I'm going to expand on this one a bit. When it said data integration, I immediately found out that ETL might be Extract, transform, load. The only reason I know this is because I work for a TLA type company. Kettle seems to be the name of something that already has a name, "Pentaho Data Integration". I'm not sure why it has two names. It is also part of the Pentaho BI suite.
A good review would give us a link to this tool, so we can figure out if the book is even relevant. Otherwise the assumption is that everyone knows what it is an everyone is using it. http://kettle.pentaho.org/ There's a FAQ which deals with usage, not what it's about, and no overview. So despite finding the website myself I still have no idea what this thing does. Does it solve the problem of exporting data from MS SQL Server and re-loading it somewhere else? Cos that's what I need.
A good review would also indicate if it's a free and/or open source tool, so we can decide if we're even interested in the tool, let alone the book. The source is available and hosted on sourceforge, so that answers that. But there is a separate link under Products for PDI, with links to Buy. Is this a poor attempt at a slashvertisement? Why would I use kettle instead of PDI? Is there a difference? http://www.pentaho.com/products/data_integration/
A good review would also identify the audience of the book, letting people know who might use it. It's a datbase tool - if I'm a Microsoft shop would I have any interest in reading about this?
1) You used "at the end of the day." People who say that should be shot, and you took the time to type it. I copy/pasted. 2) You want things that aren't predictable to be predictable. Just put whatever's new in the current testing cycle and go. 3) I'm pretty sure "insane amounts" is not a very good estimate, I'd be interested in some real numbers. Especially if you consider the "put whatever's new in the current testing cycle and go" part. 4) "Makes problems worse in the long run" is also most likely hyperbole. If your policy is to test what you can, when you can, then I don't see how Microsoft's schedule impacts you at all. You're already backlogged. Does it matter whether you're testing 3 patches or 20? I mean, you're not going to fall behind Microsoft's release schedule, so you're not going to be falling behind, so what does it matter whether the patch is released on Thursday or Tuesday - you can sit on the Thursday patches until next Tuesday if you want, only now the delay is on your side instead of Microsoft.
So overall, you would rather Microsoft to hold things up on their end. When a virus outbreak happens you can say "the vendor hasn't released the patch" or "we didn't complete testing of the patch". That absolves you of responsibility. If Microsoft releases as fixes are finished, you have to fit an unscheduled release pattern into a rigidly defined cycle, and are at risk. Instead of worrying about your clients and users, you are worried about liability.
I say give me the patches as soon as you have them, I'll test and release them internally when I can. Most of the time that's going to be faster, occasionally something might be delayed for whatever reason.
And finally, thanks for proving that business is Microsoft's customer, not end users. It doesn't matter how at-risk someone at home is as long as business is happy, right?
Statistical analysis shows us it's 90% likely fraud, not 100%. The scenario given by Solandri above you suggests that an unlikely scenario probably happened. There have been enough stories in mainstream news about voting for the other guy, or vote-trading, that people could reasonably do this. Further, the "vote for the first democrat" scenario boosts the liklihood that Benford might not apply here.
When you're making a confidence judgement, which is what this calculation is, as opposed to a solid true/false value, it's good to look at all of the circumstances, not just the confidence result.
You can still "obey Benford's law" if the law says unlikely events are still possible.
They keep getting rid of the smart people by pay cuts or salary freezes. The smart people jump ship, and the people who write functional but terrible code get kept. If you want someone who knows what they are doing, you have to pay, and that increases costs.
Unfortunately, if you are ever called to defend yourself you will need the services of a competent attorney. If you don't object to things at the right time, it's very hard to get information un-"introduced" later, and there are other little games and tricks ("procedures") you have to know about in order to get a fair trial.
It is therefore my opinion that the entire concept of a trial is the real problem. You can't have justice when the only way to prove the truth is to a) follow arcane rules, b) know about every possibly relevant ruling, c) catch the other side when they make a faulty step or argument. The sheer number of people who ended up on death row and were later proven guilty, despite the higher burden of proof, should be all the evidence we need to declare courtrooms a sham.
You have to have a good attorney to prove the truth, and most of the better ones do private practice instead of being the provided attorney to people who can't pay. So you automatically have a financial bias in place, even before determining the relative worth of each side and their ability to bolster their legal teams.
The end result of all of this is that an attorney can be used for good or evil - they must represent their client's interests to the best of their ability, even if everyone knows the dude is guilty. A technicality or impropriety is all it takes for a great trial to go down in flames, and the bad guys back out on the streets. This is the real problem.
As for the grandparent post, it's most likely that a group of lawyers calling themselves the US Copyright Group is drumming up business. A few bits of data collection, and few thousand letters, and they get fees paid from whatever they can scare people into spending. It's not flamebait, it's an accurate representation of business practice.
The only thing they care about is re-election, and if enough people are angry about something they will, like magnets, align themselves with whatever the more powerful current is generating.
When it's obvious that the people will vote you out for maintaining the status quo, you'll change your mind. So you just tell the people who bought your vote that while you appreciate the campaign contribution, the contribution was to enable you to stay in office, and you can't do that if you vote against the reform. Then the blackmail, I have to pass this now, but if you want me to water it down after the election, make sure I'm elected again.
The cycle continues, and gradually people who give a crap pressure the laws into something sensible. Yes it takes a very long time, and meanwhile they are passing other absurd bills that will take a long time to get around. Eventually the system works, it requires patience and voting and especially letting your congress critter know you're watching them.
Not disagreeing, just fact checking. Huge money is a bit mythical - a few thousand seems to be the going rate. I'm pretty sure that was linked from here no more than a month ago, possibly two.
Why would legit admins follow the underground community? The last thing someone wants is when the network goes down for someone to find links to fravia and woodman in someone's browser history - that isn't damning by itself, but it looks bad.
Announcing security problems is not the only way to go if the vendor is responsible. "Be on the lookout for hcp:// links because I reported a vulnerability" would be a good compromise, letting admins block content or at least watch for it, while divulging the details to the vendor, is an alternative. When the vendor doesn't respond, you have no choice - they force you into forcing them, so you're not the bad guy in that scenario.
