Get ready to have no free (gratis) software, as it would be ridiculous to donate one's time to write code for free if you could be held liable for mistakes. Get ready for your paid software to cost 10X more to cover the extra development "hardening" time it would all require to be less penetrable, and to cover the insurance policies software companies would have to take out to shield themselves.
You know, we blame civil engineers when their buildings collapse, maybe it's time to start blaming computer "engineers" when their systems do.
But we don't blame civil engineers when their buildings collapse after they get blown up by dynamite. It's not like these computer systems are just falling over from nature. They're under malicious attack.
If all you were doing was getting in line, then leaving when asked or when you got to the counter, any monkey with a law degree could keep you out of jail, since you clearly did not violate any law.
If you are coordinating a distributed attack on a system and preventing others access, thus damaging a companies ability to do business...then yes, that indeed should be illegal.
But, taking the example of 100 people getting in line at Chick-fil-a, how can you (as the store's management) tell the difference between a hungry customer and one who is participating in this coordinated attack, without waiting for them to get to the register and not order? Do you make it illegal to not order food? How would you even write a law to make such practice illegal?
Flip this around and put yourself in the other shoes. Pretend this was your website and was the way that you made money. I'd imagine you would want it to be illegal for someone to take away your ability to run your business.
I would go to great lengths to not provoke someone into or motivate someone to organizing such an attack. People don't just wake up in the morning and say, "Gee, I think I'm going to try to take down Joe's Auto Parts web site today!!" for no reason.
Then accurately describe the phenomenon: "Information tends to spread despite attempts to contain it" rather than inaccurately attributing a human emotion such as "want" to something incapable of such an emotion.
Their culture must really be a great fit with Microsoft's.
Skype Guy: "You know, there are already open protocols for doing all of this. But I'm just going to ignore the existing standards, create my own proprietary ones, and try to lock customers in!"
The result? Today the world of VOIP is set back years, a fragmented mess of incompatibility, with the leading vendor having a closed, proprietary solution.
Right out of Microsoft's playbook. It's almost as if Bill Gates himself was one of the Skype founders.
Why focus on changing people's minds (difficult) when you can simply focus on voter count (easy). Democrats tend to win when voter turnout is high, and Republicans tend to win when voter turnout is low. So, depending on your party, it's more effective to invest your efforts into Get Out To Vote or into Voter Suppression, than it is to try to change peoples' minds.
Oh, I agree.. Not saying it wouldn't suck. Just disputing the claim that the stock market (in general) serves a "societal good". Certainly the initial stock sale (and subsequent stock issues) benefit society by allowing companies to be financed, and if you really stretch you can say that the ability for someone to invest and receive interest and dividends is good for society. But taken as a whole, including high-frequency trading, derivatives, futures, securitization of all sorts of crazy assets etc. the stock market serves no more of a societal good than a giant roulette wheel.
I dislike the whole mechanism of the stock market as much as the next guy; but theoretically, at least, it DOES serve a social purpose: The shareholder invests in a company, giving it the capital to expand its business. This is presumably good for the economy, and society as a whole.
Fine, but only the initial sale of stock to the very first investors actually delivers capital to the company (company itself is selling to the investors). No trade from investor to investor results in more capital to the company--at that point it's just gambling, and the existence of the shares no longer serves any social purpose.
Require an investor to purchase shares directly from the company and hold them forever, and you'd have a different stock market.
It may not have been your intention to review Dairy Queen, but the above rant reads an awful lot like many (most) user-generated reviews out there. It was a nit-picky anecdote, which told the reader nothing about the quality of the food, the price, the setting, etc. Just one person's isolated bad experience with the restaurant owner. I give it a 99% chance that if I happen to walk into that Dairy Queen, I won't even know who the manager, let alone have an altercation with him.
Most "one star" amateur online reviews are grumpy customers who want to stick it to the man for some perceived slight against them, not honest comprehensive assessments of the business and product. Most "five star" amateur online reviews are simply fans who personally like the business reviewed. Neither really give me an idea of what the business will be like.
What's important is what the reader's experience will be, not what the writer's experience was. An amateur reviewer will tell me why they loved or hated something. A professional reviewer will tell me why I will love or hate it.
User-generated reviews are useful for when you need the aggregate opinion of people who, in general, do not know anything about what they are reviewing. In other words, they're nearly useless.
To put it another way for Slashdotters:
Think of the last code change you made. Put that change up for a public code review and invite everyone (programmers, non-programmers, 80 year old grandmas, etc.) to comment on it. Let's say 95% of the commenters don't know how to program (and you have no way of knowing which reviews come from them). How good/actionable do you think that aggregate code review will be? Well, the same is true for restaurants, books, insurance, basically anything that can be reviewed online by unqualified reviewers.
You'll get as much value from a restaurant review from someone who has no professional restaurant review credentials as you will from a code review from someone who has no professional programming credentials.
