C and C++ are both amazing languages but :
a) C and C++ are not and never have been worth a damn as a standard. Even in the absolutely best C and C++ code, there are so many platform abstractions and #ifdefs that it's a nightmare. Neither C or C++ are useful as a platform.
b) C and C++ are not so fast anymore. There was a time where you couldn't write better code in assembler than a well optimized C or C++ code set could produce. Working in tools like Intel vTune Amplifier and optimizing your C or C++ code allowed amazing code performance to be achieved. Then money was spent on JIT technologies and hand optimized JIT code ended up being substantially faster in most cases.
c) C and C++ are more versatile than any other languages because you can program at a register level if you choose to. Need to make a new kernel system call interface... C or C++ are your languages. If you want to hand code vTables for object inheritance, C is for you.
d) Everything useful in C/C++ requires non-standard language extensions. Need proof? Look at the Linux kernel and try compiling it with a strict standards compliant C compiler.Try the same with the different standard C library implementations.
I can go on, but in reality, C and C++ are not very good anymore for anything other than operating system and JIT development.The code they generate is often far less than optimal. They target individual CPU revisions. They have no internal knowledge of the cache management structure of the system they're running on. They can't optimize code on the fly for "inlining" code differently based on how it is used and the current state of the processor pipeline architecture. Multithreaded and multiprocessing code has to make excessive use of locks (semaphores, mutexes, etc...) to manage shared memory and cache coherency because pipeline directions aren't easily detected and IPC can't be achieved exploiting ring-bus direction to its advantage since the compiler has no idea whether it's running on a ring or a mesh or even how many cache levels it has available.
This is what make things like CUDA far more interesting for high performance computing. If for no other reason than the CUDA compiler runs as AOT for the local platform. C and C++ is limited to whatever the developer compiled for.
Let's talk memory management. Garbage collected memory in a dynamic memory system is ALWAYS faster than manually managed memory. Using even the best memory allocators in C and C++ generally causes fragmentation hell. Let's also consider that free always frees now. They depend on pool systems which are often quick but make an absolute mess of the system. Memory is in fixed positions which can't be defragmented.
I can go on and on... but in 2017, no hand coded memory model will ever compare to a good garbage collected memory manager.
While I'm not a huge fan of JavaScript, I love Node.JS performance. Node.js is absolutely insanely high performance because of roughly a billion dollars invested by 4 companies in competition with each other to make the fastest JavaScript JITs. Right now, for code performance and memory optimization techniques, there probably isn't anything out there that can touch JavaScript for performance. Let's not forget the inherent async programming model of modern JavaScript which makes it absolutely beautiful for multithreading or even more importantly, scaling through microservices.
Again, I can go on and on... but these days you can use things like EnScripten if you really must have C and C++. There's also things like TypeScript and other languages which transpile to JavaScript. There's also some high end compilers like C#/HTML5.
These days, there's absolutely no good reason to be using C/C++ unless you're a sadomasochist who actually thinks they can write better code by hand than can be produced by modern JavaScript JITs
I'm not really an SQL Injection expert, but as a developer, I use SQL a lot and while I'm quite good as a developer, I'm absolutely awful as a database administrator.
I think that's the point which I'm about to make. Consider for example nearly every modern SQL binding you come across.
Python has no standardized method of accessing databases. Each database has it's own connector and their front end bindings for a database connection is written in pencil. Then within the code, there's raw SQL splattered left and right and while it looks super easy to use, it's a frigging security nightmare like you've never seen.
Node.js seems to be about the same.
Java is a lot cleaner in the sense that there is the JDBC binding which is very powerful and standardized and tools that allow for fluent programming can be very powerful. The advantage of fluent database programming is that you never pass SQL directly to the engine. So if you try to do SQL injection via a fluent API, it won't work..NET include Entity Framework which is a fluent programming model for databases on top of ODBC or OLEDB. It's lovely and offers far more opportunity than Node or Python for database security.
There are disadvantages of fluent programming for databases, but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages overall.
Now back to the original point, let's ignore the programming pleasantries and focus instead on the DB administrator aspects.
When I get a connection string as a developer from the DBA, I expect a developer connection string as well as a production connection string. I would expect that the production string would have permissions blocking destructive commands almost firewall-style and would hope that a good dba would require me to exploit views, indices and stored procedures correctly.
On the other hand, I've never worked in a development company with educated database administrators. All I've ever encountered is a developer who knows how to hack together basic DB security for the developer.
Come to think of it, I spent many hours last week trying to find a reasonable reference on configuring MongoDB, MariaDB, MySQL, Postgres, etc... for replication and distributed processing. That went poorly.
To be honest, there are some better ways to do this which are far smarter.
1) Alter the code to the e1000 driver to add a creative code injection opportunity. This would open probably a hundred million of virtual machines to attack. This can be done by making what looks like power management code.
2) Alter the VMXNet3 driver which is already some of the worst code in the Linux kernel with what looks like a security fix but is really another code injection.
3) Alter code throughout the kernel to start aligning data into predictable buffer positions. This would allow code injection as well.
See the thing is, what you really want is layer-2 network code injection. Almost all commercial firewalls and IPS systems today run Linux and they almost all run virtual (even when run on appliances). If you can identify an IP address on the other side of the firewall (should be easy) and the firewall is running in transparent mode, then the goal is to attack the firewall before a bad packet is forwarded to the actual firewalling code.. A perfect code injection for example would upload a small IP stack (think 1-1.4KB in size) that contains enough code to respond to specific messages for a routed IP as well as a specific port. This is pretty simple to do if the code is compiled with hard coded addresses at the attacker's machine.
Then, once there's a means of communicating with the firewall from kernel mode, it's just a matter of allocating some more memory, uploading a larger program and then forwarding packets to and from that program in the kernel. Then there's totally untraceable packets bypassing all security and providing an open door. Since most companies (**cough Cisco for example cough**) sell firewalls to companies and claim "contexts are just as good as separate devices", many companies use the same firewall for edge as the do for internal traffic. The firewall can then be used to snoop all contexts easily.
So... that said, adding a "Feature or Fix" to a kernel mode driver like e1000 is ideal for supplying a somewhat unauditable trojan.
No matter how good Linus is, if you build a repertoire for making good kernel fixes for something like power management on older drivers, within a few months, you'll build enough trust with him that he'll start accepting your changes based on your reputation as a good and reasonable coder more than the individual lines of code themselves. It is absolutely obvious that there is no possible way that every new line of Linux code can be properly reviewed. I revisit the source code submitted by VMware as evidence of that... they really made a LOT of bad code... a total shame it looks like it started off nice, but then I think they started using cheap immigrant labor for their changes and the quality control dropped substantially.
the solution to this problem is an add-on to the Amazon Echo that makes it so that when the delivery guy unlocks the door, then steal bar cages immediately create a secured path between the door and the kitchen table and refrigerator. I would recommend a few altered Sony Aibos with teeth to follow and guard the criminal closely.
babysitter = neighbor's teenaged son or daughter who when they're not babysitting are either at school, playing video games, getting drunk and/or humping.
Background check a babysitter? What the hell are you talking about? What kind of a neighborhood do you live in? Are you seriously planning on raising a kid where there are no other kids? Where will they go to school? There are teenagers needing cash everywhere. Make friends with a neighbor and ask them if they'd trust their pierce and tattooed teenaged brat with your offspring. If they say yeh... then you got a babysittter.
If you asked me about my daughter... I'd be like... no chance... use my son instead, he's the nice one.
Dude... the beauty of the world of the internet is that people are bumping uglies and procreating everywhere these days.
So that said... I think we need to sort out this mulatto thing. I mean seriously... black and white makes mulatto... then there's white and oriental, black and oriental, latino and... you see where this is going. If we're going to come up with ice cream names for every time we mix some other flavors, we need to dump the mulatto thing.
My wife and daughter are Coconut, I'm Cookie Dough, my son is Cookies and Cream. Mulatto can mean lots of things... you could be Cookies and Cream, or Rocky Road, or Coffee Delight. Probably the prettiest girl friend I ever had was Chocolate Fudge.
