What if a person goes on a rampage in a school and shoots up people. Well we investigate, charge, and try and hopefully convict. The presumption of innocence prevents pre-emptive actions. We seem more and more to cater to Chaneyesque fears (where If I remember right he said if there is as little as 2% chance something bad is going to happen, we take pre-emptive steps or something like that, and we invade a country with our citizens loosing their lives and thousands suffering.. good work Dick). This getting into the middle of essentially all communications is very Orwellian and scary. I am reminded of the steps that Singapore takes to control their citizens. I understand they have urine detectors in elevators, just in case someone takes a leak when riding between floors.
If you are in the network monitoring traffic, you are monitoring All traffic, and it is only your filtering and selection programs that might capture or alert you to specific types of transmissions or to or from individuals or addresses. But you start with monitoring All traffic. So to say, they (actually we, if you think that the government is by the people and for the people) are not looking at private citizens, well of course they are, I'm sure the targets are all private citizens and the senders are either private citizens or programs written by private citizens, Aren't we all private citizens, what other kind of citizen is there, unless you mean Public citizens maybe or private non-US citizens. But we are all private citizens of some country. Are non-US citizens less worthy of protection or privacy? are they a second class of citizen? I think the issues of us vs. them can be framed in a number of ways. With this article the them may be those in the government that want to protect us from ourselves. Not their job.
It seems like this is a very bad precedent to set, and probably violates some international agreements. It would give cover to other countries like China or Iran for blocking sites and domains. We could complain about it before but now were screwed. And we did it for corporate profit reasons. I guess that is becoming this counties Ideology. I for one protest this move and see the dangers internationally, like the long term detention of combatants and the torture of prisoners. So I suggest if you have a strong opinion on this issue that you email the White House and let them know what you think.
No sorry, this is an old listing, from the previous administration, you know the Chaney White House. Say look their oil spill is starting to soil the lawn.
Well there is an interesting concept here revolving around copyright and the shift from hard copy to digital and the dynamic of the owners of the information and the ownership of a copy of that information.
In Gov. Bob McDonnell's GOP Repsonse to Obama's state of the union he said "America must always be a land where liberty and property are valued and respected, and innocent human life is protected." which is a very compact statement covering ideas of governement out of businesses business, the right of owners to do with their property whatever they want and the right to life agenda. When I heard it the one thing that I thought was strange to say was about property being valued and respected. What the digital age has done was to shift information to a more maliable form and the "owners" of the "property" of a book are unwilling to give away the control of that property to the people they are selling it to, so they are now leasing the information.In music I think if you change every 12th note it is not considered the same work and can be used as your own. At least they have not gotten into controlling the Font. Maybe that would be good so, you could change the font and say it is not the same work and you could take ownership of it. Where's a good lawyer when you need one, hey where's a good lawyer?
"Of course, maybe you're right in that if there are 100 programmers in a company (presumably some generic business oriented thing) then only 2 do low level stuff. But at the same time consider that there may be 1000 at the company that don't program and only 100 merely doing programming. It's perspective. If low level and systems programming is pointless because most programmers don't do it, then maybe programing is useless because most humans don't do it."
A specious argument. Rightly so much underlying code for compilers and operating systems is written in C. More and more though they are written in more transportable languages giving the business instantly mulitple delivery platforms. But my point was that the vast majority of the ongoing work for programmers is not in C but in higher level application friendly languages. That is not to say that there aren't more lines of code on a particular box that were written in C, like OS and drivers etc. but that code is write once by a small group and fielded all over. Most of the programming and work for programmers is the business applications work that keeps the wheels of commerce running.
So it does matter that the number of programmers around doing C vs other languages is pertinent. The larger the disparety between those numbers, the more C would be considered Niche.
Now I grant you that if you look at the elite programmers, the ones doing the hard low level glory work writing OS's, languages and software packages you are looking at the best of the best, but then that is a niche isn't it? I do not make a judgement as the the importance of the code done with C, or the skill needed but still it is a small market. There still is a great demand for C programmers because a lot of code was written in C and needs to be maintained, and a number of shops are C shops because all their code is in C but that is just inertia, and the cost of converting all that code to something else , more modern or better. Cobol programmers for that matter are highly sought after for the same reasons.
With modern optimizing compilers a lot of the hand optimizatons that programmers so assiduously do is wasted effort. What is it the figure, Fortran today benchmarks 10 or 20 times faster than the best C or C++ code for some mathematical benchmarks because it can optimize a lot because of its language design.
For tiny embedded systems you can't beat it currently, but the compilers just have to catch up and some devices not run Java natively. So things are going in many directions at once.