HR on the other hand likes to scan, read and prcoess resumes and in 90% of all cases they have no idea what anything in the resume means. For instance I know most HR personal don't know what the IEEE is. Now you would think that the HR of an engineering company might understand the name of the biggest engineering group in the world. They also don't understand keywords like FPGA,VHDL, Matlab etc... Basically HR is a big department who's sole job is to spin tires in mud and progress no where well pissing off the rest of the company.
Yea, but I bet they know how to use words like "personnel", "whose" and "while".
I was all eager to read the article and nod in disgust at Facebook's incompetence, but after reading a bit, I have to say, "Grow up, crybaby!"
Do you have many candidates that know three months in advance their available timeslots? Do you expect all these timeslots to remain reserved for the three months, until the interview is finally scheduled?
Boo hoo hoo! It's called living life as an adult. Sorry you're used to not having to plan future commitments. If the interview is so important, keep your day open, kid!
My interview was finally scheduled three weekdays in advance, leaving me in fact one day to prepare, because I've already had plans for the other weekday and the weekend. Do you have many candidates who can prepare for a CS exam in one day? Or do you expect them to be ready to abandon their plans at zero notice?
Boo hoo hoo! If preparing for the interview is so important to you, cancel your precious "plans". How is their HR supposed to know you have a keg stand to appear at over the weekend?
In the one day that I've had available, I've been reading up like mad, and still obviously I couldn't prepare as well as I'd like to. The feeling of coming to a CS exam unprepared builds up the lack of confidence during the interview, and contributes to the stress -- as if the stress from the important interview itself wasn't enough.
Boo hoo hoo! I don't know my shit like I should, so I'm going to have to "cram" instead and try to sound smarter than I am! This is really stressful and hurts my feelings!!
Then comes the punch: the coding exercise during my interview didn’t involve any intricate algorithms or data structures, none at all, just robust coding. Exhausted and stressed by the rushed preparation, turning out useless, I was so perplexed -- as if I’ve not only come to an exam unprepared, but after all to a wrong exam.
Boo hoo hoo! I couldn't guess what my interviewer would ask me, which is sooooo unfair, and I wasted a lot of time trying to fool them!
If I get into your E-mail, I have access to every web site you use, because they all use E-mail based password reset functions. I'll just change all your passwords and confirm the change using your 0wned E-mail account.
On one of my previous projects, I recall throwing a little party (in my own mind) the day I was finally able to eradicate the last "Q" from the codebase. Since then, I've sworn an oath to the universe to never again use a C++ library that has to have their own string class. It's almost 2013. If your C++ library doesn't play seamlessly with STL strings and containers, please do the world a favor and erase your repository.
The GP poster is justifying the ban with the argument "you don't know there won't be any problems". This is an unreasonable hurdle, since it's true for nearly anything you might bring aboard. This puts the burden on the opposer of the ban to prove that for any given item, there are zero potential problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Get ready to have no free (gratis) software, as it would be ridiculous to donate one's time to write code for free if you could be held liable for mistakes. Get ready for your paid software to cost 10X more to cover the extra development "hardening" time it would all require to be less penetrable, and to cover the insurance policies software companies would have to take out to shield themselves.
But we don't blame civil engineers when their buildings collapse after they get blown up by dynamite. It's not like these computer systems are just falling over from nature. They're under malicious attack.
If all you were doing was getting in line, then leaving when asked or when you got to the counter, any monkey with a law degree could keep you out of jail, since you clearly did not violate any law.
I didn't say anything about refusing to leave when asked, so you're doing what's called "putting words into my mouth".
I'm standing in line at Chick-fil-a. Am I trespassing or just thinking about getting a chicken sandwich?
I get to the register and change my mind, then walk out. Was I trespassing?
Well, that escalated quickly.
If you do it long enough, you are loitering.
If you are coordinating a distributed attack on a system and preventing others access, thus damaging a companies ability to do business...then yes, that indeed should be illegal.
But, taking the example of 100 people getting in line at Chick-fil-a, how can you (as the store's management) tell the difference between a hungry customer and one who is participating in this coordinated attack, without waiting for them to get to the register and not order? Do you make it illegal to not order food? How would you even write a law to make such practice illegal?
Flip this around and put yourself in the other shoes. Pretend this was your website and was the way that you made money. I'd imagine you would want it to be illegal for someone to take away your ability to run your business.
I would go to great lengths to not provoke someone into or motivate someone to organizing such an attack. People don't just wake up in the morning and say, "Gee, I think I'm going to try to take down Joe's Auto Parts web site today!!" for no reason.
Then accurately describe the phenomenon: "Information tends to spread despite attempts to contain it" rather than inaccurately attributing a human emotion such as "want" to something incapable of such an emotion.
Their culture must really be a great fit with Microsoft's.
Skype Guy: "You know, there are already open protocols for doing all of this. But I'm just going to ignore the existing standards, create my own proprietary ones, and try to lock customers in!"
The result? Today the world of VOIP is set back years, a fragmented mess of incompatibility, with the leading vendor having a closed, proprietary solution.
Right out of Microsoft's playbook. It's almost as if Bill Gates himself was one of the Skype founders.