And finally, why does anyone have to prove something that Microsoft itself probably couldn't prove? We should assume that every exploitable vulnerability is something MS should have tested for, and therefore should have known about. Whether they did or not is irrelevant. The code should have been reviewed, and a huge red flag is when a function returns a value which is not checked. I make it a rule to either declare a function void or always check the return value - never even think about putting a comment in the code that you don't care about the return value, and static checkers test for this sort of thing. It's terrible code, terribly reviewed, and probably was put together by the scrub team because the component is low-risk, low-priority, low-usage.
Microsoft has improved on its responsiveness, but I still see complaints that simple crashes are ignored, and later turn out to be exploitable. At least MS should do a better job determining if something is exploitable before setting it as a low priority fix. That doesn't mean it's open season, and each bug is going to be a case-by-case situation. Some bugs need immediate disclosure, some need attack vector disclosure (if the vector can be mitigated), and some may need complete silence (assuming the vendor is actively working on it, althogh I can't think of a valid reason right now - I'm just leaving open possibilities like the Kaminsky DNS issue which was probably best left vague for a while until enough people patched).
Very large companies need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, and contacts to call when downtime is costing money. Especially outsourcing or service providers. If you run linux in this environment, "my team knows linux" is not going to cut it. You want to be able to place the blame on the "vendor" as opposed to being responsible yourself. So you don't modify the code, and you buy the support package.
Red Hat should be very profitable, given that, except Microsoft makes sweetheart deals with the big companies to keep them using microsoft tools. I have a full MSDN subscription, which would cost me piles of money but most likely costs my employer very little per head. I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free. It only costs money because the production servers have to be fully licensed and legit.
Microsoft is everywhere, so they can afford to give away freebies, charge for just the production installs, and still make boatloads of cash. If you take a look at the revenue compared to actual software usage, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Microsoft is giving away as much or more software than Red Hat. Direct end-user sales are just the icing on the cake - someone paying full price for Windows is very rare, it's usually OEM cost, which is approximately 10% of the cost. So Red Hat's numbers are probably not far off Microsoft's numbers, it's just reported as software sales vs. support costs. And even that difference is a technicality - Microsoft still charges for support depending on what you need and where you got the software.
Fundamentally, it's the same business model. Give lots of software away and make up for the sales losses with support charges - but with OEMs in the middle it's not transparent to the end users. Only the businesses see how the model truly works.
Would a "standard wall-wart" be able to supply the required power for all of the internal components and all connected USB devices? I have big and small adapters, some are noisy, but they output very few watts compared to what's going to be needed to run a PC - even a low power PC - with everything connected.
Umm, you don't have to actually type "uh" when you think it. Or "um" as in your previous post. It basically translates to "You're wrong and I'm going to explain why," which if you actually explain why will be obvious without the annoyance factor. It's redundant, and I have to say if you did that while in my presence I'd want to fire you, punch you in the face, or point and laugh, depending on the circumstances.
I hope this feedback helps you improve your interpersonal skills so that you get results from discussions rather than "who is more wrong?" pissing matches. Welcome, and enjoy your stay on the planet. Hey, I'm willing to take a karma hit to help you out, so you should appreciate this post.
Your argument is a fallacy, because you're assuming that whoever wrote that would approve if the decision went in their favor. That might be a natural assumption to make, but there are a lot of people who believe that no decision is proper, no matter how favorable it is, if it extends the law further than the wording of the law. In that interpretation, there is no fallacy in the description. The term is heavily overloaded, but for someone who is against *any* sort of "legislating from the bench" it might seem a natural, if not completely obvious description of exactly what happened.
Now, whether it actually happened is another story. I think burnin1965 has a good start on the history of patents as it relates to software, but I can't say if there's something I missed.
Now, in this context the burden would be on you to show that, absent some additional information, the person using the term is being selective in their usage. Your objection seems to be based on most people using it improperly, not on the specifics here, so you're the one with unsubstantiated claims. There are plenty of people who accept no judicial activism as legitimate, and they would take exception to your claims. In general I agree with you but in this case I see no support for your observation.
For this specific issue yes. But GP was talking more generally. The person with nothing to lose is your worst nightmare, because they have the time and incentive to try to accomplish what they want. Ever hear of a suicide mass murder from a first-world country? They are few and far between. Third world? They don't have much to lose, happens all the time.
Suicides in the Apple factories, until recently subsidized, were due to low wages. Even more, the factory issued financial compensation to the families. So naturally you ask your kid to kill himself so your family gets suicide pay. Who in America would even think of such a thing? We might have unemployed people, but we don't get this desperate. Of course it's easier to steal something and get housed in a jail, where it's not as easy over there, you're likely to lose a hand or just be executed.
We do have a lot to lose, and if you rock the boat you'll risk losing it. I have a good life - I want to ask the local police all kinds of tough questions, but I'm afraid of making myself a target. I have less to gain and more to lose by speaking out. I want to voice my opinion on lots of things, but you can't ask why something's illegal without making it seem like you're interested in doing it, and probably already doing it anyway.
Meanwhile, I learn as much as I can and enforce my rights as well as I can, and when I say no officer you can't search my car just because I was speeding, now he's suspicious. Everyone speeds I say, does that mean everyone has something illegal in their trunk? Well we made a deal and that was since you're probably out here on Superbowl Sunday looking for drunks and I blew 0.0 you can either write me for speeding or search my car, but not both. He tried to reverse psychology me and call my bluff, so he searched the driver's seat and a cursory glance at the cupholders and glove department and back seat and such, and didn't even ask about the trunk. I could have had a bong in there, or a corpse, or anything, but he was on DUI duty and didn't care about anything else. What if I were speeding away from a crime scene?
I enforce my rights as well as I can, but I have too much to lose. It's just too nice here. If I lived in a hut and poop out my back window, I'd have a different perspective. American Idol and such are a distraction, but not the root cause, just a symptom.