So... next time you, me or anyone else with a real interest in accuracy fills out an American or British form (the two countries who actually ask...) when the field says "Race", we should find the most accurate Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor to describe ourselves and write it in.
So you're someone who is able to install an extension or add-on but not smart enough to switch to an earlier browser?
NoScript is out of date and provides a false sense of security. Though I understand the way it works is really quite nice for people surfing unusual pornographic sites with click bait everywhere. So I can understand why you might be intrigued by such a program.
Writing a web extension like NoScript is quite simple. If it's so important to you, then maybe I can recommend writing a replacement.
As for security.... if you understood computer security and web technologies, you'd understand why the removal of legacy extension support is so important.
Honestly, you need an extension that prevents the user from posting on forums.
BTW while I have close friends that feed their families from the Mozilla foundation and used to work with them daily on similar projects, I have no association the foundation. I love what they do and I think one day I may even consider trying their browser again.
Let's for the moment assume that me and the reporter are equally qualified to talk shit about science we both obviously don't understand. Then I'll chime in on what I can get from using common sense and maybe a little multidimensional thinking.
Solar and Wind - These two tools are really useful for solving power issues. They're not end-all solutions and large batteries in the desert will get hot and cooling them to a reliable operational level that don't leak constantly will require large air-conditioned facilities or at least massive underground storage. On the other hand, using it should be possible using Elon Musk's tech to build most internal walls of each climate controlled home and office to collect and store quite a bit of power without the need for large centralized facilities. A reliable automated method of washing roof tiles will be needed, but I imagine that sprinkler systems mounted on the roof should assist with this.
Niagra falls and the NYC aqueduct. This was accomplished originally in 1907 with technology from 1907... as a government project it was expanded substantially in 2015 and that was one of the biggest examples of government corruption in NY history... the land of the mafias... Those aqueducts have supplied tens of millions of people with water across a 262km stretch for over a hundred years. The issue is to bring water...not necessarily fresh, but simply water to the desert. It should be possible for Bill Gates to buy a "Boring Company" drill and get zoning to drill from the Gulf of California to his plot. Alternatively, he can lay an above ground pipe which might be more profitable. The reason is that using vacuum a heated pipe will start sucking water uphill without the assistance of pumps if the pipe is correctly designed. In addition, pumps will further assist. This can allow a large salt water reservoir to be established near/on his plot. Then the problem is desalination.
Desalination - The only real problem with desalination is the energy cost and salt disposal... which in a desert isn't overly problematic. One method is either to use solar electricity. An alternative is to build glass boxes... from sand (if there is any sand for clear glass there) which will cause water to evaporate and then be caught on the top of the box and drip off the sides to be collected. The salt can be dumped into the desert as one option, it can also be gathered through maintenance (probably using low cost labor or robots). If using solar electricity, also keep in mind that it doesn't need to work 24/7. Instead of storing electricity, it can simple overproduce during the day and be stored as fresh water to be filtered for drinking after.
There is also ground water. Ground water is quite plentiful but difficult to access in the desert. Of course, this option debatable as there are many ground water problems in the desert. The most obvious is that as the water level decreased, the desert sinks too. This can be a nightmare for construction and infrastructure.
There are also many methods for extraction of water from the air. This is becoming more and more common in African deserts. Of course, the yield is low (at least on an urban scale) and dries out the environment further.
Purification generally requires power and filters. The most obvious filter which solves an economical problem as well is coal. I am no expert on chemistry and don't understand the process of producing the specific types of coal required for water purification, but I would imagine that this would increase demand for non-energy related coal.
Wildfires are always a problem in hot climates. So the solution for this is increase water, that means pumping more sea water in. The desert is a nightmare to make lakes in, but it's possible to do. On method is major concrete basins. Other methods could be to scorch the earth further to bring the sand closer to glass. I'm sure there are people far smarter than me who can come up with methods of building massive pools for salt and clean water
I never really cared about being rich. And I certainly will never have enough money to manage my money the way rich people do. I do have some bitcoins on a hard drive somewhere which I should maybe look into digging out. I also have some Monero. They cost me nothing to get. The sun actually paid for them.
Now let's address items of no intrinsic value.
- Stocks. In theory they are ownership of a real world corporation. :
* But first off... the value of the share and the value of the company have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
* A stock is more of an "I Owe You" than a piece of a company. And what makes this IOU different is that the company doesn't owe you anything at all. The stock itself is about as valuable as a bitcoin in the sense that the value of the stock goes up and down based on trading volume, interest, statistics, trends, etc...
* The CEO of a company (see Meg Whitman) isn't responsible for making a company succeed. His/her job is to provide a return on investment to shareholders. The shareholders don't really care what the CEO does as long as they can get the trading volume to increase and hopefully convince people that the share will go up. This does not mean the value of the company should go up, but the value of the share will go up.
If a company has netted a certain amount of disposable cash, the CEO will dole it out to the share holders who gambled on their shares... not invested in their companies... because investing in the company requires issuing more shares. The shares in circulation following an offering are bought and sold by share holders to/from shareholders. So, the dividends are simply being paid to gamblers who bought and IOU that only has value based on the CEO's ability to convince stock traders to pay more for shares... even if that means taking one of the greatest corporate empires of the world (HP) and killing off more or less all new technology development, chopping it into pieces, outsourcing to India and buying and chopping up a bunch of other companies too.
Bitcoin is a lot less nasty. It makes more sense really. You don't lie to yourself about some altruistic nonsense about investing in companies. You're not... in either case. You're not making jobs either way... in fact, gambling on Bitcoin for now is far better than doing things like gambling on grain, wheat, pork bellies, etc... at least for now Bitcoin isn't making it so that people can't afford milk and bread because supply/demand failed because we drove food prices up artificially by gambling on them
Then you have fund managers... who don't inside trade, but collaborate to drive volumes of shares up and down using software which tries to trick other people to hop on board and ride the shares up and down to buy low and sell high without any rationality other than electronic market manipulation. Then they stomp their feet about 1%er rallies messing up Wall Street because they claim "We made the fund... and retirements, etc... grow by X percent" and in reality, they may have ensured that the retirement fund has more money, but they also devalued the dollar so greatly by their gambling that while they'll enjoy the short term aggregate kill on the stocks, the people they did it for actually have less not more.
People who gamble are stupid... period.
If you gamble on stocks... you're stupid
If you gamble on funds... you're stupid
If you gamble in Vegas... you're stupid
I can go on, but on the other hand... if you have a solar powered computer sitting in the sun mining... and the computer is used for other things and you're just using spare cycles, and other people are stupid enough to pay for you to spend the cpu cycles... then that's not gambling... that's earning money.
Their website http://www.washburngrp.com/ is a total retro blast from the early 2000s. What I don't understand is :
a) based on Joomla
b) has copyright markings in some of the source files from 2014
c) has advertising which screams "1980's Computer Shopper Magazine!"
d) They're using a legacy web hosting company called LiquidWeb. Which means :
- They paid someone to make the website
- Whoever made it used the hosting service with built in Joomla support
- They really overcharged haha
- It took 2 minutes and didn't even have to use tools to start finding security holes in their site and hosting provider. Not even a Google search.
So... I don't know. If this business manages their business and customers as well as they manage their web presence... something which in 2017 isn't that important (right?) they're almost certainly screwed.
On the other hand, the guy sounded like he was an ass. Who does this kind of stuff?
More players could be a good thing, but competition when it comes to these things is absolutely stupid.
Carrier A - "Hey look... we put up 40 new LTE POPs in this urban area!" Carrier B - "Hey look... we put up 50 new LTE POPs in the same urban area!" Carrier C - "Hey look... we put up 110 new LTE POPs in the same urban area!!! We win!!!"
Customer - "Hey look, I have great coverage on all 3 of my phones from Carrier A, B, and C at my office... but I had to walk 3 miles to get signal when my tire went flat on the Interstate driving from NYC to D.C. last week. Too bad the carriers don't share the load to cover outside the cities. It's strange how we never have coverage problems when traveling in Europe".
