There exists no lock that will secure a house when the owner doesn't use common sense and lock the door.
There exists no OS that will secure a computer when the owner doesn't use common sense and not execute unknown code.
There are very few true 'viruses' on any OS these days - a virus being a program that can propagate without any user assistance at all. The vast majority of malware is trojans et al that exploit the user.
Yeah, pretty much actually. I'm not an astrophysicist, so I'm sure one will give you the details, but for any object to have a stable orbit around the earth it's got to get into some harmonic resonance with the moon or else be kicked out by the moon's gravity eventually.
Further, MySQL's quality in this area depends largely on database engine used. In eight years of working with MySQL I've seen MyISAM drop an index twice and have yet to see innoDB do so. Anecdotal evidence though is largely worthless even in my own opinion, so take that observation with a tablespoon of salt, but as a rule innoDB compares reasonably well to Postgre, while MyISAM is quicker at the cost of some write reliably - and most critically for many applications - the ability make transactional commits and roll them back.
But honestly, if you write the application correctly using PDO and don't use any MySQL specific SQL in the program then switching database engines should be as trivial as switching the DSN connection string. In that sense MySQL is fine for testing and non-critical deployments particularly if they are kept backed up. But the same must be said for all database programs - all of them can fail, even if their rate of failure in some cases is lower than the failure rate of the hard drives.
Another place where he is completely off is by painting Apple as a software company. They aren't. They never have been. Their software has always been and shall always be an end to the means of selling Apple hardware. If Apple fancied itself a software vendor then OSX would ship for any intel PC. It doesn't. It only ships for Apple hardware because it exists solely to drive the sales of that hardware.
And the formula works. It's not new - Vanderbilt came up with it in the late 19th century - vertical integration - own all phases of the process of bringing a product to market to increase margins. Microsoft uses the more poisonous horizontal integration - aka monopoly - own all instances of one phase of bringing a product to market.
The problem is a horizontally integrated company has very little leverage when shifting markets. A vertical one doesn't have this problem. They can't move as fast as a startup, but they can move faster than the horizontal monster. This is how Apple crashed into the phone scene - they had the means to build a phone outright - not just the OS or the hardware. Microsoft only has the means to build hardware in its Xbox division, and that division is pretty locked down to its role within the greater company.
I'll go so far as to say that if Microsoft is ever going to crack the phone space it will be driven by the Xbox team, not the windows team. They, and they alone, have experience in developing and deploying an integrated product solution within MS.
IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist) but from what little I do not getting into a solar polar orbit is extremely difficult. To date only one probe I know of has done this - Ulysses. And to do it required a Jupiter gravity assist to get it there. Besides, getting into a polar orbit will not reduce the glare of the sun. Finally, it will probably take less propellant to exit the solar system than take a grav slingshot into solar polar orbit.
Now if you can get really far out (400 - 500 AU) you can use the sun as a gravitational lens - that distance is the approximate focal point of the sun as a lens. That could make for some interesting observations.
Microsoft should know the principle of network externals better than anyone. In computing you often can't dethrone the status quo with a better product, much less an inferior one (and I'm going to guess the Windows solution is inferior in this case if, for no other reason, lack of access to the source code). It is this principle that keeps Windows alive on the desktop in the face of better solutions - and it is what allowed IE to hang on as long as it did.
Microsoft would be better served trying to make some presence on the phone market before it is too late. iPhone and Android are already entrenched to the point that where phones a traditional market Microsoft would be utterly doomed. But they get a saving grace in that phone contracts and devices tend to rotate about once every 2 years. That rapid rotation might give them a chance, otherwise they are shackled to their desktop market - a market that is now just as irrelevant to the future as the mainframe market that IBM lorded over the computing world with back in the 1980's, until Microsoft themselves dethroned Big Blue.
This doomed foray into big iron isn't any more likely to succeed now than it was in the 1980's. IBM has most of the share and none of the players in the field want to have anything to do with Microsoft. These machines are being used by engineers who want total control over the hardware they own and expect nothing less - which is why Linux is the dominant OS and the other major OS'es are open source. I doubt Microsoft really even understands the market they are trying to enter. On the whole its a waste of their time and resources.
CE stands for Common Era, which is the preferred notation now a days. And BCE for the years before that.
Why don't you anti-theists go find your own event to count the years from? Seriously, bitching about AD and wanting it changed only shows how pathetic and petty the lot of you are. I'd suggest dating from the launch of Sputnik, which makes this the year 44. Or you could just use Unix time.