I'm pretty sure the way to do a Windows reinstall at this point is to download the current service pack (sp2 depending on your definition of "recently") first. Do the OS re-install, apply the service pack, connect it to the network (you kept it off so far, right?) and then you only have 50 critical updates or so. And you didn't download the SP on the to-be-reinstalled computer did you?
Speaking of "syntactic sugar", this link below is a good one. Someone above linked to it. I'll just add a little bit to it here. A reference is a pointer, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a fool. It is there to make things more readable - it is not a copy of an object, and the simplest of exercises in the worst book I've read on the language make that very clear. So I don't know why people think they are anything other than fancy pointers.
And they aren't talking about using the headache inducing C++ code, they are going to use the advantages of C++ to make the code simpler and cleaner. At least according to this guy, and if everyone ignores this guy then it's time to fork it and keep it C. I've been using C for 15 years and C++ with STL for 12 at least, and it is natural for me to use straight C with a few C++ features. I always use 'new' instead of 'malloc' because it's harder to screw up the size calculation. Any time I use memory allocation, I use smart pointers - I don't hack them on later.
And if there is some corollary function call that has to be made with another function call, you have a few options. If one has to be called first all the time, why keep them separate? Well of course it keeps the code clean and simple, and it's harder to introduce bugs in initialize-and-use functions. So you keep both of the functions, most easily as Private members of the class, and then you implement the common usage pattern "initialize and use". Set/Get operators are the same way - the code just sets a property, and doesn't care about all of the activity that's triggered behind the scenes.
They aren't trying to make this a headache, they are trying to make the code simpler. If you let it, C++ keeps you from making the same mistakes that C is ridiculed for such as poor memory management. You can cause other side effects if you use everything the language has, but as someone else explained above, few people have gone through the trouble of learning all of the more arcane features of C++ so it's unlikely. More likely is, someone puts in a crazy overload somewhere and someone else rejects the patch saying it doesn't make sense to do it that way, simple is better.
I think we've decided to switch, but we haven't decided to what subset of C++ we're switching. I think that we want what might be called the "syntactic sugar" subset. For example, single inheritance to replace our C-style inheritance, constructors/destructors to replace explicit calls to required initialization/finalization functions, and member functions to implement ADTs, namespaces to save us some typing.
"4 Elements" got my gf interested, for a few weeks anyway. It's LUA and XML, with some stuff compiled and some left open. She spent hours once I showed her how to make a game level easier, hacking and basically made the 64 levels all play themselves, winning in 5 minutes or so. Lost Treasures of Alexandria was another one.
She doesn't think procedurally, and even in a non-procedural language you have a fair share of "first this then this then this", so it didn't last long.
Showing her all of the Mario rom hacks from early Nintendo days piqued her a bit more, but she knows it's going to be more work than she wants. I'm making her a PC clone of something she plays on her phone, and fixing FCEUX Nintendo emulator so it doesn't forget the gamepad controls (I have a NES to USB connector for the controllers). IF that doesn't help, she won't ever want to learn. That's fine.
With anythng, there has to be a reason to write a program. I wrote VB6 apps for my students when I was teaching, and started parsing HTML to write something like "MP3 Wolf" program to find mp3 files and return the links. I should have made it download the mp3s as well, but it just didn't occur to me. Point it at a search engine and let it go recursive. From there it was rom-related utilities, and a few jpeg-related, then AVI, MIDI, WAV, and then I got a job programming and stopped the fun stuff.
I finally upgraded compy at home, and want to buy a friend's BioShock for PC, for a very small sum. He says I will have to call and activate it, since the key check will fail on a different compy.
I intend to inform them how much money the average customer contact costs, and that I have a $60 XBOX360 version staring me in the face, and had no intention of spending $20 more for the PC version because my roommate with the 360 moved out. I know, boo hoo.
I paid full price day 1 for the game, and they deserved it, but the secondary market is none of their business. Especially if I already paid on the first sale, just on a different platform. If I have a license to play, why wouldn't it be format shiftable like DVD or CD? I think it would be, they probably don't. So we'll have to have that conversation as well.
Automatically renaming files when they don't fit the CD/ISO filename restrictions (previously it warned)
Burning a disk that's slightly too large makes you click 1) Burn, 2) OK, 3) Next, 4) reinsert media, 5) Burn same project again 6) fix whatever is needed 7) Burn. Why doesn't it just say "Too much space, delete 45k" first?
Disk space is rounded, so even if you're right on the border, it won't tell you how much to remove. "Over by 45k" would be a great message. It used to be a guessing game, but now they have the size on the right - rounded to the nearest kB. and it sometimes seems wrong.
The "SmartStart" garbage - it's basically a GUI for a GUI. You have to select advanced options to even see the option to burn DVD video
I don't have it in front of me, I'm sure there's more. Memory usage is hideous *before* you start burning, it's slow - probably a.NET rewrite. It's functional, and I use it because it was free with the burner and I didn't see decent open source options at the time. But I hate it.
I have a program that verifies by filename every file is burned correctly - if I don't go into all of the subfolders to check the filenames, I get a broken disc and wrong named files, and the verification process doesn't happen. I worked around it by using a de-duplication program (also my own creation) and adding the CD drive as a junction under the local files. If everything is burned OK, the files match and the local files are deleted. Anything invalid is left behind. So finally I generate a CSV of hash/filename combinations, so that when I burn the files and copy it back to the hard drive, I rename the files using the CSV. That's 3 files I had to write in order to ensure the disc burned correctly.
"Verify burned files" checkbox is nice, but if I have to remove a file or two to fit on the disc, then I'm not always sure which files I have backed up and can delete, vs. having to re-burn. So that's 3 programs I had to write in order to work around Nero's retardedness. The old versions would alert you to long named files/folders, and when you burn too many bytes it brings you right back to where you were. So other than the guessing game on how much to remove, it was miles better.
A true solution should include a first-pass ISO compliance check, allowing you to move/rename the files in the image *and* move them so they don't get deleted, or something similar.