If these players were to work together to actually build their networks out and regulation were put in place giving fair access at fair prices to carrier over carrier on the common network, then American mobile coverage wouldn't suck so bad... and it REALLY REALLY does.
I just took a 1200 person company in Europe and convinced them to stop investing in wireless networking at the office and to invest in VPN and LTE modems or LTE enabled laptops instead. We did the cost calculation and realized that :
a) The cost of maintaining a modern wireless and telephone network at the office was 3 times more expensive than simply using LTE.
b) LTE has a MUCH better chance of working everywhere.
c) LTE has actual quality of service
I can go on. But this was headquartered in a tiny little village with like 5000 people with an hour drive to the nearest highway and a little airport with 3 flights a day. And the LTE coverage there works everywhere for a 50km radius at least and 100% along the roads. And this is because competition is BAD for telephone networks.
We build our networks out. We charge our frienemies to use our networks We send them an itemized bill They send us an itemized bill If we see that we're paying them too much in a specific area, we build our own towers there If it would cost more to build towers than to simply pay them, then we simply pay them. The government forces us to collaborate to have a minimum 95% service coverage nationwide. We share the costs with our frienemies to cover as many areas as possible with the least amount of cost. We get support from the national military because they need to practice demolition, so they lay lots of fiber to make it a little productive.. we then buy fiber from them instead of going mesh.
Competition isn't good. Cooperation with regulation is good.
But if you think it's better to have a bunch of shitty carriers competing instead of a bunch of great carriers cooperating... I suppose that's fine...
BTW... do you watch sports too? I really really really like sports... they tend to make it so there are places like stadiums and bars or at least sofas at home which keep the people who don't believe in cooperation out of the way of people who believe in working together for a few hours here and there.
I think that if you were from Europe, you would feel differently about T-Mobile. I have a T-Mobile phone which I use when I'm in the U.S. and I find them to be absolutely horrifying. I've tried all of them and found them all to be absolutely terrible.
Now... let me explain why U.S. mobile coverage is so bad... and it's easy to explain.
T-Mobile and Sprint seem to think that they need to merge their businesses to be aloud to share the cost of building a network.
There is such a thing as partnerships and cooperation. Then T-Mobile customers can use the Sprint network and vise versa and the customer doesn't know or care which network they're connected to.. they just get a better experience.
But for some cocked up reason, it seems that T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc... all seem to think that they need to build the same network over and over again. Instead, if each carrier agrees to have their own networks within densely populated urban areas and outside, they each agree to invest roughly equally (proportionate their subscriber/consumption statistics) into expanding the network, then they can have a single network which covers everywhere with almost European quality in a short time.
It seems absolutely stupid to me the way American companies always have to compete over everything no matter how stupid it might be. I grew up American and every time I go back, all I ever see is non-stop competition... whether it's children fighting over mommy's love or mega-conglomerates fighting over web browsers. Mac vs. Windows, iPhone vs. Android, etc.. Everyone is so busy competing that if anyone took the time to actually invest their efforts into cooperation, we'd all be better off. Imagine if Apple and Google and Microsoft all cooperated and made a single internet messaging system as a replacement for iMessage and Hangouts? Imagine if I could run OS X as a virtual machine for iOS development on a server? etc...
Imagine if I could use my cell phone in America anywhere and it would just work?... like how it is in first world countries.
I actually have driven an electric car for over a year now and still don't have a charger in my parking space at home. I drive into the city and while I'm at work or meetings or coffee shops, I charge on the street because there are charger spaces pretty much all over the place. Of course, there are days where the free charging spaces (free for slow charge, $40 a year for 16amp) are taken, so I might either choose to park in a garage where I can use a 22amp charger for about 0.08 USD per minute, or I may stop at the gas station and fast charge (50 amp DC charger) for about 0.20 USD a minute.
When driving on the highway, I stop at gas stations along the way where in some locations there are only two or three fast chargers, but often there are 4-10 fast chargers available from multiple different power companies (which is good because I hate one of them).
I could drive all through Norway, Sweden and Denmark (at least on the highways) without ever fearing running out of battery and I'm driving a car with a 100km highway range.
Are there still 3rd world countries out there which haven't adapted to the 21st century?
All I see from this research is a reasonable hypothesis that there is another important variable to consider. I couldn't see anything that looked like mathematical proof of anything.
Mathematical proof requires :
a) There is proven math
b) It is used to prove a hypothesis
Then there's the issue that we barely have a clue what's happening within a cell. So far as I know there are statistics we use to justify our beliefs of how cellular functions occur, but that's basically saying "If we roll the dice 2000 times, 1990 times, it's the same". Maybe 2000/2000 like "If we microwave a cell, it stops functioning after 10 seconds"... except with Cockroaches... we can't kill them by nuking them.
With regards to the functions of a human body, using the term mathematical proof is horrifying.
In the future we should write "A scientist hypothesizes with what appears to be logical reasoning based on the very little we understand cellular biology that anti-aging may be impossible if we don't also account for other poorly understood and possibly previously not considered variables."
I'll call bulshit here. This is a very immature nonsensical reasoning. You are suggesting that Microsoft dominated because they were the only thing on the store shelves in the 90s as if that was the beginning of it. It wasn't.
Borland and later QuickBasic and Visual Basic were probably the reason why Microsoft came to dominate the market.
See, here's the thing... people chose the platform because of the software available on it. The software available on it became available because of the quality of the development tools on the platform. It's as simple as that.
I recall clearly in the 80s and 90s that there were A LOT of options (often in those same stores):
1) DR-DOS
2) CPM-86
3) Geoworks Ensemble
4) Mac
5) Amiga
6) Commodore-64
7) Atari-ST
8) Commodore-128D
9) BeOS (towards the end)
10) Novell Netware
11) Desqview
12) Desqview X
We had tons of options... probably more than we have now. Many things defined the success of Microsoft. Among them:
- The availability of quality development tools
- The ease of making a simple program
- The cost of the system
Most of the solutions above cost too much. UNIX was too expensive for just about anyone and if you bought a System-V or a BSD, the cost of the compilers alone was enough to make it so that no one could afford to use them. Netware was a file and print server and when that became commodity, that was no longer interesting... and don't ignore the absolute lack of support for TCP/IP until it was too late.
But Borland made Microsoft
Borland released Turbo C and Turbo Pascal for around $99 each which was reachable even for a kid like me back then. I was able to buy a compiler that had a full IDE and integrated debugger. I could go to a local book store and buy a copy of "Turbo C" and "Advance Turbo C" by Herbert Schildt for $30 a copy which took me months to save for, but before the Internet was probably two of the absolute best sources of information on programming ever written. There were some very inexpensive libraries such as a full blown ISAM like the "C/Database Toolchest" which cost like $20 and actually shipped with a REALLY GOOD manual in the form of a learn to program book. In fact, they actually still sell it at Mix Software all these years later.
Let's also add that using Borland's Graphic Interface allowed anyone with the slightest interest to learn to make basic graphical games before moving onto books and articles from Michael Abrash and learning about mode-X.
Then came QuickBasic which was a language anyone could use without any real knowledge of programming... again with an IDE and a debugger.
Windows was struggling in the early days because the Windows API (which hasn't change much) was extremely difficult to learn. The only book worth mentioning was "Programming Windows 3.1 by Charles Petzold and while that covered the basics, it really didn't do much more than get you started with some really simple forms and GDI stuff. So, we didn't code much for it. But then came Visual Basic. A Programming language for a Windowed environment which reinvented programming for GUIs and made it so that even grandmothers running knitting businesses could make their own applications by dragging and dropping and writing 10 lines of code.
And Visual Basic was the official death knell for all other platforms. Anyone could write shitty programs with shitty code and the whole Windows world nearly exploded overnight.
Apple did ok with things like Hyper-Card but no other company other than Microsoft ever understood how important:
1) A Stable ABI and API would be
2) Drag and drop programming
3) Long term binary support (I'm not sure, but Windows 10 may actually run Windows 3.1 applications still)
We can bash Microsoft all we want, but it began with and always was about attracting developers and Micro
So, you can visit Amazon.com and read customer reviews. You can Google. Search forums, etc...