I imagine the conversations with the 5 year olds are hilarious though -- "Why is 2011?" "It's just common convention." "Why?" "Because that's how we've always done it." "Why" "Because a bunch of morons who believe in God say he came to earth that many years ago." "Well, if it isn't true, why still use it?"...
And so on. My point (as a Christian) is this. The numbering doesn't belong to you. If you don't like it make up your own like the Jews, Arabs, Japanese and half a dozen other nations and cultures have. Stay the Hell off our count.
And while you punks are at it, Go find your own calendar. The current one belongs to us for it was made by the Pope.
And one final note - CE stands for "Christian Era" and is the English localization for AD. So at the least you could try a different set of letters. AD should actually work fine - Antitheist Delusion.
Speaking of patronizing - the "I own your computer" attitude inherent in any advertiser that runs pop-up ads turned me off from Netflix a long time ago. I never became a customer precisely because their advertising strategy was (and is) annoying as Hell. And don't even get me started on their idiotic non-sequitor commercials - every time I hear one of them on the radio I want to beat the authors up with a ball-peen hammer.
Cite - cause I'd really like to know which ones. The first true computer ever built wasn't completed until 1943 (ENIAC). Other computers wouldn't show up until after the war.
Yeah, but how many of those did you start online? I'm guessing none. In person your personality can shine - online there's only pictures.
This isn't the only, or perhaps even the largest problem with online dating. The largest problem is how unscrupulous the sites are. OKC has profiles on it that have been abandoned for years. Pay sites do not let you know ahead of time whether or not the other person can even reply and since only 1 in 10 men and 1 in 50 women have an account you can waste a lot of time sending messages for nowhere.
I don't think it has to be this way. If I ran a dating site it would have a $5 registration fee. The goal here isn't revenue, the goal is spam and lewd behavior cut off by putting a financial penalty on the guys sending crap messages and the princesses that don't respond to anything (closing an account after it receives a predetermined number of unanswered responses). Engage or get out.
The trouble is getting enough members to build interest. I'm a programmer, not a marketer, and to make matters worse online dating is one of the most crowded niches on the web. At this point I don't think anyone could build a successful dating site without going bankrupt, especially one requiring an amount of accountability.
And lets be honest here, this is OKC we are talking about - a dating site that has garnered a very well deserved reputation for being ice queen central.
is your weight. If you are overweight online dating will not work. In person dating might work if you carry yourself well, but in the online world where the next profile is a click away you less of a chance than a snowball in Hell.
Actually, it's quite impressive when compared to the current spec who's range is best measured in yards. 60 miles is a huge jump over the one to two hundred yards the current spec is limited to on the high end.
Do you get mad at your computer when it pukes on crap code? No. Patent law ( Hell, nearly ALL LAW ) is written so ambiguously and so subject to interpretation that it's almost impossible to parse it. They call it "legalese" for a reason friend.
Lawyers and politicians are something we programmers will never understand because they revel in creating the one thing we seek to remove - ambiguity. We do this because machines cannot parse ambiguous code.
Humans will try though - it's what we do - and no two humans will give you the same result (the brain being a biological quantum computer after all). The blame rests with Congress, not the courts (which are guilty of nothing more than asinine interpretation like a compiler), and definitely not the patent clerk.
Why do they waste time? Because Politics is about emotion.
Let's be clear here folks. By and large the majority of the readers here are programmers before any political affiliation is factored in. That puts us all in an uneasy tension with politicians because we and our industry are, at heart, antithetical to everything they are and stand for. Understand this please -- political science is a study of emotion, and the use of those emotions to sway mindless masses of people. Programming is a study of logic, and the use of that logic to control mindless machines.
With that in mind it should be little surprise to anyone how little politicians understand us, our industry, or our needs. Logic and emotion are entirely antithetical to one another. The two mindsets are utterly opposed, even more than the usual "art major" / "science major" split.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, those stray baseballs from the backyard are going to get much more expensive... Oh who am I kidding - kids don't play ball anymore.
This is a much easier problem to deal with. Users who can't be bothered to learn to keep their computer secured shouldn't be permitted to own a HDD
It's easy to pose 'bell the cat' solutions. Easy, but never helpful.
There exists no lock that will secure a house when the owner doesn't use common sense and lock the door.
There exists no OS that will secure a computer when the owner doesn't use common sense and not execute unknown code.