What you're saying is that they are making no improvements, that ink is the same as it was when it first came out? All of that R&D is paid for? That figuring out a formulation and reproducing the production method is simple, but hasn't been done yet?
And finally, that HP should sell things at cost once everything is recouped? I'll go along with that one, but no one else in the busines world will. Regardless of the technology, they have a product and set the price, and people decide whether to buy it. IF they think it's worth it, they are happy. IF they aren't happy, they should buy something else. If everyone stopped buying ink for a month, you would see some drastic price cuts.
Every person who buys ink is contributing to the problem, and it only affects people who buy ink. If you're contributing them stop, if you're not then why argue about it?
Solved once and then what? Charge to recoup investments made. Once you reach that goal, now what? People are used to paying the higher price - do you drop the price or leave it the same?
Companies don't have to drop the price after recovering their investiments - it would be nice if they did, but in the real world people like earning money. Shareholders especially. So where's the incentive to drop pricing? If it's patented, the world gets 20 year old technology for free, but if it's a trade seccret we may never be able to duplicate it. So you pay what the manufacturer sells it for.
Solve problems once implies that you drop price when investment is recouped, but they are continually solving more problems. Technology has improved. So they are solving different problems once. You're telling the manufacturer to do something which it will only do if forced to by consumers. If we stop buying, the prices will drop. I did my part in buying a laser instead of inkjet.
If you need color, you have a point. Printing maps and directions, e-mails, quick reference stuff, taxes, most web pages do not require color. The only reason to get a color printer is to print photos, which most people cn have done at a pharmacy or convenience type store.
I bought a b/w laser after doing price comparison, and haven't found a reason to have to print anything in color yet. I'm with gp - skip the color printing and take it to a shop. If it's cheaper for you to do what you do by getting a color inkjet then the choice is obvious.
As always, your usage should determine what you buy, not some corporate head's explanation, not profit/revenue comparison from SEC filings.
Re:Was Not Impressed with Millenium either
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Lost Ends
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I had memories of Millenium when I found out Terry O'Quinn was on there. Lots of promise, but it kinda fizzled. Mystery is always more exciting than what it turns out to be. I hear songs on the radio, which absolutely captivate me until I understand the lyrics, or how to play it, or even just figure out that the complicated chord structure is really just the nature of the instrument (like Breaking the Girl - just move the same chord around).
Mystery is simply not sustainable for long enough for a television show. At some point you have to reveal something, which is either explaining the mystery or adding more mystery. Lost apparently just added more mystery without really resolving anything. I watched 13th warrior last night ("Eaters of the Dead"), and I was impressed by each revelation making a new mystery. but you always felt forward progress. Since it's an old movie I hope I'm not ruining anything, but you have the unknown, a "fire snake" which is initially confused with a dragon (obviously it's just a dragon, which exists, not a snake made out of fire, duh). Then the mystery is bear-like creatures, then it's just people, and so is the fire snake. But how/where do they live, what is their culture like? Then the movie retains the plot, but focuses on the new mystery. Lots of movies do this properly.
Anything which evolves over several seasons has to have an overall story arc - which is not possible to plan since the series can be cancelled when few people watch it. the series is about to be cancelled, so you reveal some things in the last 2-3 episodes of the season, and people watch the last 1 or 2 episodes and the ratings save it.
bottom line, the yearly renewal option is going to make shows like this impossible to pull off with any quality, unless you make each season fairly self-contained. Build on the previous ones, but you have to change the focus on the mystery. Not just resolve small points and leave the big ones open. That changes the direction of the show, now what initially hooked users is completely different.
Once you launch, you're changing the plane mid-air. You can only change it so much before you have to re-launch.
I've been trying to explain this to my girlfriend for a while, I have a good grasp but can't explain in a way that makes sense, so if someone else can help I'd appreciate it.
Cable companies suck, they know they suck. Wouldn't they try to build customers by giving decent service? I understand the idea of cutting costs, but if a service person has to come out anyway you're not saving anything by scheduling poorly. You have a list of service calls for the day, an estimated time to fix each, and a truck with just about everything the guy will need.
Simple scheduling where you arrange the visits in a reasonabl order (going out of town or coming in, not going back and forth) should be able to give you a 2 hour window maximum, without the 30 minute +/- on the outside. Even if you have to get a confirmation from the national service hotline and then an actual schedule from the local office, this is very basic stuff. You're sending someone out, you're scheduling a number of hours for the guy to work, this is known in advance. If the guy finishes a call early, moves on the the next house early, and the customer isn't there, you're actually costing real money by visiting and then having to re-schedule. From a business perspective, I would want to minimize costs by making sure the visits happen, and if one of the guys has a large number of "person not home" visits, I'd start putting a GPS recorder in the van.
So why did it get to this point? What business driver is there to make people wait and take off time and re-schedule? It's been a joke for years, enough that by the time of the Seinfeld episode everyone just nodded and said yep I know what you mean. Even if they haven't had to wait they've heard stories because their coworkers had to be off.
In other words, why would the business sabotage itself in this manner, in a way that doesn't give them any advantage? Obviously choosing the right people to hire is important, as is making sure they do what they are supposed to - but this is part of any job, any industry where you can't stand right over the people and watch over their shoulder. Normally, the CEO makes decisions for the short term so they can exercise their stock options and then cash out, but this isn't even a short-term strategy. This is intentionally running the business into the ground.
From the free market perspective, most people haven't had options and are only just now beginning to be able to switch to something else. So is it just apathy due to knowing they have the only option available for most people? If so, why wouldn't you future-proof your customers by treating them correctly? How does this help your business?
Do you want a medal? You would have been free to work on Win32, with most of the project focused on 16 bits. At the time everyone had work in progress, and much of that would be taken apart and rendered useless. What's wrong with finishing something before starting something else?
OK, here's your medal. You pointed out the blatantly obvious fact that operating systems were moving to 32 bits. 16 years ago was 1994, the first release of Win95 was imminent, there wasn't a whole lot of testing you could do, the documentation was in many ways still in progress. Petzold's Programming Windows 95 was written in 1996.
