Still.. as fast as modern computers are I think we may be reaching a point where raw speed is less important
All else equal, the faster code is better. Either you can actually do things faster, or you can run the faster code on cheaper hardware. Thank-you, lemmings, for giving those of us who know that performance matters an edge against vast numbers of you who've been duped into believing it doesn't.
How did this get modded up insightful? Do you really want the US to collapse into an anarchy of politicly motivated asassinations, like so many countries have done? That's not to say that we haven't come perilously close to do that already. Ever heard of a guy named John Wilkes Booth? He must be your idol. Or maybe you're with the crazies like Hinkley.
Can't remember who wrote it, but there's a little saying, "there are 3 boxes you can use to defend your rights: soap, ballot, and ammo. Use them in that order".
Excellent idea. We should start posting DNS records on Kazaa and Gnutella, and streaming larger DNS caches over bittorrent. Whooooah! But let's wait until after the politicians have "won" the DNS prize before pulling something like that.
The software projects that make it to market are the ones that win. Asking why software isn't more secure is like asking why peacocks have bright feathers--plainly a liability when running from predators or fighting, but they get the attention of the peahens. And the software peahens just don't care enough about security. Whoever gets to market fastest, and with the prettiest colors, wins.
Insurance was created as a concept to deal with the fact that in a purely capitalist society there is no sense of community or common good and no one will help you when you need it most.
As much as your neighbors might like to help you, they are unlikely to be able to raise or donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy you a new house, or even the smaller sum to rebuild yours on the same land if it burns down. In the old days they could have pitched in and rebuilt your house, but do you really want an all-wood frame structure that insulates with 1/3rd the R-value of your current home, and wiring done by some guy down the block who isn't a licensed electrician?
Insurance is for stuff that you have no hope of paying for. Part of the reason medical stuff is so messed up is that insurance is paying for little things like doctor's visits and off-patent pills. Most people with insurance can afford these items, and the insurance beurocracy adds negative value.
If medical insurance were really insurance and not a screwed-up buyer's club, the costs would not be so high. Most people are not even offered high-deductable policies through the corporate system where they get their insurance.
So, that said, I generally agree that the insurance companies are in it too much, but I wouldn't want them out all together. If I ever need surgery, chemo, and rehab all in one year, I want to pay the deductable and let the insurance pick up the rest. That's when insurance makes sense.
Oh yeah he wanted to sell software and only sell software!
That's always been one of my points. If I wanted to sell T-shirts and tote bags, I'd already be doing that. If I wanted to be a consultant, I'd already be doing that. If I wanted to repackage commoditized software like the IT equivalent of a bottled water company, I'd already be doing that.
I never wanted to do any of those things. I always wanted to sell software, so I'm hooked up with a company that does that, none of it's Open Source, and I'm quite happy. Oh, and might I add that thew new Slashdot CSS business is a piece of crap--I can't even preview this post properly because my text is layered on top of the parent post! Do I want to wade through Slashcode? Hell no! That's not freedom. That's Slashdot's job.
Excellent. I nominate Nobody as chair of the committee. I think the best quote from TFA was that government can't really think of a role here other than to interfere. If country X doesn't like having their DNS servers in the US, they can set up their own DNS, put the entire country on a private subnet or IPv6 and gateway to the rest of the world, blah blah. The UN is, as usual, not even a solution looking for a problem... more like a problem looking for a solution.
The problem with buying CDs is that you actually have to store them someplace. Does anybody offer a service similar to the one that Kitco does for gold? You know, you can buy "pool gold" from their exchange and not actually have to receive physical gold bars or coins. Of course you have to trust an exchange to do something like that, but it seems like we ought to have the option of doing this for music too. Then, you have a vault full of many copies of the CD. You can dispense with the jewel cases to save space, since you are only really buying a license and then... oh... wait... it's a cheaper version of iTunes, assuming the cost of storing the physical media and cataloging it in case you are audited doesn't drive things up too far. Also, unsold inventory actually consumes space, so it may not be possible for such a model to compete, but it seems like it would be perfectly legal as long as you only register one owner per physical CD.
Mod parent up! If mainland China really is a "bigger market", they should put up or shut up. It's kind of a bad precedent though... I mean... does Redmond really want to be Microsoftville? Does Atlanta want to be Coketown? Maybe they could just restrict it to teritories that are under dispute by organized armies.