There are very few true 'viruses' on any OS these days - a virus being a program that can propagate without any user assistance at all. The vast majority of malware is trojans et al that exploit the user.
Yeah, pretty much actually. I'm not an astrophysicist, so I'm sure one will give you the details, but for any object to have a stable orbit around the earth it's got to get into some harmonic resonance with the moon or else be kicked out by the moon's gravity eventually.
Further, MySQL's quality in this area depends largely on database engine used. In eight years of working with MySQL I've seen MyISAM drop an index twice and have yet to see innoDB do so. Anecdotal evidence though is largely worthless even in my own opinion, so take that observation with a tablespoon of salt, but as a rule innoDB compares reasonably well to Postgre, while MyISAM is quicker at the cost of some write reliably - and most critically for many applications - the ability make transactional commits and roll them back.
But honestly, if you write the application correctly using PDO and don't use any MySQL specific SQL in the program then switching database engines should be as trivial as switching the DSN connection string. In that sense MySQL is fine for testing and non-critical deployments particularly if they are kept backed up. But the same must be said for all database programs - all of them can fail, even if their rate of failure in some cases is lower than the failure rate of the hard drives.
Another place where he is completely off is by painting Apple as a software company. They aren't. They never have been. Their software has always been and shall always be an end to the means of selling Apple hardware. If Apple fancied itself a software vendor then OSX would ship for any intel PC. It doesn't. It only ships for Apple hardware because it exists solely to drive the sales of that hardware.
And the formula works. It's not new - Vanderbilt came up with it in the late 19th century - vertical integration - own all phases of the process of bringing a product to market to increase margins. Microsoft uses the more poisonous horizontal integration - aka monopoly - own all instances of one phase of bringing a product to market.
The problem is a horizontally integrated company has very little leverage when shifting markets. A vertical one doesn't have this problem. They can't move as fast as a startup, but they can move faster than the horizontal monster. This is how Apple crashed into the phone scene - they had the means to build a phone outright - not just the OS or the hardware. Microsoft only has the means to build hardware in its Xbox division, and that division is pretty locked down to its role within the greater company.
I'll go so far as to say that if Microsoft is ever going to crack the phone space it will be driven by the Xbox team, not the windows team. They, and they alone, have experience in developing and deploying an integrated product solution within MS.
Not to be picky, but I don't believe gravitational slingshots work that way.
They do work that way. It's been done.
IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist) but from what little I do not getting into a solar polar orbit is extremely difficult. To date only one probe I know of has done this - Ulysses. And to do it required a Jupiter gravity assist to get it there. Besides, getting into a polar orbit will not reduce the glare of the sun. Finally, it will probably take less propellant to exit the solar system than take a grav slingshot into solar polar orbit.
Now if you can get really far out (400 - 500 AU) you can use the sun as a gravitational lens - that distance is the approximate focal point of the sun as a lens. That could make for some interesting observations.
"Military Intelligence" is an oxymoron. More news at 11.
I thought it was more bars in no places?
Microsoft should know the principle of network externals better than anyone. In computing you often can't dethrone the status quo with a better product, much less an inferior one (and I'm going to guess the Windows solution is inferior in this case if, for no other reason, lack of access to the source code). It is this principle that keeps Windows alive on the desktop in the face of better solutions - and it is what allowed IE to hang on as long as it did.
Microsoft would be better served trying to make some presence on the phone market before it is too late. iPhone and Android are already entrenched to the point that where phones a traditional market Microsoft would be utterly doomed. But they get a saving grace in that phone contracts and devices tend to rotate about once every 2 years. That rapid rotation might give them a chance, otherwise they are shackled to their desktop market - a market that is now just as irrelevant to the future as the mainframe market that IBM lorded over the computing world with back in the 1980's, until Microsoft themselves dethroned Big Blue.
This doomed foray into big iron isn't any more likely to succeed now than it was in the 1980's. IBM has most of the share and none of the players in the field want to have anything to do with Microsoft. These machines are being used by engineers who want total control over the hardware they own and expect nothing less - which is why Linux is the dominant OS and the other major OS'es are open source. I doubt Microsoft really even understands the market they are trying to enter. On the whole its a waste of their time and resources.
CE stands for Common Era, which is the preferred notation now a days. And BCE for the years before that.
Why don't you anti-theists go find your own event to count the years from? Seriously, bitching about AD and wanting it changed only shows how pathetic and petty the lot of you are. I'd suggest dating from the launch of Sputnik, which makes this the year 44. Or you could just use Unix time.