In 1994 it plain old didn't make sense. 16 years later I'm telling you it should have been obvious at the time. You want to tell people what to do with their time, you have to be a project manager.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to expand on this one a bit. When it said data integration, I immediately found out that ETL might be Extract, transform, load. The only reason I know this is because I work for a TLA type company. Kettle seems to be the name of something that already has a name, "Pentaho Data Integration". I'm not sure why it has two names. It is also part of the Pentaho BI suite.
A good review would give us a link to this tool, so we can figure out if the book is even relevant. Otherwise the assumption is that everyone knows what it is an everyone is using it. http://kettle.pentaho.org/ There's a FAQ which deals with usage, not what it's about, and no overview. So despite finding the website myself I still have no idea what this thing does. Does it solve the problem of exporting data from MS SQL Server and re-loading it somewhere else? Cos that's what I need.
A good review would also indicate if it's a free and/or open source tool, so we can decide if we're even interested in the tool, let alone the book. The source is available and hosted on sourceforge, so that answers that. But there is a separate link under Products for PDI, with links to Buy. Is this a poor attempt at a slashvertisement? Why would I use kettle instead of PDI? Is there a difference? http://www.pentaho.com/products/data_integration/
A good review would also identify the audience of the book, letting people know who might use it. It's a datbase tool - if I'm a Microsoft shop would I have any interest in reading about this?
I can tell you've been in corp land.
1) You used "at the end of the day." People who say that should be shot, and you took the time to type it. I copy/pasted.
2) You want things that aren't predictable to be predictable. Just put whatever's new in the current testing cycle and go.
3) I'm pretty sure "insane amounts" is not a very good estimate, I'd be interested in some real numbers. Especially if you consider the "put whatever's new in the current testing cycle and go" part.
4) "Makes problems worse in the long run" is also most likely hyperbole. If your policy is to test what you can, when you can, then I don't see how Microsoft's schedule impacts you at all. You're already backlogged. Does it matter whether you're testing 3 patches or 20? I mean, you're not going to fall behind Microsoft's release schedule, so you're not going to be falling behind, so what does it matter whether the patch is released on Thursday or Tuesday - you can sit on the Thursday patches until next Tuesday if you want, only now the delay is on your side instead of Microsoft.
So overall, you would rather Microsoft to hold things up on their end. When a virus outbreak happens you can say "the vendor hasn't released the patch" or "we didn't complete testing of the patch". That absolves you of responsibility. If Microsoft releases as fixes are finished, you have to fit an unscheduled release pattern into a rigidly defined cycle, and are at risk. Instead of worrying about your clients and users, you are worried about liability.
I say give me the patches as soon as you have them, I'll test and release them internally when I can. Most of the time that's going to be faster, occasionally something might be delayed for whatever reason.
And finally, thanks for proving that business is Microsoft's customer, not end users. It doesn't matter how at-risk someone at home is as long as business is happy, right?
Statistical analysis shows us it's 90% likely fraud, not 100%. The scenario given by Solandri above you suggests that an unlikely scenario probably happened. There have been enough stories in mainstream news about voting for the other guy, or vote-trading, that people could reasonably do this. Further, the "vote for the first democrat" scenario boosts the liklihood that Benford might not apply here.
When you're making a confidence judgement, which is what this calculation is, as opposed to a solid true/false value, it's good to look at all of the circumstances, not just the confidence result.
You can still "obey Benford's law" if the law says unlikely events are still possible.
They keep getting rid of the smart people by pay cuts or salary freezes. The smart people jump ship, and the people who write functional but terrible code get kept. If you want someone who knows what they are doing, you have to pay, and that increases costs.
Unfortunately, if you are ever called to defend yourself you will need the services of a competent attorney. If you don't object to things at the right time, it's very hard to get information un-"introduced" later, and there are other little games and tricks ("procedures") you have to know about in order to get a fair trial.
It is therefore my opinion that the entire concept of a trial is the real problem. You can't have justice when the only way to prove the truth is to a) follow arcane rules, b) know about every possibly relevant ruling, c) catch the other side when they make a faulty step or argument. The sheer number of people who ended up on death row and were later proven guilty, despite the higher burden of proof, should be all the evidence we need to declare courtrooms a sham.
You have to have a good attorney to prove the truth, and most of the better ones do private practice instead of being the provided attorney to people who can't pay. So you automatically have a financial bias in place, even before determining the relative worth of each side and their ability to bolster their legal teams.
The end result of all of this is that an attorney can be used for good or evil - they must represent their client's interests to the best of their ability, even if everyone knows the dude is guilty. A technicality or impropriety is all it takes for a great trial to go down in flames, and the bad guys back out on the streets. This is the real problem.
As for the grandparent post, it's most likely that a group of lawyers calling themselves the US Copyright Group is drumming up business. A few bits of data collection, and few thousand letters, and they get fees paid from whatever they can scare people into spending. It's not flamebait, it's an accurate representation of business practice.
The only thing they care about is re-election, and if enough people are angry about something they will, like magnets, align themselves with whatever the more powerful current is generating.
When it's obvious that the people will vote you out for maintaining the status quo, you'll change your mind. So you just tell the people who bought your vote that while you appreciate the campaign contribution, the contribution was to enable you to stay in office, and you can't do that if you vote against the reform. Then the blackmail, I have to pass this now, but if you want me to water it down after the election, make sure I'm elected again.
The cycle continues, and gradually people who give a crap pressure the laws into something sensible. Yes it takes a very long time, and meanwhile they are passing other absurd bills that will take a long time to get around. Eventually the system works, it requires patience and voting and especially letting your congress critter know you're watching them.
Not disagreeing, just fact checking. Huge money is a bit mythical - a few thousand seems to be the going rate. I'm pretty sure that was linked from here no more than a month ago, possibly two.