There are some aspects of the Conservative point of view not shared by Democratic Liberals.
I think this is obvious, otherwise they would actualy help govern the country rather than say 'no' to everything the Senate is trying to do. If fact given that behavior one might posit that the Conservative point of view (a stretch saying that there is any overlap between that and the Republican party or their behaviour in Washington, it seems political rather than idealogical.)
Things like you should pay attention in school and learn the skills that will make you valuable in the job market.
Your kidding of course. If you look at who the Conservatives point to as the evil liberals your talking about the college educated and often working in acedemic environments. I think that liberals think that education is so important that not only do you need to pay attention in school, but study history and understand the dark holes the conservative policies have thrust us into. And that education is more than just getting skills for the job market but also skills at living a good life and to be a good citizen. And that that is so important that education is a right and not a priveledge.
That the government is not responsible for your happiness, success, or anything else other than to make sure you have an equal opportunity to succeed
I don't see anything that is not part of the liberal philosophy here. See my comments on education above.
and if you are unable to provide for yourself, then make sure you don't starve or die for lack of medical care.
Your kidding again of course. The republicans and Conservatives fought tooth and nail to prevent any comprehenisive making sure you dont starve or have health care. Look at the Republican response to Social Security, Medicare, Medicade, Health reform. Listen to the crys to repleal anything that would help people. Not to mention the fights against Civil Rights and womans rights. Conservatives do not support helping anyone but themselves (see your comments below).
That the money you make belongs to you,
Only if you do not recognize that you make your money from within an infrastructure that allows you to make that money, including roads, money, police, fire departments, the legal system, the prison system, the military, a system of government to keep all those running at different levels. That is the overhead and the taxes you pay are part of that overhead, it is a fantasy that Conservative put out that all the money you make is yours to keep, you try and try to get those tax loophole and tax shelters and evade, evade, evade as much of paying your fair share as possible and all the time being proud about how much you got away with. Be honest Compassionate Conservatism is was a cynical political marketing ploy.
not the government and that government should tax only what it needs, not what it wants in an attempt to create a Utopia that will ultimately and inevitably fail.
If you look at the people in the street, homeless, we are not talking about a Utopia. The conservative Utopia is being realized by a combination of Union busting started with Regean and through Bush's tax cuts for the rich. The Utopia is a private school for my kids and a gated community with a golf course for me. That is the conservative Utopia. The Liberal Utopia is one where no one is starving or homeless. The trouble is the conservative Utopia creates more starving and homeless. Rich people getting Richer is not a tide that lifts all boats. The trouble with trickle down economics is what trickles down.
That schools should teach, not indoctrinate. That if you choose, and can afford it, you can put their children in private schools or even educate yourself without a Teacher's Union representative trying to have you arrested.
Not many can do all those things, but boot loaders and compilers and operating systems are a very small niche and only a select few in a few companies acually do work in those areas. In schools they play with all those things but 90% + of the real jobs out there are writting application code for business or software that business will use. Not a complier or driver in sight. A company with a hundred programmers might have one or two that actually do low level stuff.
So my contention is even though C is turing complete, for most work it is more work that it is worth. But I have seen menu driven systems written in Cobol and transaction systems written in APL used commercially, not to mention all those Lotus Notes and Excel applications.
For me I know C, C++, Java, C#, Perl, APL, Fortran, and a smattering of other languages. I use what seems appropriate and for the application work I do, C ain't. C++ is on the edge because of all the extra administrative stuff and having to use bounds checker etc to protect your ass.
Well there are some aspects of the Democratic Liberal point of view not shared by the 'conservatives', things like jobs should pay a living wage, no one should die of starvation or lack of medical care. On the conservative side, 'let them eat cake', I don't want my tax dollars going to help people, bomb them over there maybe but not here. I'll educate my children in a private school, I don't want to pay for anyone elses education. If I can keep them dumb I can pay them less (the jobs I dont send overseas) and charge them lots of interest on the loans I give them so I can get a big bonus to spend on my house in that gated community.
Yes there is a difference and the unions have fought for decent (not extravagent, not million dollar bonus for poor perfomance) just good pay for honest work. But the conservatives hate that because they see somewhere they can cut out money from the herd for their own back account.
Please keep in mind the dynamics of our system. Business has its voice on these matters (much too much lately). The rest of us need to start to organize so there is a counter balance to the greed.