1. Fresh Water.
2. Non-perishable food.
3. Cash.
4. Gas cans.
5. Communications gear -- broadcast radio receiver and CB. CB will work where cell towers are down, but bring cell phone too.
6. Lantern/Flashlight.
7. Extra batteries for electrical items.
8. Games, toys, candy, fun stuff for sad kids.
9. Tools, including shovels, can and bottle openers.
10. Extra first-aid kids.
That list is not necessarily in order of importance, and most of these items are not fancy.
What *not* to bring? A gun. Leave that up to law enforcement. I know I'll get some arguments on that, but the easiest way to get shot is to bring a gun. If you get robbed, so be it, but most people are not so evil as to rob you while on a mission of mercy. The news gives us a distored view of reality because that kind of stuff is what makes news. If it *didn't* make news, then bringing a gun might be what you have to do, but in that case you should be going in behind a tank.
So. Having never done anything like this, what did I miss? I suspect most of the people who answer this have never done any emergency work either. It would be interesting to hear from some people who have actually gone to disaster zones before. There is probably a lot that would never occur to people who haven't been there.
Job security, that is. It was so easy to write "job security applications" in Perl that even PHBs caught on to it. The next web scripting language should be based on a very careful study of how obtuse the syntax can be before the cost of maintaining it will be enough to make IT managers cry "enough is enough!" and throw out the entire application. And yes, although I was not the actual maintenance programmer on a Perl app, I was close enough to those who were to understand what had happened, The nature of Perl is such that it was probably not intentional. I mean, it looked like the code was well organized, but no God help anybody who wanted to change it.
His argument that an OS should ask you before running something is also stupid
OK, I'll bite. When you run the installer for the screen saver, Windows already asks if you want to run an executable. Of course people will click yes on this.
What's more interesting is what kind of executables the installer writes to your drive. Let's say it asks "do you want me to write fishtank.scr to the hard drive?". Of course you want that. Now let's say it asks "do you want me to write adbot.exe to the hard drive". Bah! No thanks.
OK, so what's to stop them from putting adbot.exe in fishtank.scr. Nothing. So at this point, we have to have some control over what fishtank.scr can do. By default, applications can do whatever a user can do. Too much power. What if, by default, applications couldn't r/w the hard drive or access the network, or open more than one window?
So now "fishtank.scr would like to read from the hard drive [ ] allow all [x] limit access to a directory you specify"
"fishtank.scr would like to access the network, do you wish to allow this [ ] yes [x] no"
So the screensaver full of crap wouldn't work by default. The user might ask questions like "why won't this thing work without arbitrary hard drive access and network capability, I thought all it would do was show an animated fishtank?"
Doesn't that seem just a trifle bit better than the way things are now? How hard would it be to hook into calls that access the file system and the network to do this, and control access based on process id? Not too hard, and it seems like a pretty good idea.
I don't know why you think this is so special. It would be silly for any decent space program not to have an unmanned vehicle that could dock with the sta... oh... nevermind.
If the thing can actually output completed bills, then I see how it could be worth it. I didn't notice if there was an option to have a postage meter attached. That would really be slick. Or better yet, it could just dispatch thugs with sticks to beat people senseless who still insist on receiving paper bills.
You can get 22 ppm for about $600, at least that's what I saw on the first link from Froogle. So, if you want to print 1400 ppm you need roughly 64 of those. For $38,400 + the cost of some network hardware and software to manage it, and a little time you can get comparable page rates at laser quality. Let's say the added parts and labor of setting it up brings the total to $100,000. That's still a lot less than a million.
Really though, if I needed to print that much, I'd send stuff off to someone with an offset press and have them run the job.
Given that the GPL is designed to subvert copyright, and that the constitution grants congress the power to copyright to promote arts and sciences, and further given that it can be argued that the GPL goes against that goal (Stallman has expressly stated that he would rather have GPL'd software, even if the non-GPL'd is better); I think the claim to unconstitutionality is compelling. Most likely, it's unarguable in court, since the FSF lawyers have worked within the system and followed the law to the letter. The SCOTUS would have to rule from the bench based on something other than the letter of the law, implying that the FSF is some sort of subversive organization, and as much as I agree with that, I don't want to go down that road. It's too much of a "nuclear option" that could be used against things I like, or even me personally.
I'd rather fight the GPL other ways, by not using it, by avoiding participating in such projects when possible; by constructively engaging those who do participate and explaining my viewpoints in a gentlemanly manner (something sorely lacking in politics these days), by supporting OSS under better licenses such as BSD, and by producing software so good that no GPL weenie can beat it. That's the American way!