Why would legit admins follow the underground community? The last thing someone wants is when the network goes down for someone to find links to fravia and woodman in someone's browser history - that isn't damning by itself, but it looks bad.
Announcing security problems is not the only way to go if the vendor is responsible. "Be on the lookout for hcp:// links because I reported a vulnerability" would be a good compromise, letting admins block content or at least watch for it, while divulging the details to the vendor, is an alternative. When the vendor doesn't respond, you have no choice - they force you into forcing them, so you're not the bad guy in that scenario.
And finally, why does anyone have to prove something that Microsoft itself probably couldn't prove? We should assume that every exploitable vulnerability is something MS should have tested for, and therefore should have known about. Whether they did or not is irrelevant. The code should have been reviewed, and a huge red flag is when a function returns a value which is not checked. I make it a rule to either declare a function void or always check the return value - never even think about putting a comment in the code that you don't care about the return value, and static checkers test for this sort of thing. It's terrible code, terribly reviewed, and probably was put together by the scrub team because the component is low-risk, low-priority, low-usage.
Microsoft has improved on its responsiveness, but I still see complaints that simple crashes are ignored, and later turn out to be exploitable. At least MS should do a better job determining if something is exploitable before setting it as a low priority fix. That doesn't mean it's open season, and each bug is going to be a case-by-case situation. Some bugs need immediate disclosure, some need attack vector disclosure (if the vector can be mitigated), and some may need complete silence (assuming the vendor is actively working on it, althogh I can't think of a valid reason right now - I'm just leaving open possibilities like the Kaminsky DNS issue which was probably best left vague for a while until enough people patched).
Very large companies need to have a disaster recovery plan in place, and contacts to call when downtime is costing money. Especially outsourcing or service providers. If you run linux in this environment, "my team knows linux" is not going to cut it. You want to be able to place the blame on the "vendor" as opposed to being responsible yourself. So you don't modify the code, and you buy the support package.
Red Hat should be very profitable, given that, except Microsoft makes sweetheart deals with the big companies to keep them using microsoft tools. I have a full MSDN subscription, which would cost me piles of money but most likely costs my employer very little per head. I can download and use and develop with anything I want, for free. It only costs money because the production servers have to be fully licensed and legit.
Microsoft is everywhere, so they can afford to give away freebies, charge for just the production installs, and still make boatloads of cash. If you take a look at the revenue compared to actual software usage, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Microsoft is giving away as much or more software than Red Hat. Direct end-user sales are just the icing on the cake - someone paying full price for Windows is very rare, it's usually OEM cost, which is approximately 10% of the cost. So Red Hat's numbers are probably not far off Microsoft's numbers, it's just reported as software sales vs. support costs. And even that difference is a technicality - Microsoft still charges for support depending on what you need and where you got the software.
Fundamentally, it's the same business model. Give lots of software away and make up for the sales losses with support charges - but with OEMs in the middle it's not transparent to the end users. Only the businesses see how the model truly works.
Would a "standard wall-wart" be able to supply the required power for all of the internal components and all connected USB devices? I have big and small adapters, some are noisy, but they output very few watts compared to what's going to be needed to run a PC - even a low power PC - with everything connected.
Umm, you don't have to actually type "uh" when you think it. Or "um" as in your previous post. It basically translates to "You're wrong and I'm going to explain why," which if you actually explain why will be obvious without the annoyance factor. It's redundant, and I have to say if you did that while in my presence I'd want to fire you, punch you in the face, or point and laugh, depending on the circumstances.
I hope this feedback helps you improve your interpersonal skills so that you get results from discussions rather than "who is more wrong?" pissing matches. Welcome, and enjoy your stay on the planet. Hey, I'm willing to take a karma hit to help you out, so you should appreciate this post.
Your argument is a fallacy, because you're assuming that whoever wrote that would approve if the decision went in their favor. That might be a natural assumption to make, but there are a lot of people who believe that no decision is proper, no matter how favorable it is, if it extends the law further than the wording of the law. In that interpretation, there is no fallacy in the description. The term is heavily overloaded, but for someone who is against *any* sort of "legislating from the bench" it might seem a natural, if not completely obvious description of exactly what happened.
Now, whether it actually happened is another story. I think burnin1965 has a good start on the history of patents as it relates to software, but I can't say if there's something I missed.
Now, in this context the burden would be on you to show that, absent some additional information, the person using the term is being selective in their usage. Your objection seems to be based on most people using it improperly, not on the specifics here, so you're the one with unsubstantiated claims. There are plenty of people who accept no judicial activism as legitimate, and they would take exception to your claims. In general I agree with you but in this case I see no support for your observation.
For this specific issue yes. But GP was talking more generally. The person with nothing to lose is your worst nightmare, because they have the time and incentive to try to accomplish what they want. Ever hear of a suicide mass murder from a first-world country? They are few and far between. Third world? They don't have much to lose, happens all the time.
Suicides in the Apple factories, until recently subsidized, were due to low wages. Even more, the factory issued financial compensation to the families. So naturally you ask your kid to kill himself so your family gets suicide pay. Who in America would even think of such a thing? We might have unemployed people, but we don't get this desperate. Of course it's easier to steal something and get housed in a jail, where it's not as easy over there, you're likely to lose a hand or just be executed.
We do have a lot to lose, and if you rock the boat you'll risk losing it. I have a good life - I want to ask the local police all kinds of tough questions, but I'm afraid of making myself a target. I have less to gain and more to lose by speaking out. I want to voice my opinion on lots of things, but you can't ask why something's illegal without making it seem like you're interested in doing it, and probably already doing it anyway.
Meanwhile, I learn as much as I can and enforce my rights as well as I can, and when I say no officer you can't search my car just because I was speeding, now he's suspicious. Everyone speeds I say, does that mean everyone has something illegal in their trunk? Well we made a deal and that was since you're probably out here on Superbowl Sunday looking for drunks and I blew 0.0 you can either write me for speeding or search my car, but not both. He tried to reverse psychology me and call my bluff, so he searched the driver's seat and a cursory glance at the cupholders and glove department and back seat and such, and didn't even ask about the trunk. I could have had a bong in there, or a corpse, or anything, but he was on DUI duty and didn't care about anything else. What if I were speeding away from a crime scene?