Idiot, C is an aberation on the evolutionary road to productivitiy. Any language that prides itself in Obfiscated C contests shows that the C language is ill-designed. It was (an oh yes I used to have to use and teach C, First Fortran, then Pascal then C, then C++ and Smalltalk then Java, now working in C# so I have some context) an early language that tried to make assembler programming more comfortable while adding some modern idea's of language features at the time. But it is an early attempt and it is true that learning the concepts of C is just an easier way of learning machine basics which are valuable, but you can get that with assembler or other 2nd generation languages.
It makes a difference if you are planning on being a software developer, a device driver developer, an embedded software developer, an applications programmer, a web developer... C is a useful for teaching low level coding and in some cases forcing you to do things that you really don't want to have to do that a language environment could and probably should do for you like collecting your own garbage. Remember how much time you had to spend preventing memory problems, and tracking down array subscripts that were trying to access Cleveland. You did learn defensive programming but who wants to live in a paranoid world.
What that tells me is that C is bare bones in many ways or roll your own as it were, but if you have a job to do, you want to be able to express your algorithm, get it coded, debugged and running efficiently in the shortest time. C and certainly C++ are not the ways to do that. As your doing all that extra administrative work to get the simpest thing done (and take a break to fill out all your time and project reporting and changes controls and other administrative overhead), sit back and think, what was it I was actually trying to do. Oh yes, read in some data from the database and merge it with some data from a text file, do some statistics and print a report, Sometimes you can loose sight of how much extra work your doing that is in support of the language or envirionment and not actually solving the problem your working on.
And when you have languages that come with add on suites of "Productivity Tools" like bounds checker, Red Flag, Red Flag. I was in a company where a lot of people got "Right Sized". So I don't feel that C or C++ for that matter are necessary to know unless you are interested in the painful history of computing.
But then I guess there is the argument that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
I think IP rights are too strict and too long lived. It stifles use for profit and creates an entire industry who's goal is to control and prosecute other people rather than create new ideas or utilize and extend existing idea's. We need to return things to the public domain sooner, and get on with creating new things. We are getting into an ownership control police state mentality. Grab an IP and fight to protect it for as much profit as you can grab (even when it was not your idea to begin with).
IP rights should be exclusively for the individuals who did the creation and not a commodity. That one idea would strike at the heart of a lot of the corporate abuse of indivual creators and of those in the market. We need to get back to Intellectual Property, created by an intellect and owned by that intellect. And BTW if corporations want to be individuals, lets throw some of them in jail. That is what we do with individuals that break the law.
Now my wife has a different opinion of course, but it seems to me that keeping your clutter around you self limits your acquisitions of more clutter. Those people that buy, use discard, buy use discard are filling up the common landfills with toxic waste whereas I keep my toxic waste close at hand and out of the ground water.
I do have several Sinclair 1000 systems and a few 5 1/4 drives and maybe a few computers that can use them. But I think my wife got my box of punch cards and tossed them. I am still trying to forgive her for that. Individual punch cards are fetching a good price. My Master thesis in cards might just pay for my tuition back then. IBM Selectric, wired for computure control anyone?
An uncluttered house just means a cluttered landfill, out of sight out of mind, but not out of ground water.
Quite possibly some major changes. Of not is the fact that the increased climate temperature means more mositure uptake in the atmosphere which means more rain and maybe more tornados and warmer seas mean more violent hurricanes. What I haven't heard is a calculation of the effect of a couple of degrees of warmth and the coeficient of thermal expansion of the earths surface rocks. Haven't we seen an uptick in earthquakes, it might also be a contributing factor in more volcanic activity and the rocks re-adjust to their new temperatures and bring more presures to bare on the molten rock below.
renew your library card. At least you will have a place to entertain yourself when transportation is grounded an the electric grid fails.
Let them know what you think on this issue. If they know there is some interest or even a large body of interested parties that have an real informed opinion on the matter, maybe there will be legislation to treat the information highway as a public resource like the rest of our highways, a public resource not a private corporate money pit.
We do something similar with the air we breath.
Remember control of information is a first step to control of the people.
The unthinkable alternative is loosing your identity and cash to a thief who would have been stopped by compliance or your car tboned by a semi at an intersection because he just did not want to comply. Or you end up in jail because someone stole your identity and stole items and you are framed for it. Then there is the economic collapse that could occur. We saw this recently with the derivatives market tanking the economy. We did not regulate those bastards. Why comply I'm making money, oops your life is ruined, who knew? I will just retire with my winnings (your money) to my gated community.