Consumer Reports did recommend the BMW i3. I however would not. As a matter of fact, because of the reviews from CR and multiple other sources praising the vehicle raised my expectations a great deal. I decided to get the BMW i3 as it's one of the cheapest cars you can possibly buy at this point in time (consider electric + retained resell value) and it has been the worst new car I have ever owned. I've owned used Toyota's which were substantially better than this vehicle. But I think CR and others decided that "It's BMW... ooh wow!!!".
Let's be honest... consumer reports will spend about a week with a product before recommending it or not. They'll dig up statistics and generally do whatever it takes to make a headline and sell an issue. But at the end of the day, unless a product either turns to gold or crumbles in their hands in a week, they have no real grounds to stand on to make long term evaluations of products.
For this, I recommend favoring customer reviews instead of consumer reports. They're far more useful and thanks to this internet thing, I don't need to use an antiquated magazine to get information on things.
P.S. I personally own several and love my Surface/Surface book computers. I would personally recommend everything except the now defunct Surface RT and a used Surface Pro 2 (as I damaged the kickstand and consider the damage related to design as I can't easily replace it... a part which clearly should be easily replaceable).
I bought three Surface Pro 1s, a Surface Pro 2, two Surface Pro 3s, a Surface RT and a Surface Book.
One Surface Pro 3 was the first computer I ever brought back to the store for replacement... it worked well enough, but I found out that I could get a model which had one of the bugs worked out of it if I went and complained, so I backed up, cleaned it, brought it to the store and they replaced it in under 10 minutes... well 15 if you count the nice friendly conversation with the sales clerk.
I've been told that there are power problems with the Surface Book model I own. I suppose that there might be. The waking/sleeping thing was actually a bonus for me honestly. I found the behavior to be quite nice. And there is a weird thing sometimes where after over a year of ownership, I had to sometimes hard reset (hold the power button and volume in together.. etc... every now and then.
In all, I counted recently and found that the Surface Book is my 27th laptop or notebook computer. I have owned HP, Toshiba, Samsung, Wacom, Apple and a few others. I can safely say that I've never ever experienced computers as good as the Surface Book.
I believe the high replacement and return rate of the Surface line in general is because Microsoft is allowing people to try the laptop and return it if they don't like it. This means that people can suffer buyers remorse (I shouldn't have spent that money) or they can try one model of laptop and then try another instead. And the replacement is of course because instead of leaving the computer there for hours or days or weeks while it's repaired, they simply replace and refurbish. It provides a much quicker/better method of service than for example a Best Buy experience.
If you're looking for something really really nice and really really good which isn't Microsoft... Wacom Mobility Studio Pro 15" is my second favorite at the moment. The problem is, it's more of a portable computer than a laptop as it lacks an attached keyboard.
I have to admit... while I'd kill myself if I lived in Arkansas, it was one of my favorites to visit. It's actually a truly beautiful place.... the people... if you can find an interpreter are some of the nicest people I've ever met.
What I don't like about Arkansas is the overwhelming displays of what seems to be an epidemic of poverty. With the exception of Mississippi and New Mexico, I never felt like I was so completely surrounded by the impoverished.
But still... if you get past the whole "wow this place is run down" feeling, it's quite lovely
Have you ever been to California? I mean seriously... California is where we put "those people". We don't want kids passing AP exams in computer science to go to California when they can amount to something in life.
Let's see. California. - No water - Earthquakes - Forest fires - Pineapple on bread with sauce and cheese which they have the audacity to call pizza. - Silicon Valley people... in other words "new money" which is absolutely horrifying. I'd rather watch bestiality porn with my grandmother... it's actually less tacky - LA people... with the exception of the redneck population in Florida, I've never seen such extreme examples of scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean really... "I want to be an actor" or "Who cares about my career, my kids, etc... there's sun here.. I'm sure the public schools are good enough". - The heart and home of the SJW movement. It starts at Berkeley and spreads from there. There are dolphins in the Pacific whining at starfish that call whales chubby because it's so racially insensitive.
California is where we send people we don't want to keep.
Wouldn't it be better to send the kids from Arkansas to New England, New York, D.C. or much more preferably... Western Europe (not England or France) where people don't demonize smart people and the quality of life is consistently higher?
If the absolute first item on the list is gambling related, then I see a company that considers preying on the weak as a legitimate means of getting ahead.
Sure, AMD isn't running the casino itself... maybe not even making the machines. But they believe it's not in poor taste to openly discuss how they will gladly help companies who do run the games or build the machines to abuse weak people.
Talking about gambling is something you don't do in good company. It's like talking about rape openly. Or child abuse. It's basically something that you DON'T EVER DO and if you do do it, then you take everything you own and sell it, donate the money to the recovery of whomever was harmed and then put a bullet in your head to make sure you never do it again. Gambling and supporting gambling (this includes Wall Street) is a disgusting thing. It takes people who are stupid enough to think they can play the odds and win... all while you sit back knowing that even if the sucker wins a little, it'll just build his confidence up so you can get more from him later. Then you get the really disgusting gambling which screws up peoples retirements and causes them to live in the poor house for years (mutuals, hedges, etc...)
We don't talk openly about being a gambler, taking money from gamblers, helping to take money from gamblers. This is just filthy.
AMD... don't you think it's bad enough there's an American president who believes that it's perfectly ok to intentionally prey on the weak? And that it's legitimate to build your wealth by basically stealing money from stupid people? And the belief of "If they're dumb enough to put their money on the table, then it's practically my duty to take it from them."
Advertising that you support NASDAQ or NYSE etc... I can almost forgive... at least there are some rules there which are supposed to protect people from being preyed upon. But I won't buy for myself or my company any products which openly support casinos or lotteries.
P.S. - When weak people are preyed upon, while it may be their money, it becomes our burden to support them. I'm no OK with Trump, AMD or anyone else profiting from screwing poor people and making it so that I have to pay for their retirements and welfare.
I told my kids a long time a go that as soon as I see a game with gambling in it (even loot boxes), it's off their computers. I have made the exception for Overwatch because unlike LoL and a few others, the loot boxes seem to have no impact on the actual game play, only appearance. So in that case the rule is "no money on loot boxes".
In the case of WoW, when we played it, it wasn't so bad because you could choose what you wanted and buy it. So, I would sometimes buy a pet if there was a campaign where the proceeds would be donated to a charity.
I explain to the kids that gambling is for people who lack the intelligence to understand that when you give someone money, they should give you something of that value in return. There shouldn't be odds or luck attached to financial exchanges. It would be like going to your boss and saying...hey let's spin a wheel each month and see how much you should pay me!
In my house, I have a minimum of several dozen devices with standard 3.5mm headphone jacks. This includes my stereo, my TVs, my iPads (no intention of upgrading, they're good enough), my Windows tablets (we have at least 15 laying around the house), Kindle (for text to speech),etc...
To switch the headphones, I would need to replace about $40-$50,000 of devices.
3.5 mm jacks are imperfect and always have been. They're a terrible design but probably the best we could hope for given the manufacturing equipment of the time. The original 1/4" "telephone plug" or monaural plug dates to 1878. The 3.5mm jack dates from the 50's but I can't find anything more precise from Googling. The fact that something so small could be made in the 50's... especially when most things had to be hand-assembled back then is truly amazing.
So that said... given a standard that already dates back 60-70 years... I have no intention of giving up my headphones and their wires. They work well enough... I don't have to charge them... and since I prefer ear buds, I sure as shit don't want to lose them constantly because they're not physically attached to my phone.
Oh... and dongles are just plain stupid... I have Ajay 5 headphones and have bought 20-30 pairs of AJays over the years because they are more durable than most others. They don't make dongles of comparable strength or cable quality.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple... I needed something better.