You, like most everyone, haven't read it and probably can't because it is encrypted with legalese
Who is this AC, how does he know whether or not I've read the EULA and understood it? How does he know what parts of the agreement I've actually abided by? I'm scared. This AC is one powerful all-knowing dude.
Linux gave us years of whining, configing, and trouble and finally gave us a desktop that's comparable to Windows in ease of use. All I had to do to get that from Windows was write them a check. Much easier. It's not the OS I'm shunning--it's the mode and the speed with which the system that created it delivers goods: poorly and years late.
Don't blame me. I'm not the one who doesn't know where his kid is, and the kid is out on the street dealing or something. I'm not the one who knocked up his poor mama either. Also, gentrification isn't the only way for these places to improve. Believe it or not, sometimes these places get better without help from Whities like me. Right there in the very same neighborhood along with the pushers and thugs, there was a church and a youth center. Once again, not places that would meet my needs, so another good reason for me not to move there. I mean, I can walk to bookstores from where I am now. I have no reason to walk to a Baptist church or a youth basketball league practice.:)
When I was looking for places, I looked at a "very nice" rowhouse in an "emerging" neighborhood in DC. I applied the "drive there at night" test. It flunked. Very few people want to be urban pioneers. I opted for a small studio in a much nicer part of town for about the same price. I can walk to my job. I only worry about the little rats that scurry about in the alley, not the big rats that drive by in SUVs and carry automatic weapons. I can walk to convenience stores and feel relatively safe, instead of walking through 10 blocks of urban blight and looking over my shoulder and wondering about everybody I approach.
Psychopaths are EVERYWHERE and unless we create some ethical standards for certain positions or even for getting certain degrees in college its not going to stop.
Wow! I know a lot of people who want to be on the board that makes those decisions... just as soon as they out of the mental institution... because... surprise, surprise... everybody who wants to do the job is a psychopath. Go figure.
Slashdot Mirror
Still.. as fast as modern computers are I think we may be reaching a point where raw speed is less important
All else equal, the faster code is better. Either you can actually do things faster, or you can run the faster code on cheaper hardware. Thank-you, lemmings, for giving those of us who know that performance matters an edge against vast numbers of you who've been duped into believing it doesn't.
How did this get modded up insightful? Do you really want the US to collapse into an anarchy of politicly motivated asassinations, like so many countries have done? That's not to say that we haven't come perilously close to do that already. Ever heard of a guy named John Wilkes Booth? He must be your idol. Or maybe you're with the crazies like Hinkley.
Can't remember who wrote it, but there's a little saying, "there are 3 boxes you can use to defend your rights: soap, ballot, and ammo. Use them in that order".
Thanks for making the NRA look sane.
Excellent idea. We should start posting DNS records on Kazaa and Gnutella, and streaming larger DNS caches over bittorrent. Whooooah! But let's wait until after the politicians have "won" the DNS prize before pulling something like that.
The software projects that make it to market are the ones that win. Asking why software isn't more secure is like asking why peacocks have bright feathers--plainly a liability when running from predators or fighting, but they get the attention of the peahens. And the software peahens just don't care enough about security. Whoever gets to market fastest, and with the prettiest colors, wins.
Just more proof that "the easiest interface to use is the one you already know".
What could be done to change computing to help mitigate this multitasking?
We should write some software to solve this problem.
In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic.
Insurance was created as a concept to deal with the fact that in a purely capitalist society there is no sense of community or common good and no one will help you when you need it most.
As much as your neighbors might like to help you, they are unlikely to be able to raise or donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy you a new house, or even the smaller sum to rebuild yours on the same land if it burns down. In the old days they could have pitched in and rebuilt your house, but do you really want an all-wood frame structure that insulates with 1/3rd the R-value of your current home, and wiring done by some guy down the block who isn't a licensed electrician?
Insurance is for stuff that you have no hope of paying for. Part of the reason medical stuff is so messed up is that insurance is paying for little things like doctor's visits and off-patent pills. Most people with insurance can afford these items, and the insurance beurocracy adds negative value.
If medical insurance were really insurance and not a screwed-up buyer's club, the costs would not be so high. Most people are not even offered high-deductable policies through the corporate system where they get their insurance.