But there are two different objectives, one is fostering the corporate profits and the other is public safety. As much as we decry regulations what would it be like if there were no traffic lights or stop signs, or even worse, there were but people did not pay attention to them. The stop lights do a tremendous lot of good , they reduce moving accidents to close to zero while allowing cars to speed along through light after light, when things are timed well, without stopping, maintaining a even speed. That saves time, saves gas, increases throughput of the entire system. We see other types of regulations like that in computers where I/O is given precedence so it can get its work started and leave and let the CPU tasks continue. The throughput of the entire system is increased.
It is true in subtle but powerful ways with security regulations, and the Internet especially. If people can't trust that their data will be safe (cant trust that someone who has the red light is going to stop) then they will not give their data out, they won't do commerce online. They won't trust their credit card company to be safe and secure and will start using cash and checks again. Commerce can not continue and certainly not at an efficient pace when trust is not present. So the regulations to protect user data establishes a trust playing field that, while a great pain in the ass to comply with, is essential for business. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate. As for the other, the corporation protecting their data, thats up to the corporation and there is little or no community interest nor control that would make sense. Corporations and businesses would find that more than onerous.
So the real issue here is that the article states that the study feels that compliance is not worth the money. That is selfish business talking. All you have to look at are the recent very large thefts of peoples identities or the corporate malfeasance that have come to light that has had dramatic and real negative monetary impact on millions of people to tell us that this view is selfish and short sighted. It does not value the social value of compliance as it should but then many businesses have a much more narrow self interest in mind for where they want to put their monies. Thats why we have regulations with compliance, they don't do it on their own and we all have suffered already for that.
Interesting concept, "The thing that accused infringement-aiding sites have to prove is that they have significant non-infringing uses" seems like your saying that if accused you need to prove your innocence. Where is the presumption of innocence, and isn't it the job of prosecution to prove guilt. Your presumed innocent so you do not have to prove that. Not a small legal concept and a pillar of our legal system. But when money grubbing corporations see their profits erroding, they will get the ambulance chasers in gear to get what they can, however they can. Legistatively, Sonny got the Copyright extended for a centruy for Disney's benefit. That should be repealed certainly.
Well in the communications arean we are trying to increase speed and throughput. In cities the problems are clogged roads that slow the commute and thereby increase polution. Seems like rather than slowing things down by making the envirionment more dangerous (cars parked close by, with doors that might open and pedestrians walking out between) to slow things down we might do better finding a way to speed things up safely. There are aerodynmic cars that increase efficency (www.aptera.com), if we can increase throughput of the roads we make everything more efficient. True higher speeds are less efficient and collisions more deadly, but we can work on both those problems to come up with a way to make travel safer and more green. The assumption that we need to reduce car speed seems missplaced as a given. Of course the speed traps in the small towns that rely on the speeding ticket revenue will suffer. But then who needs wholesale police records in their community.
copying part of something is a defense, like almost hitting someone but pulling the punch at the last second, its not a punch until it lands, just wind. The crime it the completion of the act, without that you have not act to be a crime. Its true in full acknowledgement of that, attempted murder is a seperate crime with a seperate schedule of punishments. I don't think they have made attempted copyright infringment a crime as yet.
The true it the non-right (centrists, libertarians, independents, left) want the major provisions this bill offers, namely a start at reigning in the parasitic practices of the Health Care Insurance industry. No where else in the world does a developed country let for-profit private interests control the health care of the country, as well as a system that give power into the hands of business to control workers. You need to keep employed in our system to get resaonable health care. A big stick for business, against labor. What sense does it make that business should control health care, either by employment or insurance. We have a wacked system of values in this country. This bill starts the pendulum swinging back away from that perverse application of greed on our lives. Don't get me wrong self interest is good, greed is a form a self interest but not the only form of self interest. We just have to recognize that greed when not moderated is a sin not a 'good'. Profits are good but its the way you get those profits and the tradoffs you make to get those profits that measure you as an ethical moral person. We have too much institutionalized un-ethical, immoral behaviour in this industry and this bill, though a comprimse, strikes at the heart of some of the most blatant practices and is therby a start and worthwhile.
By the way Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Postal Service are fine examples of government run programs that do their jobs, millions rely on them, health care gets done form millions, letters get delivered, and millions of seniors can stay in their homes and keep warm and eat, even though their 401k's were devistated by the recent gutting of the finacial markets by uncontrolled greed and speculation that went wrong. That was their hard earned money, you think that the privatizing Social Security back when Bush and company wanted to would have been a good thing? We would have people cold and hungry now. If you want to compare programs that work, show me a private industry program that has worked as well, as long, with as little overhead and done so much good as the ones you mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I get an uncomfortable feeling about this?