I enforce my rights as well as I can, but I have too much to lose. It's just too nice here. If I lived in a hut and poop out my back window, I'd have a different perspective. American Idol and such are a distraction, but not the root cause, just a symptom.
I'm pretty sure the way to do a Windows reinstall at this point is to download the current service pack (sp2 depending on your definition of "recently") first. Do the OS re-install, apply the service pack, connect it to the network (you kept it off so far, right?) and then you only have 50 critical updates or so. And you didn't download the SP on the to-be-reinstalled computer did you?
Speaking of "syntactic sugar", this link below is a good one. Someone above linked to it. I'll just add a little bit to it here. A reference is a pointer, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a fool. It is there to make things more readable - it is not a copy of an object, and the simplest of exercises in the worst book I've read on the language make that very clear. So I don't know why people think they are anything other than fancy pointers.
And they aren't talking about using the headache inducing C++ code, they are going to use the advantages of C++ to make the code simpler and cleaner. At least according to this guy, and if everyone ignores this guy then it's time to fork it and keep it C. I've been using C for 15 years and C++ with STL for 12 at least, and it is natural for me to use straight C with a few C++ features. I always use 'new' instead of 'malloc' because it's harder to screw up the size calculation. Any time I use memory allocation, I use smart pointers - I don't hack them on later.
And if there is some corollary function call that has to be made with another function call, you have a few options. If one has to be called first all the time, why keep them separate? Well of course it keeps the code clean and simple, and it's harder to introduce bugs in initialize-and-use functions. So you keep both of the functions, most easily as Private members of the class, and then you implement the common usage pattern "initialize and use". Set/Get operators are the same way - the code just sets a property, and doesn't care about all of the activity that's triggered behind the scenes.
They aren't trying to make this a headache, they are trying to make the code simpler. If you let it, C++ keeps you from making the same mistakes that C is ridiculed for such as poor memory management. You can cause other side effects if you use everything the language has, but as someone else explained above, few people have gone through the trouble of learning all of the more arcane features of C++ so it's unlikely. More likely is, someone puts in a crazy overload somewhere and someone else rejects the patch saying it doesn't make sense to do it that way, simple is better.
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-05/msg00757.html
"4 Elements" got my gf interested, for a few weeks anyway. It's LUA and XML, with some stuff compiled and some left open. She spent hours once I showed her how to make a game level easier, hacking and basically made the 64 levels all play themselves, winning in 5 minutes or so. Lost Treasures of Alexandria was another one.
She doesn't think procedurally, and even in a non-procedural language you have a fair share of "first this then this then this", so it didn't last long.
Showing her all of the Mario rom hacks from early Nintendo days piqued her a bit more, but she knows it's going to be more work than she wants. I'm making her a PC clone of something she plays on her phone, and fixing FCEUX Nintendo emulator so it doesn't forget the gamepad controls (I have a NES to USB connector for the controllers). IF that doesn't help, she won't ever want to learn. That's fine.
With anythng, there has to be a reason to write a program. I wrote VB6 apps for my students when I was teaching, and started parsing HTML to write something like "MP3 Wolf" program to find mp3 files and return the links. I should have made it download the mp3s as well, but it just didn't occur to me. Point it at a search engine and let it go recursive. From there it was rom-related utilities, and a few jpeg-related, then AVI, MIDI, WAV, and then I got a job programming and stopped the fun stuff.
I finally upgraded compy at home, and want to buy a friend's BioShock for PC, for a very small sum. He says I will have to call and activate it, since the key check will fail on a different compy.
I intend to inform them how much money the average customer contact costs, and that I have a $60 XBOX360 version staring me in the face, and had no intention of spending $20 more for the PC version because my roommate with the 360 moved out. I know, boo hoo.
I paid full price day 1 for the game, and they deserved it, but the secondary market is none of their business. Especially if I already paid on the first sale, just on a different platform. If I have a license to play, why wouldn't it be format shiftable like DVD or CD? I think it would be, they probably don't. So we'll have to have that conversation as well.
I don't have it in front of me, I'm sure there's more. Memory usage is hideous *before* you start burning, it's slow - probably a .NET rewrite. It's functional, and I use it because it was free with the burner and I didn't see decent open source options at the time. But I hate it.
I have a program that verifies by filename every file is burned correctly - if I don't go into all of the subfolders to check the filenames, I get a broken disc and wrong named files, and the verification process doesn't happen. I worked around it by using a de-duplication program (also my own creation) and adding the CD drive as a junction under the local files. If everything is burned OK, the files match and the local files are deleted. Anything invalid is left behind. So finally I generate a CSV of hash/filename combinations, so that when I burn the files and copy it back to the hard drive, I rename the files using the CSV. That's 3 files I had to write in order to ensure the disc burned correctly.
"Verify burned files" checkbox is nice, but if I have to remove a file or two to fit on the disc, then I'm not always sure which files I have backed up and can delete, vs. having to re-burn. So that's 3 programs I had to write in order to work around Nero's retardedness. The old versions would alert you to long named files/folders, and when you burn too many bytes it brings you right back to where you were. So other than the guessing game on how much to remove, it was miles better.
A true solution should include a first-pass ISO compliance check, allowing you to move/rename the files in the image *and* move them so they don't get deleted, or something similar.
What you're saying is that they are making no improvements, that ink is the same as it was when it first came out? All of that R&D is paid for? That figuring out a formulation and reproducing the production method is simple, but hasn't been done yet?
And finally, that HP should sell things at cost once everything is recouped? I'll go along with that one, but no one else in the busines world will. Regardless of the technology, they have a product and set the price, and people decide whether to buy it. IF they think it's worth it, they are happy. IF they aren't happy, they should buy something else. If everyone stopped buying ink for a month, you would see some drastic price cuts.