So, that said, I generally agree that the insurance companies are in it too much, but I wouldn't want them out all together. If I ever need surgery, chemo, and rehab all in one year, I want to pay the deductable and let the insurance pick up the rest. That's when insurance makes sense.
Oh yeah he wanted to sell software and only sell software!
That's always been one of my points. If I wanted to sell T-shirts and tote bags, I'd already be doing that. If I wanted to be a consultant, I'd already be doing that. If I wanted to repackage commoditized software like the IT equivalent of a bottled water company, I'd already be doing that.
I never wanted to do any of those things. I always wanted to sell software, so I'm hooked up with a company that does that, none of it's Open Source, and I'm quite happy. Oh, and might I add that thew new Slashdot CSS business is a piece of crap--I can't even preview this post properly because my text is layered on top of the parent post! Do I want to wade through Slashcode? Hell no! That's not freedom. That's Slashdot's job.
Nobody invented it.
Excellent. I nominate Nobody as chair of the committee. I think the best quote from TFA was that government can't really think of a role here other than to interfere. If country X doesn't like having their DNS servers in the US, they can set up their own DNS, put the entire country on a private subnet or IPv6 and gateway to the rest of the world, blah blah. The UN is, as usual, not even a solution looking for a problem... more like a problem looking for a solution.
The problem with buying CDs is that you actually have to store them someplace. Does anybody offer a service similar to the one that Kitco does for gold? You know, you can buy "pool gold" from their exchange and not actually have to receive physical gold bars or coins. Of course you have to trust an exchange to do something like that, but it seems like we ought to have the option of doing this for music too. Then, you have a vault full of many copies of the CD. You can dispense with the jewel cases to save space, since you are only really buying a license and then... oh... wait... it's a cheaper version of iTunes, assuming the cost of storing the physical media and cataloging it in case you are audited doesn't drive things up too far. Also, unsold inventory actually consumes space, so it may not be possible for such a model to compete, but it seems like it would be perfectly legal as long as you only register one owner per physical CD.
Mod parent up! If mainland China really is a "bigger market", they should put up or shut up. It's kind of a bad precedent though... I mean... does Redmond really want to be Microsoftville? Does Atlanta want to be Coketown? Maybe they could just restrict it to teritories that are under dispute by organized armies.
1. Fresh Water.
2. Non-perishable food.
3. Cash.
4. Gas cans.
5. Communications gear -- broadcast radio receiver and CB. CB will work where cell towers are down, but bring cell phone too.
6. Lantern/Flashlight.
7. Extra batteries for electrical items.
8. Games, toys, candy, fun stuff for sad kids.
9. Tools, including shovels, can and bottle openers.
10. Extra first-aid kids.
That list is not necessarily in order of importance, and most of these items are not fancy.
What *not* to bring? A gun. Leave that up to law enforcement. I know I'll get some arguments on that, but the easiest way to get shot is to bring a gun. If you get robbed, so be it, but most people are not so evil as to rob you while on a mission of mercy. The news gives us a distored view of reality because that kind of stuff is what makes news. If it *didn't* make news, then bringing a gun might be what you have to do, but in that case you should be going in behind a tank.
So. Having never done anything like this, what did I miss? I suspect most of the people who answer this have never done any emergency work either. It would be interesting to hear from some people who have actually gone to disaster zones before. There is probably a lot that would never occur to people who haven't been there.
Job security, that is. It was so easy to write "job security applications" in Perl that even PHBs caught on to it. The next web scripting language should be based on a very careful study of how obtuse the syntax can be before the cost of maintaining it will be enough to make IT managers cry "enough is enough!" and throw out the entire application. And yes, although I was not the actual maintenance programmer on a Perl app, I was close enough to those who were to understand what had happened, The nature of Perl is such that it was probably not intentional. I mean, it looked like the code was well organized, but no God help anybody who wanted to change it.
No, they'll just use something like this to edit it, or more likely some MS GUI tool.
His argument that an OS should ask you before running something is also stupid
OK, I'll bite. When you run the installer for the screen saver, Windows already asks if you want to run an executable. Of course people will click yes on this.
What's more interesting is what kind of executables the installer writes to your drive. Let's say it asks "do you want me to write fishtank.scr to the hard drive?". Of course you want that. Now let's say it asks "do you want me to write adbot.exe to the hard drive". Bah! No thanks.
OK, so what's to stop them from putting adbot.exe in fishtank.scr. Nothing. So at this point, we have to have some control over what fishtank.scr can do. By default, applications can do whatever a user can do. Too much power. What if, by default, applications couldn't r/w the hard drive or access the network, or open more than one window?