What if a person goes on a rampage in a school and shoots up people. Well we investigate, charge, and try and hopefully convict. The presumption of innocence prevents pre-emptive actions. We seem more and more to cater to Chaneyesque fears (where If I remember right he said if there is as little as 2% chance something bad is going to happen, we take pre-emptive steps or something like that, and we invade a country with our citizens loosing their lives and thousands suffering.. good work Dick). This getting into the middle of essentially all communications is very Orwellian and scary. I am reminded of the steps that Singapore takes to control their citizens. I understand they have urine detectors in elevators, just in case someone takes a leak when riding between floors.
If you are in the network monitoring traffic, you are monitoring All traffic, and it is only your filtering and selection programs that might capture or alert you to specific types of transmissions or to or from individuals or addresses. But you start with monitoring All traffic. So to say, they (actually we, if you think that the government is by the people and for the people) are not looking at private citizens, well of course they are, I'm sure the targets are all private citizens and the senders are either private citizens or programs written by private citizens, Aren't we all private citizens, what other kind of citizen is there, unless you mean Public citizens maybe or private non-US citizens. But we are all private citizens of some country. Are non-US citizens less worthy of protection or privacy? are they a second class of citizen? I think the issues of us vs. them can be framed in a number of ways. With this article the them may be those in the government that want to protect us from ourselves. Not their job.
It seems like this is a very bad precedent to set, and probably violates some international agreements. It would give cover to other countries like China or Iran for blocking sites and domains. We could complain about it before but now were screwed. And we did it for corporate profit reasons. I guess that is becoming this counties Ideology. I for one protest this move and see the dangers internationally, like the long term detention of combatants and the torture of prisoners. So I suggest if you have a strong opinion on this issue that you email the White House and let them know what you think.
Make magazine is a wonderful DIY with electronics projects etc.
No sorry, this is an old listing, from the previous administration, you know the Chaney White House. Say look their oil spill is starting to soil the lawn.
Well there is an interesting concept here revolving around copyright and the shift from hard copy to digital and the dynamic of the owners of the information and the ownership of a copy of that information.
In Gov. Bob McDonnell's GOP Repsonse to Obama's state of the union he said "America must always be a land where liberty and property are valued and respected, and innocent human life is protected." which is a very compact statement covering ideas of governement out of businesses business, the right of owners to do with their property whatever they want and the right to life agenda. When I heard it the one thing that I thought was strange to say was about property being valued and respected. What the digital age has done was to shift information to a more maliable form and the "owners" of the "property" of a book are unwilling to give away the control of that property to the people they are selling it to, so they are now leasing the information.In music I think if you change every 12th note it is not considered the same work and can be used as your own. At least they have not gotten into controlling the Font. Maybe that would be good so, you could change the font and say it is not the same work and you could take ownership of it. Where's a good lawyer when you need one, hey where's a good lawyer?
"Of course, maybe you're right in that if there are 100 programmers in a company (presumably some generic business oriented thing) then only 2 do low level stuff. But at the same time consider that there may be 1000 at the company that don't program and only 100 merely doing programming. It's perspective. If low level and systems programming is pointless because most programmers don't do it, then maybe programing is useless because most humans don't do it."
A specious argument. Rightly so much underlying code for compilers and operating systems is written in C. More and more though they are written in more transportable languages giving the business instantly mulitple delivery platforms. But my point was that the vast majority of the ongoing work for programmers is not in C but in higher level application friendly languages. That is not to say that there aren't more lines of code on a particular box that were written in C, like OS and drivers etc. but that code is write once by a small group and fielded all over. Most of the programming and work for programmers is the business applications work that keeps the wheels of commerce running.
So it does matter that the number of programmers around doing C vs other languages is pertinent. The larger the disparety between those numbers, the more C would be considered Niche.
Now I grant you that if you look at the elite programmers, the ones doing the hard low level glory work writing OS's, languages and software packages you are looking at the best of the best, but then that is a niche isn't it? I do not make a judgement as the the importance of the code done with C, or the skill needed but still it is a small market. There still is a great demand for C programmers because a lot of code was written in C and needs to be maintained, and a number of shops are C shops because all their code is in C but that is just inertia, and the cost of converting all that code to something else , more modern or better. Cobol programmers for that matter are highly sought after for the same reasons.
With modern optimizing compilers a lot of the hand optimizatons that programmers so assiduously do is wasted effort. What is it the figure, Fortran today benchmarks 10 or 20 times faster than the best C or C++ code for some mathematical benchmarks because it can optimize a lot because of its language design.
For tiny embedded systems you can't beat it currently, but the compilers just have to catch up and some devices not run Java natively. So things are going in many directions at once.
