vary from what I am familiar with.
I guess the only difference between any two languages is syntax--that's what a language is. The rest is just API.
In the specific case of VB.Net and C#.Net, its a little different. Both languages compile directly to MSIL, which means analogous code in both languages should in theory compile down to the exact same binary.
VB is a syntactically ambiguous language, which is why C# to VB.NET translators are easy to come by, but VB.NET to C# translators are a bit more problematic. For example X=A(5) could refer to a function call, an array index, or a number of other possibilities, depending on what "A" is, which you may not know based on just that one
As I understand it, the System.Reflection namespace takes care of this just fine. Reflection allows the code translator parse all elements of the code on-the-fly. Reflection should allow direct transcription from one
In the end, I feel that choosing either VB.Net or C#.Net over the other is really a matter of preference. It is advisable to choose C#.Net as a learning language if you want to become familiar with other C-style languages. Personally I prefer VB.Net, because I don't necessarily perfer C-style syntax (brackets, braces, semicolons, etc etc), which seems messy to me. VB.Net on its own does not encourage bad programming practice any more than C#.Net does.
Citations please.
.Net Framework and the CLI were truly proprietary in the context of your comment, the guys at the Mono project would be in jail right now. Further, both VB.Net and C#.Net enforce strong-typing and are very particular about typecasting, as long as the Strict and Explict options are turned on.
.Net.
If the
Finally, FWIW, I personally don't see anything at all about C++ that inherently promotes understanding anything, unless you are talking about how the programmer is required to perform his/her own memory management. If that's the case, I'd argue that C++ has failed its developer base from the perspective that buffer overflows are just as common in C++ (perhaps more so) than in a managed framework such as Java or
Hello world, in perl:
In VB.Net:
Seriously, which one of these examples looks like it is using OO features? Anyway, I would have to disagree with teaching Perl as a first language. It was my first langauge, and I can't say that it benefitted me in the long run. Perl can be abused and used 'incorrectly' far easier than a
First, I actually RTFA, but am too lazy to further research this phenomena. I dont quite get how they are measuring that this "off" program is actually producing any result. That aside, consider that the "off" program is actually eventually run at some indeterminate time in the future. Maybe there is some reverse-time thing going on, so that in linear time a result is returned "before" the program is executed. If it is at all possible that some particles travel backwards through time, or exist simultaenously at all points on the time-axis, then thats what I'd put my money on. It may be a far-fetched solution, but what the hell, we're talking quantum-mechanics here ;-)
Exactly what I thought, but you beat me to the punch. I am too lazy to look for specific references to ATI cards and HDCP, but it raises an interesting point. Its not really worth the effort on ATI's part to try to cover their tracks. If the fact is they falsely advertised (and sold) products, a careful search through archive.org or other web-caches should provide sufficient basis for class-action. Also, it will probably be fairly easy to find actual product packaging or manuals that corroborate the accusations of the class-action suit.
;-)
A bit offtopic, but sites like archive.org provide an interesting and useful service. The downside is that it brings 'big brother is watching' to a whole new level. Don't ever post anything on the internet that you wouldn't want to answer for