So now "fishtank.scr would like to read from the hard drive [ ] allow all [x] limit access to a directory you specify"
"fishtank.scr would like to access the network, do you wish to allow this [ ] yes [x] no"
So the screensaver full of crap wouldn't work by default. The user might ask questions like "why won't this thing work without arbitrary hard drive access and network capability, I thought all it would do was show an animated fishtank?"
Doesn't that seem just a trifle bit better than the way things are now? How hard would it be to hook into calls that access the file system and the network to do this, and control access based on process id? Not too hard, and it seems like a pretty good idea.
I don't know why you think this is so special. It would be silly for any decent space program not to have an unmanned vehicle that could dock with the sta... oh... nevermind.
The iMac had flavors. Didn't Apple get a patent on "flavored" personal computing technology?
If the thing can actually output completed bills, then I see how it could be worth it. I didn't notice if there was an option to have a postage meter attached. That would really be slick. Or better yet, it could just dispatch thugs with sticks to beat people senseless who still insist on receiving paper bills.
You can get 22 ppm for about $600, at least that's what I saw on the first link from Froogle. So, if you want to print 1400 ppm you need roughly 64 of those. For $38,400 + the cost of some network hardware and software to manage it, and a little time you can get comparable page rates at laser quality. Let's say the added parts and labor of setting it up brings the total to $100,000. That's still a lot less than a million.
Really though, if I needed to print that much, I'd send stuff off to someone with an offset press and have them run the job.
So. What's the market for this thing?
Given that the GPL is designed to subvert copyright, and that the constitution grants congress the power to copyright to promote arts and sciences, and further given that it can be argued that the GPL goes against that goal (Stallman has expressly stated that he would rather have GPL'd software, even if the non-GPL'd is better); I think the claim to unconstitutionality is compelling. Most likely, it's unarguable in court, since the FSF lawyers have worked within the system and followed the law to the letter. The SCOTUS would have to rule from the bench based on something other than the letter of the law, implying that the FSF is some sort of subversive organization, and as much as I agree with that, I don't want to go down that road. It's too much of a "nuclear option" that could be used against things I like, or even me personally.
I'd rather fight the GPL other ways, by not using it, by avoiding participating in such projects when possible; by constructively engaging those who do participate and explaining my viewpoints in a gentlemanly manner (something sorely lacking in politics these days), by supporting OSS under better licenses such as BSD, and by producing software so good that no GPL weenie can beat it. That's the American way!
You, like most everyone, haven't read it and probably can't because it is encrypted with legalese
Who is this AC, how does he know whether or not I've read the EULA and understood it? How does he know what parts of the agreement I've actually abided by? I'm scared. This AC is one powerful all-knowing dude.
Linux gave us years of whining, configing, and trouble and finally gave us a desktop that's comparable to Windows in ease of use. All I had to do to get that from Windows was write them a check. Much easier. It's not the OS I'm shunning--it's the mode and the speed with which the system that created it delivers goods: poorly and years late.
Don't blame me. I'm not the one who doesn't know where his kid is, and the kid is out on the street dealing or something. I'm not the one who knocked up his poor mama either. Also, gentrification isn't the only way for these places to improve. Believe it or not, sometimes these places get better without help from Whities like me. Right there in the very same neighborhood along with the pushers and thugs, there was a church and a youth center. Once again, not places that would meet my needs, so another good reason for me not to move there. I mean, I can walk to bookstores from where I am now. I have no reason to walk to a Baptist church or a youth basketball league practice. :)
When I was looking for places, I looked at a "very nice" rowhouse in an "emerging" neighborhood in DC. I applied the "drive there at night" test. It flunked. Very few people want to be urban pioneers. I opted for a small studio in a much nicer part of town for about the same price. I can walk to my job. I only worry about the little rats that scurry about in the alley, not the big rats that drive by in SUVs and carry automatic weapons. I can walk to convenience stores and feel relatively safe, instead of walking through 10 blocks of urban blight and looking over my shoulder and wondering about everybody I approach.
Psychopaths are EVERYWHERE and unless we create some ethical standards for certain positions or even for getting certain degrees in college its not going to stop.
Wow! I know a lot of people who want to be on the board that makes those decisions... just as soon as they out of the mental institution... because... surprise, surprise... everybody who wants to do the job is a psychopath. Go figure.