At least I'm awake.
There are some aspects of the Conservative point of view not shared by Democratic Liberals.
I think this is obvious, otherwise they would actualy help govern the country rather than say 'no' to everything the Senate is trying to do. If fact given that behavior one might posit that the Conservative point of view (a stretch saying that there is any overlap between that and the Republican party or their behaviour in Washington, it seems political rather than idealogical.)
Things like you should pay attention in school and learn the skills that will make you valuable in the job market.
Your kidding of course. If you look at who the Conservatives point to as the evil liberals your talking about the college educated and often working in acedemic environments. I think that liberals think that education is so important that not only do you need to pay attention in school, but study history and understand the dark holes the conservative policies have thrust us into. And that education is more than just getting skills for the job market but also skills at living a good life and to be a good citizen. And that that is so important that education is a right and not a priveledge.
That the government is not responsible for your happiness, success, or anything else other than to make sure you have an equal opportunity to succeed
I don't see anything that is not part of the liberal philosophy here. See my comments on education above.
and if you are unable to provide for yourself, then make sure you don't starve or die for lack of medical care.
Your kidding again of course. The republicans and Conservatives fought tooth and nail to prevent any comprehenisive making sure you dont starve or have health care. Look at the Republican response to Social Security, Medicare, Medicade, Health reform. Listen to the crys to repleal anything that would help people. Not to mention the fights against Civil Rights and womans rights. Conservatives do not support helping anyone but themselves (see your comments below).
That the money you make belongs to you,
Only if you do not recognize that you make your money from within an infrastructure that allows you to make that money, including roads, money, police, fire departments, the legal system, the prison system, the military, a system of government to keep all those running at different levels. That is the overhead and the taxes you pay are part of that overhead, it is a fantasy that Conservative put out that all the money you make is yours to keep, you try and try to get those tax loophole and tax shelters and evade, evade, evade as much of paying your fair share as possible and all the time being proud about how much you got away with. Be honest Compassionate Conservatism is was a cynical political marketing ploy.
not the government and that government should tax only what it needs, not what it wants in an attempt to create a Utopia that will ultimately and inevitably fail.
If you look at the people in the street, homeless, we are not talking about a Utopia. The conservative Utopia is being realized by a combination of Union busting started with Regean and through Bush's tax cuts for the rich. The Utopia is a private school for my kids and a gated community with a golf course for me. That is the conservative Utopia. The Liberal Utopia is one where no one is starving or homeless. The trouble is the conservative Utopia creates more starving and homeless. Rich people getting Richer is not a tide that lifts all boats. The trouble with trickle down economics is what trickles down.
That schools should teach, not indoctrinate. That if you choose, and can afford it, you can put their children in private schools or even educate yourself without a Teacher's Union representative trying to have you arrested.
There is a law that says th
Not many can do all those things, but boot loaders and compilers and operating systems are a very small niche and only a select few in a few companies acually do work in those areas. In schools they play with all those things but 90% + of the real jobs out there are writting application code for business or software that business will use. Not a complier or driver in sight. A company with a hundred programmers might have one or two that actually do low level stuff.
So my contention is even though C is turing complete, for most work it is more work that it is worth. But I have seen menu driven systems written in Cobol and transaction systems written in APL used commercially, not to mention all those Lotus Notes and Excel applications.
For me I know C, C++, Java, C#, Perl, APL, Fortran, and a smattering of other languages. I use what seems appropriate and for the application work I do, C ain't. C++ is on the edge because of all the extra administrative stuff and having to use bounds checker etc to protect your ass.
Well there are some aspects of the Democratic Liberal point of view not shared by the 'conservatives', things like jobs should pay a living wage, no one should die of starvation or lack of medical care. On the conservative side, 'let them eat cake', I don't want my tax dollars going to help people, bomb them over there maybe but not here. I'll educate my children in a private school, I don't want to pay for anyone elses education. If I can keep them dumb I can pay them less (the jobs I dont send overseas) and charge them lots of interest on the loans I give them so I can get a big bonus to spend on my house in that gated community.
Yes there is a difference and the unions have fought for decent (not extravagent, not million dollar bonus for poor perfomance) just good pay for honest work. But the conservatives hate that because they see somewhere they can cut out money from the herd for their own back account.
Please keep in mind the dynamics of our system. Business has its voice on these matters (much too much lately). The rest of us need to start to organize so there is a counter balance to the greed.