Why focus on changing people's minds (difficult) when you can simply focus on voter count (easy). Democrats tend to win when voter turnout is high, and Republicans tend to win when voter turnout is low. So, depending on your party, it's more effective to invest your efforts into Get Out To Vote or into Voter Suppression, than it is to try to change peoples' minds.
Say what you will about Comcast, their support for native IPV6 has been impressive
You should ask for all the money back that you paid them to host your video. Oh, wait...
Oh, I agree.. Not saying it wouldn't suck. Just disputing the claim that the stock market (in general) serves a "societal good". Certainly the initial stock sale (and subsequent stock issues) benefit society by allowing companies to be financed, and if you really stretch you can say that the ability for someone to invest and receive interest and dividends is good for society. But taken as a whole, including high-frequency trading, derivatives, futures, securitization of all sorts of crazy assets etc. the stock market serves no more of a societal good than a giant roulette wheel.
Fine, but only the initial sale of stock to the very first investors actually delivers capital to the company (company itself is selling to the investors). No trade from investor to investor results in more capital to the company--at that point it's just gambling, and the existence of the shares no longer serves any social purpose.
Require an investor to purchase shares directly from the company and hold them forever, and you'd have a different stock market.
That would make as much sense as roasting realtors over an open fire to send a message to homeowners...owning real estate leads to death - thears.
Impacted? Like a tooth? I think you meant "affected". /Sorry, my pet peeve.
You've made my point for me better than I could.
It may not have been your intention to review Dairy Queen, but the above rant reads an awful lot like many (most) user-generated reviews out there. It was a nit-picky anecdote, which told the reader nothing about the quality of the food, the price, the setting, etc. Just one person's isolated bad experience with the restaurant owner. I give it a 99% chance that if I happen to walk into that Dairy Queen, I won't even know who the manager, let alone have an altercation with him.
Most "one star" amateur online reviews are grumpy customers who want to stick it to the man for some perceived slight against them, not honest comprehensive assessments of the business and product. Most "five star" amateur online reviews are simply fans who personally like the business reviewed. Neither really give me an idea of what the business will be like.
What's important is what the reader's experience will be, not what the writer's experience was. An amateur reviewer will tell me why they loved or hated something. A professional reviewer will tell me why I will love or hate it.
User-generated reviews are useful for when you need the aggregate opinion of people who, in general, do not know anything about what they are reviewing. In other words, they're nearly useless.
To put it another way for Slashdotters:
Think of the last code change you made. Put that change up for a public code review and invite everyone (programmers, non-programmers, 80 year old grandmas, etc.) to comment on it. Let's say 95% of the commenters don't know how to program (and you have no way of knowing which reviews come from them). How good/actionable do you think that aggregate code review will be? Well, the same is true for restaurants, books, insurance, basically anything that can be reviewed online by unqualified reviewers.
You'll get as much value from a restaurant review from someone who has no professional restaurant review credentials as you will from a code review from someone who has no professional programming credentials.
the facebook home page doesn't even validate
LOL nor does:
HR on the other hand likes to scan, read and prcoess resumes and in 90% of all cases they have no idea what anything in the resume means. For instance I know most HR personal don't know what the IEEE is. Now you would think that the HR of an engineering company might understand the name of the biggest engineering group in the world. They also don't understand keywords like FPGA ,VHDL, Matlab etc... Basically HR is a big department who's sole job is to spin tires in mud and progress no where well pissing off the rest of the company.
Yea, but I bet they know how to use words like "personnel", "whose" and "while".
I was all eager to read the article and nod in disgust at Facebook's incompetence, but after reading a bit, I have to say, "Grow up, crybaby!"
Boo hoo hoo! It's called living life as an adult. Sorry you're used to not having to plan future commitments. If the interview is so important, keep your day open, kid!
Boo hoo hoo! If preparing for the interview is so important to you, cancel your precious "plans". How is their HR supposed to know you have a keg stand to appear at over the weekend?
Boo hoo hoo! I don't know my shit like I should, so I'm going to have to "cram" instead and try to sound smarter than I am! This is really stressful and hurts my feelings!!
Boo hoo hoo! I couldn't guess what my interviewer would ask me, which is sooooo unfair, and I wasted a lot of time trying to fool them!
He would have gotten far fewer years in prison simply breaking in to their houses and snapping the pictures himself in person.
If I get into your E-mail, I have access to every web site you use, because they all use E-mail based password reset functions. I'll just change all your passwords and confirm the change using your 0wned E-mail account.
Well, at least those desktop background PNGs are beautiful. What about the window manager?
On one of my previous projects, I recall throwing a little party (in my own mind) the day I was finally able to eradicate the last "Q" from the codebase. Since then, I've sworn an oath to the universe to never again use a C++ library that has to have their own string class. It's almost 2013. If your C++ library doesn't play seamlessly with STL strings and containers, please do the world a favor and erase your repository.
The GP poster is justifying the ban with the argument "you don't know there won't be any problems". This is an unreasonable hurdle, since it's true for nearly anything you might bring aboard. This puts the burden on the opposer of the ban to prove that for any given item, there are zero potential problems.