I imagine the conversations with the 5 year olds are hilarious though -- "Why is 2011?" "It's just common convention." "Why?" "Because that's how we've always done it." "Why" "Because a bunch of morons who believe in God say he came to earth that many years ago." "Well, if it isn't true, why still use it?"...
And so on. My point (as a Christian) is this. The numbering doesn't belong to you. If you don't like it make up your own like the Jews, Arabs, Japanese and half a dozen other nations and cultures have. Stay the Hell off our count.
And while you punks are at it, Go find your own calendar. The current one belongs to us for it was made by the Pope.
And one final note - CE stands for "Christian Era" and is the English localization for AD. So at the least you could try a different set of letters. AD should actually work fine - Antitheist Delusion.
Speaking of patronizing - the "I own your computer" attitude inherent in any advertiser that runs pop-up ads turned me off from Netflix a long time ago. I never became a customer precisely because their advertising strategy was (and is) annoying as Hell. And don't even get me started on their idiotic non-sequitor commercials - every time I hear one of them on the radio I want to beat the authors up with a ball-peen hammer.
IBM sold computers to the Nazis...
Cite - cause I'd really like to know which ones. The first true computer ever built wasn't completed until 1943 (ENIAC). Other computers wouldn't show up until after the war.
Baaaaahhhh..
Moo?
Yeah, but how many of those did you start online? I'm guessing none. In person your personality can shine - online there's only pictures.
This isn't the only, or perhaps even the largest problem with online dating. The largest problem is how unscrupulous the sites are. OKC has profiles on it that have been abandoned for years. Pay sites do not let you know ahead of time whether or not the other person can even reply and since only 1 in 10 men and 1 in 50 women have an account you can waste a lot of time sending messages for nowhere.
I don't think it has to be this way. If I ran a dating site it would have a $5 registration fee. The goal here isn't revenue, the goal is spam and lewd behavior cut off by putting a financial penalty on the guys sending crap messages and the princesses that don't respond to anything (closing an account after it receives a predetermined number of unanswered responses). Engage or get out.
The trouble is getting enough members to build interest. I'm a programmer, not a marketer, and to make matters worse online dating is one of the most crowded niches on the web. At this point I don't think anyone could build a successful dating site without going bankrupt, especially one requiring an amount of accountability.
And lets be honest here, this is OKC we are talking about - a dating site that has garnered a very well deserved reputation for being ice queen central.
is your weight. If you are overweight online dating will not work. In person dating might work if you carry yourself well, but in the online world where the next profile is a click away you less of a chance than a snowball in Hell.
Actually, it's quite impressive when compared to the current spec who's range is best measured in yards. 60 miles is a huge jump over the one to two hundred yards the current spec is limited to on the high end.
"We should be able to get no less than 450 billion in fees from these thieves. Lawyers, to the courtrooms!!!" - Unknown RIAA exec.
Who else?
Do you get mad at your computer when it pukes on crap code? No. Patent law ( Hell, nearly ALL LAW ) is written so ambiguously and so subject to interpretation that it's almost impossible to parse it. They call it "legalese" for a reason friend.
Lawyers and politicians are something we programmers will never understand because they revel in creating the one thing we seek to remove - ambiguity. We do this because machines cannot parse ambiguous code.
Humans will try though - it's what we do - and no two humans will give you the same result (the brain being a biological quantum computer after all). The blame rests with Congress, not the courts (which are guilty of nothing more than asinine interpretation like a compiler), and definitely not the patent clerk.
Worse, if more people understood economics, there'd be even fewer engineers and more parasites (lawyers, politicians and bankers)
Why do they waste time? Because Politics is about emotion.
Let's be clear here folks. By and large the majority of the readers here are programmers before any political affiliation is factored in. That puts us all in an uneasy tension with politicians because we and our industry are, at heart, antithetical to everything they are and stand for. Understand this please -- political science is a study of emotion, and the use of those emotions to sway mindless masses of people. Programming is a study of logic, and the use of that logic to control mindless machines.
With that in mind it should be little surprise to anyone how little politicians understand us, our industry, or our needs. Logic and emotion are entirely antithetical to one another. The two mindsets are utterly opposed, even more than the usual "art major" / "science major" split.
I'm willing to bet I understand them better than Lucas. So back off, it's a damn slashdot post, not a physics dissertation.