C and C++ are both amazing languages but :
a) C and C++ are not and never have been worth a damn as a standard. Even in the absolutely best C and C++ code, there are so many platform abstractions and #ifdefs that it's a nightmare. Neither C or C++ are useful as a platform.
b) C and C++ are not so fast anymore. There was a time where you couldn't write better code in assembler than a well optimized C or C++ code set could produce. Working in tools like Intel vTune Amplifier and optimizing your C or C++ code allowed amazing code performance to be achieved. Then money was spent on JIT technologies and hand optimized JIT code ended up being substantially faster in most cases.
c) C and C++ are more versatile than any other languages because you can program at a register level if you choose to. Need to make a new kernel system call interface... C or C++ are your languages. If you want to hand code vTables for object inheritance, C is for you.
d) Everything useful in C/C++ requires non-standard language extensions. Need proof? Look at the Linux kernel and try compiling it with a strict standards compliant C compiler.Try the same with the different standard C library implementations.
I can go on, but in reality, C and C++ are not very good anymore for anything other than operating system and JIT development.The code they generate is often far less than optimal. They target individual CPU revisions. They have no internal knowledge of the cache management structure of the system they're running on. They can't optimize code on the fly for "inlining" code differently based on how it is used and the current state of the processor pipeline architecture. Multithreaded and multiprocessing code has to make excessive use of locks (semaphores, mutexes, etc...) to manage shared memory and cache coherency because pipeline directions aren't easily detected and IPC can't be achieved exploiting ring-bus direction to its advantage since the compiler has no idea whether it's running on a ring or a mesh or even how many cache levels it has available.
This is what make things like CUDA far more interesting for high performance computing. If for no other reason than the CUDA compiler runs as AOT for the local platform. C and C++ is limited to whatever the developer compiled for.
Let's talk memory management. Garbage collected memory in a dynamic memory system is ALWAYS faster than manually managed memory. Using even the best memory allocators in C and C++ generally causes fragmentation hell. Let's also consider that free always frees now. They depend on pool systems which are often quick but make an absolute mess of the system. Memory is in fixed positions which can't be defragmented.
I can go on and on... but in 2017, no hand coded memory model will ever compare to a good garbage collected memory manager.
While I'm not a huge fan of JavaScript, I love Node.JS performance. Node.js is absolutely insanely high performance because of roughly a billion dollars invested by 4 companies in competition with each other to make the fastest JavaScript JITs. Right now, for code performance and memory optimization techniques, there probably isn't anything out there that can touch JavaScript for performance. Let's not forget the inherent async programming model of modern JavaScript which makes it absolutely beautiful for multithreading or even more importantly, scaling through microservices.
Again, I can go on and on... but these days you can use things like EnScripten if you really must have C and C++. There's also things like TypeScript and other languages which transpile to JavaScript. There's also some high end compilers like C#/HTML5.
These days, there's absolutely no good reason to be using C/C++ unless you're a sadomasochist who actually thinks they can write better code by hand than can be produced by modern JavaScript JITs
I'm not really an SQL Injection expert, but as a developer, I use SQL a lot and while I'm quite good as a developer, I'm absolutely awful as a database administrator.
.NET include Entity Framework which is a fluent programming model for databases on top of ODBC or OLEDB. It's lovely and offers far more opportunity than Node or Python for database security.
I think that's the point which I'm about to make. Consider for example nearly every modern SQL binding you come across.
Python has no standardized method of accessing databases. Each database has it's own connector and their front end bindings for a database connection is written in pencil. Then within the code, there's raw SQL splattered left and right and while it looks super easy to use, it's a frigging security nightmare like you've never seen.
Node.js seems to be about the same.
Java is a lot cleaner in the sense that there is the JDBC binding which is very powerful and standardized and tools that allow for fluent programming can be very powerful. The advantage of fluent database programming is that you never pass SQL directly to the engine. So if you try to do SQL injection via a fluent API, it won't work.
There are disadvantages of fluent programming for databases, but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages overall.
Now back to the original point, let's ignore the programming pleasantries and focus instead on the DB administrator aspects.
When I get a connection string as a developer from the DBA, I expect a developer connection string as well as a production connection string. I would expect that the production string would have permissions blocking destructive commands almost firewall-style and would hope that a good dba would require me to exploit views, indices and stored procedures correctly.
On the other hand, I've never worked in a development company with educated database administrators. All I've ever encountered is a developer who knows how to hack together basic DB security for the developer.
Come to think of it, I spent many hours last week trying to find a reasonable reference on configuring MongoDB, MariaDB, MySQL, Postgres, etc... for replication and distributed processing. That went poorly.
To be honest, there are some better ways to do this which are far smarter.
1) Alter the code to the e1000 driver to add a creative code injection opportunity. This would open probably a hundred million of virtual machines to attack. This can be done by making what looks like power management code.
2) Alter the VMXNet3 driver which is already some of the worst code in the Linux kernel with what looks like a security fix but is really another code injection.
3) Alter code throughout the kernel to start aligning data into predictable buffer positions. This would allow code injection as well.
See the thing is, what you really want is layer-2 network code injection. Almost all commercial firewalls and IPS systems today run Linux and they almost all run virtual (even when run on appliances). If you can identify an IP address on the other side of the firewall (should be easy) and the firewall is running in transparent mode, then the goal is to attack the firewall before a bad packet is forwarded to the actual firewalling code.. A perfect code injection for example would upload a small IP stack (think 1-1.4KB in size) that contains enough code to respond to specific messages for a routed IP as well as a specific port. This is pretty simple to do if the code is compiled with hard coded addresses at the attacker's machine.
Then, once there's a means of communicating with the firewall from kernel mode, it's just a matter of allocating some more memory, uploading a larger program and then forwarding packets to and from that program in the kernel. Then there's totally untraceable packets bypassing all security and providing an open door. Since most companies (**cough Cisco for example cough**) sell firewalls to companies and claim "contexts are just as good as separate devices", many companies use the same firewall for edge as the do for internal traffic. The firewall can then be used to snoop all contexts easily.
So... that said, adding a "Feature or Fix" to a kernel mode driver like e1000 is ideal for supplying a somewhat unauditable trojan.
No matter how good Linus is, if you build a repertoire for making good kernel fixes for something like power management on older drivers, within a few months, you'll build enough trust with him that he'll start accepting your changes based on your reputation as a good and reasonable coder more than the individual lines of code themselves. It is absolutely obvious that there is no possible way that every new line of Linux code can be properly reviewed. I revisit the source code submitted by VMware as evidence of that... they really made a LOT of bad code... a total shame it looks like it started off nice, but then I think they started using cheap immigrant labor for their changes and the quality control dropped substantially.
I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy.
I sometimes wonder if Mel Brooks, Zemeckis and Bob Gale had crystal balls and were able to see into 2017
the solution to this problem is an add-on to the Amazon Echo that makes it so that when the delivery guy unlocks the door, then steal bar cages immediately create a secured path between the door and the kitchen table and refrigerator. I would recommend a few altered Sony Aibos with teeth to follow and guard the criminal closely.
babysitter = neighbor's teenaged son or daughter who when they're not babysitting are either at school, playing video games, getting drunk and/or humping.
Background check a babysitter? What the hell are you talking about? What kind of a neighborhood do you live in? Are you seriously planning on raising a kid where there are no other kids? Where will they go to school? There are teenagers needing cash everywhere. Make friends with a neighbor and ask them if they'd trust their pierce and tattooed teenaged brat with your offspring. If they say yeh... then you got a babysittter.
If you asked me about my daughter... I'd be like... no chance... use my son instead, he's the nice one.
Is it at all possible he considers that he doesn't like people saying bad things about French people?
Dude... the beauty of the world of the internet is that people are bumping uglies and procreating everywhere these days.
... you see where this is going. If we're going to come up with ice cream names for every time we mix some other flavors, we need to dump the mulatto thing.
So that said... I think we need to sort out this mulatto thing. I mean seriously... black and white makes mulatto... then there's white and oriental, black and oriental, latino and
My wife and daughter are Coconut, I'm Cookie Dough, my son is Cookies and Cream. Mulatto can mean lots of things... you could be Cookies and Cream, or Rocky Road, or Coffee Delight. Probably the prettiest girl friend I ever had was Chocolate Fudge.