Idiot, C is an aberation on the evolutionary road to productivitiy. Any language that prides itself in Obfiscated C contests shows that the C language is ill-designed. It was (an oh yes I used to have to use and teach C, First Fortran, then Pascal then C, then C++ and Smalltalk then Java, now working in C# so I have some context) an early language that tried to make assembler programming more comfortable while adding some modern idea's of language features at the time. But it is an early attempt and it is true that learning the concepts of C is just an easier way of learning machine basics which are valuable, but you can get that with assembler or other 2nd generation languages.
It makes a difference if you are planning on being a software developer, a device driver developer, an embedded software developer, an applications programmer, a web developer ... C is a useful for teaching low level coding and in some cases forcing you to do things that you really don't want to have to do that a language environment could and probably should do for you like collecting your own garbage. Remember how much time you had to spend preventing memory problems, and tracking down array subscripts that were trying to access Cleveland. You did learn defensive programming but who wants to live in a paranoid world.
What that tells me is that C is bare bones in many ways or roll your own as it were, but if you have a job to do, you want to be able to express your algorithm, get it coded, debugged and running efficiently in the shortest time. C and certainly C++ are not the ways to do that. As your doing all that extra administrative work to get the simpest thing done (and take a break to fill out all your time and project reporting and changes controls and other administrative overhead), sit back and think, what was it I was actually trying to do. Oh yes, read in some data from the database and merge it with some data from a text file, do some statistics and print a report, Sometimes you can loose sight of how much extra work your doing that is in support of the language or envirionment and not actually solving the problem your working on.
And when you have languages that come with add on suites of "Productivity Tools" like bounds checker, Red Flag, Red Flag. I was in a company where a lot of people got "Right Sized". So I don't feel that C or C++ for that matter are necessary to know unless you are interested in the painful history of computing.
But then I guess there is the argument that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
I think IP rights are too strict and too long lived. It stifles use for profit and creates an entire industry who's goal is to control and prosecute other people rather than create new ideas or utilize and extend existing idea's. We need to return things to the public domain sooner, and get on with creating new things. We are getting into an ownership control police state mentality. Grab an IP and fight to protect it for as much profit as you can grab (even when it was not your idea to begin with).
IP rights should be exclusively for the individuals who did the creation and not a commodity. That one idea would strike at the heart of a lot of the corporate abuse of indivual creators and of those in the market. We need to get back to Intellectual Property, created by an intellect and owned by that intellect. And BTW if corporations want to be individuals, lets throw some of them in jail. That is what we do with individuals that break the law.
Now my wife has a different opinion of course, but it seems to me that keeping your clutter around you self limits your acquisitions of more clutter. Those people that buy, use discard, buy use discard are filling up the common landfills with toxic waste whereas I keep my toxic waste close at hand and out of the ground water.
I do have several Sinclair 1000 systems and a few 5 1/4 drives and maybe a few computers that can use them. But I think my wife got my box of punch cards and tossed them. I am still trying to forgive her for that. Individual punch cards are fetching a good price. My Master thesis in cards might just pay for my tuition back then. IBM Selectric, wired for computure control anyone?
An uncluttered house just means a cluttered landfill, out of sight out of mind, but not out of ground water.
Viva Nostalgia.
Your sick!
Quite possibly some major changes. Of not is the fact that the increased climate temperature means more mositure uptake in the atmosphere which means more rain and maybe more tornados and warmer seas mean more violent hurricanes. What I haven't heard is a calculation of the effect of a couple of degrees of warmth and the coeficient of thermal expansion of the earths surface rocks. Haven't we seen an uptick in earthquakes, it might also be a contributing factor in more volcanic activity and the rocks re-adjust to their new temperatures and bring more presures to bare on the molten rock below.
renew your library card. At least you will have a place to entertain yourself when transportation is grounded an the electric grid fails.
Let them know what you think on this issue. If they know there is some interest or even a large body of interested parties that have an real informed opinion on the matter, maybe there will be legislation to treat the information highway as a public resource like the rest of our highways, a public resource not a private corporate money pit.
We do something similar with the air we breath.
Remember control of information is a first step to control of the people.
That was you!
The unthinkable alternative is loosing your identity and cash to a thief who would have been stopped by compliance or your car tboned by a semi at an intersection because he just did not want to comply. Or you end up in jail because someone stole your identity and stole items and you are framed for it. Then there is the economic collapse that could occur. We saw this recently with the derivatives market tanking the economy. We did not regulate those bastards. Why comply I'm making money, oops your life is ruined, who knew? I will just retire with my winnings (your money) to my gated community.