Every person who buys ink is contributing to the problem, and it only affects people who buy ink. If you're contributing them stop, if you're not then why argue about it?
Solved once and then what? Charge to recoup investments made. Once you reach that goal, now what? People are used to paying the higher price - do you drop the price or leave it the same?
Companies don't have to drop the price after recovering their investiments - it would be nice if they did, but in the real world people like earning money. Shareholders especially. So where's the incentive to drop pricing? If it's patented, the world gets 20 year old technology for free, but if it's a trade seccret we may never be able to duplicate it. So you pay what the manufacturer sells it for.
Solve problems once implies that you drop price when investment is recouped, but they are continually solving more problems. Technology has improved. So they are solving different problems once. You're telling the manufacturer to do something which it will only do if forced to by consumers. If we stop buying, the prices will drop. I did my part in buying a laser instead of inkjet.
If you need color, you have a point. Printing maps and directions, e-mails, quick reference stuff, taxes, most web pages do not require color. The only reason to get a color printer is to print photos, which most people cn have done at a pharmacy or convenience type store.
I bought a b/w laser after doing price comparison, and haven't found a reason to have to print anything in color yet. I'm with gp - skip the color printing and take it to a shop. If it's cheaper for you to do what you do by getting a color inkjet then the choice is obvious.
As always, your usage should determine what you buy, not some corporate head's explanation, not profit/revenue comparison from SEC filings.
I had memories of Millenium when I found out Terry O'Quinn was on there. Lots of promise, but it kinda fizzled. Mystery is always more exciting than what it turns out to be. I hear songs on the radio, which absolutely captivate me until I understand the lyrics, or how to play it, or even just figure out that the complicated chord structure is really just the nature of the instrument (like Breaking the Girl - just move the same chord around).
Mystery is simply not sustainable for long enough for a television show. At some point you have to reveal something, which is either explaining the mystery or adding more mystery. Lost apparently just added more mystery without really resolving anything. I watched 13th warrior last night ("Eaters of the Dead"), and I was impressed by each revelation making a new mystery. but you always felt forward progress. Since it's an old movie I hope I'm not ruining anything, but you have the unknown, a "fire snake" which is initially confused with a dragon (obviously it's just a dragon, which exists, not a snake made out of fire, duh). Then the mystery is bear-like creatures, then it's just people, and so is the fire snake. But how/where do they live, what is their culture like? Then the movie retains the plot, but focuses on the new mystery. Lots of movies do this properly.
Anything which evolves over several seasons has to have an overall story arc - which is not possible to plan since the series can be cancelled when few people watch it. the series is about to be cancelled, so you reveal some things in the last 2-3 episodes of the season, and people watch the last 1 or 2 episodes and the ratings save it.
bottom line, the yearly renewal option is going to make shows like this impossible to pull off with any quality, unless you make each season fairly self-contained. Build on the previous ones, but you have to change the focus on the mystery. Not just resolve small points and leave the big ones open. That changes the direction of the show, now what initially hooked users is completely different.
Once you launch, you're changing the plane mid-air. You can only change it so much before you have to re-launch.
I've been trying to explain this to my girlfriend for a while, I have a good grasp but can't explain in a way that makes sense, so if someone else can help I'd appreciate it.
Cable companies suck, they know they suck. Wouldn't they try to build customers by giving decent service? I understand the idea of cutting costs, but if a service person has to come out anyway you're not saving anything by scheduling poorly. You have a list of service calls for the day, an estimated time to fix each, and a truck with just about everything the guy will need.
Simple scheduling where you arrange the visits in a reasonabl order (going out of town or coming in, not going back and forth) should be able to give you a 2 hour window maximum, without the 30 minute +/- on the outside. Even if you have to get a confirmation from the national service hotline and then an actual schedule from the local office, this is very basic stuff. You're sending someone out, you're scheduling a number of hours for the guy to work, this is known in advance. If the guy finishes a call early, moves on the the next house early, and the customer isn't there, you're actually costing real money by visiting and then having to re-schedule. From a business perspective, I would want to minimize costs by making sure the visits happen, and if one of the guys has a large number of "person not home" visits, I'd start putting a GPS recorder in the van.
So why did it get to this point? What business driver is there to make people wait and take off time and re-schedule? It's been a joke for years, enough that by the time of the Seinfeld episode everyone just nodded and said yep I know what you mean. Even if they haven't had to wait they've heard stories because their coworkers had to be off.
In other words, why would the business sabotage itself in this manner, in a way that doesn't give them any advantage? Obviously choosing the right people to hire is important, as is making sure they do what they are supposed to - but this is part of any job, any industry where you can't stand right over the people and watch over their shoulder. Normally, the CEO makes decisions for the short term so they can exercise their stock options and then cash out, but this isn't even a short-term strategy. This is intentionally running the business into the ground.
From the free market perspective, most people haven't had options and are only just now beginning to be able to switch to something else. So is it just apathy due to knowing they have the only option available for most people? If so, why wouldn't you future-proof your customers by treating them correctly? How does this help your business?
Do you want a medal? You would have been free to work on Win32, with most of the project focused on 16 bits. At the time everyone had work in progress, and much of that would be taken apart and rendered useless. What's wrong with finishing something before starting something else?
OK, here's your medal. You pointed out the blatantly obvious fact that operating systems were moving to 32 bits. 16 years ago was 1994, the first release of Win95 was imminent, there wasn't a whole lot of testing you could do, the documentation was in many ways still in progress. Petzold's Programming Windows 95 was written in 1996.
In 1994 it plain old didn't make sense. 16 years later I'm telling you it should have been obvious at the time. You want to tell people what to do with their time, you have to be a project manager.
Watch the movie Cube if you dare, it reminds me why huge companies operate the way they do.
Your post is so lame slashdot thought it was lame. That's lame. That WALLOWS in lameness.
It went to the zoo, bought a ticket to see lame, fell in the lame pit and LAME ATE IT.
It's so lame that when psychoacoustical models were applied to reduce the additional useless overhead, the result was silence. That's how lame it was.