So... next time you, me or anyone else with a real interest in accuracy fills out an American or British form (the two countries who actually ask...) when the field says "Race", we should find the most accurate Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor to describe ourselves and write it in.
You isn't that smart... is you?
So you're someone who is able to install an extension or add-on but not smart enough to switch to an earlier browser?
NoScript is out of date and provides a false sense of security. Though I understand the way it works is really quite nice for people surfing unusual pornographic sites with click bait everywhere. So I can understand why you might be intrigued by such a program.
Writing a web extension like NoScript is quite simple. If it's so important to you, then maybe I can recommend writing a replacement.
As for security.... if you understood computer security and web technologies, you'd understand why the removal of legacy extension support is so important.
Honestly, you need an extension that prevents the user from posting on forums.
BTW while I have close friends that feed their families from the Mozilla foundation and used to work with them daily on similar projects, I have no association the foundation. I love what they do and I think one day I may even consider trying their browser again.
Let's for the moment assume that me and the reporter are equally qualified to talk shit about science we both obviously don't understand. Then I'll chime in on what I can get from using common sense and maybe a little multidimensional thinking.
... from sand (if there is any sand for clear glass there) which will cause water to evaporate and then be caught on the top of the box and drip off the sides to be collected. The salt can be dumped into the desert as one option, it can also be gathered through maintenance (probably using low cost labor or robots). If using solar electricity, also keep in mind that it doesn't need to work 24/7. Instead of storing electricity, it can simple overproduce during the day and be stored as fresh water to be filtered for drinking after.
Solar and Wind - These two tools are really useful for solving power issues. They're not end-all solutions and large batteries in the desert will get hot and cooling them to a reliable operational level that don't leak constantly will require large air-conditioned facilities or at least massive underground storage. On the other hand, using it should be possible using Elon Musk's tech to build most internal walls of each climate controlled home and office to collect and store quite a bit of power without the need for large centralized facilities. A reliable automated method of washing roof tiles will be needed, but I imagine that sprinkler systems mounted on the roof should assist with this.
Niagra falls and the NYC aqueduct. This was accomplished originally in 1907 with technology from 1907... as a government project it was expanded substantially in 2015 and that was one of the biggest examples of government corruption in NY history... the land of the mafias... Those aqueducts have supplied tens of millions of people with water across a 262km stretch for over a hundred years. The issue is to bring water...not necessarily fresh, but simply water to the desert. It should be possible for Bill Gates to buy a "Boring Company" drill and get zoning to drill from the Gulf of California to his plot. Alternatively, he can lay an above ground pipe which might be more profitable. The reason is that using vacuum a heated pipe will start sucking water uphill without the assistance of pumps if the pipe is correctly designed. In addition, pumps will further assist. This can allow a large salt water reservoir to be established near/on his plot. Then the problem is desalination.
Desalination - The only real problem with desalination is the energy cost and salt disposal... which in a desert isn't overly problematic. One method is either to use solar electricity. An alternative is to build glass boxes
There is also ground water. Ground water is quite plentiful but difficult to access in the desert. Of course, this option debatable as there are many ground water problems in the desert. The most obvious is that as the water level decreased, the desert sinks too. This can be a nightmare for construction and infrastructure.
There are also many methods for extraction of water from the air. This is becoming more and more common in African deserts. Of course, the yield is low (at least on an urban scale) and dries out the environment further.
Purification generally requires power and filters. The most obvious filter which solves an economical problem as well is coal. I am no expert on chemistry and don't understand the process of producing the specific types of coal required for water purification, but I would imagine that this would increase demand for non-energy related coal.
Wildfires are always a problem in hot climates. So the solution for this is increase water, that means pumping more sea water in. The desert is a nightmare to make lakes in, but it's possible to do. On method is major concrete basins. Other methods could be to scorch the earth further to bring the sand closer to glass. I'm sure there are people far smarter than me who can come up with methods of building massive pools for salt and clean water
I never really cared about being rich. And I certainly will never have enough money to manage my money the way rich people do. I do have some bitcoins on a hard drive somewhere which I should maybe look into digging out. I also have some Monero. They cost me nothing to get. The sun actually paid for them.
... not invested in their companies... because investing in the company requires issuing more shares. The shares in circulation following an offering are bought and sold by share holders to/from shareholders. So, the dividends are simply being paid to gamblers who bought and IOU that only has value based on the CEO's ability to convince stock traders to pay more for shares... even if that means taking one of the greatest corporate empires of the world (HP) and killing off more or less all new technology development, chopping it into pieces, outsourcing to India and buying and chopping up a bunch of other companies too.
... and retirements, etc... grow by X percent" and in reality, they may have ensured that the retirement fund has more money, but they also devalued the dollar so greatly by their gambling that while they'll enjoy the short term aggregate kill on the stocks, the people they did it for actually have less not more.
Now let's address items of no intrinsic value.
- Stocks. In theory they are ownership of a real world corporation. :
* But first off... the value of the share and the value of the company have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
* A stock is more of an "I Owe You" than a piece of a company. And what makes this IOU different is that the company doesn't owe you anything at all. The stock itself is about as valuable as a bitcoin in the sense that the value of the stock goes up and down based on trading volume, interest, statistics, trends, etc...
* The CEO of a company (see Meg Whitman) isn't responsible for making a company succeed. His/her job is to provide a return on investment to shareholders. The shareholders don't really care what the CEO does as long as they can get the trading volume to increase and hopefully convince people that the share will go up. This does not mean the value of the company should go up, but the value of the share will go up.
If a company has netted a certain amount of disposable cash, the CEO will dole it out to the share holders who gambled on their shares
Bitcoin is a lot less nasty. It makes more sense really. You don't lie to yourself about some altruistic nonsense about investing in companies. You're not... in either case. You're not making jobs either way... in fact, gambling on Bitcoin for now is far better than doing things like gambling on grain, wheat, pork bellies, etc... at least for now Bitcoin isn't making it so that people can't afford milk and bread because supply/demand failed because we drove food prices up artificially by gambling on them
Then you have fund managers... who don't inside trade, but collaborate to drive volumes of shares up and down using software which tries to trick other people to hop on board and ride the shares up and down to buy low and sell high without any rationality other than electronic market manipulation. Then they stomp their feet about 1%er rallies messing up Wall Street because they claim "We made the fund
People who gamble are stupid... period.
If you gamble on stocks... you're stupid
If you gamble on funds... you're stupid
If you gamble in Vegas... you're stupid
I can go on, but on the other hand... if you have a solar powered computer sitting in the sun mining... and the computer is used for other things and you're just using spare cycles, and other people are stupid enough to pay for you to spend the cpu cycles... then that's not gambling... that's earning money.
Their website http://www.washburngrp.com/ is a total retro blast from the early 2000s. What I don't understand is :
a) based on Joomla
b) has copyright markings in some of the source files from 2014
c) has advertising which screams "1980's Computer Shopper Magazine!"
d) They're using a legacy web hosting company called LiquidWeb. Which means :
- They paid someone to make the website
- Whoever made it used the hosting service with built in Joomla support
- They really overcharged haha
- It took 2 minutes and didn't even have to use tools to start finding security holes in their site and hosting provider. Not even a Google search.
So... I don't know. If this business manages their business and customers as well as they manage their web presence... something which in 2017 isn't that important (right?) they're almost certainly screwed.
On the other hand, the guy sounded like he was an ass. Who does this kind of stuff?
More competition is stupid my friend.
More players could be a good thing, but competition when it comes to these things is absolutely stupid.
Carrier A - "Hey look... we put up 40 new LTE POPs in this urban area!"
Carrier B - "Hey look... we put up 50 new LTE POPs in the same urban area!"
Carrier C - "Hey look... we put up 110 new LTE POPs in the same urban area!!! We win!!!"
Customer - "Hey look, I have great coverage on all 3 of my phones from Carrier A, B, and C at my office... but I had to walk 3 miles to get signal when my tire went flat on the Interstate driving from NYC to D.C. last week. Too bad the carriers don't share the load to cover outside the cities. It's strange how we never have coverage problems when traveling in Europe".