But there are two different objectives, one is fostering the corporate profits and the other is public safety. As much as we decry regulations what would it be like if there were no traffic lights or stop signs, or even worse, there were but people did not pay attention to them. The stop lights do a tremendous lot of good , they reduce moving accidents to close to zero while allowing cars to speed along through light after light, when things are timed well, without stopping, maintaining a even speed. That saves time, saves gas, increases throughput of the entire system. We see other types of regulations like that in computers where I/O is given precedence so it can get its work started and leave and let the CPU tasks continue. The throughput of the entire system is increased.
It is true in subtle but powerful ways with security regulations, and the Internet especially. If people can't trust that their data will be safe (cant trust that someone who has the red light is going to stop) then they will not give their data out, they won't do commerce online. They won't trust their credit card company to be safe and secure and will start using cash and checks again. Commerce can not continue and certainly not at an efficient pace when trust is not present. So the regulations to protect user data establishes a trust playing field that, while a great pain in the ass to comply with, is essential for business. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate. As for the other, the corporation protecting their data, thats up to the corporation and there is little or no community interest nor control that would make sense. Corporations and businesses would find that more than onerous.
So the real issue here is that the article states that the study feels that compliance is not worth the money. That is selfish business talking. All you have to look at are the recent very large thefts of peoples identities or the corporate malfeasance that have come to light that has had dramatic and real negative monetary impact on millions of people to tell us that this view is selfish and short sighted. It does not value the social value of compliance as it should but then many businesses have a much more narrow self interest in mind for where they want to put their monies. Thats why we have regulations with compliance, they don't do it on their own and we all have suffered already for that.
Interesting concept, "The thing that accused infringement-aiding sites have to prove is that they have significant non-infringing uses" seems like your saying that if accused you need to prove your innocence. Where is the presumption of innocence, and isn't it the job of prosecution to prove guilt. Your presumed innocent so you do not have to prove that. Not a small legal concept and a pillar of our legal system. But when money grubbing corporations see their profits erroding, they will get the ambulance chasers in gear to get what they can, however they can. Legistatively, Sonny got the Copyright extended for a centruy for Disney's benefit. That should be repealed certainly.
Well in the communications arean we are trying to increase speed and throughput. In cities the problems are clogged roads that slow the commute and thereby increase polution. Seems like rather than slowing things down by making the envirionment more dangerous (cars parked close by, with doors that might open and pedestrians walking out between) to slow things down we might do better finding a way to speed things up safely. There are aerodynmic cars that increase efficency (www.aptera.com), if we can increase throughput of the roads we make everything more efficient. True higher speeds are less efficient and collisions more deadly, but we can work on both those problems to come up with a way to make travel safer and more green. The assumption that we need to reduce car speed seems missplaced as a given. Of course the speed traps in the small towns that rely on the speeding ticket revenue will suffer. But then who needs wholesale police records in their community.
copying part of something is a defense, like almost hitting someone but pulling the punch at the last second, its not a punch until it lands, just wind. The crime it the completion of the act, without that you have not act to be a crime. Its true in full acknowledgement of that, attempted murder is a seperate crime with a seperate schedule of punishments. I don't think they have made attempted copyright infringment a crime as yet.
Moon Glasses, Moon screen, anyone, cheap!
The true it the non-right (centrists, libertarians, independents, left) want the major provisions this bill offers, namely a start at reigning in the parasitic practices of the Health Care Insurance industry. No where else in the world does a developed country let for-profit private interests control the health care of the country, as well as a system that give power into the hands of business to control workers. You need to keep employed in our system to get resaonable health care. A big stick for business, against labor. What sense does it make that business should control health care, either by employment or insurance. We have a wacked system of values in this country. This bill starts the pendulum swinging back away from that perverse application of greed on our lives. Don't get me wrong self interest is good, greed is a form a self interest but not the only form of self interest. We just have to recognize that greed when not moderated is a sin not a 'good'. Profits are good but its the way you get those profits and the tradoffs you make to get those profits that measure you as an ethical moral person. We have too much institutionalized un-ethical, immoral behaviour in this industry and this bill, though a comprimse, strikes at the heart of some of the most blatant practices and is therby a start and worthwhile.
By the way Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Postal Service are fine examples of government run programs that do their jobs, millions rely on them, health care gets done form millions, letters get delivered, and millions of seniors can stay in their homes and keep warm and eat, even though their 401k's were devistated by the recent gutting of the finacial markets by uncontrolled greed and speculation that went wrong. That was their hard earned money, you think that the privatizing Social Security back when Bush and company wanted to would have been a good thing? We would have people cold and hungry now. If you want to compare programs that work, show me a private industry program that has worked as well, as long, with as little overhead and done so much good as the ones you mentioned.