If these players were to work together to actually build their networks out and regulation were put in place giving fair access at fair prices to carrier over carrier on the common network, then American mobile coverage wouldn't suck so bad... and it REALLY REALLY does.
I just took a 1200 person company in Europe and convinced them to stop investing in wireless networking at the office and to invest in VPN and LTE modems or LTE enabled laptops instead. We did the cost calculation and realized that :
a) The cost of maintaining a modern wireless and telephone network at the office was 3 times more expensive than simply using LTE.
b) LTE has a MUCH better chance of working everywhere.
c) LTE has actual quality of service
I can go on. But this was headquartered in a tiny little village with like 5000 people with an hour drive to the nearest highway and a little airport with 3 flights a day. And the LTE coverage there works everywhere for a 50km radius at least and 100% along the roads. And this is because competition is BAD for telephone networks.
We build our networks out.
We charge our frienemies to use our networks
We send them an itemized bill
They send us an itemized bill
If we see that we're paying them too much in a specific area, we build our own towers there
If it would cost more to build towers than to simply pay them, then we simply pay them.
The government forces us to collaborate to have a minimum 95% service coverage nationwide.
We share the costs with our frienemies to cover as many areas as possible with the least amount of cost.
We get support from the national military because they need to practice demolition, so they lay lots of fiber to make it a little productive.. we then buy fiber from them instead of going mesh.
Competition isn't good. Cooperation with regulation is good.
But if you think it's better to have a bunch of shitty carriers competing instead of a bunch of great carriers cooperating... I suppose that's fine...
BTW... do you watch sports too? I really really really like sports... they tend to make it so there are places like stadiums and bars or at least sofas at home which keep the people who don't believe in cooperation out of the way of people who believe in working together for a few hours here and there.
I think that if you were from Europe, you would feel differently about T-Mobile. I have a T-Mobile phone which I use when I'm in the U.S. and I find them to be absolutely horrifying. I've tried all of them and found them all to be absolutely terrible.
Now... let me explain why U.S. mobile coverage is so bad... and it's easy to explain.
T-Mobile and Sprint seem to think that they need to merge their businesses to be aloud to share the cost of building a network.
There is such a thing as partnerships and cooperation. Then T-Mobile customers can use the Sprint network and vise versa and the customer doesn't know or care which network they're connected to.. they just get a better experience.
But for some cocked up reason, it seems that T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc... all seem to think that they need to build the same network over and over again. Instead, if each carrier agrees to have their own networks within densely populated urban areas and outside, they each agree to invest roughly equally (proportionate their subscriber/consumption statistics) into expanding the network, then they can have a single network which covers everywhere with almost European quality in a short time.
It seems absolutely stupid to me the way American companies always have to compete over everything no matter how stupid it might be. I grew up American and every time I go back, all I ever see is non-stop competition... whether it's children fighting over mommy's love or mega-conglomerates fighting over web browsers. Mac vs. Windows, iPhone vs. Android, etc.. Everyone is so busy competing that if anyone took the time to actually invest their efforts into cooperation, we'd all be better off. Imagine if Apple and Google and Microsoft all cooperated and made a single internet messaging system as a replacement for iMessage and Hangouts? Imagine if I could run OS X as a virtual machine for iOS development on a server? etc...
Imagine if I could use my cell phone in America anywhere and it would just work?... like how it is in first world countries.
I may seem naive, but where do you live?
I actually have driven an electric car for over a year now and still don't have a charger in my parking space at home. I drive into the city and while I'm at work or meetings or coffee shops, I charge on the street because there are charger spaces pretty much all over the place. Of course, there are days where the free charging spaces (free for slow charge, $40 a year for 16amp) are taken, so I might either choose to park in a garage where I can use a 22amp charger for about 0.08 USD per minute, or I may stop at the gas station and fast charge (50 amp DC charger) for about 0.20 USD a minute.
When driving on the highway, I stop at gas stations along the way where in some locations there are only two or three fast chargers, but often there are 4-10 fast chargers available from multiple different power companies (which is good because I hate one of them).
I could drive all through Norway, Sweden and Denmark (at least on the highways) without ever fearing running out of battery and I'm driving a car with a 100km highway range.
Are there still 3rd world countries out there which haven't adapted to the 21st century?
So... are we ignoring mathematical or proof?
All I see from this research is a reasonable hypothesis that there is another important variable to consider. I couldn't see anything that looked like mathematical proof of anything.
Mathematical proof requires :
a) There is proven math
b) It is used to prove a hypothesis
Then there's the issue that we barely have a clue what's happening within a cell. So far as I know there are statistics we use to justify our beliefs of how cellular functions occur, but that's basically saying "If we roll the dice 2000 times, 1990 times, it's the same". Maybe 2000/2000 like "If we microwave a cell, it stops functioning after 10 seconds"... except with Cockroaches... we can't kill them by nuking them.
With regards to the functions of a human body, using the term mathematical proof is horrifying.
In the future we should write "A scientist hypothesizes with what appears to be logical reasoning based on the very little we understand cellular biology that anti-aging may be impossible if we don't also account for other poorly understood and possibly previously not considered variables."
I'll call bulshit here. This is a very immature nonsensical reasoning. You are suggesting that Microsoft dominated because they were the only thing on the store shelves in the 90s as if that was the beginning of it. It wasn't.
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Borland and later QuickBasic and Visual Basic were probably the reason why Microsoft came to dominate the market.
See, here's the thing... people chose the platform because of the software available on it. The software available on it became available because of the quality of the development tools on the platform. It's as simple as that.
I recall clearly in the 80s and 90s that there were A LOT of options (often in those same stores)
1) DR-DOS
2) CPM-86
3) Geoworks Ensemble
4) Mac
5) Amiga
6) Commodore-64
7) Atari-ST
8) Commodore-128D
9) BeOS (towards the end)
10) Novell Netware
11) Desqview
12) Desqview X
We had tons of options... probably more than we have now. Many things defined the success of Microsoft. Among them
- The availability of quality development tools
- The ease of making a simple program
- The cost of the system
Most of the solutions above cost too much. UNIX was too expensive for just about anyone and if you bought a System-V or a BSD, the cost of the compilers alone was enough to make it so that no one could afford to use them. Netware was a file and print server and when that became commodity, that was no longer interesting... and don't ignore the absolute lack of support for TCP/IP until it was too late.
But Borland made Microsoft
Borland released Turbo C and Turbo Pascal for around $99 each which was reachable even for a kid like me back then. I was able to buy a compiler that had a full IDE and integrated debugger. I could go to a local book store and buy a copy of "Turbo C" and "Advance Turbo C" by Herbert Schildt for $30 a copy which took me months to save for, but before the Internet was probably two of the absolute best sources of information on programming ever written. There were some very inexpensive libraries such as a full blown ISAM like the "C/Database Toolchest" which cost like $20 and actually shipped with a REALLY GOOD manual in the form of a learn to program book. In fact, they actually still sell it at Mix Software all these years later.
Let's also add that using Borland's Graphic Interface allowed anyone with the slightest interest to learn to make basic graphical games before moving onto books and articles from Michael Abrash and learning about mode-X.
Then came QuickBasic which was a language anyone could use without any real knowledge of programming... again with an IDE and a debugger.
Windows was struggling in the early days because the Windows API (which hasn't change much) was extremely difficult to learn. The only book worth mentioning was "Programming Windows 3.1 by Charles Petzold and while that covered the basics, it really didn't do much more than get you started with some really simple forms and GDI stuff. So, we didn't code much for it. But then came Visual Basic. A Programming language for a Windowed environment which reinvented programming for GUIs and made it so that even grandmothers running knitting businesses could make their own applications by dragging and dropping and writing 10 lines of code.
And Visual Basic was the official death knell for all other platforms. Anyone could write shitty programs with shitty code and the whole Windows world nearly exploded overnight.
Apple did ok with things like Hyper-Card but no other company other than Microsoft ever understood how important
1) A Stable ABI and API would be
2) Drag and drop programming
3) Long term binary support (I'm not sure, but Windows 10 may actually run Windows 3.1 applications still)
We can bash Microsoft all we want, but it began with and always was about attracting developers and Micro
So, you can visit Amazon.com and read customer reviews. You can Google. Search forums, etc...
Consumer Reports did recommend the BMW i3. I however would not. As a matter of fact, because of the reviews from CR and multiple other sources praising the vehicle raised my expectations a great deal. I decided to get the BMW i3 as it's one of the cheapest cars you can possibly buy at this point in time (consider electric + retained resell value) and it has been the worst new car I have ever owned. I've owned used Toyota's which were substantially better than this vehicle. But I think CR and others decided that "It's BMW... ooh wow!!!".
Let's be honest... consumer reports will spend about a week with a product before recommending it or not. They'll dig up statistics and generally do whatever it takes to make a headline and sell an issue. But at the end of the day, unless a product either turns to gold or crumbles in their hands in a week, they have no real grounds to stand on to make long term evaluations of products.
For this, I recommend favoring customer reviews instead of consumer reports. They're far more useful and thanks to this internet thing, I don't need to use an antiquated magazine to get information on things.
P.S. I personally own several and love my Surface/Surface book computers. I would personally recommend everything except the now defunct Surface RT and a used Surface Pro 2 (as I damaged the kickstand and consider the damage related to design as I can't easily replace it... a part which clearly should be easily replaceable).
I bought three Surface Pro 1s, a Surface Pro 2, two Surface Pro 3s, a Surface RT and a Surface Book.
One Surface Pro 3 was the first computer I ever brought back to the store for replacement... it worked well enough, but I found out that I could get a model which had one of the bugs worked out of it if I went and complained, so I backed up, cleaned it, brought it to the store and they replaced it in under 10 minutes... well 15 if you count the nice friendly conversation with the sales clerk.
I've been told that there are power problems with the Surface Book model I own. I suppose that there might be. The waking/sleeping thing was actually a bonus for me honestly. I found the behavior to be quite nice. And there is a weird thing sometimes where after over a year of ownership, I had to sometimes hard reset (hold the power button and volume in together.. etc... every now and then.
In all, I counted recently and found that the Surface Book is my 27th laptop or notebook computer. I have owned HP, Toshiba, Samsung, Wacom, Apple and a few others. I can safely say that I've never ever experienced computers as good as the Surface Book.
I believe the high replacement and return rate of the Surface line in general is because Microsoft is allowing people to try the laptop and return it if they don't like it. This means that people can suffer buyers remorse (I shouldn't have spent that money) or they can try one model of laptop and then try another instead. And the replacement is of course because instead of leaving the computer there for hours or days or weeks while it's repaired, they simply replace and refurbish. It provides a much quicker/better method of service than for example a Best Buy experience.
If you're looking for something really really nice and really really good which isn't Microsoft... Wacom Mobility Studio Pro 15" is my second favorite at the moment. The problem is, it's more of a portable computer than a laptop as it lacks an attached keyboard.
I have to admit... while I'd kill myself if I lived in Arkansas, it was one of my favorites to visit. It's actually a truly beautiful place.... the people... if you can find an interpreter are some of the nicest people I've ever met.
What I don't like about Arkansas is the overwhelming displays of what seems to be an epidemic of poverty. With the exception of Mississippi and New Mexico, I never felt like I was so completely surrounded by the impoverished.
But still... if you get past the whole "wow this place is run down" feeling, it's quite lovely
Have you ever been to California? I mean seriously... California is where we put "those people". We don't want kids passing AP exams in computer science to go to California when they can amount to something in life.
Let's see. California.
- No water
- Earthquakes
- Forest fires
- Pineapple on bread with sauce and cheese which they have the audacity to call pizza.
- Silicon Valley people... in other words "new money" which is absolutely horrifying. I'd rather watch bestiality porn with my grandmother... it's actually less tacky
- LA people... with the exception of the redneck population in Florida, I've never seen such extreme examples of scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean really... "I want to be an actor" or "Who cares about my career, my kids, etc... there's sun here.. I'm sure the public schools are good enough".
- The heart and home of the SJW movement. It starts at Berkeley and spreads from there. There are dolphins in the Pacific whining at starfish that call whales chubby because it's so racially insensitive.
California is where we send people we don't want to keep.
Wouldn't it be better to send the kids from Arkansas to New England, New York, D.C. or much more preferably... Western Europe (not England or France) where people don't demonize smart people and the quality of life is consistently higher?
If you're a problem solver and the problem is to change jobs... you solve it.
People worried about ageism are typically not problem solvers.
and Matrox.
If the absolute first item on the list is gambling related, then I see a company that considers preying on the weak as a legitimate means of getting ahead.
Sure, AMD isn't running the casino itself... maybe not even making the machines. But they believe it's not in poor taste to openly discuss how they will gladly help companies who do run the games or build the machines to abuse weak people.
Talking about gambling is something you don't do in good company. It's like talking about rape openly. Or child abuse. It's basically something that you DON'T EVER DO and if you do do it, then you take everything you own and sell it, donate the money to the recovery of whomever was harmed and then put a bullet in your head to make sure you never do it again. Gambling and supporting gambling (this includes Wall Street) is a disgusting thing. It takes people who are stupid enough to think they can play the odds and win... all while you sit back knowing that even if the sucker wins a little, it'll just build his confidence up so you can get more from him later. Then you get the really disgusting gambling which screws up peoples retirements and causes them to live in the poor house for years (mutuals, hedges, etc...)
We don't talk openly about being a gambler, taking money from gamblers, helping to take money from gamblers. This is just filthy.
AMD... don't you think it's bad enough there's an American president who believes that it's perfectly ok to intentionally prey on the weak? And that it's legitimate to build your wealth by basically stealing money from stupid people? And the belief of "If they're dumb enough to put their money on the table, then it's practically my duty to take it from them."
Advertising that you support NASDAQ or NYSE etc... I can almost forgive... at least there are some rules there which are supposed to protect people from being preyed upon. But I won't buy for myself or my company any products which openly support casinos or lotteries.
P.S. - When weak people are preyed upon, while it may be their money, it becomes our burden to support them. I'm no OK with Trump, AMD or anyone else profiting from screwing poor people and making it so that I have to pay for their retirements and welfare.
I told my kids a long time a go that as soon as I see a game with gambling in it (even loot boxes), it's off their computers. I have made the exception for Overwatch because unlike LoL and a few others, the loot boxes seem to have no impact on the actual game play, only appearance. So in that case the rule is "no money on loot boxes".
In the case of WoW, when we played it, it wasn't so bad because you could choose what you wanted and buy it. So, I would sometimes buy a pet if there was a campaign where the proceeds would be donated to a charity.
I explain to the kids that gambling is for people who lack the intelligence to understand that when you give someone money, they should give you something of that value in return. There shouldn't be odds or luck attached to financial exchanges. It would be like going to your boss and saying...hey let's spin a wheel each month and see how much you should pay me!
In my house, I have a minimum of several dozen devices with standard 3.5mm headphone jacks. This includes my stereo, my TVs, my iPads (no intention of upgrading, they're good enough), my Windows tablets (we have at least 15 laying around the house), Kindle (for text to speech) ,etc...
To switch the headphones, I would need to replace about $40-$50,000 of devices.
3.5 mm jacks are imperfect and always have been. They're a terrible design but probably the best we could hope for given the manufacturing equipment of the time. The original 1/4" "telephone plug" or monaural plug dates to 1878. The 3.5mm jack dates from the 50's but I can't find anything more precise from Googling. The fact that something so small could be made in the 50's... especially when most things had to be hand-assembled back then is truly amazing.
So that said... given a standard that already dates back 60-70 years... I have no intention of giving up my headphones and their wires. They work well enough... I don't have to charge them... and since I prefer ear buds, I sure as shit don't want to lose them constantly because they're not physically attached to my phone.
Oh... and dongles are just plain stupid... I have Ajay 5 headphones and have bought 20-30 pairs of AJays over the years because they are more durable than most others. They don't make dongles of comparable strength or cable quality.